Posted on 12/08/2016 10:21:03 AM PST by ProgressingAmerica
Two other questions:
—Were the non-major courses important to your profession?
—Would a demonstration of basic numeracy and literacy along with the technical courses have been sufficient to do your job?
Please, would you go into them. What are these simple questions?
My suggestion:
1) Companies use SAT and ACT scores, along with internships, to identify future employees for jobs that historically never needed a college degree.
2) If a job didn't need a degree in 1947, it doesn't need one now.
They don't want the typical government school K-12 graduate.
My homeschooled son at the age of 15 finished nearly all the general college requirements and Calculus 3 in our local community college. He then transferred to 4 year college and majored in accounting.
The college had a job fair and my 15 year old son attended. The next day a major bank in the area called my son and offered him a full-time position. He refused for two reasons:
1) I , his mom, would need to drive him to work.
2) He was attending college part-time and training full-time in a sport. ( He was a nationally and internationally ranked athlete and had the opportunity to travel to many countries representing the United States.)
Evidently, the bank representative was completely unaware that my son was only 15....but...I am completely confident that even at that young age my son would have been an excellent employee for the bank. Historically, it was not unusual for young men of that age to have serious responsibilities. John Quincy Adams is an example that comes to mind.
This is for a job that people of my mother and father's generation could have easily done with just an 8th grade education.
Today, I would ask for SAT or ACT scores instead of requiring some community college. The essential requirement for the job was basic literacy and numeracy. Those two tests are well respected for measuring that. The diploma, degree, or college credits were and are completely irrelevant to the job.
In software engineering a 4 year degree is a requirement, no if’s and’s or but’s about it. Exceptions do exist but are incredibly rare.
All the other non-major classes I took were absolutely useless.
But...My question is whether the non-engineering courses are necessary for the job? Would above average literacy be enough to **do** the job. Doing the job is really different in its requirements than getting the job.
Charles Murray ( author of the Bell Curve) had a very interesting article in the Wall Street Journal about certifiable credentialing. If you are interested please do an Internet search on the words: Charles Murray, For Most People College is a Waste of Time.
I retired a few year ago from a doctoral level health profession. The non-science courses that I took have had personal benefits but were not in away needed or related to my graduate studies or the job that I actually did from day to day.
This was my experience as well. They have been personally satisfying but that is all.
wintertime wrote: “There are two tests that are well accepted as being non-discriminatory and good measures of basic literacy and numeracy: The SAT and ACT.”
The Obama administration will take action against any action they see having a disparate impact including using the SAT and ACT. Obama had great plans to sue municipalities until they took action to see that all races and all classes were proportionately distributed across all neighborhoods. In order to avoid the wrath of the federal government, cities and municipalities were being directed to pay minorities to move into neighborhoods where they were under-represented.
Conservatives must work to see that Republicans maintain control of the state and federal legislatures and Presidency.
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