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Comment by simonsarris | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure we should expect anything differently, if recent graduates are less intelligent (as a cohort) than ever. [Difficult degree] enrollment is relatively flat because aptitude is flat, and grad jobs will reflect this.

I wrote a little about this framing it as a CS degree problem, but it seems true for a lot more than just CS.

> Can we prove aptitude is flat? Kinda. In 1970s 1-in-2 college grads aced Wordsum test. Today 1-in-6 do.[2] Using that as a proxy for IQ of the median college grad, in the 70’s it was ~112, now its ~100.

> In other words we have more people going to college than ever, but the “average grad” is less intelligent than ever. Degrees are increasingly diluted yet expensive. You can pay more money than ever to show that you are of average intelligence.

From: https://medium.com/@simon.sarris/why-is-computer-science-enr...

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Thanks for writing that article. I'm extremely disappointed in the CSU system's decision to give college credit for remediation classes. As a society we need to really reassess the purpose of higher education in light of increasing student debt, flat grad salaries, and decreasing quality of graduates.

Anecdotally, I'm still baffled at those in my extended social circle who followed a path similar to:

  - Graduate high school with sub-3.0 GPA
  - Admittedly they didn't "like school"
  - Attended community college or local state university
  - Proceeded to graduate in 5-8 years (to their credit some may have worked part-time or full-time)
  - Study general business, marketing, or a social science
  - Graduate college with sub-3.0 GPA
  - Graduate with no meaningful experience (internships, part-time work, etc.) in their desired career
  - Immediately and even in later years, get upset about undesirable job opportunities and/or low salaries and/or high cost of living

I don't think any of those are bad in isolation, or even in aggregate if you remove the experience one. It doesn't look all that different from the path I took, I graduate community college/trad school faster, but dropped out of high school.

We're extremely luck to work in an industry where meaningful experience only requires a time investment, all our tools are free (or near free) and we can collaborate with other people around the world.

I don't know if it is intelligence alone - I would call it 'grit' as well. If you are willing to slog through a tough class and use good learning strategies, you don't have to be super intelligent to enter into a career in engineering. Are we setting a bar that is high, where college is expected to be a lot of hard work? If we do, we will see those in all careers that require a college degree brining in something new to the work place. Maybe it is my midday coffee speaking but we need to stop diluting college courses

Is it true that they've made raw aptitude less of a factor in SAT scores? If so then there's a systemic problem with our training and credentialing process.

Or we need to realize not everyone can be a doctor or engineer. The world needs ditch diggers still. Ditch diggers don't really need college.

Ditch diggers is a go-to insult, but skilled tradespeople are still incredibly valuable. As an apprentice a plumber makes next to nothing, but once you get your time in you can make a ton of money if you have basic business/time management skills.

Everybody poops.

The same goes for carpenters, masonry, etc. The physical work will wear you down — but by the time that becomes a problem you should be skilled enough to be a manager.

I'm making decent money now, but it's crazy how much trade work was frowned upon when I graduated high school. In retrospect I think I'd be totally happy with being a contractor managing a small business.

The apprenticeship and guild systems that states use to regulate them are awful though. Time in is not a great measure of skill and that seems to be a central feature of these systems.

Definitely agree. Time is important to some extent because knowledge is different from practice, but the requirements are generally outrageous.

I've also hired tradespeople who did put in the time and were worse than doing the job myself after watching youtube videos for a few hours, so at that point what's it even accomplishing.

The average graduate is now representative of the average member of the population because so many people are entering and completing universities.

It doesn't necessarily mean that it takes any more or less effort or intelligence to finish a university degree.

It also doesn't mean that average intelligence is dropping.

It just indicates a stereotypical reversion to mean.

Wait, that's an amazing claim. 100 is the median IQ for the entire population. So the claim is that the median college graduate has the same IQ as the median person. How could that possibly be true?

In the 70s 10% of people completed a 4 year degree and now it's 35%. So the increased availability of a college education has dragged the meadian of the cohort closer to the average IQ of everyone.

Could it be that in the past, aptitude was the most clear distinction between college-goers and everyone else, while now anyone that can remotely afford it becomes a college-goer, regardless of aptitude? This explanation would require intelligence to not be too sensitive to income, which might be a false assumption.

Aptitude might be flat due to current methods of K12 schooling. Just a thought. I don't think people are any stupider now than they have been, just methods of schooling have changed significantly in the last 50 (even 20) years.

I'm not necessarily talking coursework, either -- how students are treated is very different.

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