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Comment by terminalshort | Hacker News Reader

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Isn't this the type of attitude that is giving cover to the types of actions the OP mentions, i.e. throwing the baby out with the bathwater?

It’s not the intellectuals who are pushing standards down. High standards inherently reject people, that’s inherent to the concept. The push for ever higher percentage of the population to get degrees means the average student keeps getting worse, as fewer of them are really seeking to be educated vs get a piece of paper. Public schools are pushed to raise graduation rates due to political pressure and higher education is ultimately a business and then responds to those forces.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d1/Educatio...

You are 100% correct, but it is absolutely a bunch of useless intellectuals and their endless yapping who have pushed this crap on us. You are confusing intellectuals with smart people.

HR can very quickly sort people by levels of education. Most companies don’t give a fuck what someone learned in their history degree, but know on average they’re more reliable than someone that dropped out of college. Some college still puts people in a better bucket than high school graduates, which is a better bucket than high school dropouts.

Which is why the general population is trying to get that piece of paper. The day HR stops caring is the day this changes.

It sounds like you have your own definition of "intellectuals", which appears to mean pretty much the opposite of what it usually means.

I know exactly what "intellectual" means. It's someone who has spent years obtaining credentials in an economically useless subject and looks down their nose at people who would lower themselves to actually do practical work. A brilliant mechanic who can fix anything and has made millions running his business would never be called an intellectual, but someone serving coffee with a phd in English literature would.

It really doesn't sound like you know exactly what it means.

Credentials are largely unrelated to being an intellectual. Academics may be the word you’re thinking of.

A mechanic who’s been publishing poetry would easily qualify. Further labs also need people who maintain equipment, it’s a viable and hands on carrier path to maintain electron microscopes and such all day.

That's a completely non-sensical take.

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