Welcome to City-Data.com Forum!
U.S. CitiesCity-Data Forum Index
Go Back   City-Data Forum > General Forums > Education
 [Register]
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
View detailed profile (Advanced) or search
site with Google Custom Search

Search Forums  (Advanced)
Reply Start New Thread
 
Old 11-29-2022, 02:35 PM
 
Location: Oregon, formerly Texas
10,004 posts, read 7,143,334 times
Reputation: 17096

Advertisements

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ralph_Kirk View Post
False argument. The discussion is about whether the person needs a bachelor's degree. And the discussion is not about every position, but making the point that many today don't actually need that bachelor degree...that they they don't need any training at all.

Computer programmers and networkers do not need bachelor's degrees to begin work coding or wiring. They do need technical training, however.
I've tried hiring people with only high school to do jobs that we typically required bachelor's degrees for. The HS grads could only do it with A LOT of handholding. A damn lot. And I could never give them assignments like "take this data and produce an X report" and expect them to do it correctly in a timely manner. I would basically have to do it then hope the next time was similar enough to my example that they could follow it. College graduates can actually adapt and improvise. The HS grads could only do it with a lot of handholding for me. I USED to think a high school sophomore should be able to do those functions. But generally speaking it took college grads to do that kind of less scaffolded delegation task.

I don't know how many high schools you guys frequent, but as part of my job I go into them. They are KIDS and graduating at age 18 does not make them suddenly have the maturity and wherewithal of a 30 year old college graduate. You guys seem to have massively inflated expectations for 18-25 year olds. They're kids. And I bet you guys were stupid kids too and not quite ready for the big time at those ages either.

Any individual college class is not particularly valuable. But the cumulative experience of passing a lot of classes is. It shows the person can LEARN - they can take a large amount of information, process it, distill it, interpret it, prioritize it, and communicate it. High school doesn't really do that except maybe the best of them and honestly, it never did. Because again they are kids and always were.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message

 
Old 11-29-2022, 02:40 PM
 
28,564 posts, read 18,570,253 times
Reputation: 30812
Quote:
Originally Posted by MarianRavenwood View Post
Some of the problem is that with so many occupations requiring a college degree, high school curriculum is designed to be college prep. No longer are there civics courses teaching students about basic civil society functions. No longer are there high school workshop or cooking classes. Parents are so focused on college placement that kids these days rarely have after-school jobs, and their days are over programmed, taking away the opportunity to learn and apply time and money management skills, and crucial executive functioning. High school graduates aren't prepared to do anything but sit in a college lecture hall.
That is a huge part of the problem, particularly when it's considered that most kids still don't get bachelor's degrees. So, the majority come out of high school with no real capability at all.

There is a test called the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB). This is a multiple-aptitude battery that measures "developed abilities" and helps predict future academic and occupational success in the military. Every kid desiring to enlist in the US military has to take the ASVAB and it largely determines what military occupations the person will be permitted to pursue.

This is a test of practical knowledge that the person has accrued. For instance, the electronics portion will present a schematic diagram and ask, "What is the component at annotation A" and work up to "What is the function of this circuit?" Or it may present a drawing of some Rube Goldberg mechanical device and ask, "What direction is the gear at Annotation A turning?" or "If the gear at Annotation A turns three times, how many times will the gear at Annotation P have turned?"

The test runs through all kinds of applied knowledge, including electronics, algebra, geometry, hydraulics, technical reading, et cetera. It's designed to get more and more difficult with each set of questions until the student reaches the "wall" of knowledge on that subject.

The point is not to figure out what military occupations the person is ready to pursue. After all, nobody comes out of high school already able to repair a J-58 aircraft engine or manage the reactor of a nuclear submarine. But those who do well on the ASVAB are going to be more able to absorb the robust technical training the military is going to push them through.

Or any civilian technical training as well.

High schools should have two tracks so that every graduate can succeed with either the ASVAB (or a similar test) or the SAT/ACT. No high school should be graduating students who can't do well on either.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 11-29-2022, 02:46 PM
 
28,564 posts, read 18,570,253 times
Reputation: 30812
Quote:
Originally Posted by pullin2 View Post
You (or they) are leaving out another subset of degree holders though. I worked offshore rigs, pipelines, flight instructing and independent programming to get through school -- finishing with a STEM degree and zero debt. Sometimes a degree proves a lot more than having occupied a classroom for X semesters. Of course, I didn't finish until I was 28, so maybe I'm an outlier.
Here is the problem, though: A robust bachelor's degree program is not for the person of "average" IQ. People have to be pretty bright to make a bachelor's degree with the expense. Either they're bright up front and can go into a difficult (but immediately lucrative) technical field, or they have to be bright at the rear to parlay a non-technical degree into a lucrative position.

People of "average" intelligence (which is the majority of people) will wind up with non-lucrative degrees working non-lucrative jobs that won't pay their college debts.

What's worse, in order to show a record of "successful students," colleges emphasize those degrees that "average" students are able to pass...or even create them. I have a niece that took ten years to get a "General Studies" degree. It's fricking shameful that a college even offers such a thing...that's nothing but a money grab. She has wound up doing the same thing she could have done with six months of on-the-job training.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 11-29-2022, 02:50 PM
 
1,565 posts, read 1,107,704 times
Reputation: 5124
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ralph_Kirk View Post
What's worse, in order to show a record of "successful students," colleges emphasize those degrees that "average" students are able to pass...or even create them. I have a niece that took ten years to get a "General Studies" degree. It's fricking shameful that a college even offers such a thing...that's nothing but a money grab. She has wound up doing the same thing she could have done with six months of on-the-job training.
Bingo. Could not have said it better.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 11-29-2022, 02:51 PM
 
28,564 posts, read 18,570,253 times
Reputation: 30812
Quote:
Originally Posted by Vision67 View Post
No, I'm not saying that.

I'm just telling you the excuses that companies use because they are too lazy to do the filtering themselves.
There is a need to pull employee selection out of HR and put it back on management. HR needs to be there to make sure hiring laws are obeyed, but should not be the applicant gatekeepers.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 11-29-2022, 02:54 PM
 
28,564 posts, read 18,570,253 times
Reputation: 30812
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hemlock140 View Post
We did this with the lowest level position that I manage. It was not meant to get more applicants,. in fact we did it prior to the current labor shortage. It was done to help make the workplace more inclusive, and allow people without degrees to get a foot in the door. As it turns out most applicants since have still had degrees. The biggest problem with it is that the next "step on the ladder" does require a degree, but we can often substitute experience, so if someone without the degree stays in that position a few years I might be able to promote them to the next step. After that, however, it's going to be a dead end unless they fond something else in the organization that doesn't require a degree (not likely).
And that's fine. The military (particularly the Air Force, Space Force, and Navy) is similar: At some point that troop is going to need college to progress further.

That's fine in the civilian world as well, because by that point the worker will know what degree is necessary for progress, and having been in the working world for a while will more likely be able to pay for it without going into debt.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 11-29-2022, 02:57 PM
 
28,564 posts, read 18,570,253 times
Reputation: 30812
Quote:
Originally Posted by mitsguy2001 View Post
That proves my point, since it proves that minorities are able to get degrees (even without affirmative action), so requiring a college degree was not done in order to screen out minorities.
I'm going to propose my own conspiracy theory that it's a collusion of HR and education industry professionals who themselves don't have technical degrees, but are shaping society to need people just like them.

To wit:

Quote:
Originally Posted by villageidiot1 View Post
I battled with HR at several employers when hiring IT staff. HR wanted to require artificial qualifications such as a college degree and a certain number of years of experience. They wanted to screen the applicants to determine if they met those and some other vague qualifications. I had problems with this approach because they would eliminate people with the experience I wanted and send me resumes of unqualified applicants. The department head/hiring manager is the person in the best position to determine who is qualified, and in some cases, overqualified. I always gave a lot of weight to whether a person had a degree, what their major was, and my opinion of the college. But relevant experience always carried the most weight.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 11-29-2022, 03:03 PM
 
28,564 posts, read 18,570,253 times
Reputation: 30812
Quote:
Originally Posted by villageidiot1 View Post
I've also gone back to college three times since then. The only difference I've noticed is some colleges today have students who can barely read and write. In more selective schools, the students have much more knowledge and experience.
Many high schools only have college prep curricula. In fact, the "No Student Left Behind" program directly penalized schools that had vocational programs. It's a money thing. Those schools that dropped their vocational programs for the sake of "No Student Left Behind" haven't replaced them.

But the schools still have to show that most students are succeeding. So, they have watered down their college prep curricula to graduate students who can't truly succeed in college. It's a money thing.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 11-29-2022, 03:05 PM
 
28,564 posts, read 18,570,253 times
Reputation: 30812
Quote:
Originally Posted by EDS_ View Post
Here's a big part of the problem. Depending upon whom one believes that average college graduate's IQ is around 112-114, high school diploma holders around 101/102, everyone else less well less than 100.
Those who are able to succeed in robust programs--even robust non-technical programs--probably have IQ in the 120+ range.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 11-29-2022, 03:07 PM
 
28,564 posts, read 18,570,253 times
Reputation: 30812
Quote:
Originally Posted by redguard57 View Post
You know what's also overrated? Working your best years away and then dying with nothing to show for it. Jobs don't love you. They don't make your life better. We do them because it's what we do to survive. If all you got educated for was a job, than yeah, you wasted your education. I tell people all the time.. if you want a job, get a job. Don't need college for that. I got my education to improve my LIFE and it helped me with that.

Education is always over-rated until you need it. It's possible someone may go a lifetime without needing it. Others may use it every day.

Personally for me it was one of the great experiences of my life. Helps me understand the world so I'm not a complete fool. I gained a love of books and learning *because of college.* Before I went to college I was a dense unthinking idiot and I have the evidence to prove it.

In the U.S. we produce about the same proportion of college graduates per capita as our developed-world peers, around 1/3rd of the population. We probably don't need more but I don't think we need less either.

What other countries don't have is a student loan crisis like what we have. Somehow we pay for it very inefficiently.
Other industrialized nations put students into college and vocational tracks at about what we would call the 8th or 9th grades. They have free education, true, but it's targeted according to student capabilities.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.

Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.


Reply
Please update this thread with any new information or opinions. This open thread is still read by thousands of people, so we encourage all additional points of view.

Quick Reply
Message:


Over $104,000 in prizes was already given out to active posters on our forum and additional giveaways are planned!

Go Back   City-Data Forum > General Forums > Education

All times are GMT -6.

© 2005-2024, Advameg, Inc. · Please obey Forum Rules · Terms of Use and Privacy Policy · Bug Bounty

City-Data.com - Contact Us - Archive 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37 - Top