Everyone has a degree. Good or bad?

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

(MK): "Are you sure that UoP's per-unit (graduate) costs are higher..."
(Garrison): "Yes I am."
(MK): "Anyway, these figures do not support Garrison's argument that for-profit institution per-unit costs are higher."
(Garrison): "Well, given I never made such a claim..."

Explain?

 

[Garrison0fMars]

(MK): "Are you sure that UoP's per-unit (graduate) costs are higher..."
(Garrison): "Yes I am."
(MK): "Anyway, these figures do not support Garrison's argument that for-profit institution per-unit costs are higher."
(Garrison): "Well, given I never made such a claim..."

Explain?

I've already stated it was a misunderstanding, and explained. Talk about baiting...

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

Talk about baiting...

Okay. Let's...

...his position seems to be derived from a mix of extreme libertarianism and/or paleoconservative position and tinfoil kookery, since in his mind schools are there to produce union "due paying" satanist homosexuals...

...only Kirk Tinfoil hat in an airtight bunker Patrick is making such an argument, and it's a disingenuous one at that. He doesn't care about cost effectiveness, but about getting "gubmint" out of the education process...
...it's why I called Kirkpatrick out on his idiotic proposal...

...someone like you is meant to be ridiculed, not debated.

I have not done this,

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

(Kitten): "Indeed, that's what the whole 'for profit' college mess currently before the US government is about -- too many colleges are offering meaningless "programs" for which they charge exorbitant fees, knowing that most of the students are neither qualified nor likely to complete, and that even the graduates will be unable to find work in the fields that were advertised to them."
(Garrison): "Agreed, and it's why I called Kirkpatrick out on his idiotic proposal to let the 'University of Phoenix' administrate such exams. They're part of the problem, not the solution."
(MK): "Are you sure that UoP's per-unit (graduate) costs are higher..."
(Garrison): "Yes I am."
(MK): "Anyway, these figures do not support Garrison's argument that for-profit institution per-unit costs are higher."
(Garrison): "Well, given I never made such a claim..."
(MK): "Explain?"
(Garrison): "I've already stated it was a misunderstanding, and explained."
You mean:...

I thought you were referring to tuition at for-profit colleges, which are usually more expensive than their public counterpart.

I said nothing about tuition. I challenged your assent to Kitten's slam against for-profit schools, when you wrote: "UoP is one of the biggest tax guzzlers in the nation."

Taxes. Revenues derived through the threat to kidnap (arrest), assault (subdue), and to forcibly infect with HIV (imprison) someone, and then paid to $300/hr parasites who work 32 weeks a year, six hours a week, piling debt on kids and taxpayers and cranking out "The Myth of the Individual in the Films of Clint Eastwood" (really), by Dr. Noel Kent, "Mumford, Mailer, and the Machine" (Governor-elect Dr. Neil Abercrombie's American Studies PhD thesis--a 50-page book report), or "A Feminist-Marxist Deconstruction of 1950's Era Advertising in the Sears Catalogue" (I made that up, but I would not be surprised).

Tax-guzzlers, indeed. For the price of one major US research university's Women's Studies Department budget we could probably get the entire annual output of all US academic publications in that discipline if we paid the Chinese government to construct a Sinkiang labor camp for dissident intellectuals and gave them 15 years of back issues of "peer-reviewed" periodicals in that discipline.

 

[Garrison0fMars]

You're still trying eh?

and to forcibly infect with HIV (imprison) someone

Lol wut? See, this is why I can't take you seriously.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

You're still trying eh?

To get you to admit "disingenuous" statements and apologize for gratutious insults? Sorta, but more to reveal your character. Keep it up,

(MK): "Taxes. Revenues derived through the threat to kidnap (arrest), assault (subdue), and to forcibly infect with HIV (imprison) someone..."

Lol wut? See, this is why I can't take you seriously.

Your determined denial of the obvious is why I cannot take you seriously.

In prisons across the world, the HIV and AIDS epidemic presents a major challenge. HIV prevalence within prisons is often far higher than in the general community, and prisons are a high-risk environment for HIV transmission... Rape: The often violent nature of non-consensual sex can cause tearing and bleeding, which increases the risk of HIV transmission. Rape in prisons is rarely reported, but the WHO estimate that prevalence ranges from 0 to 16 percent.24 In 2003 in the United States it was estimated that over 1 million inmates had been sexually assaulted in the past 20 years.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

And this last, btw, everyone, relates to our theme: shilling for superfluous paper validation of knowledge that adults can acquire on their own is disguised jobs protection for public-sector employees. It comes at a high price, in money, the opportunity cost of student time, and real human life.

 

[drkitten]

Then why do so few of them advertise on the basis of lower cost?

Because it's not a very effective advertisement for that particular group.

Traditional students, first, tend not to be as emotionally aware of the actual numbers involved; the difference between $15,000 and $30,000 doesn't impact them because they're both large enough for "number numbness" to set in. Second, of course, students expect to be able to take out loans for arbitrarily large amounts and to be able to pay them back out of their completely unrealistic salary expectations.

Basically, colleges don't advertise on the basis of low cost for the same reason that sports cars and luxury restaurants don't advertise on the basis of low cost. Because that's not the message they're trying to convey.

 

[lightfire22000]

Who would sweep, vacuum and mop the floors and clean the toilets? A person with a Batchelors degree in liberal arts would balk at being a mailclerk. Who would wash and dry our cars and mow our lawns (don't answer that) Who would service our sewers? Lots of essential jobs that don't require a degree.

This is the same fallacy of the hypothetical Cyprus experiment in the book Brave New World. If people became better educated, those jobs would still be there and people would do them for money. Educated people would do those jobs if the demand was high enough. Just because someone has a degree, doesn't mean that the job they'll do necessarily requires a degree or the equivalent education. The reason those jobs are undesirable is usually because they're either lower paying, physically more taxing, or just gross and unhealthy. If people wouldn't take those jobs, the jobs would become higher paying and an equilibrium would be reached. The idea that a population needs ignorant stupid people to work jobs is itself stupid. Besides, those jobs would become obsolete eventually as automation improved.

Because you suggested that people who go to college should be steered into "an education with real tangible job skills" in order to "secure better job prospects." Someone wants to go to school and study linguistics, for example, and we should discourage them from doing that an instead study medicine, because there's real tangible job skills in an MD that there isn't in linguistics.

I actually know of a few undergraduate linguistic majors who became MDs. They do neuroscience research. Graduate school is a good option for practical training.

If it turns out that I'm right that the CS boom is over, and the linguistics boom is cooling, and the literature boom is on the horizon,.... great. But if not, no one went into literature because they thought they could make money at it. They went into it because they like literature studies.

You can approximate the financial practicality of a certain education though. A literature major should have additional training in a more practical field because for every J.K. Rowling and George Lucas there are at least 10 John Cheevers and J.D. Salingers.

Usually when literature or philosophy majors financially succeed in a field, it isn't because of prerequisite knowledge acquired in their curriculum, but because their academic success required them to develop certain thought processes that are also important in some professions. Take George Soros for example; he was a philosophy major.

 

[Varanid]

Usually when literature or philosophy majors financially succeed in a field, it isn't because of prerequisite knowledge acquired in their curriculum, but because their academic success required them to develop certain thought processes that are also important in some professions. Take George Soros for example; he was a philosophy major.

It is funny that both sides are claiming this point as evidence for their argument.
Again, I will re-iterate that someone who educates themselves, almost by definition, demonstrates these skills.

I still fail to see why a degree is necessary to be qualified for anything. Skills, knowledge set, etc. are obviously the important criteria.

 

[Garrison0fMars]

I still fail to see why a degree is necessary to be qualified for anything. Skills, knowledge set, etc. are obviously the important criteria.

Well, we do need a way to objectively verify one has those aforementioned skills and knowledge set, yes?

 

[Varanid]

Well, we do need a way to objectively verify one has those aforementioned skills and knowledge set, yes?

How is this possible?

Is a degree from Harvard equivalent to a degree from UoP?

What about someone who obtains a degree in one field, but then (as they gain other knowledge, skills, etc.) changes fields?

There is no objective criteria, other than observation of a person doing profession X. Degrees are in my view, hardly objective.

At the end of the day, our own critical analysis (hardly objective) is all we can go on.

To be clear, I am not "anti-education". I simply disagree that a degree equates with competency. Many times it will, but not always. Conversely, a lack of a degree doesn't indicate the absence of appropriate knowledge/skill.

 

[Garrison0fMars]

Is a degree from Harvard equivalent to a degree from UoP?

No, of course not. The institution behind them also matters. UoP is generally considered a joke by employers, and generally gets your application sent to the trash bin.

What about someone who obtains a degree in one field, but then (as they gain other knowledge, skills, etc.) changes fields?

Depends I suppose. If I am an engineer, but decide all of a sudden I want to be a medical doctor, well, I'm going to have to go to medical school for that.

There is no objective criteria, other than observation of a person doing profession X. Degrees are in my view, hardly objective.

Then, how exactly are we to prove one has competency in one's professed field? Do they simply tell the employer "Yeah, I know how to do this", and the employer should take his/her word for it?

To be clear, I am not "anti-education". I simply disagree that a degree equates with competency. Many times it will, but not always. Conversely, a lack of a degree doesn't indicate the absence of appropriate knowledge/skill.

Of course it doesn't always indicate competency, but someone with a medical degree from UCI is far more likely by many fold to be a competent physician compared to some random guy who has no educational experience claiming that he too can be a physician. Nothing is 100% You don't refuse a medical treatment just because it may not work, and you don't expect neglecting treatment to be a better option just because the treatment doesn't always work.

 

[Varanid]

No, of course not. The institution behind them also matters. UoP is generally considered a joke by employers, and generally gets your application sent to the trash bin.

Perhaps we disagree about the term 'objective', or perhaps I misunderstood your point. I thought you were advocating that a degree is in fact objective.

Depends I suppose.

Uh oh...that isn't a good start to an objective statement.

Then, how exactly are we to prove one has competency in one's professed field?

That is just the problem, there isn't a way to objectively discern these facts. At least not prior to observing the practice of whatever skills are in question.

Of course it doesn't always indicate competency, but someone with a medical degree from UCI is far more likely by many fold to be a competent physician compared to some random guy who has no educational experience claiming that he too can be a physician.

100% agreed, though the opposite also occurs. I am not pointing out a pretty truth, just a truth.

 

[Garrison0fMars]

Perhaps we disagree about the term 'objective', or perhaps I misunderstood your point. I thought you were advocating that a degree is in fact objective.

If by "objective" you mean "100% certainty to be competent enough for employment in this field", no of course not. Is something though with a medical degree from UCI FAR more likely to be a competent physician, than say Joe Schmoe who acquired their professed education from talking to chickens? I'd say so. There's never going to be any fool proof method, it's about finding a method that works better than all the available ones, or in other words, the least worst. If you have a method that can produce better results, let's hear it.

 

[Varanid]

I mean objective as in polar. Yes/no, right/wrong, or in our case qualified/not qualified.

What did you mean by objective?
No matter....



I have advocated from the beginning, that like it or not, the hiring agent's (or client as the case may be) critical thinking skills are what should be used.

 

[Garrison0fMars]

I have advocated from the beginning, that like it or not, the hiring agent's (or client as the case may be) critical thinking skills are what should be used.

That's seems a rather inferior system for a number of reasons.

First off, say I have 100 applicants, as an employer, how exactly am I going to weed out the potentially unqualified candidates with the potentially qualified candidates? How is one such applicant going to demonstrate their education? Remember, even when people test out with CLEP, they still earn the same degree as the university graduates.

Second off, if there's no independent certification, then I can see employers having to run burdensome tests on pretty much every potential candidate, among other needless probationary methods to weed out the viable ones.
'm going to WANT any help that narrows down the candidacies, which is why after all, employers generally favor things such as certification, and degrees.

Third off, if I'm a client who for example, has no knowledge of plumbing, how am I supposed to dis concern the good plumbers from the bad plumbers? Just a roll of dice hoping they know what the hell they're doing? What's to stop some quack from claiming to be a medical doctor to medically illiterate individuals and charging for scams like "nerve tonic"? (Yes, I know things like this still happen here and there, but if we rely on the general public's ability to dis concern the quacks from the real deal, well, that kind of thing would greatly increase I'd argue)

 

[NewtonTrino]

I would argue that just passing the exam is not the same thing as earning the degree by going through the program. As an employer I expect that someone who has a degree actually had to do some hard work, cooperate with people and learn how to work within a system. I also expect that they should have spent the time during school networking and getting to know some of the other best and brightest from their class. Many great people and deals have been found through these types of connections.

Now that's not to say that I refuse to hire people without degrees. Far from it, I have plenty of employees who don't have them. However most of these people are truly gifted individuals and I wouldn't use them as a reason to skip getting one yourself (assuming you enjoy intellectual pursuits, if you don't there are *plenty* of ways to make a decent living that don't involve calculus or latin).

 

[Varanid]

The presence or absence of a degree is one component of a critical analysis of a person in question.
And in my view, not necessarily the best one. Critical thinking is still part of the equation (as per all of your examples). Do you know which plumbing schools are good ones? I don't either, ergo we must use (this and) other criteria to discern the best candidates.

 

[daenku32]

Do something with a battery, couple switches, resistors, capacitors and inductors and then tell them to derive Maxwell's equations from what they just observed.