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Comment by fleitz | Hacker News Reader

I've always wondered what the employment / income benefits for a degree are once you account for intelligence. It seems to be that there is a lot of schooling that goes unused.

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I think you've pointed out the elephant in the room. In America it is politically incorrect to believe that some people might not have the cognitive capacity to excel in college and in jobs requiring college degrees. Every American is above average. If each citizen is not Bill Gates, it is because they are the victim of circumstance. Other people held them down, the system failed them. The successful must be condemned for prospering at their expense and another reform must be tried.

We would rather the vast cognitive middle class take out thousands of dollars in debt and drop out than "admit defeat" by encouraging them to pursue skilled careers in nursing, maintenance and repair, and etc. I am skeptical that the billions of dollars of tax money and individual money spent on the pipe dream of sending every person to college has been worth the expenditure.

Plans that ignore reality are doomed to failure, no matter how well-intentioned. And the reality is that not everyone is cut out for Harvard.

Actually thats what the article just pointed out, that college does not benefit the unintelligent.

What fleitz seemed to be pointing out is that it is necessary to examine to what degree college actually benefits the intelligent as well.

edit: also, it's funny you used Bill Gates considering he dropped out of college.

As a second year undergrad at a UC, I've found that the majority of the people who would appear to not have the cognitive capacity to excel in college courses were simply lacking in fundamental learning that they should have learned in high school or even middle school. All of the students I met that had trouble with calculus had trouble because of their poor algebra skills. The same is true of English classes where students had poor grammar and generally no concept of how to write a structured thesis-driven argument. Even in my upper div algorithms course, the only people who are doing poorly are the ones who did not pay attention in earlier cs classes where we already learned half of this stuff!

Clearly some people are truly incapable of excelling at these things, but I don't think that's the majority and I feel that if we could teach people better in k-12 then they would most definitely excel at higher learning schools where k-12 knowledge is expected.

But then again I'm young, so what do I know?

I assure you that different people have different degrees of cognitive ability. What you say has some truth to it. But a deficit in preparation can be atoned for by a high degree of ability. And no amount of experience will carry someone who is simply over his head.

That has been my experience anyways. We are not all geniuses though I wish we were.

Better beginning preparation can bring up a whole national average to about the "gifted" level in the United States, in several countries that were formerly poor and backward,

http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2009/2009001.pdf

and several aspects of primary curricula in the United States are KNOWN to be suboptimal,

http://www.ams.org/notices/200502/fea-kenschaft.pdf

so there is surely still a lot of room for improvement in the United States.

Genius is primarily a learned skill. Yes, some people have more aptitude than others, but the vast majority, if they apply themselves, will do just fine. It's far more a question of a support structure to instill discipline than it is of innate skill. Those who truly cannot learn and maintain discipline are rare.

Just to share a quote that motivated me in university (and turned my grades around dramatically)

"Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated failures. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent"

Exactly. The whole "anyone can do anything" culture in America has its benefits, but also its costs.

I personally think a good middle ground is to be sending far more students to community colleges. This doesnt immediately comdemn lower-level jobs to the truly determined (as they can transfer out), but it is far more affordable than a 4-year degree without much in the way of a loss of benefits for the students.

On the other hand, It seems like far too many jobs in the US require bachelors degrees these days. If a job doesnt require a specific major/set of majors in the posting, the work probably doesnt require a bacheolars at all.

A recent Econ Talk podcast reviewing a sociologist's study of low-wage workers showed that technical degrees and certificates can make a huge difference in a person's earning potential:

http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2010/03/newman_on_low-w.htm...

Though "community college" has a certain stigma among the intellectual classes that debate and shape public policy, these programs make a strong positive impact in people's lives.

> If each citizen is not Bill Gates, it is because they are the victim of circumstance. Other people held them down, the system failed them.

This part of your otherwise insightful comment is a bit ridiculous. Most people's success is determined by how much money their parents had and what schools their parents could afford to send them to. Circumstances have a pretty huge impact, and if our system is intended to minimize the effects of circumstances, it is failing many people.

OK but where did your parents, or their parents, or their parents get the money in the first place?

There are no shortage of examples of people from humble beginnings who're self-made millionaires, and people born into every privilege who squandered it all.

I don't understand where you're going with that argument. It still makes children victims of circumstance.

If everyone is a "victim of circumstance" as you put it, there would be no social mobility at all.

But there is, so you are wrong.

If each citizen is not Bill Gates, it is because they are the victim of circumstance.

He has done some amazing things, and aims to do more, but he did also come from unusual circumstances.

http://philip.greenspun.com/bg/

You're assuming that intelligence somehow leads to employment and income.

I believe intelligence is only one part of the total equation. IMHO, the larger and more substantial part of the equation is discipline and the ability to execute. This is HN, so look at all the startups that people do around here. Are they really that much more intelligent than everyone else on this list? I'm sure they're all smart people, but what they really have above others is the ability to execute. While the average american is watching American Idol they are working on their business idea. While the same american is playing video games or posting on HN ;) they are working their website.

Obviously some level of intelligence is required, but I just don't think it's as important as many people believe it to be.

Yes, you're correct. What I meant was more along the lines of what does college actually do in and of itself when you subtract all the factors that go along with those that go to college vs. those that don't. I wonder this because I've always been very hard working and consider myself reasonably successful, yet never went to college.

It's funny that you mention playing video games and posting HN as I just stopped playing Portal and thought "I should work on a project" and then fired up HN.

Or at least once you account for scholastic aptitude. If only there was a widely-used test that measured it...

But seriously, there must be some studies that explain what happens after two students with equal SAT scores graduate with degrees in different fields. Anyone know?

Shouldn't the degree reflect intelligence? If not, wtf is the point?

Rephrased:

Do people smart enough to get accepted to college earn the same amount whether they attend or not?

Or is actually attending college necessary to earn more because of knowledge imparted in classes?

Or is attending college necessary to earn more because employers hire people with degrees? That's hard to quantify, and you'd have to control for it to get the answer.

Agreed. Conducting a meaningful longitudinal study with large enough group to control for confounds would be extremely hard.

My personal view is of college as an institution where what you are really learning is how to function within institutions. Institutional training is therefore positive if you wish to continue joining institutions (large firms, academia, etc.) but otherwise irrelevant.

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