Virtues of higher education
2010-10-23 00:15:50.483085+00 by
Dan Lyke
2 comments
Chronicle of Higher Education: Why Did 17 Million Students Go to College?:
... Putting issues of student abilities aside, the growing disconnect between labor market realities and the propaganda of higher-education apologists is causing more and more people to graduate and take menial jobs or no job at all. This is even true at the doctoral and professional level—there are 5,057 janitors in the U.S. with Ph.D.’s, other doctorates, or professional degrees.
or maybe the pension on those public-service janitorial jobs is better than anything they could get in the private sector?
[ related topics:
Education Economics
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#Comment Re: made: 2010-10-23 14:56:44.786842+00 by:
meuon
[edit history]
I'm hiring a young man next month. He's spent a year at a local college and dropped out. He's been working at wal-mart for a while. He beat out several degree'd applicants for an entry level job:
- He sent a genuine plain text ascii file formatted resume, as requested.
- He attached an .zip file of a working simple Perl program that uses MySQL
(not requested).
- He showed for a casual interview in a tie. (all black, tie, shirt, etc.. )
- He's sends properly formatted and worded e-mails.
- His LinkedIn page looks like a young man looking for a job. His Facebook page is his business (I didn't look).
Out of 8 applicants, including 2 with BS degrees in Computer Science, he won.
I received .doc and .rtf file resumes and e-mails that made me cringe, We are taking a gamble on him, hiring him part time for few weeks, but I think he's worth the chance sans a "college education" just because he shows intelligence and aptitude. He hasn't been taught yet, what can't be done, by people incapable of doing it themselves.
Excuse me, waiter.. Can I get an order placed, without the PhD thesis summary of "A Rhetorical Analysis of Composition Anthologies of American Literature from 1901 to 1910 of Authors Whose Name Rhymes With Twain"?
#Comment Re: made: 2010-10-23 23:32:15.456101+00 by:
markd
Of the three best programmers I've worked with, two had "untraditional" degrees - one from Berklee
(guitar performance) and the other was from DeVry.