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Thanks, that MIT page really highlights how exaggerated your first comment was. Your job wasn’t to show that an intro to Python course exists, of course an intr

by dahart 1y ago

Thanks, that MIT page really highlights how exaggerated your first comment was. Your job wasn’t to show that an intro to Python course exists, of course an intro to Python course exists, duh. Your job was to show that intro to Python made up the 25% of in-degree coursework, that the rest was math and gen eds, and you’ve shown that your own description doesn’t fit MIT at all. Why does it matter if the reason having a degree pays more is because of credentialism? If that’s true, then the best advice to someone is to just get the degree, no? Unfortunately for your argument, both the comment you replied to and mine personally attested to the coursework being very helpful and your experience doesn’t counter ours. On top of that there’s a whole field of research trying to study whether the average salary premium of degree holders is due to credentialism or to actually learning useful things during four years of schooling, and they find it’s a mix of both. Your armchair claim that one doesn’t learn anything in four years of school won’t convince me or anyone else without a whole lot more effort, data, and serious analysis. What is plausible is that you didn’t learn much in your time at your school. Is the lack of math & physics in your career due to not wanting to do those things? Of course people can have careers that don’t use some or even any of the subjects they learned in school. That doesn’t demonstrate that school is a waste of time. At worst it demonstrates that you didn’t use your time wisely. At best it demonstrates you wanted to learn more and other things. Either way, I didn’t (and still don’t) expect for every single thing learned in school to be relevant to life or my own jobs, but many things I learned have been useful for me, including math and physics, as well as some social studies and history. It was eye opening to learn a bit about how global class hierarchies and economies work. If you didn’t learn any of that or anything else interesting, maybe your school failed you, maybe you should have gone somewhere else. > Are you like 2 years out of your degree program or something? Something. Around 25 years since graduation. > I can’t remember most of it. How is it shaping my thinking at this point? Saying things like that puts degrees on a pedestal. Obviously I have no idea how your degree is shaping your thinking, are you suggesting that it’s not? I mean it’s a bummer if you really got nothing out of it and it hasn’t helped shape your life at all, but I can’t speak to your experience. I’m not exactly sure why suggesting that someone who spends four years of their life learning things actually learns something is putting a degree on a pedestal. From my perspective, saying that four years of learning yields nothing for anyone, aside from being demonstrably false, doesn’t make that much sense. If you spent four years learning and didn’t learn, isn’t that on you? > Lessons from school are like anything else, use it or lose it. This highlights a vocational style of thinking. What you say is true if you only care about the list of facts a professor said in class. The lessons that I took from school are more meta level, longer lasting, and less about practicing or remembering specific things. How to approach problem solving, how to do research, and what have been the high level outcomes of other people’s research. On top of that, yes, I am keeping some of my math and social studies and history and art skills around by practicing them. If what you say is true, then one way to make sure your degree was useless is to not use it.

tayo42 1y ago
Yes my comment was slightly exaggerated. I would just point you to my other comment, since it probably addressed like 90% of your reply and maybe suggest getting out of your academic bubble and see how most people are using their degrees.
- dahart 1y ago
  Most people are enjoying the 2x salary premium. Why do you think I’m in a bubble? What evidence do you have that it’s not you wallowing? I’ve read some of the research that tries to tease apart credentialism from skills, read maybe a dozen papers about it. And I’ve looked at the data on pay gap on average across the US for degree holders vs non degree holders. Have you? BTW, your other reply does almost nothing to address either my comments nor @sarchertech’s. You’re arguing a straw man, asserting that it’s possible for people to learn on their own, which neither of us has disgreed with. The facts are that very few people actually do it without a guided curriculum, and conversely that people who choose the guided curriculum often do learn things they wouldn’t have learned otherwise.
  - tayo42 1y ago
    From my other reply > Lets go back to my original point, related to spending 3-4 years studying CS. You and the other guy that responded are getting way off topic and putting words in my mouth. > What I didn't say is that computer science knowledge is useless. So lets not get distracted by this imaginary point. > Most of the unrelated degree for CS work is useless. I think your in a bubble because it sounds like your surprised by people finding their time in college to be mostly useless. This isn't about the degree it self being something that is used to gatekeep and lead to higher salaries. Just that your not really spending 4 years studying CS, your wasting time with gen eds. Go ask some 30 year old + people about their college and experience with gen eds.
    - dahart 1y ago
      It sounds like you wasted your time. I didn’t waste mine, and @sarchertech didn’t waste theirs. I have asked some 30 year olds, in addition to reading quite a bit of research on this topic. I’m not at all surprised some people find their time in college to be mostly useless. Some people are lazy and contrarian and see school as authoritarian and useless from the start, and so they don’t pay attention and getting nothing out of it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy - something they did to themselves because of their attitude. Maybe you’re one of those people. That reflects on their attitude and choices and not on school in general, since it’s a fact that many other people find their time in college valuable, many people take advantage of the time and seek out classes that teach them things they want to learn. My school had lots of choices for classes that fill gen ed requirements, and I chose my gen eds wisely. The research that has statistically sampled all 30 year olds found that on the whole they are learning things and taking skills away from their university experience. It would be totally weird if they weren’t. Your point makes very little sense that people would spend 4 years of their lives learning and end up not learning. I think @sarchertech is right that you’re projecting your own experience on everyone else, making the incorrect assumption that because you didn’t learn much then nobody did. > This isn’t about the degree it self being something that is used to gatekeep and lead to higher salaries Yes it absolutely is. A degree that gets you into a 2x better paying job has utility, and is not useless, even if you waste your time and learn nothing. Nothing you’ve said yet addresses the point that even though people could learn on their own everything that college teaches, we have loads of evidence that it just doesn’t happen very often. BTW, I think you meant “you’re”. I wouldn’t have said anything, but you did it 4 times in a row.

by dahart 1y ago

tayo42 1y ago

Yes my comment was slightly exaggerated. I would just point you to my other comment, since it probably addressed like 90% of your reply and maybe suggest getting out of your academic bubble and see how most people are using their degrees.

dahart 1y ago
Most people are enjoying the 2x salary premium. Why do you think I’m in a bubble? What evidence do you have that it’s not you wallowing? I’ve read some of the research that tries to tease apart credentialism from skills, read maybe a dozen papers about it. And I’ve looked at the data on pay gap on average across the US for degree holders vs non degree holders. Have you? BTW, your other reply does almost nothing to address either my comments nor @sarchertech’s. You’re arguing a straw man, asserting that it’s possible for people to learn on their own, which neither of us has disgreed with. The facts are that very few people actually do it without a guided curriculum, and conversely that people who choose the guided curriculum often do learn things they wouldn’t have learned otherwise.
- tayo42 1y ago
  From my other reply > Lets go back to my original point, related to spending 3-4 years studying CS. You and the other guy that responded are getting way off topic and putting words in my mouth. > What I didn't say is that computer science knowledge is useless. So lets not get distracted by this imaginary point. > Most of the unrelated degree for CS work is useless. I think your in a bubble because it sounds like your surprised by people finding their time in college to be mostly useless. This isn't about the degree it self being something that is used to gatekeep and lead to higher salaries. Just that your not really spending 4 years studying CS, your wasting time with gen eds. Go ask some 30 year old + people about their college and experience with gen eds.
  - dahart 1y ago
    It sounds like you wasted your time. I didn’t waste mine, and @sarchertech didn’t waste theirs. I have asked some 30 year olds, in addition to reading quite a bit of research on this topic. I’m not at all surprised some people find their time in college to be mostly useless. Some people are lazy and contrarian and see school as authoritarian and useless from the start, and so they don’t pay attention and getting nothing out of it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy - something they did to themselves because of their attitude. Maybe you’re one of those people. That reflects on their attitude and choices and not on school in general, since it’s a fact that many other people find their time in college valuable, many people take advantage of the time and seek out classes that teach them things they want to learn. My school had lots of choices for classes that fill gen ed requirements, and I chose my gen eds wisely. The research that has statistically sampled all 30 year olds found that on the whole they are learning things and taking skills away from their university experience. It would be totally weird if they weren’t. Your point makes very little sense that people would spend 4 years of their lives learning and end up not learning. I think @sarchertech is right that you’re projecting your own experience on everyone else, making the incorrect assumption that because you didn’t learn much then nobody did. > This isn’t about the degree it self being something that is used to gatekeep and lead to higher salaries Yes it absolutely is. A degree that gets you into a 2x better paying job has utility, and is not useless, even if you waste your time and learn nothing. Nothing you’ve said yet addresses the point that even though people could learn on their own everything that college teaches, we have loads of evidence that it just doesn’t happen very often. BTW, I think you meant “you’re”. I wouldn’t have said anything, but you did it 4 times in a row.