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Comment by vampirechicken | Hacker News Reader

The degree is, in the face of people's stunning inability to judge others, a prima facie way to decide whether a person is capable of setting a long term goal and seeing it through to completion.

It can, for less savory reasons, be used to pre-screen people who fit in demographics that do not have high graduation rates.

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All I can say is that I didn't 'set a long term goal' going into college. I just did what I was told and eventually picked a major, riding it out as the path of least resistance to graduation. Let me put it this way: given my cultural upbringing and inset fears at the time, it would have been harder to drop out of school than to stay in school. Pretty sure that holds for many college graduates.

I'm not against screening for college grads as a policy, though I think that it could limit you from finding amazing underrated candidates. I just think that popular argument about 'seeing out a long term goal' is simply not true a lot of the time, though I benefit a lot from it.

You did, though. Whether or not you completed that goal because "it was easier to complete it than to not complete it because of my cultural upbringing" or because you had to push yourself and struggle every day doesn't really matter all that much to a company who wants to hire you. If you're going to complete a project to avoid a sense of guilt about not completing it rather than to achieve a sense of pride for completing it, it's all the same to your employer.

If you're preprogrammed for success by your parents and it comes naturally, that doesn't make success illegitimate. Just count your blessings.

It may be prima facie, but it's also completely subjective. There are a plethora of reasons a person might not complete a degree that have nothing to do with his ability to commit, complete long term goals, or anything else. Using a degree in such a manner is an indicator to me that the person doing it is either incapable of engaging in critical thinking, or else is too lazy or indifferent to do so on this matter. In that regard, a person using such a filter is itself a (negative) filter, for me, with regard to whether I want to work with them.

I agree. I'm just repeating, and adding a little commentary to what I get told whenever I ask why any particular position requires a degree.

Want to be a tech writer? Samples aren't good enough. Gotta have a degree - any degree. But you have to have a degree.

So who ever made that rule had a reason at the time: expediency, prejudice, ignorance. But it's a widespread practice, and describing it does equate with condoning it.

Who needs someone who can "see a long term goal to completion"?

What's the turnover rate in Silicon valley, or for that of high-skilled IT design and ops? I'd rather have a savant of a coder/engineer for 18 months than a mediocrity for 36.

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