7 ms·

Thankfully we have another, wiser tech giant to push back against the bad advice of Thiel and Altucher, who seem to think that what happened to them - effectiv

by Aqueous 13y ago

Thankfully we have another, wiser tech giant to push back against the bad advice of Thiel and Altucher, who seem to think that what happened to them - effectively, winning the lottery, even if they are talented - ought to happen to everybody.

gress 13y ago
The argument against college is that it too has become a lottery rather than an investment, one with an unacceptably high ticket price. I'd like to see the distinction made between the historical increase in earnings resulting from a college degree, and the projected increase.
- snowwrestler 13y ago
  I don't know of any data indicating that college "has become a lottery." Life is a lottery; no one is guaranteed health, let alone financial stability or success. College is part of life so it can't guarantee success either. But in every study I've seen, people who complete college are more likely to achieve financial stability than those who do not. So, if it is a lottery, it's one that is biased toward the student.
  - gress 13y ago
    Are those studies backward looking, or forward looking, and does 'financial stability' mean decades paying of debt?
commandar 13y ago
This is where it falls apart, in my opinion: >Schmidt vehemently disagrees. “The economic return to higher education over a lifetime produces significant compound greater earnings.” It’s true, on average, economists find that college raises wages by about 15-30 percent. Despite the debt, it’s a wise investment for many students. >When asked about the difficulty in paying for college, Schmidt was adamant: “I appreciate it’s expensive and we need to fix that,” he said, but “figure out a way to do it.” College is expensive because we tell kids that it's going to be this huge windfall so people "figure out a way to do it." The problem is that it's a correlation/causation argument that's turned into an out-of-control feedback loop. College graduates traditionally earned far more because fields that needed a degree were higher-earning. College degrees are absolutely useful for some fields, and, in fact, I lean toward the argument against college being weaker for the more technical fields like typically get discussed here. But the real problem is that we've been telling kids that the only way to do anything with your life is by going to get a four year degree, and as a result we have more graduates and employers are starting to require four year degrees for jobs that have traditionally -- and should be -- vocational in nature. As a society, I think it's absolutely insane to expect these sorts of jobs to suddenly begin creating more value, and thus have higher compensation, simply because the person working it has more outside education. My stance is that we need to sort this out now before it gets any worse. We need to destigmatize vocational education. We need to realize that while some form of higher education is almost always a good thing, a four year degree is complete overkill for many.
- srl 13y ago
  > We need to destigmatize vocational education. This is a little off-topic, but back in high school, there was a vocational education program clearly considered to be somewhat remedial, tailored for those who had no hope of going to college or otherwise having much success. (Poor minorities, in other words.) Students would spend about half their time in this program, and half their time with the rest of the school. I was not in it, but I eventually learned that the brightest students in many of my classes were in this program. Stigmatized as it was, it worked, and quite well. In fact, it was probably better preparation for college than the regular-track courses (which were actually meant for people who might go to college). I don't pay much attention to education policy (one can't spend time on everything), so I'm not too sure what lessons ought to be drawn from this.
- danielweber 13y ago
  Schmidt really needs to segment out that "average" rise of 15 to 30 percent. 1. A few fields clearly need education, like medicine or law. Break those out separately. 2. Getting admitted and graduating from college is a strong signal of your employability. Even if college adds absolutely nothing to your skillset, it can increase your value. (Think of getting a perfect score on the SAT.) 3. Being able to put off earning for 4 years is partly a signal of your socioeconomic status. 4. It ignores the people who try to attend college and fail. They are left with debt, the opportunity cost of wages for their time in, and no degree to show to employers. This is separate from the fact that as we have pushed more people to get better degrees, employers have simply increased their job requirements, so you need a college degree to be an office manager. A credential race is a zero-sum game for society as a whole.
dreamdu5t 13y ago
I didn't graduate high school or college. I make plenty of money and have a great career. I just got lucky, huh? Rolled the dice and had my life created for me. Did school teach you this false dichotomy?
- res0nat0r 13y ago
  The point is, on average you will fare better with a college degree than without. If you pick 18th century Russian literature as your degree, well that's a different story...
  - batoure 13y ago
    People always want to give literature students a hard time. But do you know where they end up by the numbers? One answer, law school... they love to read old incomprehensible stuff and are obsessed with research. I'm in software development I make a good living, my significant other makes way more than me... what did she study in undergrad... >18th century Russian literature
    - learc83 13y ago
      They go to law school because there aren't a lot of other options, not because literature prepared them for law school. Some degrees just aren't worth very much unless you plan on going further than a bachelors. Russian literature is one of those. Also law school isn't the ticket to a well paid job that it used to be, and it's very expensive.
      - batoure 13y ago
        I think that is a pretty jaded statement. What if instead of being able to get a CS degree, degrees in engineering were required to be spun around a topic. So that you left college with a degree in "Mid Nineties Adventure Games". On the surface you might examine this course of study to be completely useless. Very few adventure games exist any more. But to spend 4 years trying to truly understand the topic you would have to learn to code to see how that code interacts with visual and artistic objects to understand the history of the business model and examine ideas of story and context and finally to understand why the industry moved passed it. No one would expect that you would go out and build your own game, but in that course of study maybe you discovered that there was a piece you were good at , the code and that in understanding it through the vehicle of something you were interested in you found a passion for a profession. Would you say that people with that degree that went on to work at X big startup were doing it because they had no other options? No you would say "wow she's a brilliant coder.... and a little weird if you get her talking about adventure games" Maybe the realities are that we need to make CS, that is basically vocational training, have a little more liberal arts to it.
randomdata 13y ago
Something else to consider: I'm not sure about the data from the USA, but in Canada, the university enrolment rate is 50%, but the graduation rate is closer to 25%. It is clear you can push large segments of the population into college, but that doesn't mean they will be successful at it. Is that still a gain for the individual and society?

by Aqueous 13y ago

gress 13y ago

The argument against college is that it too has become a lottery rather than an investment, one with an unacceptably high ticket price. I'd like to see the distinction made between the historical increase in earnings resulting from a college degree, and the projected increase.

snowwrestler 13y ago
I don't know of any data indicating that college "has become a lottery." Life is a lottery; no one is guaranteed health, let alone financial stability or success. College is part of life so it can't guarantee success either. But in every study I've seen, people who complete college are more likely to achieve financial stability than those who do not. So, if it is a lottery, it's one that is biased toward the student.
- gress 13y ago
  Are those studies backward looking, or forward looking, and does 'financial stability' mean decades paying of debt?

commandar 13y ago

This is where it falls apart, in my opinion: >Schmidt vehemently disagrees. “The economic return to higher education over a lifetime produces significant compound greater earnings.” It’s true, on average, economists find that college raises wages by about 15-30 percent. Despite the debt, it’s a wise investment for many students. >When asked about the difficulty in paying for college, Schmidt was adamant: “I appreciate it’s expensive and we need to fix that,” he said, but “figure out a way to do it.” College is expensive because we tell kids that it's going to be this huge windfall so people "figure out a way to do it." The problem is that it's a correlation/causation argument that's turned into an out-of-control feedback loop. College graduates traditionally earned far more because fields that needed a degree were higher-earning. College degrees are absolutely useful for some fields, and, in fact, I lean toward the argument against college being weaker for the more technical fields like typically get discussed here. But the real problem is that we've been telling kids that the only way to do anything with your life is by going to get a four year degree, and as a result we have more graduates and employers are starting to require four year degrees for jobs that have traditionally -- and should be -- vocational in nature. As a society, I think it's absolutely insane to expect these sorts of jobs to suddenly begin creating more value, and thus have higher compensation, simply because the person working it has more outside education. My stance is that we need to sort this out now before it gets any worse. We need to destigmatize vocational education. We need to realize that while some form of higher education is almost always a good thing, a four year degree is complete overkill for many.

srl 13y ago
> We need to destigmatize vocational education. This is a little off-topic, but back in high school, there was a vocational education program clearly considered to be somewhat remedial, tailored for those who had no hope of going to college or otherwise having much success. (Poor minorities, in other words.) Students would spend about half their time in this program, and half their time with the rest of the school. I was not in it, but I eventually learned that the brightest students in many of my classes were in this program. Stigmatized as it was, it worked, and quite well. In fact, it was probably better preparation for college than the regular-track courses (which were actually meant for people who might go to college). I don't pay much attention to education policy (one can't spend time on everything), so I'm not too sure what lessons ought to be drawn from this.
danielweber 13y ago
Schmidt really needs to segment out that "average" rise of 15 to 30 percent. 1. A few fields clearly need education, like medicine or law. Break those out separately. 2. Getting admitted and graduating from college is a strong signal of your employability. Even if college adds absolutely nothing to your skillset, it can increase your value. (Think of getting a perfect score on the SAT.) 3. Being able to put off earning for 4 years is partly a signal of your socioeconomic status. 4. It ignores the people who try to attend college and fail. They are left with debt, the opportunity cost of wages for their time in, and no degree to show to employers. This is separate from the fact that as we have pushed more people to get better degrees, employers have simply increased their job requirements, so you need a college degree to be an office manager. A credential race is a zero-sum game for society as a whole.

dreamdu5t 13y ago

I didn't graduate high school or college. I make plenty of money and have a great career. I just got lucky, huh? Rolled the dice and had my life created for me. Did school teach you this false dichotomy?

res0nat0r 13y ago
The point is, on average you will fare better with a college degree than without. If you pick 18th century Russian literature as your degree, well that's a different story...
- batoure 13y ago
  People always want to give literature students a hard time. But do you know where they end up by the numbers? One answer, law school... they love to read old incomprehensible stuff and are obsessed with research. I'm in software development I make a good living, my significant other makes way more than me... what did she study in undergrad... >18th century Russian literature
  - learc83 13y ago
    They go to law school because there aren't a lot of other options, not because literature prepared them for law school. Some degrees just aren't worth very much unless you plan on going further than a bachelors. Russian literature is one of those. Also law school isn't the ticket to a well paid job that it used to be, and it's very expensive.
    - batoure 13y ago
      I think that is a pretty jaded statement. What if instead of being able to get a CS degree, degrees in engineering were required to be spun around a topic. So that you left college with a degree in "Mid Nineties Adventure Games". On the surface you might examine this course of study to be completely useless. Very few adventure games exist any more. But to spend 4 years trying to truly understand the topic you would have to learn to code to see how that code interacts with visual and artistic objects to understand the history of the business model and examine ideas of story and context and finally to understand why the industry moved passed it. No one would expect that you would go out and build your own game, but in that course of study maybe you discovered that there was a piece you were good at , the code and that in understanding it through the vehicle of something you were interested in you found a passion for a profession. Would you say that people with that degree that went on to work at X big startup were doing it because they had no other options? No you would say "wow she's a brilliant coder.... and a little weird if you get her talking about adventure games" Maybe the realities are that we need to make CS, that is basically vocational training, have a little more liberal arts to it.

randomdata 13y ago

Something else to consider: I'm not sure about the data from the USA, but in Canada, the university enrolment rate is 50%, but the graduation rate is closer to 25%. It is clear you can push large segments of the population into college, but that doesn't mean they will be successful at it. Is that still a gain for the individual and society?