Comparing attendance at Stanford to requiring a college degree is also a pointless comparison. If you're on the fence about whether or not a college degree is required for a job, you're not looking for students from stanford, with the odd exception of programmers who can somewhat frequently big up a large degree of technical expertise on their own. Even if you do want to take the stance that requiring college degrees is discriminatory, shitting on some old guy for being proud of his son's academic achievements without any evidence that it wasn't earned on merit is extremely rude. And for what its worth, I'd bet heavily on a random student from stanford over a random student from my undergrad being more generally competent at intellectual tasks.
"On top of financing tuition assistance and scholarship programs via the income tax you pay, your son wasn't eligible for these programs so you had to foot the bill yourself for his education"
> And for what its worth, I'd bet heavily on a random student from stanford over a random student from my undergrad being more generally competent at intellectual tasks.
I agree. But keep in mind there are outliers everywhere, and selective schools are quite small. The average at a mega-public school might be bad, but the top 10% might be on-par with a smaller more selective school, quality and number-wise.
It has been this way for a millennium.
The workforce started using them en masse 60 years ago and we’ve been trying to patch this concept ever since. It is great that we have large populations educated in advanced multidisciplinary concepts. There is also no way for the university concept to not exacerbate inequality.
This still leaves the need for a way to screen for competent people, something that shows discipline and life stability to commit to something. I think the apprentice concept and trade school does that. Germany has this fairly institutionalized (and also free university). I hope larger economic unions are able to reconcile this.
I think this blind spot is because many people derive part of their identity with their university.
All the aspiring foreigners aren’t in the US higher education system, and the ones that are overcame other forms of adversity and are fairly exceptional or are party members in China that are practically tasked with going to an American school.
And the Americans? Mostly upper middle class, benefactors of a support system.
It’s been shown that the class someone ends up in is far more correlated with their parents than their college. This is why poor kids who go to Harvard typically don’t get rich.
People tend to vastly overestimate the effect a college has on income for almost all fields.
In the UK some organisations belong to 'the 5 percent club' [0] whose aim is that at least 5% of the workforce is formed from apprentices and sponsored graduates. It's not yet institutionalized but a good step in the right direction. I used to work for one of the founder organisations and it was quite common to meet prople who had joined as apprentices and were now achieving good work place qualifications and experience. I was always impressed by their motivation and pragmatism
Not in the US. Harvard was founded in 1636 as a vocational school. The Morrill Act, signed by Lincoln, established the land grant universities. "The mission of these institutions as set forth in the 1862 Act is to focus on the teaching of practical agriculture, science, military science, and engineering (though "without excluding... classical studies") as a response to the industrial revolution and changing social class." Wikipedia.
Woke is tiresome.
Massive eye roll. I'm sure everyone clapped after that, and they gave them a free coffee, and hung their portrait on the wall.
Also, it's "proceeded".
He’d know that if he had a college degree.
None of the points are particularly convincing, mostly because she picks the base for each of the statistics as whatever best supports her argument. She starts out only talking about elite colleges because that's where she can find corruption and proceeds to pretend that it reflects the entire degree-granting community. "Case studies" 2 and 3 are both the same argument.
The last point about degrees being an indicator of on-the-job success is actually saying that 2/3 of people with degrees were considered successful by their bosses. Whether 2/3 is good or bad depends upon how it compares to employees without degrees, a statistic conveniently left out.
A degree isn't supposed to be an indicator of on-the-job success; it's supposed to be an indicator of ability to learn, adapt, and manage your time when you are on your own.
It's also what happens when socially clueless strangers interrupt your conversation to make rude comments and you have the good sense not to waste your time on them. Idiotic comments don't deserve well thought out replies.
Of course there are always sharp and diligent people that didn't go to college. But if they don't have a degree or work experience, then you have to interview them to find out and possibly do more on the job training. When someone already has lots of applicants, they don't bother finding out.
Now, I don't want to cargo-cult elite schools, but yes graduating from one of them sends a strong signal. I assume someone who could get into Stanford & al. is minimally competent since he was able to get admitted and graduate from a tough CS program.
While the US has schools with expensive price tags, it also has respected affordable schools, and a mind-boggling amount of financial assistance available.
I would wager that the biggest indicator of success is not household income or college of attendance, but the resources and quality of secondary education. Navigating the college entry process is probably the biggest hurdle for capable students who grow up unprivileged.
As a counterexample, there are plenty of highly educated yet lower income people in the US: families with employment in the arts, humanities, academics, etc. The children in these families are not excluded from higher education — they simply have the knowledge to navigate the financial aid process.
> This comment really infuriated me because this type of outdated thinking—that a college degree from an elite, pricey university means you’re set for life—must die immediately. It falsely signals to employers that you’re better than the average Jane just because you have a piece of paper. In reality, all it really signals is your family’s socioeconomic status.
The source given[0] for this statement states nothing about employers and college graduates. Rather, it discusses the likelihood for a student to graduate from college based upon family income.
Following this:
> I preceded to tell him that it doesn’t matter if you have a college degree anymore to do today’s jobs and that he was basically bragging about his family’s socioeconomic status, not his son’s actual achievements.
I understand the frustration with both private and Ivy institutions hefty price tags. This has been well covered and isn't something I would debate.
After the issue with the first source, I decided to check the source for the infographic (titled "New college grads lack soft skills, employers say") near the end of the article. The Cengage/Morning Consult source[1] didn't have the same figures as purported in the graphic. There is another piece from HRDive referencing this[2] but also does not have the same figures.
Regardless of sources, what irks me the most is the idea that a degree is useless for work. Many forms of work require critical thinking, reading and analytics—someone who is able to earn a college degree (regardless of institution status) is able to demonstrate that they have some abilities in these skills.
[0]: https://www.americaspromise.org/news/pbs-newshour-biggest-pr...
[1]: https://news.cengage.com/upskilling/new-survey-demand-for-un...
[2]: https://www.hrdive.com/news/soft-skills-top-employer-wish-li...
> I preceded to tell him that it doesn’t matter if you have a college degree anymore to do today’s jobs and that he was basically bragging about his family’s socioeconomic status, not his son’s actual achievements. I tried to elaborate about the inequalities of higher education and why it’s an outdated metric of future success. I explained why employers are absolutely wrong for thinking his son is better than someone without a degree or a degree from a public university.
These are important points to consider and I don't see how it's a "waste of time to read". The author provided data from different sources to backup their claim. Do you have any sources to counter those claims?
> anecdotal evidence misapplied as representative
Such as? Did you happen to skip over ALL the other sources they used to prove their point?
> There was no discussion as to what alternatives are to a college degree that employers might find attractive
So? This discussion section is a good place for that. Why don't you offer some alternatives since you've thought on it?
You're taking an article with enough substance to have a valuable discussion around it and poo-pooing it away because the author is inferior relative to your subjective standards. That's what I'm getting from your comment.
>>I explained why employers are absolutely wrong for thinking his son is better than someone without a degree or a degree from a public university.
Both of these things can be true.
That’s how choices are made.
For senior level roles you do need someway to determine who can actually perform the job, qualifications will discriminate against some pool of candidates. If you require experience you are discriminating based on age, if you require a professional certification you are discriminating against those who haven't achieved the certification.
The question seems to be what to do about other roles, like writer, or developer where the pool of applicants can be large. How do you filter out unqualified candidates? Whatever metric you choose becomes the new factor of discrimination.
A college degree is an easy button in some sense. It proves you can stick with a long term goal. It proves you can pass some sort of basic tests. It shows you potentially have some of the qualities required. It's not guaranteed, there are horrible lawyers who passed the bar.
Griggs v. Duke Power Co.[0] is the Supreme Court case on this topic.
An undergrad provides very little that is distinguishing these days and the distribution of "goodness," it imbues is long-tailed. However, where she sees this obvious discrimination as stupid, I see disruption and arbitrage opportunity. Very excited by these observations.
https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/06/06/against-tulip-subsidie...
There's a decent chance someone who wanted to convince the guy that his son's degree wasn't as valuable as he thought could make the case. The author had no intention of doing that.
This article does make her sound like* a jerk. I don't mean to suggest Lauren Holliday is* a jerk or an asshole; she might be a perfectible reasonable and respectful person. But her writing here takes reputable evidence and skews it with misinterpretation and appeals to emotion. For example, the NOLO link she uses to support her claim "Filtering candidates by degree is the epitome of wrong and legally, it’s actually discriminatory" merely says that whether it's discriminatory "...depends on its into and its effect." And of course, the NOLO link has nothing to say about the morality of filtering by degree. Similarly, she asserts that "A LOT of rich kids" pay people to take classes/do assignments, which I suppose is true depending on one's definition of "a lot." The implication is that rich people regularly cheat in college.
Her goal seems to be persuading employers to drop their degree requirements. Instead of writing a convincing article, she got distracted by frustration and a dislike of the rich. If she writes a follow-up, a better case would be simply support the point: "Employers are likely missing out on superior job candidates because of degree requirements." I think that, along with the bare minimum of outrage, would get closer to achieving the goal and further from encouraging the mob to grab pitchforks.
