Social sciences however... but of course I'm biased there.
He also says that having any degree is "worth it" to an individual, monetarily. It's just not worth it to society to require everyone to have education they don't use.
Half of Finnish people between 35 and 44 have a degree, whereas only 7% of people in that age range from South Africa do, so South Africa must be much better off than Finland.
I certainly don't think it helps the situation to use the historical and current state of thimgs as some excuse not to bother trying. You can't create better civilization be decree or force. It can only happen when enough percentage of the population does it for themselves, and they don't when they are ignorant or bubbled.
I guess you have a PhD and embody the "exhibit A" counter example eh? Educated yet no better than the uneducated at communication and comprehension.
Or let me guess, you only took technical classes. As close to 100% stem as the system would let you.
I don't really want to make personal attacks like that but this kind of comment is exactly an example of the topic. What field on what spreadsheet gets what number increased or decreased by one to quantify the cost of this sort of lack of understanding?
If South Africa suddenly had as many degree holders as Finland, it wouldn't suddenly become Finland.
While I understand the source of this statement and why people often say this, I'm not entirely sure I agree with this, at least anecdotally.
For example, I have a degree in Theater. Which, on the surface, doesn't transfer well to, say, software engineering or law or accounting or teaching or social work.
But is that really true? To pick a popular theatre-related discipline, consider what an actor does:
- They show up on time (to scenes, to rehearsal, to performances)
- They can memorize vast amounts of material in a relatively short period of time verbatim
- They work well with others
- They work well individually
- They can take direction
- They can take constructive criticism
- They meet deadlines under pressure (the show must go on!)
- They can put themselves in other people's shoes (Method acting, ftw)
- They know how to do research (how does a 1940s soldier talk, dress, walk, act?)
- They are comfortable speaking in front of groups
- They can speak clearly and enunciate appropriately (especially good in a remote world with fuzzy tech!)
And so on and so forth...
I don't really care what industry you're in, those are desirable qualities for ANY hiring manager! I would be THRILLED if candidates metaphorically walked through the door with evidence of those skill sets under their belt! This is the holy grail of "soft skills" that everyone looks for, whether you're a doctor or a restaurant manager or a postal worker.
I've had a lot of jobs in my career, but I've never in my life walked onto a job and known everything I need to know. There's a LOT of on the job training -- so much that I might as well be taking a boot camp at every new job!
And so from that perspective, someone who walks in with a theater or really any kind of arts or social science degree and a modicum of Python under their belt is a very, very attractive hire to me. I can teach you our framework of choice and how to run tests and how to use Jira, but I don't have time to teach you how to learn or how to communicate or how to take direction.
Anyway, my two cents.
Which I think is the author’s point.
Even for IT there's an argument to be made that it's super easy to learn 80% at home and do maybe some hands-on work in a lab with 500 virtual computers (that you wouldn't easily setup by yourself in a realistic manner), then go into the job. After a magazine got me started on HTML with a 3-page explanation at 12yo, things just started rolling from there and I was basically always ahead of what I was expected to know by year x of the study because I had already done stuff out of personal interest. Don't need an N-year study there, either. Engineering (in the sense of building a bridge that stands 100 years) is probably different though.
With your surprising and well written example, I realize he's not an exception. There's great value there. And I now fully agree with you.
> And so from that perspective, someone who walks in with a theater or really any kind of arts or social science degree and a modicum of Python under their belt is a very, very attractive hire to me. I can teach you our framework of choice and how to run tests and how to use Jira, but I don't have time to teach you how to learn or how to communicate or how to take direction.
You fully changed my mind.
Being able to multiply matrices by hand is nice, but there's software for that. Soft skills or a rigorous thought process is very hard to find.
Not saying you're wrong about what a good theater student does, but a disproportionately large number of arts students I've met seemed to treat their degree as a three year long bludge that allows them to delay taking on adult responsibilities.
Far fewer people go into mechanical engineering or physics because they want to sit around smoking weed all day.
At least in my line of (admittedly quite "dirty") work, I'd choose someone with experience at McDonalds or Kmart over an arts grad any day of the week.
The question is just how much of education is testing for skills that were there all along, and how much is actually taught. Caplan says that all evidence points to that it's almost all A, and very little B. If true, spending several years and very large amounts of money just for one person to get ahead in a zero-sum game is not very beneficial to society as a whole.
> - They show up on time (to scenes, to rehearsal, to performances)
> - They can memorize vast amounts of material in a relatively short period of time verbatim
> - They work well with others
> - They work well individually
> - They can take direction
> - They can take constructive criticism
> - They meet deadlines under pressure (the show must go on!)
> - They can put themselves in other people's shoes (Method acting, ftw)
> - They know how to do research (how does a 1940s soldier talk, dress, walk, act?)
> - They are comfortable speaking in front of groups
> - They can speak clearly and enunciate appropriately (especially good in a remote world with fuzzy tech!)
> I don't really care what industry you're in, those are desirable qualities for ANY hiring manager!
Of those 11 skills, 9 are skills you'd need for any engineering postgrad degree, and 7 are skills you'd get in any engineering undergrad degree. From the hiring managers PoV, with the engineering graduate you also get a lot of other nice skills, like problem-solving complex problems, understanding complicated systems, etc.
> I would be THRILLED if candidates metaphorically walked through the door with evidence of those skill sets under their belt!
They do - that's what the postgrad engineering degrees are - evidence of possessing those skills you mentioned, and using them.
1) I wasn't advocating necessarily for a degree, but specifically in rebuttal to the idea that non-STEM majors aren't useful in STEM areas, and
2) One of the benefits of a college degree is that you now have a physical piece of paper that says "I started and finished a 4+ year-long project that proves I can do all of those things," whereas folks without a degree don't have that "proof". I'm NOT saying that you NEED it, but it's useful social proof that says "Hey, I can do all of the things in that list, and here's something that more or less proves it."
But yes, you're right. I could arbitrarily pick History as a major and give you a different but equally impactful list of soft skills that you learn while getting a degree in History! I was specifically pushing back on the parent's assertion that the social sciences (and arts) don't transfer to other domains, which I think is a patently absurd statement.
It's not something that can be reduced to metrics except possibly on the scale of entire countries over timespans of multiple generations, and even then the effects are probably not seperable from countless other factors because there are no two or more otherwise identical countries to act as the controls.
This assumes that "facing ideas" happens in school and not the real world, which is questionable on both sides.
A few people learn a few things the hard way, and everyone else ignores their annoying crying.
/sarcasm (but not 100%.)
BTW, what is the value of a university degree is to someone's self-worth?
Which made me realize even in my CS degree all the "useful" courses could fit into one semester and the rest was just learnt the old fashioned (read: medieval) apprentice way - osmosis from being around other practitioners.
Paraphrasing the great Yogi - thing change yet so much remains the same.