[Split Thread] The value of degree qualifications over time

[Ivor the Engineer]

A tad hyperbolic. Universities have been handing out honorary degrees since forever. I really don’t see why an artist who has created some of the most well-regarded music since Michael Jackson getting a degree in fine art. When I was at university, students in the fine art department got a degree for perpetrating a hoax on some media organizations by pretending they had spent a grant on a holiday in Spain. Whereas Taylor Swift gets one for making actual art that is bought by hundreds of millions of people! Of course she should get a doctorate. Or did you complain when Jonny Cash got one? Or Elton John? Or Billy Joel?

I think all "honorary" degrees are just universities trying to get a bit of publicity and appeals to the intellectual insecurity or vanity of those receiving them. They are the educational equivalent of the pointless gongs that governments hand out.

https://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=369264[/url]

Posted By: jimbob Split from All Hail Taylor Swift, Person of the Year! [url

 

[angrysoba]

I think all "honorary" degrees are just universities trying to get a bit of publicity and appeals to the intellectual insecurity or vanity of those receiving them. They are the educational equivalent of the pointless gongs that governments hand out.

Have you shaken your fist at any clouds today?

 

[lionking]

I think all "honorary" degrees are just universities trying to get a bit of publicity and appeals to the intellectual insecurity or vanity of those receiving them. They are the educational equivalent of the pointless gongs that governments hand out.

This is a skeptical forum. The cynical forum is that way ————>

 

[pgwenthold]

I think all "honorary" degrees are just universities trying to get a bit of publicity and appeals to the intellectual insecurity or vanity of those receiving them. They are the educational equivalent of the pointless gongs that governments hand out.

You are wrong.

Honorary degrees are university ways of stroking a potential donor's ego to get them to donate more money to the university.

It has nothing to do with "intellectual insecurity." It has everything to do with giving money.

 

[Ivor the Engineer]

What a bunch of pseuds you all are.

I interview people with university education. I give them what should be an insultingly basic test of electronics knowledge.

Of the last two, one had a Bacholors degree and told me he hadn't finished calculating 150/25 because he didn't have a calculator. The other had a PhD and struggled to understand how a D-Type flip flop worked or how to debounce a push switch.

I don't even bother trying to inform or correct them anymore. I just quickly move on.

It has been this way for many years. Universities hand out degrees like confetti.

 

[lionking]

What a bunch of pseuds you all are.

I interview people with university education. I give them what should be an insultingly basic test of electronics knowledge.

Of the last two, one had a Bacholors degree and told me he hadn't finished calculating 150/25 because he didn't have a calculator. The other had a PhD and struggled to understand how a D-Type flip flop worked or how to debounce a push switch.

I don't even bother trying to inform or correct them anymore. I just quickly move on.

It has been this way for many years. Universities hand out degrees like confetti.

Your degree, though, was hunky dory and you were the perfect, diligent and hard working scholar who deserved your degree and the privilege it bestowed.

 

[Shalamar]

What a bunch of pseuds you all are.

I interview people with university education. I give them what should be an insultingly basic test of electronics knowledge.

Of the last two, one had a Bacholors degree and told me he hadn't finished calculating 150/25 because he didn't have a calculator. The other had a PhD and struggled to understand how a D-Type flip flop worked or how to debounce a push switch.

I don't even bother trying to inform or correct them anymore. I just quickly move on.

It has been this way for many years. Universities hand out degrees like confetti.

And then an Eagle flew into your office and shed a tear.

 

[Ivor the Engineer]

Your degree, though, was hunky dory and you were the perfect, diligent and hard working scholar who deserved your degree and the privilege it bestowed.

Nah, I almost quit my masters in the 3rd year. As one professor kept on reminding us, it's just a points scoring exercise. Those of us who were actually interested in and had some talent for electronics got quite disenchanted at times.

I think university is a bit of a scam. Most of what you learn there could be obtained at much lower cost by just buying the books, reading them and doing the questions at the end of each section. Indeed, most lecturers seem to treat lecturing at a necessary evil that drags them away from their research and abusing PhD students. Universities charge a premium to apply a rubber stamp. Only for subjects where expensive equipment is needed that an individual couldn't afford is university worth the money.

 

[Ivor the Engineer]

But those are all men.

Ah the Internet, where those who express any opinion are guaranteed to be misconstrued.

So far this week I'm a misogynistic antisemite. Who knows what names I'll be called next!

 

[Fast Eddie B]

Who knows what names I'll be called next!

A dog?