4 ms·

I think companies started asking for BA degrees precisely because college education is readily available and almost everyone they are interested in has a degree

I think companies started asking for BA degrees precisely because college education is readily available and almost everyone they are interested in has a degree. Yes, college is over-hyped, yes we're in tuition bubble not unlike the housing bubble from not-so-distant past but if most of the crop has college education and you're interested in hiring the cream of the crop, requiring a college degree is given.

tokenadult 14y ago
if most of the crop has college education and you're interested in hiring the cream of the crop, requiring a college degree is given I will agree with you that this is how many hiring managers think. I happen to know counterexamples (people who declined to finish college degree programs even though they were admitted to college on financial terms affordable with their family resources) who have nonetheless obtained paying work based on college-graduate-level skills they developed despite lack of a degree. But you correctly state the general state of mind of hiring managers. That said, the general state of mind of hiring managers is wrong. Preferring people with degrees to people who lack degrees is less supported by research than quite a few other hiring criteria. I last posted my FAQ for Hacker News on company hiring procedures http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4270768 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4270768 seven days ago, so rather than repeat all those keystrokes here, allow me to say that hiring managers have more reliable criteria to look at for hiring job applicants than college degrees or any other kind of biographical data about the applicants. Check the FAQ http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4270768 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4270768 for more details.
- aidenn0 14y ago
  Where I work we wouldn't fail to at least interview someone without a 4yr college degree with some form (formal or otherwise) of related experience. However, college degrees do have some advantages: From the POV of hiree: we recruit on college campuses because that's the only place you find any significant population of qualified people who don't already have full-time jobs. From the POV of hirer: GMA tests aren't allowed, but when hiring programmers, a CS general knowledge test is, and when comparing dozens of people who all went through exactly the same CS program, it's a pretty darn good proxy for a GMA test.
  - ericd 14y ago
    CS general knowledge tests of people going through the same program are not at all a good proxy for a GMA test - there is a lot of variance in how people actually go through the same program, even with the same grades. You can't abstract that down to a test and assume the difference is the result in a difference in intelligence.
cookiecaper 14y ago
This doesn't really make sense. People who are different from the usual person have unusual backgrounds. This often includes highly-skilled "best of breed" individuals. You don't get somewhere unusual by doing all the usual things. It does not make any sense to either ostracize or acclaim candidates just by virtue of their having a degree; there are many dumb people with a degree and many smart people without (and vice-versa). A degree really does not tell you anything useful. Unless a candidate has advanced degrees, I almost never mention education in interviews because I really don't care about it. It is not a reliable metric of anything, really.
amalag 14y ago
The difference with the housing bubble is you can't walk away from your college debt by just filing bankruptcy.

tokenadult 14y ago

if most of the crop has college education and you're interested in hiring the cream of the crop, requiring a college degree is given I will agree with you that this is how many hiring managers think. I happen to know counterexamples (people who declined to finish college degree programs even though they were admitted to college on financial terms affordable with their family resources) who have nonetheless obtained paying work based on college-graduate-level skills they developed despite lack of a degree. But you correctly state the general state of mind of hiring managers. That said, the general state of mind of hiring managers is wrong. Preferring people with degrees to people who lack degrees is less supported by research than quite a few other hiring criteria. I last posted my FAQ for Hacker News on company hiring procedures http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4270768 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4270768 seven days ago, so rather than repeat all those keystrokes here, allow me to say that hiring managers have more reliable criteria to look at for hiring job applicants than college degrees or any other kind of biographical data about the applicants. Check the FAQ http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4270768 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4270768 for more details.

aidenn0 14y ago
Where I work we wouldn't fail to at least interview someone without a 4yr college degree with some form (formal or otherwise) of related experience. However, college degrees do have some advantages: From the POV of hiree: we recruit on college campuses because that's the only place you find any significant population of qualified people who don't already have full-time jobs. From the POV of hirer: GMA tests aren't allowed, but when hiring programmers, a CS general knowledge test is, and when comparing dozens of people who all went through exactly the same CS program, it's a pretty darn good proxy for a GMA test.
- ericd 14y ago
  CS general knowledge tests of people going through the same program are not at all a good proxy for a GMA test - there is a lot of variance in how people actually go through the same program, even with the same grades. You can't abstract that down to a test and assume the difference is the result in a difference in intelligence.

cookiecaper 14y ago

This doesn't really make sense. People who are different from the usual person have unusual backgrounds. This often includes highly-skilled "best of breed" individuals. You don't get somewhere unusual by doing all the usual things. It does not make any sense to either ostracize or acclaim candidates just by virtue of their having a degree; there are many dumb people with a degree and many smart people without (and vice-versa). A degree really does not tell you anything useful. Unless a candidate has advanced degrees, I almost never mention education in interviews because I really don't care about it. It is not a reliable metric of anything, really.

amalag 14y ago

The difference with the housing bubble is you can't walk away from your college debt by just filing bankruptcy.