Your Credentials Are Holding You Back | Hacker News Reader

Your Credentials Are Holding You Back

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38 pointssaurabh39 comments

I think university credentials are holding all of society back. For a thousand years, universities had little to do with making a living for most people in society. They were for training academics, churchmen, and lawyers, and for the scions of rich families to get to know each other. The majority of households became able to support themselves by mechanisms other than going to college.

It is only in the last generation (VERY recently in the thousand year history of the system) that universities have become almost the monopoly source of employment qualification. How ironic is it that as economic activity diversifies, qualification for entry narrows into a single queue?

One result of the university being the only door into the entire economy is that people assume that the way to do the best in the economy is to do the best in the university system. Get the most elite degree possible, and you'll have your pick of elite careers.

But it doesn't work that way. The university and the economy are two different worlds. People with PhDs in Etruscan history from Harvard are elite in the university system, and for every ten of them, there will be one academic job available. The other nine will have to leave the system and be no more qualified than people with far more ordinary degrees to be of value in the real economy.

But they'll think they deserve more because, after all, they were the winners of the system that everyone has to go through to qualify for a job. What a mess.

The sooner we can diversify the training and credentialing system to match the diversified economy, the better.

it is the very reason why a lot of really smart people drop of out of the universities. essentially the only thing it really proves is that you're very good at doing what you're told, the way you were told.

yes, there are very smart professors. I have met many. I have met equally if not more really dumb professors. they're not stupid per se, but they can only think in the procedures they have been taught to think.

chomsky made the argument that by the end of your academic career in general you are already chewed, so that you are part of the system, unless you have strong enough peers that keep you from getting assimilated.

gatto in his book the underground history of american education made the argument that the education system is really made to generate a class society.

personally I think it's a system that nurtures mediocracy. the university system wants is based on the most common denominator to get as many "well enough trained" workslaves out as possible. to do that efficiently you essentially have to cut out the top and the bottom, and keep the rest.

i recently sat in a room where they wanted to introduce the new head of development. some random dude, not particularly interesting, but just got a ph.d in computer science, associate professor in a random university. If I was running the show, he wouldn't even have made it past the first interview. but i just sat still nodding and making a note on how I could use a ph.d right now

Yeah, I'd like to know what this particular professor was trying to teach me.

The semester was almost over, and I was turning in my last paper. I tried my best to do it well. But he kept returning it to me, saying it was "bad" (no reason given even though I asked several times to know what was wrong so I could fix it). Each time I tried to improve it, he said it was "bad" and returned it to me, saying he refused to grade the paper I was really ill at the time (sleeping 14+ hours per day, then falling asleep everywhere; I was really weak). The effort I put on the paper was making me have bad grades on my other classes. I begged the professor to let me turn in the paper as it was, even if I got a zero (I would still pass the class). I explained my situation, but he still refused. I dropped out of the class even though semester was practically over. The stress of it was killing me.

So I got no grade or credit for the class.

Idiots like these shouldn't be teaching. Then again he was pretty racist and misogynist, and was always picking on me and glaring at me even if he was talking to another student.

Wish I'd known better at the time, I should have reported him, but just the effort to get to my classes everyday was awful. It took me 6 years to get healthier (I had to drop out because of how bad I got), so it's only recently that I realized how absurd the situation was.

I wonder what he was trying to teach me?

Best Kafka-short-as-an-HN-comment I've ever read. Won't be sleeping tonight.

Maybe another way of looking at it: most Americans now get the university experience, something you note used to be reserved for social mixing of wealthy families. In other words: the masses are now experiencing a quality of life only the wealthy once had. Instead of seeing this a problem, I see it as the tip of the iceberg.

What is the college lifestyle? It's essentially the dream: do what you want, don't worry because everything is taken care of for the most part. It's like socialism: the good and the bad. You don't have to work very hard and there's little payoff for being the hardest worker. But at the same time, there's plenty of experimentation, outside the box thinking: everything is questioned.

Many of us suggest that machines do more and more of the heavy lifting, as humans are allowed to be the 'artists' (or whatever you want to call it) that they want to be... We hear this a lot: that we're on this kind of a trend and it'll continue until we need to make major political changes (a la distribution of wealth and ownership of production) to ensure harmonious society is possible. Well: I suggest that we're already part-way here. It's just that most of us experience this for only 4 years...or roughly 8% of our adult lives.

I suggest that this 8% will only grow and our societies will need to change, politically, in order to let this happen.

There are the credential-obsessed individuals on college campuses, but they're actually a small minority. Most are just living the life of freedom for a few years before learning what work is like. Wouldn't you go back and live college over again if you could now? awesome!

Unfortunately the "dream" lifestyle you described runs at a significant financial loss :(

It's a bit less idyllic if you have to try and break even.

I don't believe its so much as university credentials but the question of where you get those credentials.

Effectively the government has created a system that allows educational institutions to withdraw tax payer money through a backdoor. These institutions will help you fill out your student loan applications, get the money from the government and then it doesn't matter whether you fail, succeed or drop out. The educational institution has your money and now you owe the government to pay it back. With the changes brought on via the Bush administration, the student loan debt is no longer even allowed to be discharged at bankruptcy. The only time the debt is forgiven is if you die or are disabled and unable to work to pay.

This change has brought on this incredible education bubble where you could spend over 100K on a liberal arts degree.

The only way to fight this is to make a conscious decision of where one goes to school. If you are able to afford a $100,000 degree by paying for it in cash or via scholarships, then good for you. Otherwise, if one is going to go and get a computer science degree (as an example), does it make sense to go the "prestigious" university that is out of state with the $80K tuition funded by student loans? Or is one better of going to the local university which charges closer to $20k to $30k. If one is taking student loan's for the local university, the burden is somewhat manageable.

I believe the media and the culture has made an impression on everyone that going to the "best" university regardless of cost is the most wonderful thing a young person can do for themselves.

I believe in universities. I just don't believe anyone should be encouraged to pay extortion prices to get an education. The current bubble in education costs is extortion, pure and simple.

I think people seriously over-estimate how much marginal happiness (if any) that expensive graduate degree will bring. Many people seem to continue studying out of inertia and through encouragement of academics who have a vested interest in maintaining a large number of graduate students.

I'd suggest they take their undergraduate degree and go test the waters of where they think they want to work. Spend a couple of years in the field, even at a lower level, pay off a little of the debt they already have, and then if they like the field, and want to continue in it, they'll have a much clearer idea of the benefit/cost ratio of an advanced degree, and a better idea of which school and program will give them the best value. And if they decide the whole field is wrong for them, it's much easier to start afresh somewhere else. Undergraduate degrees are much more transferable from field-to-field than advanced degrees.

I went through grad school once (PhD, dropped out, left with a MSc), am now doing the startup thing, and intend to go back for a PhD because I do love some things in research and academia (and I have some R&D-type ideas I'd like to work full-time on which require me to be in an university setting).

What I suggest to friends asking me for advice re:grad school is to go to grad school IF AND ONLY IF they get an assistantship of some sorts (those usually come with a tuition waiver).

When I applied to grad schools, I didn't get in my top 2 programs of choice; I did get in decent programs, but which wouldn't pay me (or not enough to cover my various expenses). I ended up choosing a lesser program, but one that gave me full tuition waiver + a teaching (and later, research) assistantship.

Grad school is a great experience, and I believe most people will get something from it. But it's not worth getting in debt for it (even if it's your top choice- you wouldn't pay Google/Apple/[insert your favorite company here] to go work for them).

Now of course, this advice is easier to follow for the scientific fields; but I have friends who got into liberal arts programs with full tuition waiver + a decent assistantship. The bar is just much higher for these (as it should be).

> What I suggest to friends asking me for advice re:grad school is to go to grad school IF AND ONLY IF they get an assistantship of some sorts (those usually come with a tuition waiver).

I think this is key. Every professor I ever had said "if you have to pay for a grad degree, don't go."

Which I would have, which is why I didn't!

I personally think #2 (Rubber Stamp Syndrome) is the most problematic long-term, since it doesn't have a readily-visible, actionable way to fix it (our entire upbringing and society around us reinforces it).

I hoped that this HBR article would have addressed ways to resolve rubber stamp syndrome. Alas, no.

I am consistently disappointed by the (poor) quality of ideas presented in "HBR Blog" articles. I stopped following the HBR twitter account after a few weeks since all the links I was clicking were links to HBR Blogs and every single one of them disappointed me.

HBR, like many orgs, uses "blog" as its down label brand, like Gap uses Old Navy and Intel uses Celeron.

So the author's point is that debt is restrictive and stifling? And his advice is to just "eliminate your debt load"?

Is this supposed to be satire?

People sometimes need to be told. Right now, countless college students with $X0,000 of debt are considering law school and masters degrees without a clear idea of how the added credential will improve their prospects.

I tend to think that almost all good advice is cliche for most and a revelation for some. We all have different blind spots.

You'd think it was obvious, but there's immense cultural pressure to take on debt for an immaterial promise which may or may not actually be of any benefit to you in the future.

Student debt has eclipsed credit card debt in the US, and Americans aren't exactly known for being stingy with credit.

Was thinking the same thing... I assume he means "continue working consulting" ?

As a developer (These days, DevOps engineer) without a uni degree I can tell you absolutely that for better or for worse you're probably still better off with a degree. Note that I'm saying this is how it should be, but just that to say "your degree is holding you back is absurd".

You may choose to do stupid things to justify the money you spent at uni, but in the last 24 months:

* I was unable to secure a badass job as a pen tester, due entirely to an upstream policy of not hiring people without degrees. I was told that an exception could be made, but I'd already been screwed around for 2 months by them and needed work.

* The process of working or moving over seas is diabolically complicated already, and made borderline impossible if you don't have a piece of paper to prove that you do what you do well.

My take on the article as that any barriers that a degree imposes are psychological and self-imposed, whereas there are still realworld issues you can't get past without one.

I'd be curious to hear your perspective as someone who didn't do college: do you feel you missed out on anything (other than the credential piece)? For me the experience was probably more valuable than the credential... at least in terms of values that this article is espousing: 'finding myself' etc. My degree was valuable in terms of money too...but for me the quality of life I had in college became a real ideal, an almost idyllic vision of cooperative living, good and bad, that has stayed with me. I'd never give up that experience, not for the world. In fact my feeling is college is the beginning of a trend whereby we're going to all start living lives of greater freedom and less hand-to-mouth... that is if we can find a way to share in the plenty that our times have created.

Not really. Some odd stuff you don't think about like how to structure a meeting or how to write a research paper.

Generally speaking, I spent the equivalent time a) gainfully employed and b) writing fucktons of code. This certainly isn't general advice and I don't know that I'd recommend doing this to other people, but for me specifically it seems to have paid dividends.

I advise you to look again re: pentesting. Most good firms do not require qualifications of any kind as long as you can pass their entry test.

In theory yes. In practice, this was a specific job that I wanted for reasons I probably won't go into here.

It was devastating to be turned down for such arbitrary reasons, especially considering that everyone on the team was behind hiring me, it was the parent company (who ultimately had to pay me) that veto'd.

Sorry to hear that, that sucks :( Just wanted to let you know that most consulting outfits aren't like that.

I would argue that debt holds most people back. It's easier to change jobs when you don't have unnecessary debt. The only debt that I would consider necessary is mortgage debt. Car loans, credit card debit, etc. are all things that can be managed and eliminated.

Agree on car loans and credit card debt, but...student loans? That's the elephant in the room, and arguably as necessary as mortgage debt. (You can rent a small apartment, but you're shut out of many career-track jobs without at least a college degree.)

Mortgage debt, or more precisely, home ownership, locks you into expensive maintenance on an asset that is expensive to get rid of. You can't just downsize your house -- all the benefit gets soaked up in transaction fees.

It also limits the geographic area that you can look for non-telecommuting work.

And in some scenarios, it really "is" cheaper to rent. But renting goes against what we've been raised to believe, especially regarding the American dream, our sense of permanence/putting down roots, etc.

Agreed. While my student loans have constrained my options, my home ownership has constrained my options by many more orders of magnitude. I hate my student loans, but don't regret them. I hate AND regret my home ownership.

> First, eliminate your debt load.

Need money?

1. Make money

Now here's my guide to happiness in life:

1. Become happy.

Voilà. Problem solved. Enjoy.

FTA: Perennially caught between the dream of pursuing her true passions and the responsibility of generating a direct return on her education, she once again decides to grin and bear her current role.

Apparently some people need to be reminded!

The irony is that your guide to happiness in life is basically exactly how it works. If you want to be happy, the solution is...become happy, and there's no other trick to it.

It doesn't work so well for money because there're at least some external constraints on wealth, but for happiness, it really is purely mental and your "guide" will work perfectly well for most people. Well, the ones who're willing to take enough of a leap to follow it.

For happiness, I agree, although often a significant lack of money will hinder happiness and render unhappy.

Almost everyone makes money. The trick isn't to make more, it's to spend less.

Some of the best advice I was ever given was that if you want to be rich, live like you're poor. Most people, left unchecked, will live to the extent of their means, which is a tremendous contributor to debt, because a) when you want something above what you already tend to buy, you do it on credit, and b) credit is carefully constructed to take forever to pay off if you are only paying what you have to.

So, the advice could better be stated "spend less, put what you don't spend towards eliminating your debt".

>> credit is carefully constructed to take forever to pay off if you are only paying what you have to

I do not understand ... Anybody care to elaborate ?

Credit repayment plans are designed to extract as much interest from you as possible before the debt is paid off. To escape debt, you generally have to apply additional payments to the principle above and beyond the minimum required.

It's amazing how few supposedly educated people understand the concept of sunk costs. What's the best time to stop flushing money down the toilet? Do you think we should continue longer because we have been doing it for so long, or would it be better to stop now?

So true. Grab a couple of beers with an ex-consultant when he's out of the system, open up about your BS experiences first and before you know it you end up spending all night sharing all the BS either of you had to go through. Worked every time so far.

"You're not the XXX, you're the product"

Oh boy that one we're going to hear for a long time apparently :(

I know lots of people who paid $$$ for MBAs. And then they went on to make more $$$ than they would have without their MBAs. In a matter of two to three years they'd have make back what they paid their MBA.

How are they the "product" of the business school? To me they're the customer: they paid $$$ for the opportunity to then get $$$$$.

But it's sooooo easy to try to knock people down by repeating that "you're the product" mantra as if people were merchandise and the web is so full of people who just love to try to diminish others that I'm pretty sure we'll keep reading "you're the product" for a long time...

The motto is, "if you're not the customer, you're the product". This applies to colleges and universities as much as anything else. The entire discourse is muddled by the vast chasm between reputable MBAs and diploma mills.

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