Nowhere on this thread, nor ever in my life otherwise, did I say that. The very structure of the thought is totally foreign to me.
and that getting a degree in math, physics, engineering is "hard".
I was specifically referring to Ph.D.s, as I was talking about faculty to whom visas also go (people on these threads always talk about programmers).
You are about to start arguing against something I never said.
How would you characterize the value a good business manager brings to an organization? Very large and often critical. How is this related to what I said? What is the point?
Would you consider his/her education to be "easy" to obtain compared to the average digit head?
This is an ill-posed question. The level of education that counts nowadays is master's. A starting salary of an MBA from a good school (where education is by no means easy) is about $80/year.
Hardly any programmers outside of development has a college degree. Yes, it is much easier to attain. In 1990s, a smart kid without any degree could make $150,000; many with the college degree $200,000 (and that maintaining accounts receivable --- a real intellectual challenge).
If programmers take advanced math and science because they are smart enough to do so, what does that make a business major who washes out of the program? That most business majors do not have aptitude for quantitative reasoning. Why are you asking me this? I think you know that, too.
School doesn't make people smart,
You confound a gazillion of aspects into one: how hard it is to achieve something, how smart you becomes when you achieve that, how valuable it is in society, and how valuable it is to you. What a mess.
Education does not make one smart, it is true. But it gives reasoning skills, the ability to apply one's innate intelligence effectively. It also broadens the field where one can make applications. And, early education, does increase your innate intelligence (that is the true value of studying mathematics, which if lost on most: one forgets fairly quickly how to take integrals but the ability to think carefully stays for life). Once again, I have no idea what you are arguing for or against. You started with a question, but it is clearly rhetorical.
it just gives them an ego big enough to take risks. Patently untrue and really smells of envy on your part. (It has also long been viewed as smallness of one's caliber to deny true worthiness of others: you are diminishing the value of education in educated people, with no justification, either moral of factual). Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard just to take a risk. Most entrepreneurs in this country do not have higher education. These are out best risk-takers.
Sorry, I can discuss some reasonable things, but you try to engage me in naval-gazing. I told you before: it is for you to ask why you make statements and judgments about rather subtle issues in our society while lacking knowledge of what words mean. Do that first, please. I've wasted enough of my time giving answers that you can find in any book. And you don't even ask. You attempt to argue. Please do that with someone else on this thread.
Until we meet again, TQ.