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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

Outside of The Professions, where is college an effective credential system? College is clearly not that important in our field. Even at the companies that most famously do use degrees as selection criteria, the requirement is trivially circumvented with the right work experience.

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Getting a job as a mid-level manager in government service is very difficult without a degree, unless you are old enough to grandfather in when things were different. And even if you do get a job, there will be a noticeable level of weirdness around you because you didn't finish college.

Note that you don't have to go to a particularly good school -- it is government service, after all.

I think a similar thing is true -- I would be interested in knowing how many people at supervisor or above at, say, Netflix (or an oil company) don't have a degree? I don't know... hopefully other people can share anecdotal evidence ;)

One tricky thing about this is that demographically, most people that end up in "white collar" jobs do get degrees. But I think that's post-hoc evidence for the implied requirement of a degree. Those same people might have done just as well (or even better, considering the 4 years opportunity cost of a degree) without college.

I don't think you have any real evidence for whether the association of white-collar job and degree is post-hoc or not? Do you? Without evidence, it's kind of a cheap shot.

I don't think we need to cite sources to suggest that white collar jobs tend to be filled by people above the socioeconomic median, or the fact that the same demographic cohort overwhelmingly tends to go to college. The middle class goes to university (a) because it's a default, (b) because it's part of the middle class lifestyle, and (c) because it's perceived as necessary for a career. Only 1/3rd of those reasons are about credentials.†

Stipulating the fact that jobs are just statistically going to be filled by people who automatically got degrees, I don't think it's a stretch (or a cheap shot) to suggest that the relationship between jobs and school is tenuous.

Moreover, given the fact that white collar jobs in large companies tend to be managed conservatively, and the fact that people without degrees are outliers (because almost every applicant for any job went to college by default), some of the "credentialing effect" of a degree is actually just an observational bias.

† Note also the preponderance of college attendees who attain degrees that are almost objectively without credentialing merit, such as the liberal arts.††

†† "Without credentialing merit" being intended as an objective statement and not as an argument that people shouldn't get liberal arts degrees; I think most degrees are without credentialing merit.

Let's look at this as a logic problem.

You say college has no causal effect, I say college has a causal effect (granting that we aren't talking about credentialing degrees, blah, blah).

The best you have done is destroy my argument in favor of causation; however, this doesn't imply that you are correct for NO causation, just that my argument doesn't work (maybe correct). To prove no causation you would have to evaluate all possible arguments for it, and show them all to be wrong. (good luck)

However, I do have partial evidence for causality based on the association between college and white collar jobs. I am basing this on the "warrant" that P(causation| association) >= P(causation) -- if there is association, the likelihood of causation is higher or the same.

So how about this: neither of us can say for sure whether college helps, but I have a little bit of faulty evidence and you have no evidence whatsoever.

We are in the same situation as most social scientists -- the evidence for anything really sucks, and is nowhere like the evidence for hard science propositions. However, very important policy decisions have to be made based on this faulty evidence. What most people do is pretend be sure and so guarantee they act foolishly.

I think you're going through a lot of trouble to formalize an argument I'm not even contesting. I'm talking about the minimal value of a degree as a credential outside the Professions; you're arguing with a fictitious third party who says they have zero importance anywhere.

>I'm talking about the minimal value of a degree as a credential outside the Professions; you're arguing with a fictitious third party who says they have zero importance anywhere.

Umm, wrong. I am arguing with the "minimal value of a degree as a credential outside the Professions". I have made that clear, by statements to the effect of "granting the professions are a different case."

I am saying -- I have limited evidence for causality in the effect of a degree (outside the professions), and you have no evidence for the absence of causality .

It's all good though...

We're discussing a difference of (small) degree, and your point is that correlation is sometimes causation?

Ok? Stipulated? Now what?

No, I am arguing that my lack of a good argument does not imply that the converse argument is true.

So ... retract your argument that college has no credentialling value in getting a white collar job (outside of the professions) ;) You have no evidence.

(Heuristically, I have evidence, but it is poor. But poor is better than none.)

I gave specific pieces of evidence: sales, technology, trading, marketing. Rebut.

You posited that in "sales, technology, trading, marketing" there is no value to a degree as credentialing, but you didn't offer any evidence that I can find. Please correct me if you cited a study.

My evidence, to be fair, is the graphs I have vaguely seen associating educational outcomes with salary and "higher" job classifications.

How much damage can one bad hire cause?

Not much directly. Even in engineering, entry-level work is usually scutwork, so they probably won't get the chance to break anything important.

But hiring a flake can cause a lot of damage indirectly. If they lose an important document or attach the wrong appendix to the marketing proposal, you could lose a lot of money.

So if you're a big company with complicated procedures and a lot to lose -- what if that lost document is important because of a lawsuit? -- hiring dependable people trumps almost everything else. Bachelor's degrees are a great way to certify that someone can show up on time, follow directions, meet deadlines, and pay attention to one thing for four years at a time.

No it isn't. The diligence bar for obtaining a bachelor's degree is so far below the diligence bar for maintaining a work presence that they almost don't bear comparison.

People make this observation all the time, but I'm guessing that even the most diligent students who make it showed up late to class often enough that they'd have gotten disciplined had class been a real job.

Outside of the silicon valley/ tech industry, it's impossible to get a decent job without a degree.

You mean except in trading, sales, marketing, and management of those fields and technology? Like I said: outside the Professions, where is the degree an absolute requirement?

A degree is necessary to be an accountant, a lawyer, a doctor, or an (non-computing) engineer. But that's a small slice of the overall workforce.

And sure, especially in the Fortune 1000, companies strongly consider degrees even outside the professions. But I guarantee you that success in (say) sales has almost nothing to do with the degree (or lack thereof) you start with, and management of sales teams has everything to do with prior sales success.

You can't get a job as a secretary without a degree these days.

There is a bubble in Silicon Valley, but it's not an economic one...

Yeah I think you're just wrong.

I have a friend at a Fortune 500 where I used to work who started working as an administrative assistant (secretary) and now 4 years later is a project manager and is making more than I did as a fresh out of college as a junior dev. She only has a high school diploma. I can think of at least three other similar examples at the same financial institution.

There are lots of ways into "real" jobs without a degree if you're smart and you find the right path into the career you want (obviously this does not work for professions with licensing bodies).

There might be verbiage like "B.A. or equivalent experience" on the description, but if it is a managerial position I think 90% is B.A, 10% is equivalent experience. So, there may be no literal requirement, but there is still a de facto requirement.

Sales may be an exception here -- though I would hazard a guess that to sell software for IBM to governments and businesses, my above comment would apply. To sell real estate, though, nobody really cares (same for cars, etc).

Getting hired externally into a management role probably does require a degree, but many of these positions are filled internally, and if you are (e.g.) a star sales account manager or responsible for the company's most successful marketing program, the degree is probably a non-issue when you bid for the promotion.

Evidence? Seems plausible or common knowledge, but lots of wrong things seem plausible or common knowledge (remember Columbus and falling off the side of the earth?)

It seems to work ok for subjects like chemistry, biological sciences, and other engineering disciplines.

You can't perform experiments in chemistry or material science on a laptop. The practice oriented classes in these fields often require facilities and equipment that are too expensive for individuals to purchase. Hence why in those fields college credentials is a variable with r > 0 for on the job competence. In contrast, it costs about $600 dollars in computer equipment and used books in order to get started in programming or security. The security industry in particular reflects this. Over half of the guys running top security companies either don't have a degree or have one from a highly technical college. Hell, the guy running cyber security research for the government has a music degree.

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