Posted on 02/20/2015 11:25:52 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
The pundit class is raising questions about whether Scott Walker’s lack of a college degree disqualifies him from being America’s 45th president. This is what educators call a “teachable moment,” because the issue goes much deeper than Governor Walker’s biography. Of course a college credential shouldn’t be a prerequisite for the presidency, but that’s also true for many jobs that today require a degree even when it’s not really necessary. That’s a big problem.
Many American leaders are obsessed with college as the path to economic opportunity. President Obama, for instance, wants America to lead the world in college graduates by 2020. But he’s hardly alone. Philanthropists, scholars, business leaders, and other members of the meritocratic elite have been banging the “college for all” — or at least “college for almost all” — drum for the better part of a decade.
Yet despite their own blue-ribbon educations, these leaders are making a classic rookie blunder: They mistake correlation for causation. They point to study after study showing that Americans with college degrees do significantly better on a wide range of indicators: income, marriage, health, happiness, you name it. But they assume that it’s something about college itself that makes the difference, some alchemy at their alma mater that turns gangly 18-year-olds into twentysomething masters of the universe.
Sure, college can be a great experience, and many individuals gain important knowledge, skills, insights, and contacts there. It’s also a prerequisite for most graduate and professional schools. All of that can help to build the “human capital” that enables people to get good-paying jobs and then excel at them.
But much of the college advantage can be explained by “selection bias” — the differences between those who tend to complete college and those who don’t. The dirty little secret of college is that it tends to bestow a credential on those who are already most likely to succeed. To use another term from Statistics 101, it’s “instrumental variables” that explain why college grads do better: their reading and math abilities; their social skills; their wealth. If people with these underlying advantages did something with their time other than go to college — like start a business or serve in the military — they would still outperform their peers over the long term.
Furthermore, research tells us how college students do “on average” against their peers without degrees. But those averages can mask a lot of variation. As Andrew Kelly succinctly put it in a recent paper for the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, “on average ≠ always.” He cites a study by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York that found that the lowest-paid quartile of college graduates earns little more than average high-school graduates do; that’s been so since the 1970s. Which helps to explain all of those college-educated Starbucks baristas.
Back to Governor Walker. Our challenge as his prospective employer isn’t to determine whether presidents “on average” do better with a college degree than without one. It’s to consider Walker’s particular case. Does he have the knowledge and skills to do the job? What’s his track record in similar positions? We might conclude that his executive experience and legislative skills are quite solid but that his foreign-policy knowledge is a bit of a question mark. That’s the case with various of the successful GOP governors who are running for president. What matters isn’t whether they finished college 30 or 40 years ago, but how they’ve been performing in recent years, what kinds of advisers they are associating with, and what that implies for their potential success as president.
Unfortunately, millions of Americans don’t have this same opportunity to make their case to prospective employers, because their lack of a degree locks them out of the recruitment process altogether. While there are indeed some jobs that require the knowledge and skills gained in college, surely receptionists and photographers are not among them. Employers use college degrees as a proxy for smarts, perseverance, and other valuable skills. But this shortcut unwittingly excludes many talented people from their prospective hiring pool. This is especially unfair since it’s people who come from modest means (such as Walker) who are most likely to be disadvantaged by this type of credentialism. As Charles Murray has argued persuasively, a much better system would be one in which employers “rely more on direct evidence about what the job candidate knows, less on where it was learned or how long it took.”
Scott Walker may or may not be the best candidate for president. But there’s little doubt that he should be in the candidate pool. The same goes for millions of his non-college-educated peers who want a shot at a good job. We should give them a chance.
— Michael J. Petrilli is president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a leading education-policy think tank. He is also a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution.
I have a Master’s degree and I worked for almost 30 years in a profession where a 4 year degree is not required.
I read eighteenth century theology for fun. These fellows would quote Latin, Greek, and French without translating it, because they just assumed their readers knew it.
disjunction [dis-juhngk-shuh n] Examples Word Origin noun
1. the act of disjoining or the state of being disjoined: a disjunction between thought and action.
2. Logic.
Also called disjunctive, inclusive disjunction. a compound proposition that is true if and only if at least one of a number of alternatives is true.
Also called exclusive disjunction. a compound proposition that is true if and only if one and only one of a number of alternatives is true.
the relation among the components of such a proposition, usually expressed by AND or V.
Origin Middle English Latin 1350-1400 1350-1400; Middle English disjunccioun < Latin disjunctiōn- (stem of disjunctiō) separation, equivalent to disjunct (us) (see disjunct ) + -iōn- -ion
Too late ....
In England in the 13th, 14th, and 15th centuries, there was a push to educate the middle class because they believed that it would be beneficial to have a broad base of educated people.
Scotland also had an emphasis on education that was so great that they actually had 5 major universities and the students to fill them, when England, a much larger country only had 2.
I am an electrical engineer, my mentor had a 6th grade education, put the first radio in a white house limo, developed many things with Bell labs..education helps one to speak the language, but it is inner strength that motivates to overcome..About time we elected some”normal folks” good family values, Christian, understands debt is not good and does not try to ease everyones pain on the backs of others..go Scott!!
Look at what the so called “educated” have done to the world..
Interesting! No government schools then? ;-)
Right you are. I am getting into the nitty gritty of what happened in England before Henry VIII. It is simply amazing how much the people did on their own without government involvement.
Because it reinforces the status of existing employees who got degrees when they require degrees from new hires. "I have a degree therefore you need one also". There are professions in which degrees are obviously required - engineering, doctors, etc. - but politics sure isn't one of them.
That, of course, is very much dependent upon what sort of bachelor's degree you're talking about. Physics, Mathematics, Engineering are very different from Gender Studies, Political Science, or Journalism.
EEEE...what was Sheila Jackson Lee’s degree? African studies?
This must be an AA degree like the Obamas.
It’s viewed as a “discriminator” in a sense...a way to separate applicants by “achievement”.
In some fields it makes sense for applicants to have a degree, engineering for example. In others, like LE, not so much.
The USAF has been doing this for years...those with a degree, doesn’t matter if it’s related to one’s current career field, are considered for promotion over those who don’t have one.
I am currently in an engineering position without a degree of any kind...a technician with a title so to speak.
However, I secured my job by having a verifiable/observable work ethic, knowledge of my field learned through the USAF and probably most importantly of all...security clearances.
Quite so. The average fresh-out BS/BA college graduate (assuming no military service) should be 21 or 22 years old. A student following straight on to graduate school should be able to earn Master's or Doctorate degrees well before age 30, and should not be dependent on parents to do so. That's what fellowships and jobs are for.
In short, unless your degree is in business, (maybe) law or one of the hard sciences, it isn't worth the diploma paper it's printed on.
WAS.
I'm not sure how many real Liberal Arts programs still exist. Hillsdale College and Christendom College probably provide them ... pretty sure an Ivy League university would not be as good a place to go for such an education.
I don’t disagree, but the main problem is that too many employers have drunk the Kool-Aid put out there by the educational establishment that a Bachelors Degree is the minimum qualification needed to do any sort of responsible job.
I personally have found that the more elite the college the candidate earned his degree from, the more incompetent he is in the real world. And the more likely that employers who see that on his resume will nevertheless have a multiple-orgasm then start lining up to write him checks regardless.
V.P. of Sales at Fortune 500 company told us that in his opinion:
“A college degree was nothing but a piece of paper that says you sat on your a?? for four years!”
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