How smart do you have to be to get a degree?

I could have written this exact post. It contains every point I would have made, including "Hard work beats talent when talent doesn't work hard" which was my mantra for a long time. As well as my sister not being 'smart' but very hard-working and doing infinitely better than me despite having much lower test scores.

The only thing that (eventually!) got me through my bachelors degree was thinking "If you just put one foot in front of the other, you'll get there eventually (assuming you are walking on a sphere and not perfectly along a meridian)".

People asked me if you needed to be smart to get my degree (one of the big-4 engineering degrees) ... I always said "No, just stubborn."

Throwaway: I have a PhD in CS, and I wouldn't describe myself as very intelligent. Maybe slightly above average. I am constantly amazed at how quickly others in my team can understand extremely complex mathematical problems in a few seconds. I would need at least an hour of quiet thinking, and I struggled a lot with the mathematical aspects of my PhD. But I did work my ass off for 5 years (mostly out of curiosity, though, there was no family pressure, my father is a builder and my mother worked in a supermarket).

Something I noticed: extremely smart people have a tendency to see a problem and quickly sketch the solution in their head, or sketch a proof that the problem cannot be solved. Their overwhelming life experience is that they are always the most intelligent person in the room and that their intuition is always right, and so they quickly mark this problem as "done" / "boring" / "unsolvable". In contrast, people with curiosity but less intellectual confidence tend to experiment with ideas to see if they would work / why they wouldn't work / if they work to a certain degree. I certainly do, and everything I have ever written a paper about, including my dissertation, was discovered during such experiments. If anything, I have a PhD in intellectual naivety.

I know of several extremely smart people in PhD programs who have not produced anything interesting in years, because they shrug off every problem as trivial, see paper writing as below their dignity, and keep themselves busy with teaching. They seem to wait to be automatically rewarded for their intelligence. After all, that is exactly what happened to them in school, and during their Bachelor/Master studies.

I think there’s also a willingness to jump through hoops required that some of the most intelligent people I have known have been too stubborn for.

I’m pretty convinced that if you just show up to class, be nice to the prof, and do all of the assignments you’ll get a mercy C or D regardless of how you performed.

I’ve never tried this (finished with a 3.9) but observed my friends.

Some would do the above and miraculously pass courses they, according to exam scores, were certain to fail.

However, my friends who had poor exam score and spotty attendance never made it through. In fact, sometimes they were so convinced they’d fail that the dropped the course or no-showed the exam — so they did in fact fail.

Hard work, maybe — simply trying is easy. But more than that, persistence.

If you have a higher IQ it is going to be easier though in subjects like Math, CS, Physics etc. You still need to work. It may not be hard work though.

Doesn't this mean the value of a university degree has increased?

If you now have to have a degree just to make it to the 40th percentile of the earning bracket that surely means it is more required than ever, and thus worth more.

The trends for HS and Dropout are also negative. To me it implies education across the board is getting worse (assuming IQ is a good measure of “good” education).

We also no longer have as clear a signal that can be used to get high-IQ people to associate with each other then move into jobs that benefit from a very high IQ. Although on the other hand the idea that military officer intelligence is dropping (as presented in the article) is pretty concerning. If there is one place we want unusually high IQ it'd be there.

It is interesting to look at history and see how episodes of progress often require little clusters of geniuses to make them work. In the worst case, it might be harder to set that up now. Although it is hard to tell. Maybe it'd be good to normalise just testing IQ directly if that isn't already a thing.

> in EU it seems that education is less commercialized and you can get a degree for free if you are above average.

"Above-average" students (as measured by, for example, the SAT, ACT and/or GPA) are offered free university educations in many/most states in the US. It's just that average and even below average students can and do also gain admission, though obviously the completion rate is lower. College mostly only costs money in the US if you are not academically excellent and/or you elect to go to a private or out-of-state university without a scholarship.

> If your parents have never set foot in an university and worked manual labor all their live, you are less likely to even consider higher education.

That’s not what I have perceived in developing countries. Usually those kind of parents work very hard precisely to allow their children to go to university and have the life they didn’t have. They don’t want their children to work like their parents.

My delineation between those with degrees and those without has always been the type of feedback received through the learning process.

Those with degrees tend to be great with theory, but lacking in practice or application. Mind you, they are otherwise pretty bright people, so I don't fault them. They simply didn't get the corrective feedback needed along every step that tends to come with putting an idea into practice. I think of the engineers I work with daily as I write this. They can design new product in CAD all day, but have never built one, which hampers the implementation of their design in the real world and frustrates them.

Those who learned by doing, as opposed to 'studying to the test' such as myself will have a much stronger grasp on the ways things might go wrong (or in some cases, not actually be possible even though it works on paper or in simulation) and be better prepared for it. However, we also tend to have considerable gaps in our theoretical knowledge, and tend to try to make up for it by our ability to quickly adapt or problem solve.

Combined, I'd say the two types of people do make a good team, so long as each is compensating for the others deficiencies in a mutually beneficial way. I rather like the engineers I work with, and they seem to like me, so together, we are pretty valuable to each other and our employers. With other teams, I see this relationship break down when one side starts with the "they don't know anything" attitude.

IDK, I went to a state tech school and the huge majority (including myself) were from union/working class parents with no degrees. For at least my parents, getting a degree was seen as a ticket to a better life.

At the time, that school was also the cheapest (and consistently ranked at best value) so I think it just kind of self selected.

The competing private tech university however … I’m guessing those kids had parents with degrees.

> If your parents have never set foot in an university and worked manual labor all their live, you are less likely to even consider higher education

Maybe. But one thing I've noticed is that, in Europe at least, there's a huge difference people who value learning and working and those who don't: degree or not. There are people who've been doing manual labor their entire lives who value learning, knowledge and working.

One parent of mine got a university degree, the other didn't. I'm entirely self-taught (in more than one domain) but the thing is: my parents valued learning. My mom would, after work, create "learning games" for us, for example.

A friend of mine is a lawyer: his parents and grandparents were farmers/paesants but they valued working. He is proud of being the son and grandson of "paysants" ("peasants"). My wife's grandparent was an intellectual working... In a coal mine (after WWII he had no choice: he ended in a country where he didn't speak the language and the only job he was offered was in a coal mine).

Heck, my grandfather was a lawyer but he quit lawyering to... Build chalets in the countryside. With his own hands. He was doing manual labor but he was an intellectual and very well educated.

I've got lots of respect for farmers / blue collar working people. But I cannot stand the entitled, 90 IQ, people holding a bullshit degree (not all degrees are bullshit) and doing bullshit work and asking for 28 hours workweek while I've got doctors friends whom, after 10 years+ of studies, are working their arses off (for a great salary, granted).

My point being: there's higher education (like becoming a doctor or the engineer working on the machines that doctors do use to cure cancers) and "higher" education, as TFA shows.

People don't like IQ as a measurement but I know the IQ of those who make these machines and those who create medicine. And I know smart plumbers, electricians, farmers, ...

I've got friends (well, family really) who are both doctors and they don't get to see their kids as much as they would like to: but they explained me that they prefer their kid growing up seeing as role models people who save other people's lives and who work hard to do that.

They consider their job useful. Just as they consider a plumber's job useful (I had to dig once for five hours in human manure to locate a clogged pipe on a sunday to save the plumber some time on monday morning... Though job they do these guys: yup, it's virtually always men doing that).

But bring me someone with a 90 IQ holding a "gender studies" "higher education" degree and I'll want to slap him/her/zhe in the face with a cluestick for they produce jack shit of value to society.

There are four distinct concepts at play;

  -  Innate capability, as intelligence, drive etc

  -  Access, in terms of money and background culture

  -  Accumulated capability, as education or training

  -  Credentials, certificates

Two are input conditions, two are outputs.

Some people are born smart, but they choose not to go to university. Or they live in a culture where it's unnecessary. They thrive as autodidacts. Or they are lone wolves who can accumulate capability on their own much better.

Others are born smart but they have no access, no family money, no grants or loans, or they live in a culture that frowns on class mobility. If they are lucky they can self-teach anyway or find mentors. If they are unlucky they are sadly wasted. That's a lot of people in the world, because IQ and global intelligence has been steadily rising.

Some people are born dumb as a brick, but they have family who insist, and pay for them to attend. Or they live in a culture that shoehorns everyone through university as a matter of course, or as a holding pen for youth.

The outputs of formal education likewise vary. Some really smart people go to university and fail. Some universities are awful. Students come out lacking the piece of paper their parents and gatekeepers want.

And of course there are some really dumb people should never have gone to university, but they were sold it, or pushed, and their failure is a real knock-back in life. I've seen university destroy many young people. It's a fucking tragedy and I absolutely blame the extractive wannabe culture of education as a cosmetic product.

Some cognitively challenged people manage to cheat and weasel their way through obtaining a degree certificate. Maybe they're not so dumb huh, because they learn guile and corruption necessary for modern life.

Regardless the credentials, some people may or may not obtain an actual education while at university. The space, free time, the library, access to smart professors... these are all opportunities to blossom. Some, at the lower ranking universities, merely get parochial training, which expires within a year and they need to "retrain". In this way education is a great racket.

Some people follow the path of enlightenment. They really do start out quite intellectually weak, but while at university they find themselves, study hard, become well educated and smarter as they "learn how to learn" and the value of knowledge and self-discipline. For them, university is the making of them.

Some even follow this path and realise late in the game that the certificate isn't worth waiting for, so they jump off and start life early. I believe Messrs. Gates and Zuckerberg fall into this group.

Anyway, in 30 years as a visiting professor I've seen all of these things and more. Higher education varies around the world, as do the cultures that set the value and desirability of HE.

The problem is that western universities have become degenerate. They've been taken over by a toxic culture of financialism and professional management and are no longer fit places for teaching, learning and research. They fall into the GIGO taxonomy, as degree mills where you pay £20,000 or whatever, and you damn well expect a degree. And if you don't get one then sue.

And to be honest, in the UK that's most of them now, not just the provincials but the Russell Groups too. The only reason to go is for the networking and certificate and that requires a gatekeeper culture to keep up its value - one which is rapidly crumbling.

When people ask me now, "Is it worth getting a degree?", I have to be very sceptical. What do you really want to do in life and what sort of person are you?, those are the more important questions.

> I'll also note that when I teach Elementary Statistics and ask undergrads for a show of hands of who has taken an IQ test, often in a class of 30 I won't get more than a hand or two. So I guess these studies are administering the tests specially for the study?

I'm also wondering where they're getting all of the IQ stats. I have no idea what my IQ is, and I don't recall ever taking an IQ test in my entire life. Where I came from, it certainly wasn't routine to administer IQ tests.

You come out guns blazing about how IQ isn't the only thing, but then get twisted about "working with Linux" somehow being any way related to degrees and then claim to have found many degree havers to be very low IQ.

Kind a think you should take stock again and reconsider what you think IQ is and what it means. Hint: it has nothing to do with using Linux.

It's a measurement of cognitive performance, nothing more. It does not tell if you can do a good job or not.

I think it's a good tool when looking a two groups or looking at performances over time.

But it could be biased, for example when he say PhD IQ fall when enrollment is higher, measuring the quality of the work would've been better.

Also IQ don't give you any hint of causation. Maybe IQ drop because of school quality? Screen time? Physical activity drop? Some widespread chemical? Lack of oportunity given the world environmental crisis?

There are many factors that could play a role.

> Is IQ everything that counts?

H*ll, no...but it's an easily obtained, one-dimensional number. Which pushes lots of people's buttons. So it's near-perfect if you want people to pay attention to your pretty graphs and glib conclusions.

I suspect a better number (for "good prospect for college?" questions) would be some measure of how willing & able a student is to sit and study (vs. be physically active, do real-world work, and interact socially). At least back when I went to college, there were lots of brilliant flakes. Their HS grades and admission test scores made them look like potential Ph.D's. But their inability to really study, for college-level classes, meant that they flunked out in a year or two.

Not impressed at all that someone works with Linux.

That actual title says almost literally nothing.

Well people want IQ to be a test of intelligence, which it isn't particularly but supposing it were, if it increased with education then people who were well-educated would have a higher IQ than those who were not. Wealthy parents would be able to afford to give their children a higher IQ.

All sorts of side effects would come into play (or as they are already in play be increased) because it would be obvious that the people at the top of the socioeconomic ladder are there just because they are smarter than everybody else and the serfs should stop their whining.

What is actually wanted are

1. a potential score that remains pretty much even as you start to realize the potential, with decrease with age as it is supposed that potential decreases. This is actually pretty much the way IQ works. It would also be nice if potential could identify areas in which you had more potential.

2. an educational score across various areas.

3. an ability to apply 1 and 2 score.

functions that could calculate what education you should have further, cost / benefit analysis etc.

Has your ability to apply what you have learned increased by the amount expected given your potential, would, for example, be an interesting thing to track.

I've always understood IQ to be similar to the "horse power" of your brain.

Filling the brain with more facts, and learning more quick routes and tricks, will, surely, make you arrive at a conclusion faster, but the raw Horse Power of your brain/internal engine is not going to get any higher.

If I recall correctly, they have been trending upwards for the the past 100 years (up 30 points but I doubt the average person was clinically retarded) and only relatively recently has started to show a slight decline. IQ tests from 100 years ago are still pretty valid, they use military tests I believe. Double check that.

Ha! Germans seem to win everything, both good and bad!

Not unsurprising considering that the Germans are good solid neighbors but the populistic agenda is demanding WWII reparations from Germany and making them the culprit for a lot of European decisions.

Ofcourse you need some basic cognitive functions in order to be able to read, write and present yourself. Remember you don't have to be best to get a degree, you only need to pass and when you don't succeed you can in most cases try again.

That said, get a degree if you can. It will help you in the job market, and if you for some reasons don't pursuit a degree for any random reasons - you will still have the background leading up to this point in time which can count as experience.

Dear mods this comment is not flagged and has upvotes I am asking for public clarification why you pinned it to the bottom.