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Comment by bumby | Hacker News Reader

>Almost all students cite getting a better job as a primary reason for attending college.

I think it's interesting how the intent of college has changed from one of creating a philosophy of life to that of essentially a vocational school that may or may not teach the actual skills necessary for a job. From what I can tell this shift goes back as far as the Morrill Land Grant of 1890 in the U.S.

It's also interesting to me how much inertia the system has. When I talk to young students, many seem to go to college because "that's just what you do after high school" or pick a particular school simply because "everyone" has agreed that's a great school without being able to articulate why. Marry that to human resources who require degrees to filter applicants because that's the method "everyone uses" while not being able to articulate what relevant skills that particular degree confers to the job and you get a self-licking ice cream cone.

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It's not so much high schooler choice or HR's inability to properly assess candidates (although that is also a factor). It's the emotional and material "stock" put into degrees by degree holders that guarantees that this system will remain in place. Most people do not have the strength of character to extricate their personal identity and value from their level of education.

Post-secondary credentialism is the new form of feudalism. This book is a little too woke for my tastes but there's a significant amount of scholarship on this concept of education's rise as the new "cool guy" power structure, replacing politics and the church.

https://books.google.ca/books/about/Beyond_Education.html?id...

>It's not so much high schooler choice or HR's inability to properly assess candidates (although that is also a factor). It's the emotional and material "stock" put into degrees by degree holders that guarantees that this system will remain in place

I think this might be saying the same thing but you did it more clearly. I’m saying people can’t objectively articulate why one choice is more valuable than the other largely because they are making emotional decisions and not rational, objective ones. Unless of course the rationale is “this is the way the game is played, regardless if it makes objective sense.” The irony, as you point out, is that just entrenches a silly system

Interesting book suggestion, I’ll check it out.

Hitler hated academics and todays political divides are also among levels of education. Just take a look at Trump supporters.

[0] https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/education-not-income-pr...

Well then it was more of a luxury for the gentry who didn't truly have to worry about money from the career itself in the same way. The classical university system wound up falling into aristocratic "disdain of the practical and worldly as base" flaw. Part of what drove the industrial revolution in the United Kingdom were the colleges of the heterodox, largely scottish which ended up providing the more practical but still sophisticated engineering schools. They lead to the "new money" captains of industry and middle class.

The two types of schools blended along the way of course and in other contexts. Trade-college blending is a very slow process but happening some. Farming is the furthest alarm but arguably that was an "agronomy and automation coup" as the model changed and made farm work a niche job instead of the majority.

The current system is related to more eglatarian mutation from hard class gatekeeping. Frankly that a lot of positions are flat out about justifying your actions to others as the practical skill component of the "philosophy of life". It is about getting what they measure for.

It has changed! But it's changed because class mix of the people going to college has changed. Wealthy people used to make up a significant proportion of people going to college. People who didn't need to work for money. Now it is more lower and middle class people, with different needs.

I think the real question is whether college fulfills those different needs and, if so, if it does it at a reasonable price.

At many orgs I’ve worked at, I felt like there were a lot of people who could have done the same work from a two year apprenticeship. Even though many had engineering degrees, I don’t think most brought an engineering mindset/education to the problems they faced on a daily basis, with the exception of some PIs

I think the only fix for this is to make it illegal for companies to list educational requirements in job postings.

Search for any entry level job in an office environment, how many list a college degree as a requirement? Anywhere north of 80% sends a message (Get a college degree or work for minimum wage).

This is my (maybe unpopular) take. I’m not sure many HR people can adequately assess the skills for a position, particularly technical ones. So they use education credentials as a lazy proxy. I’m not sure outlawing education requirements fixes this and may just result in some other lazy proxy like nepotism.

If they will still treat it as a de facto requirement, would lying on the job posting help anyone? I mean, in many professions there are a large number of applicants, and HR has to throw out many of the applications without interviewing anyway based on various not-that-strong signals.

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