Many of the B.S. degrees are also gifts to the pupils who in mass refuse to prepare and hence benefit from mass grade inflation.
Especially for “-studies” majors, where you get an “A” if you can put a condom on a cucumber.
After all, why should they be penalized just because they're a black HS grad who reads at the second grade level and some privileged white HS grad reads at the seventh grade level? You should just dumb down the stuff they have to read so they can handle it.
Now, if you require a college degree, odds are everyone applies will at least read at the ninth grade level.
They had to dumb down all academics so a certain segment of society wouldn’t look so very sub standard.
A collage degree acts as an additional filter to weed out unwanted applicants. It helps the company avoid being accused of some type of discrimination. The powerful education lobby is all for it as it means a constant flow of money.
It used to be that a HS graduate could read, write effectively and think at least somewhat critically. That has become increasingly rare, thus the requirement for a bachelor’s degree. Even then the employer better test that applicant thoroughly for the skills and abilities required on the job.
Having done some hiring that required employees’ having analytical and communication skills, I relied more on determining the applicant’s intellectual capabilities than how many years spent in the classroom.
I absolutely agree.
My old `70s HS education has proven to be far superior to most college's current four year degree.
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Suddenly this is news? I think most intelligent people figured this out quite some time ago.
Article: In plenty of jobs — such as I.T. help-desk positions — there is little to no difference in skill requirements between job ads requiring a degree and those that do not.....
Reply: I do Help Desk Work. I have no college degree. I saved $50,000 or more not going to college.
Article: If you couldn’t be bothered to get a degree in this day and age, you must be lazy, unreliable or dumb.
Reply: I am smart not to go into massive debt.
Unless you are going to be an engineer or doctor or shudder a lawyer just what does college do for you? Is it the partying? The easy college girls? Spring Break?
Most jobs require you to show up and learn from the old timer who was hired a few months earlier then you.
For some I have met it it seems to be more like a fifth grade education.
They can’t do simple calculations without a calculator, they are barely literate, they cannot speak intelligibly, they have no idea of American history and they couldn’t find most continents or countries on a map with the names printed on it.
Being that most colleges today are nothing more than leftist indoctrination centers that teach absolute squat and the fact that just about every problem we face in this coutry is the direct cause of an Ivy league graduate, maybe its time companies start focusing on a persons actual talent and knowledge other than relying on a piece of paper.
There is much more to this story that is not being told. Looking at just the IT development arena:
The technology boom of the 1980s and 1990s, and the averted Y2K disaster, created jobs faster than academia could create qualified applicants, especially in Business, Information Systems, Computer Science, and related technologies. These jobs required, and really needed, those BS degrees for them to be performed at profession levels.
Far too many job-seekers took advantage of the hiring boom by getting a couple of semesters of coding classes, and never continued their education. Companies with IT departments got stacked with coders who could code, code, code, but could never wrap their little heads around the business needs for the coding, and who could never grasp the need for the other phases of the project process.
Once employed, these people could have continued their education toward being fully qualified, but far too many chose not to. Yet they stayed on the job, and advanced solely on coding skills that should have been recognized as only one tenth of the necessary qualifications.
These badly hacked-together software systems are costly to maintain and upgrade. When they need to be replaced, the people needed for the work need to understand both the business behind the software system, and they need to understand the project process. The very experienced coders just want to code. Like the jack-leg carpenter whose only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. They just want to hammer out code, and they are angry that their ignorance of the other 90% part of their job has caught up with them.
To aggravate the problem, over the years many of these coders have moved into IT management, still without any of the requisite knowledge for either the development positions, and definitely not sufficient for the management positions. They can't hire the qualified Americans with STEM degrees (half of whom are underemployed, working outside their fields) because their own glaring defects might get exposed. They can, however, hire qualified Indian H1Bs, who are very happy to fill the positions for a while, and will not make any noise.
Here is one solution.
First, recognize the problem. If we are outsourcing the development of a major system because we don't have the "talent" to do the job, it isn't just the "talent" that is at fault. Managers kept promoting their "talent" who possessed 10% of the needed skills for their jobs. The "talent" had the income needed to continue working toward their BS degrees, but they had absolutely no incentive to do so.
Second, recognize the solution. Encourage existing job-holders and managers to finish their educations. Incentivize the return to school with tuition reimbursement programs. A company can use a tuition reimbursement program to guide the educational choices of the reimbursed employee through a field of study that is beneficial to both the company and the employees.
Third, let attrition serve its purpose. Those who are too close to retirement to consider returning to school can wind down their careers maintaining the systems that are being replaced.
I never bothered to go to college although I obtained my advanced education in the Computer Science field from the U.S. Army and then from On the Job Training once I left the military.
I've had to work with college graduates who supposedly learned much more than I ever did with their degree, and not one of them has been useful until I taught them what they really needed to know to excel in this field.
Those who went to a technical school were much more useful from the start, but even they needed guidance to become useful.
A. : "Because so many that have them are unemployed."
(Sort of like Mt. Everest -- because it's there.)
Which makes 22 the new 18. Educationally speaking, of course.
I was talking to some college science faculty, including some physics people. They had no concept of geometry. They had no concept of systems of equations. They didn’t even seem to have the concept of there being a correct answer. I think they were afraid that any difficult ideas might discriminate the more capable students from the less capable students. That could lose them their jobs.
Company hr first knows nothing about most of the positions they need.to fill .. really the just know a few buzz words to look for on the resume.
Then the want to play safe .. it safe to hire the person with the degree because if that person does not work out they can say.."well they looked qualified on paper".. it low risk name brand buying
Then the fact the HR person will most likely have a garbage degree of some kind. the expect you to have one too..
The problem I have with college degrees is the entrance standard. It used to be that you made good grades, that was the criteria. Now my kids have to also accrue all this worthless community service, well rounded bullcrap. One has nothing to do with the other. You are academically college material or you are not. Being an average student or a moron put loads of working at a soup kitchen should not get you into college.
“The college degree has become the new high school degree”
can I change the headline Vet?
“The college degree has become the way to ensure all of our kids accept social justice and understand white privilege along with a healthy does of embracing LGBT choice.”
ALL except a tiny percent of Colleges/Universities worship the above New Standards.
Many here on FR talk about how dangerous it is sending our kids to Govt Schools. And the difference in “Higher” Education is????????