Well! Aren't you special?
Posted on 03/31/2009 6:41:34 AM PDT by reaganaut1
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Obama didn't come right out and say it, but the message is clear: College has become the new high school. Soon after my St. Louis trip I called Enterprise and learned that with a few exceptions for military it hires only college graduates for Lyndsay's position. The ability to multitask and communicate with customers, skills that years ago high schools supplied, are now found almost solely among those with two- or four-year degrees.
To hammer that reality home to high school students, states such as Kentucky and Michigan have moved to raise minimum dropout ages. If you don't make it through high school you've got no chance of acquiring the post-high school credentialing demanded by jobs of the future.
But, as a recent report by the Lumina Foundation summed up, "College attainment rates are rising in almost every industrialized or post-industrialized country in the world, except for the U.S." Lumina's point was the same as Obama's: Eventually, our flat education levels will hurt our international economic competitiveness.
That's true, but it doesn't quite capture the whole picture. Lyndsay renting me a car isn't helping our international competitiveness. Whether your bank teller has a high school degree or a Ph.D. says little about international competitiveness, but it says a lot about economic survival, which is what high school students should care about.
The college-as-high school phenomenon is picking up speed during the recession, with employers having their pick of better-educated workers. A recent Denver Post article captured that nicely: "If I had a light labor job, I'd have a Ph.D. do it," explained a Denver employment agency staffer who had just hired two people with B.A.s to pick up sticks from sidewalks.
(Excerpt) Read more at usnews.com ...
You forgot Rush Limbaugh
Look again-he’s on there.
That statement alone tells me that you have good business sense and would be a good hire, if I were talking to you about a job. You understand business priorities, and the importance of selling. Kudos to you.
Not here in the middle of nowhere I don't! I've got a big old house that always needs something. f I phoned 20 people about home improvements, 19 would have answering machines and 18 of those would not return my call. They all want to work on big commercial jobs at hourly rates. Last time I needed a toilet replaced, I got an estimate of $300 from the only company that called me back, and that didn't include materials. (Never did fix that thing.)
Thank heavens we don't need a roof or a porch fix!
The ability to learn and to communicate (both written and orally) are also key skills which never go out of fashion.
During my working days as a programmer, I ran across people who had college degrees from a lot of unrelated disciplines - including one who had a Divinity degree. After a while I got the feeling that programming was the Bermuda Triangle for those who got unsaleable degrees. The highest I ever got was an AA and still ended up in the $90K range by time I retired in 1999.
You are right. I almost mentioned this explicitly, too, because it is an integral part of the entrepreneurial spirit you find in the homeschool community.
Part of that is because of how computer sciences grew. Being the bastard step child of electrical engineers and mathematicians (IMHO still the degrees that are most likely to result in a good programmer) and given how long it was before most colleges even had computer degrees and how silly the early degree programs were (remember when MIS degrees frequently didn’t even include a language) the industry is kind of setup to accept “outsiders”. I should ask the wife how many of the degree holders where she’s at (she works in a school) have truly related degrees, it should be the other extreme but I wonder how much of it is paper worship not content of the paper.
You guys remind me of a computer sales associate I met in Office Depot years ago. He was a gothic disheveled technical geek with dirty fingernails. Somehow the discussion of college came up and he told me, “they should give me a degree because I know all that business and computer stuff.” I smiled politely and left. I believe he still works for Office Depot.
All this talk of universities not teaching and their being money machines is hysterical coming from non-college graduates!
I guess they should just, “give you a degree” based on some test? Like the MCSE? Because you know THAT is worth the paper it’s printed on!
:)
Well! Aren't you special?
“pump up young kids to be executive management when they graduate.”
Of course, some are too stupid to be management material, but htye aren’t taught that. They are usually taught the opposite.
Some of these instructors are idiots. I went to the counseling dept. to learn about hwo to become a virologist, which classes I need to focus on to get that sort of degree.
They kept going on and on about transferring to university and were elusive about which courses and which specific degree I would be able to get from them to get on that pathway.
That would be perfect! Plus they would be learning in a real world environment, not just spending time forming and iscussing theory.
Very true. In 1967 they were almost pulling people off the street to teach them programming. I was a Linotype operator for 13 years and saw the handwriting on the wall when offset came in. I wondered what all this fuss about computer programming was and checked out a trade school - guys running around wearing a white shirt and tie plus lots of good-looking chicks sold me.
I figured I had a two-years' lead time to get in solid before the colleges started cranking out programmers by the boatload, just as they had done with engineers during Eisenhower's term. Never happened. The business just kept growing and growing and didn't really deteriorate, IMO, until they started bringing in H1Bs.
I figured I'd keep working until I started drooling on the keyboard (I was STILL getting offers of a permanent position at age 63) but, just as with the hot metal print trade, I could see the end of an era coming and bailed at 65. Good memories though as I was blessed with doing work that I thoroughly enjoyed and, so help me, often looked forward to going to work the next day.
Someone that took 8 years to complete a college degree shouldn’t be looking down their nose at others.
I remember taking Comp 1 and we went over how to make a basic sentence.
“By your logic you would accept High School dropouts as suitable candidates for a position.
“
I did. He is one of the best in the business. I wish I could name him here as anyone even remotely connected with Microsoft development tools knows him.
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