Advice to the Not Bright and Not Young: College is... erm, not for everyone. | Hacker News Reader

Advice to the Not Bright and Not Young: College is... erm, not for everyone.

theatlantic.com

4 pointszach13 comments

I don't think anyone believes that college is for everyone. The problem is that everybody believes that college is for them. As usual, the people who are least able are the worst at recognizing their (dis)ability level.

Sometimes I think that the greatest value of competitive post-secondary entrance processes is not so much that it allows institutions to get the best possible students as it is that is is provides less able students with some gentle encouragement to find a less academic course for their lives -- saving students from their own stupidity, so to speak. It seems almost cruel -- but isn't it far crueler to confront students with the irrefutable evidence of their idiocy?

Stating my beliefs in educational opportunities usually results in someone wanting to punch me in the face. I'll risk upsetting a few people because I believe my opinion is valid.

I believe that the bottom ten percent of every class (I define class as the collective whole of a grade) should be kicked out of school and immediately placed into the workforce. There should be no second chances. In the end, only those with the drive and the ability for advanced study (I stress that both are needed) will be in a position to pursue a university education.

Do you believe then that the bottom 10% of all employees on every job should be fired to make way for those people who have the drive and ambition to work?

Certainly. Jack Welch had a similar policy while running GE. Get rid of the dead weight and reward those who outperform.

EDIT: It's simply a matter of economics. When you realize that a project is performing poorly you sever it to prevent further waste.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Welch#Tenure_as_CEO_of_GE

Here's a link to support my statement.

EDIT: Wikipedia is good enough for this off-the-cuff reference.

This policy of Welch's undoubtedly helped fuel GE's massive profit growth while he was there, by removing a lot of the dead employee weight. (It's outlined in "Straight from the Gut", which is a decent read, if a little too conversational in tone.). However, I've always thought that there approaches a point where this is counter-productive. You're assuming that you can replace those 10% with workers better than they were. But, after you do this long enough, your bottom 10% are probably at least average, or above average, and it may be a better business decision to keep those on instead of hiring and training unknown candidates. At some point there's got to be reduced returns.

In your example the assumptions you make seem to be along the lines that there is a fixed workforce. New candidates enter the market every year. Assuming that the collective whole of graduating seniors from the universities are normally distributed in ability, you are always going to hire a group of people who ultimately will flesh out your bottom 10% even if it is not readily apparent in their first few years of employment.

One side effect is that no one has any incentive to let their coworkers take credit for anything. Instead, the incentive is to make your coworkers look bad whenever possible. They become your competition.

You are making the assumption that teamwork is not a metric on which people are scored.

I will go out on a limb and agree that this isn't completely crazy.

I don't think you have to kick the bottom 10% of the class out...most of them probably won't have a problem leaving because they're not very good at school any way. I think it would be a good idea to give the bottom 10% an opportunity to leave school and enter the work force (I assume you're talking about high school kids only).

We could use some of the money we save on funding overcrowded schools to establish some kind of apprenticeship program for teenagers. I'm sure there are some problems with this, but it does seem to make some kind of sense.

I have never given thought as to what grade this could start with, but surely kicking someone out of the process at too early of an age is detrimental to society as a whole. I do, however, believe that there is a certain point at which this does become a great idea.

Are there any educational scholars on this board that could weigh in on this discussion.

One thing the article doesn't mention is that community colleges offer English and Math classes that are basically below 101 level, for people who aren't ready for the "entry-level" stuff yet. It sounds like a lot of people in his class would be candidates for that.

Perhaps OP should spend a little less time writing about not teaching and a little more time teaching.

Imagine a hacker blaming his users for not understanding his web site. Why should we expect any less from a teacher?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com