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Comment by vkou | Hacker News Reader

Ban education discrimination against job applicants. (Except for jobs which require certification).

Right now, there is no drawback for an employer requiring a bachelor's degree for a job that has no use for it. Putting an end to this practice will stop the pointless rat race.

Alternatively, cap student loans, and put lower boundaries on what % of tuition goes towards instruction. Most tuition funds do not go towards education, and there is a lot of pressure for universities to spend them on building Potemkin villages.

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I really want my aerospace engineers to be able to do math...

Universities accredit them, so companies don't have to spend their money doing it (via a ridiculous number of interviews). Interviewing is already one of the largest sinks of money for a largish company, no need to make it worse.

Far better, would removing the guaranteed loan payback the government provides. This would force universities to lower prices as students wouldn't be eligible for loans. Further, it increases the barrier to universities, meaning less people will have degrees and in turn companies would have an incentive to hire people without degrees. Plus people with degrees would get paid more (making it easier to pay off loans).

The whole issue is universities aren't having to deal with market forces. Add back in the incentives and it'll be 10x cheaper.

Your aerospace engineers already need to pass engineering certification. My fast food franchise managers, on the other hand, need to show up, and apply a little common sense.

> Your aerospace engineers already need to pass engineering certification

Generally not in the U.S., unless it's a civil or electrical engineer designing infrastructure. I say this as an aerospace engineer with a mathematics PhD only.

You already have to interview the candidate; surely asking a question specific to your industry also will demonstrate their proficiencies in the math skills that you're concerned with? I can't imagine taking it for granted that because a University has certified someone that they're already proficient in the fundamentals? In fact, isn't that part of the problem?

I once interviewed a CS grad from MIT for a mid-level software engineering position; smart guy. Couldn't code. Sorry sir, but we need someone that can contribute immediately. We don't care about your school. We care about your output. Next.

(1) Even if they passed two coding style questions doesn't mean they can code.

(2) Even if they can't pass those questions doesn't mean they can't code.

45 minutes with someone gives you an idea of what they can do, a decent sample. However, graduation from a university signals that they have been sampled repeatedly for years. They can clearly learn, and should (assuming the system is semi-efficiant) and can do what the university accredited them for.

Even if they screw up that one interview, it means little by itself (baring massive failures during the interview).

> The whole issue is universities aren't having to deal with market forces. Add back in the incentives and it'll be 10x cheaper.

That's not the whole issue. If you remove the loan payback guarantee, then creditors will start to evaluate the creditworthiness of students and their families when deciding whether to offer educational loans. Poor families not being able to get loans is a political no-go.

> Right now, there is no drawback for an employer requiring a bachelor's degree for a job that has no use for it.

Increase an employer's taxes commensurate with the cost of the education for the workers they hire. If you truly need workers with bachelors, masters, PhDs, you pay for the cost. Internalize the externality.

Instead of taxing through their employers, why not just tax higher-educated employees directly?

What would be the goal of that? If someone has more education than is needed for a job but ends up taking it for other reasons, should they be taxed more than their less educated coworker?

The idea with taxing the credentialed position is that it provides some incentive to not attach a credential to positions.

> What would be the goal of that?

You should ask the parent, not me. I do not advocate taxing getting an education, whether you do it directly on indirectly.

Besides, in either case, such a tax would infringe on free speech.

My question is about what you said. The 2 proposals have very different incentives and will likely have different outcomes.

The parent of your post did not propose what you did, your idea has poor incentives for people seeking education and can be expected to have 0 influence on employers. Their idea has little impact on incentives for individuals seeking education and can be expected to encourage employers to consider the necessity of an educational requirement for a given job.

Do you really see them as equivalently arbitrary hurdles to employment?

Not at all. The incentives behind an income tax don't change based on whether they're paid on the employee's side or the employer's side. If you're an employee that costs 5% more to hire, you're going to get paid less.

(Unless the idea is that taxes should be based on whether or not a job posting requires a degree. But that would be silly, because employers could omit the education requirement from the job posting but still hire the best candidates, or have the need for a credential be taken for granted via codewords like "engineer.")

The incentives for roles where the credential is reasonable don't change.

The incentives for the roles where the credential is meaningless change because the employer can choose not to pay the tax (by removing the requirement for the credential). Under your proposal the employee can't.

> The incentives for the roles where the credential is meaningless change because the employer can choose not to pay the tax.

Which would be illegal, and carry a penalty. Unless they choose not to hire someone with an education, in which case, they didn't need the person to have that costly skill.

I meant by removing the requirement for the credential from the position. I edited in a note about it.

More: But I see that I've misunderstood what you initially proposed. It doesn't make any sense to me to tax the education, I'm not sure taxing the (credentialed) position makes sense, but at least it provides cromulent incentives.

Maybe through a series of expensive loans for tuition....

That's an interesting idea (In that it reduces the amount of zero-training freeloading employers can do), but without other changes, I feel that it would make the problem worse - it would increase the guaranteed fire-hose of money that educational institutions will receive.

Limiting the firehose to departments that add economic value won't fix the other wasteful practices.

> but without other changes, I feel that it would make the problem worse

I agree. It must be enacted in concert with the equivalent of single payer education.

> In that it reduces the amount of zero-training freeloading employers can do

I'm confused why you think not training employees constitutes "freeloading." Employers are paying wages on an open market for employees that come pre-trained.

Because the government subsidizes that training. If it didn't, there would be far fewer trained employees for employers to choose from, wages would go up, and employers would have to shoulder more of the burden of training.

I guess that's the sense in which it was meant, and I missed that. On the other hand, that money isn't all pocketed by the employer -- it gets passed on through prices and quality to the employer's customers, and so on. The freeloading is enjoyed by the rest of the economy. (In fact, that freeloading effect is the justification most people give for publicly funding education.)

> Ban education discrimination against job applicants. (Except for jobs which require certification).

All that will do is create a regime of required certifications that people will need to get a job, and it will probably greatly reduce (individual) employment flexibility. Employers need some way of judging applicants ability, and it's my understanding that explicit aptitude tests have basically been banned, employers have to use education as a proxy.

> put lower boundaries on what % of tuition goes towards instruction. Most tuition funds do not go towards education, and there is a lot of pressure for universities to spend them on building Potemkin villages.

I think this is a much more reasonable suggestion. Cut out all the extra costs and make college a spartan environment focused on learning.

> Right now, there is no drawback for an employer requiring a bachelor's degree

Erm... how about fewer applicants and higher wages?

The average bachelor graduate will demand higher wages than the average high-school graduate. The market is demanding higher education for some reason. If you think its immoral that's one thing... but its completely different to argue that there is "no drawback".

Walmart isn't asking for bachelor degrees to fill in their "Walmart Greeter" or "Walmart Cashier" positions.

Your explanation of economics really hurts me to read =/

> The average bachelor graduate will demand higher wages than the average high-school graduate.

In economics the word 'demand' does not mean 'demanding' your wage or 'demanding' a certain price. Economics demand is how many people want something at a certain price. Lets repeat that. 'Demand'... is how many people... want something ...at a certain price.

It's not at all related to literally "demanding higher or lower wages", or "demanding higher or lower prices" as you are suggesting -- that is the colloquial definition of demand, and IMO it really should not be used when talking about economics. They can't be substituted for each other.

A. That's not even remotely related to any definition of "collective bargaining" I've ever heard of.

B. I think it's pretty clear what the parent meant by "demand."

C. Semantics aside, cp the market clearly bears much higher salaries for a candidate with a Bachelor's degree than for one without.

D. Your comment is needlessly rude.

A. I was not defining collective bargaining, just giving an example of the difference between colloquial and economics demand. But lets just ignore that point as its largely unrelated. I removed it from my original comment.

B. No, it is not clear, IMO. His use makes it seem like he is actually referring to demand, when in fact he is using the colloquial definition. People routinely confuse the two.

C. Semantics become important when things become ambiguous and confusing. Most programmers would likely agree with this.

D. Fair.

He was using the english word demand. In that these college graduates will demand (require, insist upon, refuse to work unless given) more money to accept given position. Applying jargon to an english sentence is a pointless and frustrating exercise.

Right above he/she uses supply and demand to explain higher wages. Then uses colloquial demand right under it to further explain it.

Given that, either they aren't sure of the distinction between the two and were making a mistake, or do understand the difference but still managed to make a false equivalence.

I'm betting on the first, which is why I took the time to explain it.

Great idea!

1: Job gets posted

2: High school graduate applies

3: Manager searches applicant and sees no higher education

4: "Thank you for your interest in this position, however we are looking for someone with a little more experience."

It's going to have to be phrased better than that, because (for the same age), the person who stopped at high school has more experience.

At coding?

Potentially even at coding, yes, though the discussion has been more about general employment, not specifically coding.

Yeah but a even decade of bagging groceries doesn't mean a thing in a professional context, except maybe demonstrating how well one can put up with bagging groceries for ten years.

That same workaround should work for discriminating against people based on sex or race.

And as we all learned in Training Day: it's not what you know, it's what you can prove in court.

It's not JUST the education though. Holding a degree shows you're capable of following a schedule, arriving to predetermined places on time regularly, keeping yourself relatively organized, receiving and completing assignments from authority, and are willing to work hard at things that aren't immediately obviously essential but you do them anyway.

So does graduating high school... Or having a previous job where you got a good reference. Or passing a probationary period.

High school is mandatory though, and enforced via truancy laws. The only consequence to not showing up for college courses is wasting your (probably borrowed) money.

So is gainful employment - it's enforced via poverty, homelessness, and early death... Yet, just because most of us show up to work under duress, doesn't diminish the value of work experience.

That used to be true in the case of a high school diploma as well. As a society, we've diluted the value of that to the extent that you need to see a 4-year degree to determine those things.

Even a four-year degree seems to be diluted to the point that I wonder if we'll start require a Master's degree just to ensure someone is capable of reasonably correct written communication.

> willing to work hard at things that aren't immediately obviously essential but you do them anyway.

I view this as actually one of the biggest problems with current pedagogies and curriculum structures. They don't teach the why of things[1] and so students either are unmotivated because it seems meaningless to them, or the ones who follow blindly on faith, who think less for themselves, end up looking like the smart ones. But then maybe that's what some employers are looking for.

As Musk puts it, they fail to teach to the problem instead of the tools.[2]

[1] https://youtu.be/vDwzmJpI4io?t=35m2s

[2] https://youtu.be/3UxL-0--oQo?t=25m25s

There is however a certain value to being capable of doing what you're told, even if you don't understand the why of everything right off the bat. As a business owner if I need certain things in a certain way from my management or employees, especially if it's just a personal preference or a certain way I do things, I don't give a shit if my management understands it as long as they do it.

There's plenty of room for free thought in a good workplace but there are also certain things that don't need to be questioned because it's none of your business.

Sure but the "none of your business" argument doesn't really work in education.

Secondly, in the work place, it's reasonable to assume the work you are doing is beneficial to the business, whereas with classes your work isn't helping anyone else, and might not even be helping you.

Education is supposed to emulate the business world, ergo, for some things it does work.

That's a flaw in the classes, not the system. The point of a formal education system is to prepare you for the business world; if it's not matching up in some way, then it's the fault of the institution or the educator, not the student or the business.

I like this idea, and have recommended it before.

A partial step towards that end would be to return to the situation 20 years where student loans could be discharged in bankruptcy. This would indirectly put the pressure on the other parts of the system that never cared what kind of debt load the student was being saddled with.

I always felt a rigorous test could be administered, and tailored to specific job applicants.

And yes, if we had tough tests, make it illegial for an employer to even ask where you went to school.

For example, if a person can pass the CA bar, let him/her practice law?

I bring up the CA bar test because it's especially hard.

There are some professions that wouldn't lend themselfs to testing, but they would be the exception.

Bad example. You can do it!

http://www.cbtronline.com/index.php/californias-law-office-s...

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