will we ever stop requiring a college degree in order to work the majority of good jobs?

[YGIFS 19452]

1 hour ago, aggie08 said:

Is this the thread where we propagate the myth that most college students are getting degrees in humanities, art history, or basket weaving?

This.  Even though at Texas public universities, these types of degrees account for less than 10% of students---it's all we ever hear about.  And do you know who continues to approve the mandate that the larger publics in the Lone Star State must offer this wide variety of "worthless" degrees in humanities, languages, and art history?  You guessed it, the State Legislature and their respective Board of Regents, not exactly two entities chalk full of Diaspora Studies alumni.  It's part of our formula funding.     

Anyway, interesting side note--Amazon is the nation's largest employer of new 4-year college graduates.  And all of the Top 5 majors hired are STEM/Business.  

[Celery Man 20996]

Art history is always a funny one to include with basket weaving. I took one art history class at Texas and it was both as difficult and as applicable to my post college life as calculus.

[HamsterHookah 112]

27 minutes ago, KYHorn said:

That's a nice and pithy way to put it. I'm adding it to my final slide for seniors. 

I posted it the other day to make a point, but really everyone should be required to read/listen to DFW's commencement speech from 2005 at Kenyon College:

Quote

 

Probably the most dangerous thing about an academic education–least in my own case–is that it enables my tendency to over-intellectualise stuff, to get lost in abstract argument inside my head, instead of simply paying attention to what is going on right in front of me, paying attention to what is going on inside me.

As I’m sure you guys know by now, it is extremely difficult to stay alert and attentive, instead of getting hypnotised by the constant monologue inside your own head (may be happening right now). Twenty years after my own graduation, I have come gradually to understand that the liberal arts cliché about teaching you how to think is actually shorthand for a much deeper, more serious idea: learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed. Think of the old cliché about “the mind being an excellent servant but a terrible master.”

This, like many clichés, so lame and unexciting on the surface, actually expresses a great and terrible truth. It is not the least bit coincidental that adults who commit suicide with firearms almost always shoot themselves in: the head. They shoot the terrible master. And the truth is that most of these suicides are actually dead long before they pull the trigger.

And I submit that this is what the real, no bullshit value of your liberal arts education is supposed to be about: how to keep from going through your comfortable, prosperous, respectable adult life dead, unconscious, a slave to your head and to your natural default setting of being uniquely, completely, imperially alone day in and day out. That may sound like hyperbole, or abstract nonsense. Let’s get concrete. The plain fact is that you graduating seniors do not yet have any clue what “day in day out” really means. There happen to be whole, large parts of adult American life that nobody talks about in commencement speeches. One such part involves boredom, routine and petty frustration. The parents and older folks here will know all too well what I’m talking about.

 

 

[HamsterHookah 112]

6 minutes ago, YGIFS said:

This.  Even though at Texas public universities, these types of degrees account for less than 10% of students---it's all we ever hear about.  And do you know who continues to approve the mandate that the larger publics in the Lone Star State must offer this wide variety of "worthless" degrees in humanities, languages, and art history?  You guessed it, the State Legislature and their respective Board of Regents, not exactly two entities chalk full of Diaspora Studies alumni.  It's part of our formula funding.     

Anyway, interesting side note--Amazon is the nation's largest employer of new 4-year college graduates.  And all of the Top 5 majors hired are STEM/Business.  

Not that interesting when you consider Amazon is the nation's largest employer (by an order of magnitude), so it stands to reason.

Edited January 31, 2023 by HamsterHookah

[YChang 3462]

I won't live to see it but I'm all for a day of universal income—where we can just study for fun and pursues jobs for pure interest since AI and tech will take care of most the stuff for us. 

[YGIFS 19452]

Just now, HamsterHookah said:

Not that interesting when you consider Amazon is the nation's largest employer (by an order of magnitude), so it stands to reason.

Well yeah, but most of their workforce is in fulfillment centers and driving trucks...with very few of those folks having degrees.  Take away that huge chunk and they are nowhere near the nation's largest employer.  I realize it's not apples to apples.  At least before Covid-19, the company with the largest percentage of new hires each year that were college degree holders was Enterprise Rental Car.  But yes, new hires overall with or without a degree is Amazon (alongside the U.S. Army which also has a rough blend of about 80/20 non-degree/degree holders).  

[HamsterHookah 112]

8 minutes ago, YGIFS said:

Well yeah, but most of their workforce is in fulfillment centers and driving trucks...with very few of those folks having degrees.  Take away that huge chunk and they are nowhere near the nation's largest employer.  I realize it's not apples to apples.  At least before Covid-19, the company with the largest percentage of new hires each year that were college degree holders was Enterprise Rental Car.  But yes, new hires overall with or without a degree is Amazon (alongside the U.S. Army which also has a rough blend of about 80/20 non-degree/degree holders).  

While you are obviously correct that what happened over the last decade has been the build-out of the company’s owned-and-operated logistics network, and the sheer number of employees over that time show what a massive investment it has been, I'm not sure how you can quantify or break that out. 

I also agree that having a job at Amazon can mean something different depending on your department and not just from seasonal workers but even Amazon vs AWS vs the 100+ product lines therein. Not sure about getting a job at Amazon without a college degree but I'd imagine it'd be hard to get an L7 graded job there without a good one coupled with good experience, to your point.

Employees	Amazon	Apple	Google	Meta	Microsoft
2013	109,800	80,300	53,861	5,794	99,000
2014	149,500	92,600	47,756	8,348	128,000
2015	222,400	110,000	53,600	11,996	118,000
2016	306,800	116,000	61,814	15,724	114,000
2017	541,900	123,000	80,110	23,165	124,000
2018	613,300	132,000	94,372	33,606	131,000
2019	750,000	137,000	114,096	43,030	144,000
2020	1,125,300	147,000	132,121	56,653	163,000
2021	1,468,000	154,000	150,028	68,177	181,000
2022	1,544,000	164,000	186,779	87,314	221,000

[Guest]

20 minutes ago, Celery Man said:

Art history is always a funny one to include with basket weaving. I took one art history class at Texas and it was both as difficult and as applicable to my post college life as calculus.

LOLz agreed.  Fuck that class.  I took it as an elective, and it was  so gotdam time consuming and a beatdown.

Worked my everyloving ass off for a B in that class.  There goes my fucking blow-off class...

[YGIFS 19452]

THat's a helpful chart, but again, I would think the breakdown for with degree/no degree would be wildly different.  Nothing against Amazon, most of their workforce just needs more people to pack things and move things (until the robots eat the old people's medicine for fuel and take over). 

The entire DoD hires more than anyone else except Amazon, but also like Amazon, most of their jobs don't require a degree.  

I was surprised to see that #2-#6 of the hiring of new graduates are all accounting/consulting firms.  Where I'm guessing of all their annual new hires, 90% are degree holders and 10% non degree holders.  

Other dirty little secret lost in all this binary bullshit about "Either earn a professional degree or go to trade school, there's no middle ground!" is the most vulnerable workforce subset:  "Some College"  40 million Americans, many who have gone on to great success.  But that's still in the tens of millions who don't have the degree, lost some time they could have been just doing a certificate program, apprenticeship, etc.  And have two clouds looming over them---employers see that they didn't finish something big...and Student Debt from college that they do not have the career means with which to pay.  

The most common defaulter on student loans isn't a barista, a women's studies degree holder, an underwater basket weaver, nor somebody with an Art History degree.  It is by far, an American adult who holds $20k or more in student loan debt, and who did not finish college.  But again, it's a very inconvenient truth because it doesn't play to one side or the other.  The political breakdown of this huge group is right along the nation's lines 35-30-35.  so we can't weaponize it.  noCR, just maths.  And I did not do well in college maths.

Edited January 31, 2023 by YGIFS

[Underdog 28773]

1 hour ago, HamsterHookah said:

To the OP: there are a lot of jobs in the tech industry where folks don't have college degrees. After a period of time and years of experience, there is a tipping point where your experience is valuable. I've seen people without college degrees but 15+ years of salesforce.com admin experience, for example, get $240k jobs and be product owners for a Fortune 50. The tech world is littered with people like this and not all of them are overtly technical (which is the easiest path to be seen as obviously valuable to an organization without a degree).

That said, the road to that is very painful. Many, many years of being underpaid and doing grunt work and you are paying your dues for not having a degree. It would be far better just to pay a lump sum to a degree mill (online college or directional regional university, etc.) and get a piece of paper and start with a leg up, IMO.

 

Wife has Engr. in her job title but has no college education, it's mainly due to her 35+ years in the Semiconductor industry, work ethic and job knowledge.  

[hayden_horn 11365]

1 hour ago, MaybeACoordinator said:

When I finally did get a full-time job in my chosen field, I took over from a dude with a Masters from an Ivy. He sucked and was pushed out the door after about two years. My no-degree-ass lasted about eight years and moved up the ladder when I left.

 

[Henry Hill 3156]

Derka is projecting a wee bit here.

[956 Worldwide 34772]

10 hours ago, shadow_operative said:

i'm just sitting here thinking about how TJ Ford used to always say (before we fired rick barnes) that his post-basketball dream was to get his degree from UT so that he could join Coach Barnes's staff at Texas. as if he's not qualified to be a basketball coach right now, but if he can go get some PE and Science credits from UT, *then* he can be eligible to work that job.

so, so, so many talented and capable people are literally ineligible to work jobs that they could *master* because they didn't go to/finish college, something that millions of fat, drunken, dumbass retards have done for decades and continue to do. are we ever going to stop following this totally illogical practice, and if so, when? 

I realize that the NCAA is all in on the “we ain’t come to play school” model, but even in this era the vast majority of college athletes (even D1 hoops and football) will not go pro and will never make enough money to by NIL to do more than have cash while in school.

Since these kids are still ostensibly student-athletes working toward a degree, I’d say that having a coach that managed to do it would be a vital part of the mentorship part of the job. 

[HamsterHookah 112]

21 minutes ago, Underdog said:

Wife has Engr. in her job title but has no college education, it's mainly due to her 35+ years in the Semiconductor industry, work ethic and job knowledge.  

That's awesome. I think it exposes a bit of a drawback though (maybe not for your wife) in that, to use job knowledge/experience in industry as a proxy for degrees/advanced degrees, to an extent one is beholden to an industry. You lose the privilege of being able to re-invent your career or change industries or professional interests and move around laterally. 

[deadshank 24653]

3 hours ago, Celery Man said:

if you don't apply what you learned in college to your life on a daily basis you managed to leave college without getting an education

 

[Bateshorn 9940]

We gonna do the Shaggy Engineers vs. Liberal Arts/Plan II bit again, huh?

Maryland removed the requirement for college degrees for non specific government jobs a couple of years ago:

https://www.npr.org/local/305/2022/03/16/1086860660/maryland-will-no-longer-require-four-year-degrees-for-thousands-of-state-jobs

 

 

[Brisketexan 105336]

2 hours ago, Beau Vine said:

There's a famous econ paper from the 50s (?) that says approximately the same thing, using a signaling equilibrium model. 

First -- great thread, with some great discussion.  Well-done.

Also....."signaling equilibrium model?"  Okay, fancy college-boy, whatever you say.

2 hours ago, Pato del Muerto said:

And since the vast majority attend college from say 18-24, that’s where most learn a level of independence and responsibility that they hadn’t had yet and will need for the rest of their lives. 

grow up and become an adult, in effect. 
 

some are forced to do that earlier, others can navigate college without doing it.  Those that don’t go to college learn one way or another. 
 

employers would rather take the chance that the college educated person has made that transition, when hiring a young person’s role, so they don’t have to deal with it happening during the first part of their employment. 

Also fantastic point.  Shit, many of y'all around here know my son's path -- he took a gap year after high school before starting college, and it was successful beyond our imagination in EXACTLY that respect: he grew up and learned to be responsible for his own shit.  In his case, that was important, so he didn't go to college poorly equipped to do so, saddling himself with shitty grades/flunking out.  He is MUCH more prepared for responsibility.  A lot of us get that same outcome FROM the college experience, so it's valuable in and of itself.

2 hours ago, HamsterHookah said:

To the OP: there are a lot of jobs in the tech industry where folks don't have college degrees. After a period of time and years of experience, there is a tipping point where your experience is valuable. I've seen people without college degrees but 15+ years of salesforce.com admin experience, for example, get $240k jobs and be product owners for a Fortune 50. The tech world is littered with people like this and not all of them are overtly technical (which is the easiest path to be seen as obviously valuable to an organization without a degree).

Absolutely.  Shit, when my parents had a beach house, the house next door was owned by....an electrician.  He was actually self-conscious about not having a degree, I told him "dude, I have two degrees, and you own one more house than I do."  And one of the refugees we work with is on the path above -- good job in tech, supporting the family.  BUT, we continue to push him to take college coursework (go to ACC, dude, we'll pay for it).  Because in the long run, even an associate's degree will improve his earning capacity.  Even if it is technically as pointless as running laps around traffic cones, if the outcome is "you earn more money over your lifetime," spend a few bucks and do it.

2 hours ago, MaybeACoordinator said:

Of course you should have to go to college to become a doctor, an engineer, or a chemist, and so on....But I don't think you should have to get an undergrad degree to become an attorney. I think it would be helpful to have some education as you entered law school, but if you can pass the Bar, then you should be allowed to become a lawyer no matter how you came about the skills to do so. 

Man....as an attorney, and as someone who (as a law student) taught incoming law students....I couldn't disagree more.  The writing skills you develop in college are ESSENTIAL to being an effective practitioner (and even then, there were incoming law students who were behind the curve).  A comprehensive education helps you see and be aware of different contexts, helps with higher-level pattern recognition (which is a crapload of what we do -- issue-spotting and problem-solving as you game out different scenarios and possible outcomes and consequences).  And yes, even math.  It's funny, all liberal arts grads have had the "man, why the fuck did anyone make me take algebra?" bitch session.

I keep on a my phone a photo of a whiteboard that covered an entire conference room wall.  In a dispute long ago, involving some pretty damn complex financial market elements and impacts, I spent half a day in a room with multiple opposing parties, tearing apart their multi-million dollar damages model, using their own documents to do so.  By the end of the day, the entire whiteboard was covered with algebra that I had put up there, demonstrating how all of their damages scenarios were bullshit.  I used the FUCK out of algebra that day.  An education that teaches you about and how to use higher math is incredibly useful for any number of careers, even one as liberal-artsy as law.  

1 hour ago, Js1 said:

Actually the most important thing my liberal arts degree taught me was critical and creative writing because I have to explain very abstract and nebulous concepts to people who are so technically minded (engineers, scientists, doctors), they’re borderline regarded outside of their field and don’t understand much else 

Another bingo.  Dear god, I have spent time with engineers that made me want to tear my hear out.  They say something that takes 20 minutes.  I then spit it back at them in 15 seconds, in plain english.  They start to argue with me, and I say "tell me what was false or incomplete about what I just said."  90% of the time, they can't, and I got it right.  I said in 15 seconds, in a way that other humans can understand, what they spent 20 minutes yammering about in a way that NOBODY understands (I only get it because I've been immersed in the subject matter for months).  Very Office Space "I AM A PEOPLE PERSON!"  But I'll tell you, those engineers who took a slightly broader course load, with some humanities and writing, are MUCH better at communicating to a broad audience.

The perspective and communication ability that come from a broad higher education are invaluable for damn near EVERYONE working a job that's worth a shit.

1 hour ago, 52-80 said:

Degrees arent required for many jobs because they guarantee capability.

Degrees are required because they are predictive of capability. 

The world isn’t deterministic. It’s probabilistic. If there’s 100 people applying for an entry level white collar job and half are degreed, I’ll take my chances with that half. It’s a good screening tool. 

Also a very solid point.  Plenty of moron college grads.  A fair number of bright and capable non grads.  But as a percentage, the play you should run is easy.  Hire the college grad.

1 hour ago, Your Mom said:

“Something else an academic education will do for you. If you go along with it any considerable distance, it’ll begin to give you an idea what size mind you have. What it’ll fit and, maybe, what it won’t. After a while, you’ll have an idea what kind of thoughts your particular size mind should be wearing. For one thing, it may save you an extraordinary amount of time trying on ideas that don’t suit you, aren’t becoming to you. You’ll begin to know your true measurements and dress your mind accordingly.”

- Mr Antolini, the old pervert professor from Catcher In the Rye. 

I hate Catcher in the Rye (Holden Caulfield should be kicked in the nads repeatedly).  That said, fantastic quote.  You need to figure out the ways in which you think that you excel at, and the ones you aren't so strong at.  It's not unlike being an athlete - if you have powerful legs and great speed, maybe you're an RB.  If you aren't as fast, but have a cannon arm, maybe you're a QB.  Play to your strengths, be aware of your weaknesses.  A recent great book on this is "Thinking fast, Thinking slow."  My wife and I talked about it, because we are the two opposite archetypes that the book opens with.  I am a fast and agile thinker, quick on my feet, can come up with an argument on the fly, with evidence, etc.  She is a percolator, a deliberate thinker, and as a result, a better writer than I am.  Neither is "better or worse."  They just "are," and we have found careers that complement our styles.   A big part of learning that was our higher education.

Good stuff.  Keep it rolling.

[Js1 85574]

4 minutes ago, Bateshorn said:

We gonna do the Shaggy Engineers vs. Liberal Arts/Plan II bit again, huh?

Maryland removed the requirement for college degrees for non specific government jobs a couple of years ago:

https://www.npr.org/local/305/2022/03/16/1086860660/maryland-will-no-longer-require-four-year-degrees-for-thousands-of-state-jobs

 

 

PA just did the same

[gmr548 16616]

It's a hold over from a time past.  Legacy standards.
Take appraisers?  Why do they need a degree?  It's just a barrier to entry along with the 2,000 unpaid hours of apprenticeship IF you can even find someone willing to take you under their wing.
A better question is how many people are actually using their degrees?  

Having commercial appraisal experience, I’d say a degree is actually pretty useful as long as it’s in something at least tangentially related. Between financial analysis, research, report writing, and communicating with clients, if I were hiring at the entry level I’d probably require one because it’s proof of concept on some of those.

Single family is probably more formulaic and yes, in general you learn more specific to that job in a few months in the field than you do in four years in college. But the degree would show building blocks that you’d otherwise largely be gambling on.

[RDCanecutter 26473]

2 hours ago, Celery Man said:

Art history is always a funny one to include with basket weaving. I took one art history class at Texas and it was both as difficult and as applicable to my post college life as calculus.

Art History helped me snag Mrs. Canecutter, 20 years after a class where an Art History professor got tired of us dorking up a Hungarian painter's name so he forced us to learn how to say it. Fast forward two decades to meeting cute woman with same name, making a decent stab at Hungarian pronunciation, and suddenly my hillbilly ass became a Person of Interest.

[Celery Man 20996]

10 minutes ago, RDCanecutter said:

Art History helped me snag Mrs. Canecutter,

[RDCanecutter 26473]

I did have a moment of clarity about school once. I was running my own side-business, and heard an old man say that if you could read and write and do basic arithmetic, you could go out in the world and make your way. I was thinking about him as I sat in class, the light came on in my head, that was me! I needed to quit school!

Mama wasn't keen on that. I was just in 4th grade.

All downhill since then.

[YGIFS 19452]

Maryland and PA can afford to do stuff like that.  They have very good to exceptionally good public schools for K-12.  And not because they have homogenous demographics. 

States like Texas with below average public schooling, outside of a handful of elite ISD's, your ass needs a college degree.  

[DaysOff 7974]

The legacy airlines are already there for pilot hiring. We're at that point on the supply/demand curve for pilots such that some outfits are already starting their own academies to take you from zero to hero like a bunch of damn Euro airlines college be damned.

Of course, the job is a strange combo of a white/blue collar trade that takes years of experience. In the early 80s, astronauts couldn't get an interview because they only had one masters degree and only two lunar landings. Is this a permanent shift in labor having an advantage as population declines?

[HamsterHookah 112]

3 minutes ago, DaysOff said:

The legacy airlines are already there for pilot hiring. We're at that point on the supply/demand curve for pilots such that some outfits are already starting their own academies to take you from zero to hero like a bunch of damn Euro airlines college be damned.

Of course, the job is a strange combo of a white/blue collar trade that takes years of experience. In the early 80s, astronauts couldn't get an interview because they only had one masters degree and only two lunar landings. Is this a permanent shit in labor having an advantage as population declines?

How many years (decade?) are we removed from commercial pilots being no different than bus drivers. Maybe a better analogy would be truck drivers. In need and in demand with a specific skillset, but not really prestigious or interesting and definitely devalued.

[Samson's Wig 3194]

4 hours ago, TwiceHorn said:

He said to me, at the very worst, a college degree shows that you can stick with something for a few years and accomplish a longer-term goal, and there's value in that, even if you don't make good grades in a particularly "useful" degree.

This is ultimately what it comes down to.  Can someone without a degree perform just as well at some jobs as those with degrees?  Of course.  But that's not the point, and it's not easy to determine who these people might be.   You have to have a baseline that involves a proving ground. It used to be an apprentice/master arrangement (and still is in some cases).  This model should probably return in some form, but in the meantime we ask for a college degree to prove that you actually want to do the work you're applying for, and can handle basic level structure and discipline.  

The people who tend to complain about this system the most tend to be those too lazy to go get a degree, which is exactly why they're being weeded out in the first place.

[Celery Man 20996]

lol too lazy to get a degree

[52-80 19246]

7 minutes ago, HamsterHookah said:

How many years (decade?) are we removed from commercial pilots being no different than bus drivers. Maybe a better analogy would be truck drivers. In need and in demand with a specific skillset, but not really prestigious or interesting and definitely devalued.

To a lay person, it’s still considered interesting and prestigious, simply on the basis of scarcity at 50,000 jobs.

On that basis, it’ll remain so, because the decade-ahead growth is projected by the BLS at only +5%. And there’s still countless people vying for those jobs. 

Just as a comparison there are 2M+ commercial truck drivers. 

[HamsterHookah 112]

8 minutes ago, Samson's Wig said:

This is ultimately what it comes down to.  Can someone without a degree perform just as well at some jobs as those with degrees?  Of course.  But that's not the point, and it's not easy to determine who these people might be.   You have to have a baseline that involves a proving ground. It used to be an apprentice/master arrangement (and still is in some cases).  This model should probably return in some form, but in the meantime we ask for a college degree to prove that you actually want to do the work you're applying for, and can handle basic level structure and discipline.  

The people who tend to complain about this system the most tend to be those too lazy to go get a degree, which is exactly why they're being weeded out in the first place.

Also to your point: it's never been easier just to get a piece of paper that will accomplish the rote and administrative task of clearing the low bar of a background check that says "Yes, this person has a BA". Every regional, directional fourth tier school offers a degree, probably mostly online these days, that can be had cheaply and looks like a continuation into 13th grade. It's just the question of putting the effort and money into it, I guess.

Not all degrees have to be from UT or A&M or whatever. They don't even have to be from Sam Houston or UT Arlington. 

In fact, it could be argued your ROI is better to just knock out some cheap degree for undergrad and get a job quickly with that degree or go to a prestigious graduate school versus sinking a bunch of money into a state school (non-public ivy) or private school (non-ivy) and stopping at a bachelors. 

Edited January 31, 2023 by HamsterHookah

[Sbbruin 21888]

Pumping what I have and am into my kids' educations, I sure hope it remains a requirement.

[HamsterHookah 112]

7 minutes ago, Sbbruin said:

Pumping what I have and am into my kids' educations, I sure hope it remains a requirement.

Northeastern if I recall. No offense, but prime example of the old model. Paying premium money for a second-tier school (albeit making waves and on the come up the last decade+). IMO.

Edited January 31, 2023 by HamsterHookah

[TwiceHorn 31536]

3 hours ago, MaybeACoordinator said:

I work in a field that was apprenticeship-based until the '60s for the most part. When I was 18 all I really wanted to do was jump right in and start learning first-hand and earning, but instead I had to go college, rack up debts, and take courses like higher math that I was incapable of passing and were entirely, utterly irrelevant to my chosen profession. Because of my feeble math mind, I flunked out of two colleges (UT being one of them) and lost a whole decade of earning and career advancement. Even when I was taking classes that were purported to be in my chosen field, they were often teaching us antiquated and useless bullshit, and taught by people who had failed in the field and so sought refuge as professors. My son has followed in my career path and is currently in school and he describes that the situation with our shared major is exactly the same right now.

Of course you should have to go to college to become a doctor, an engineer, or a chemist, and so on....But I don't think you should have to get an undergrad degree to become an attorney. I think it would be helpful to have some education as you entered law school, but if you can pass the Bar, then you should be allowed to become a lawyer no matter how you came about the skills to do so. 

Well, you assume that the bar really tests skills an attorney needs.  I'm not so sure of that, frankly.  It does test knowledge of Texas law and an ability to deal with a fairly immense amount of information at once.  But as for the skills to make a career out of it  . . . .

I have found it interesting that journalists and other writers frequently got by on a high-school education.  A lot of writing is innate talent, but another lot of it is just practice, and college/law school or whatever give you a lot of practice, with built-in critique, that you don't otherwise get. A lot of it, too, is clarity of thinking, particularly on complex subject matter but that may be more the territory of "essayists" and editorial writers than workaday journos.

I didn't really become a decent writer, mostly lack of practice, until I actually began practicing law and actually basically writing for a living.  I did take extra writing classes from Terri LeClerq in law school because I knew my skills had atrophied in undergrad.

Another Dad anecdote.  His father graduated from a one-room schoolhouse in Rosalie, Texas at age 16 and went back home to work on his thrice-widowed mother's farm.  Inasmuch as she had 12 other kids, she told him to go and make his way in the world, so he did.  I guess that lack of education/opportunity propelled him to value education.  He opened up a store in an oil boom town in Arkansas and became the superintendent of schools and was responsible for building a state of the art school building, where my Dad went to high school.

Dad was taught by his elder sister, a graduate of William & Mary and Henderson State Teacher's College.  He said she was the hardest and best English teacher he ever had, including in college at Hendrix and SMU.  He originally wanted to be a journalist.  And he was one of the best writers, both in terms of innate talent and in terms of rules of composition, style, and grammar, that I have ever known.  Giving Dad one of my papers to read/evaluate in high school, or even college, was an exercise in humiliation.

Dad may well have been exposed to that paper @Beau Vine mentions, because he was adjunct faculty in business at SMU until about 1960 or so.

[UTPhil2006 3812]

[MaybeACoordinator 8349]

10 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

Well, you assume that the bar really tests skills an attorney needs.  I'm not so sure of that, frankly.  It does test knowledge of Texas law and an ability to deal with a fairly immense amount of information at once.  But as for the skills to make a career out of it  . . . .

I have found it interesting that journalists and other writers frequently got by on a high-school education.  A lot of writing is innate talent, but another lot of it is just practice, and college/law school or whatever give you a lot of practice, with built-in critique, that you don't otherwise get. A lot of it, too, is clarity of thinking, particularly on complex subject matter but that may be more the territory of "essayists" and editorial writers than workaday journos.

I didn't really become a decent writer, mostly lack of practice, until I actually began practicing law and actually basically writing for a living.  I did take extra writing classes from Terri LeClerq in law school because I knew my skills had atrophied in undergrad.

Another Dad anecdote.  His father graduated from a one-room schoolhouse in Rosalie, Texas at age 16 and went back home to work on his thrice-widowed mother's farm.  Inasmuch as she had 12 other kids, she told him to go and make his way in the world, so he did.  I guess that lack of education/opportunity propelled him to value education.  He opened up a store in an oil boom town in Arkansas and became the superintendent of schools and was responsible for building a state of the art school building, where my Dad went to high school.

Dad was taught by his elder sister, a graduate of William & Mary and Henderson State Teacher's College.  He said she was the hardest and best English teacher he ever had, including in college at Hendrix and SMU.  He originally wanted to be a journalist.  And he was one of the best writers, both in terms of innate talent and in terms of rules of composition, style, and grammar, that I have ever known.  Giving Dad one of my papers to read/evaluate in high school, or even college, was an exercise in humiliation.

Dad may well have been exposed to that paper @Beau Vine mentions, because he was adjunct faculty in business at SMU until about 1960 or so.

I think of guys like Sam Houston, Abe Lincoln anf Huey Long, all of whom passed bar exams (such as they existed at the time) who are all heroes of mine.

[TwiceHorn 31536]

5 minutes ago, MaybeACoordinator said:

I think of guys like Sam Houston, Abe Lincoln anf Huey Long, all of whom passed bar exams (such as they existed at the time) who are all heroes of mine.

All true, but in this era of hyper-specialization, I sometimes wonder.  But a lot of that specialization comes with OJT.

Edited January 31, 2023 by TwiceHorn

[Superhero 8842]

5 hours ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

If I was evaluating a prospect or even a current employee, I imagine their college degree is far behind other criteria. examples include critical or creative thinking, people skills, or drive to see something through completion.

On the last point that college does demonstrate an ability to finish a large endeavor. Now that is an expensive method to demonstrate that endeavor. 

I would like to see more corporations offer apprenticeship types roles in mgmt. Pay that 18-20 year old an ok salary and allow them to get experience that means more than a 4-yr diploma. Of course, that young person runs the risk that they could run into a future employer that still has the degree requirement.

[DalTxHornFan 3117]

Typing, algebra, logic, debits and credits (how to read a financial statement), and the concept of the time value of money have been the most important skills/concepts in my business professional career.  Some of that I got in HS, some in college.  But I really learned how to party in college -- so there's that. 

Edited January 31, 2023 by DalTxHornFan

[Brisketexan 105336]

2 minutes ago, DalTxHornFan said:

Typing, algebra, logic, debits and credits (how to read a financial statement), and the concept of the time value of money have been the most important concepts in my business professional career.  Some of that I got in HS, some in college.  But I really learned how to party in college -- so there's that. 

Not a worthless life skill, by the way.

[Patricio Swayze 17058]

Engineers really should be required to take a few classes on communication. Christ, most of them are just so awful at it.

[Guest]

7 hours ago, ClubWhatever said:

Is it totally illogical?  Even for a college basketball coach?

It’s totally logical. For any coach of kids. Thread is dumb and unnecessary. 

[Deej 76921]

7 hours ago, BabaYaga said:

A better question is how many people are actually using their degrees?  

They just end up in law school.

[Guest]

6 hours ago, Celery Man said:

The illogical thing is that we have basketball's development league attached to institutions of higher learning. All of the other illogic branches from there.

The college degree requirement is a thing that I agree likely does not make sense or is a... stupidly onerous requirement for a lot of jobs that have no intrinsic reason for the requirement. But part of that is because of how onerous the requirement is, and some of how this problem is fixed should address that. At 18, you shouldn't have to choose between taking on a mountain of debt or having most career doors closed to you.

 

if you don't apply what you learned in college to your life on a daily basis you managed to leave college without getting an education

A mountain of debt to get a degree in education?  Lol

[Beau Vine 54429]

4 minutes ago, Patricio Swayze said:

Engineers really should be required to take a few classes on communication. Christ, most of them are just so awful at it.

I remember one of you assholes, at the Wimberley flood cleanup, told my daughter that if she was going to get an engineering degree that the thing that would really set her apart would be to be able to write clearly and persuasively.  

That was some excellent advice, and she mentioned it to me several times while she was in school. 

[TwiceHorn 31536]

10 minutes ago, Patricio Swayze said:

Engineers really should be required to take a few classes on communication. Christ, most of them are just so awful at it.

I'm not sure it would really help.  It was an emphasis while I was in undergrad.  Some are just so "left-brained" they can't help it.  I'm speaking in terms of written communication on any subject.  Verbal communication on technical subjects they're passable at.

Which is odd, because most of my classmates in ME were articulate, interesting people.  I can't speak for their written abilities, but they weren't the kind of geekazoids you often find in industry.  And a whole lot of them aren't engineers anymore.

[Brisketexan 105336]

5 minutes ago, Patricio Swayze said:

Engineers really should be required to take a few classes on communication. Christ, most of them are just so awful at it.

Cross-disciplinary training for ANY field is a good idea.

One of the most useful classes I took in law school was "accounting for lawyers."  I knew nothing of balance sheets, income statements, etc.  It has proven tremendously useful.  Knowing how to do things that aren't in the usual bag of tricks makes you much more useful across the spectrum.

"Engineers who can also communicate in direct and plain terms" are vastly more valuable than just "engineers who know engineering shit."   Yeah, you need to know the engineering shit either way, but the engineer who can explain to the Board of Directors why the plant actually needs a new figrulated speculomifier so that they understand it and agree to fund it is really valuable.

I deal with engineers.  A LOT.  The ones who can explain themselves in plain english are worth their weight in gold.

[Frank Drebin 5655]

2 hours ago, Patricio Swayze said:

It’s fairly obvious which careers a college education, especially graduate work, is beneficial or necessary.

Mine? Hell no. I have two degrees from Texas that have zero to do with O&G. I’m no surly 1%, but for my seniority, my profession will pay $135k-$175k as a direct employee (more for contractor). I could teach just about anyone on this site how to do my job in a week or two. You probably would be decent at it within a few months. Well, some of the MAGAts are probably too stupid to even do my job.

Would they be smart enough to keep Cloak Room shit in the Cloak Room?  Or nah?

[YChang 3462]

I don't use much from undergrad. I use everything I've learned and more from my graduate degree. 

[TwiceHorn 31536]

14 minutes ago, Beau Vine said:

I remember one of you assholes, at the Wimberley flood cleanup, told my daughter that if she was going to get an engineering degree that the thing that would really set her apart would be to be able to write clearly and persuasively.  

That was some excellent advice, and she mentioned it to me several times while she was in school. 

I probably mentioned it in one of the threads.  Being an above-average writer is a real advantage.  I suppose part of it is most engineering companies tend to move you either on a "technical ladder" or a "management ladder" and the ones that remain technical tend to be the hardcore introverts without teh people skillz.

[TwiceHorn 31536]

20 minutes ago, Deej said:

They just end up in law school.

Some of us that went to law school actually wind up using our undergrad as much as our legal education.  Maybe more.

[YGIFS 19452]

21 minutes ago, Beau Vine said:

I remember one of you assholes, at the Wimberley flood cleanup, told my daughter that if she was going to get an engineering degree that the thing that would really set her apart would be to be able to write clearly and persuasively.  

That was some excellent advice, and she mentioned it to me several times while she was in school. 

Years ago Haliburton financed/gifted some money to McCombs to develop a summer institute for their engineers.  It's a 12-15 credits intensive course all summer where they learn to read balance sheets, basic financials, sources & uses, investments, and even basic personal financial planning/banking.  Recently both Haliburton and the new(ish) Dean have decided to draw down one of the other courses and add a writing/communication course instead.  They kept running into the same problem, the engineers in O&G couldn't understand finance.  Now they do, and they can't communicate that woth a shit either.  But there's no shortage of stuff like this out there.  Just like an English major can take a crash course in coding and be hired by google within months.  I dunno.  It doesn't have to be binary, but that's what our country does best these days...

Cognitiva Dissonantia should be printed on our money.  But then somebody would bitch about being woke about Latin and not learning how to speak American!

Edited January 31, 2023 by YGIFS