Comment by ryanwaggoner | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ryanwaggoner | Hacker News Reader

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I love this story. Very inspiring and it gives me hope that perhaps the education system in this country can still be fixed through innovation, hard work, and the investment of people who care more about results and making a difference than they care about how much they care (or how much they appear to care, but I digress).

I feel like most of the people on this site who think that the university system is obsolete and who think that college is overrated don't understand how privileged their perspective is. If you grew up middle class and came from a family where most people went to college, or even just a family where going to college wasn't looked down upon, then yeah, there are a lot of other paths that could work out just as well for you, from traveling to starting a company to self-learning to joining the military. Whatever. But severely underprivileged kids don't skip college because of their other options and because they think it's not the best way to learn. They skip it because the idea of college is foreign to the point of being laughable. Because bettering oneself hasn't been taught. Because education isn't valued. Sadly, for some people in these subcultures, higher education is not only ignored, but viewed with suspicion or even scorn.

The entire trajectory of these kids lives will be changed forever because they earned the right to go to college. The mere fact that the education system in this country enables that means that we're still doing something right.

I can't speak for everyone here who criticizes the credential-based university system, but you have actually touched on one of the reasons I do that. Credentialism creates artificial, unnecessary barriers that hurt the poor even more than it hurts the middle class.

You are looking at a story about a few of the "lucky" ones and declaring the system a success. What the story doesn't mention is the incredible damage credentialism causes in the first place.

Interesting...can you expound on this? Specifically on the "credentials" portion...are you talking about the granting of degrees, the barriers to entry to starting a university, or the barriers to attend university?

All of the above, combined with the legal privileges conferred on holders of credentials, which necessarily result in legal barriers for those without credentials.

Not to mention the credentialism (a focus on credentials rather than actual ability) that is encouraged throughout society, which adds more obstacles even where legal barriers don't exist.

While this hurts everyone, the poor are especially affected because it's more difficult for them to obtain credentials. Offering more and more state assistance to try to help them obtain credentials is akin to holding someone's head underwater and providing some dirty air once in a while.

>Not to mention the credentialism (a focus on credentials rather than actual ability)

Well, the idea is that credentials are a measure of actual ability. A company looking for new hires can't give everyone a month-long trial to see what their ability is firsthand, so credentials like GPA and degree serve as a heuristic. It's not a perfect system, and in some respects you could even call it broken...but until someone comes up with a better way for companies to work out who to interview, it's necessary. Personally, I think it would be better to fix the problems than to remove the system entirely.

Well, the idea is that credentials are a measure of actual ability.

Sure, that's the idea, but they're not. I'm not saying people should use any one system to evaluate people, but a variety of different ones instead. The one-size-fits-all approach is inherently broken and extremely expensive to boot.

I disagree with you. They may be a noisy measure, but they are not meaningless. If I have ten technical positions, and for each one I interview someone from MIT and someone with a two-year degree from community college, I'm pretty sure that at least 9 of those 10 positions are better filled by a MIT grad.

OK, but the fact that you said, "at least 9 of those 10" instead of "10 out of 10" suggests that we're not really disagreeing. I'm not saying they're completely meaningless, but they are extremely noisy, to use your term, and very expensive to obtain, in terms of time and money.

90% signal is far from "extremely" noisy.

Don't focus too much on the S/N analogy. Remember, a legal barrier is equivalent to a claim of 100% accuracy, so even 90% (which wasn't my number, anyway) is terrible. What he and I apparently agree on is that the accuracy is less than 100%.

How is it a legal barrier? He's free to hire someone with the CC degree, or no degree at all. Degrees serve as an indication of knowledge (not to mention commitment), just like experience, test scores, or any other means of evaluating someone's merit. And I don't know anyone who thinks that a degree from any school is 100% proof of anything. It's just an indicator.

I think it's ridiculous to think that utopia is a world in which credentials are ignored. And they're only part of what helps people get jobs...this argument is like saying that we shouldn't use interviews for jobs because some people aren't very friendly and are therefore at a disadvantage.

The actual problem is not credentialism per se, but legal credentialing requirements that are pushed by the professional lobbies for the purpose of creating artificial barriers to entry.

For instance, lawyers used to be able to pass the bar and become a lawyer by simply self-studying and passing the tests. The bar associations wanted to raise the barriers to entry to the profession, so they passed laws requiring a Law school degree. Students then started taking correspondence courses. The bar associations then changed the accreditation rules to mandate a minimum amount of classroom face time. These artificial credentialing laws ended up hurting the poor. Because before a student could study with books from a library card and become a lawyer. Now he must pay a very expensive tuition bill. Also, the artificial barriers to entry drive up wages for the credentialed professions, which means everyone has to pay more for doctors, legal help, etc.

Something like 30% of all jobs in the United States now have a legal credentialing requirement. Other companies are forced to use college attendance as a proxy for IQ tests, simply because the Supreme Court made it illegal to use IQ tests in hiring.

Again, I'm saying that actual ability is more important than credentials, not that credentials will be completely ignored. As for legal barriers, it looks like bokonist has already addressed that here.

"A company looking for new hires can't give everyone a month-long trial to see what their ability is firsthand, so credentials like GPA and degree serve as a heuristic."

This is just corporate propaganda. GPA has no correlation with work performance, it's only used because it's a legal way to keep minorities out of the workforce.

GPA has no correlation with work performance.

I'd like to see some reliable studies to back up this statement. I don't see how this could be true when adjusted for variations in programs and schools. If I'm hiring twenty programmers from the same school who graduated from the same program at the same time, you're telling me that if I hire 10 people who barely graduated with a 2.0 GPA and ten people who busted their ass and graduated with a 4.0 GPA, the first group won't outperform the latter? Why would that be true?

It's only used because it's a legal way to keep minorities out of the workforce.

Bullshit. Corporations don't give two shits if there are minorities working for them, as long as they're making them money. This sounds like a viewpoint that drove whatever study came to the conclusion in the first part of your sentence, if there even was such a study.

"I'd like to see some reliable studies to back up this statement."

http://searchyc.com/alex3917+gpa

(Some of these comments may be part of threads with other relevant info.)

it's only used because it's a legal way to keep minorities out of the workforce.

Evidence? I've never heard anyone who does hiring say anything like that, not even in private late night conversations after many libations.

My mother was a schoolteacher in the '30s - in a one-room schoolhouse - teaching all elementary grades. She didn't have a college degree - but her students all learned to read, write, and do arithmetic.

After working as a secretary in New York during WW II, she got married, had kids, and when we were all in school, wanted to go back to teaching. Unfortunately, by then that required a college degree in education, which she was unable to acquire (financial difficulties after my parents split). She ended her working career as the secretary to the director of special education (who had an EdD) for a small school district. The irony of that was that she had to write all his correspondence for him, as he was incapable of composing a coherent paragraph. I'd submit that it's possible the kids in that school district would have been better served if he was the janitor, and she a teacher or administrator.

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