Author Topic: Relative integrity of educational systems. How trustworthy are degrees?  (Read 21447 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline Kire Pûdsje

  • Regular Contributor
  • *
  • Posts: 65
  • Country: nl
Re: Relative integrity of educational systems. How trustworthy are degrees?
« Reply #125 on: December 12, 2017, 08:51:00 pm »
Living in the Netherlands, the government wants the people to be higher educated.
In my view there will be a fixed distribution among people, ranging from plain stupid to very smart. The only way to get more people with a higher education is just to lower the requirements. (Unless you are going into eugenetics).

My education is from a HTS "higher technical school" (german equivalent fachhochschule). With the adaption of the anglo-saxon system, this has been relabelled to a University of Applied Science,  not being a real university. I think it has been scaled a bit too low, setting it to the equivalent of BEng. Although I admit that the more regarded universities and also the dutch universities are definitely of a higher level, I have met lot of foreign employees with university degrees, at my companies, that I would not even have given an HTS degree (ing.) in the Netherlands, let alone a university degree (ir.). I know, this experience might also be due to filtering, the ones that go abroad are in general more ambitious (in a management sense) and are not that interested in the technical side of things.

Finally, when the Netherlands transferred to the anglo-saxon system, I could transfer my HTS (ing.) degree to an MSc degree (by paying 2000 euro's). Still being naive and thinking that I did not earn a university degree without having the proper education, I rejected, thinking I would be evaluated on my merits. It was also a bit of a shady activity transferring diploma's. Now years later, working for international companies, I notice, it is not what you do but what abbreviation you carry in front/after your name, despite 20 years of experience, a young boy just coming from university (whichever) is more highly regarded. I just should have paid the 2000 Euro's when I could.
 

Online Simon

  • Global Moderator
  • *****
  • Posts: 17729
  • Country: gb
  • Did that just blow up? No? might work after all !!
    • Simon's Electronics
Re: Relative integrity of educational systems. How trustworthy are degrees?
« Reply #126 on: December 12, 2017, 09:09:54 pm »
If you want a classic example of degrees not being the be all end all take a look at this collection of toffs:
Yeah, that looks very much like a business trap for venture capitalists and indeed, google returns a bunch of information about venture capital investment and tons of marketing bullshit.

Interestingly hardly any of the technical staff joined until this year and the longest serving tech person only joined September last year as far as I can see.

Yet the company has been in existence since 2014 and raising almost a million pounds in funding.

The 'incubator' organisatin that helped them get going seems to retain an interest so I suspect with a little digging it would show that the main investors in that organisation are a bunch of venture capitalists backed by some hedge fund or yet another investment scheme, they look to be building a portfolio of tech companies that raise funding via crowdsourcing, 'angels' or venture capitalists, so it's all smoke and mirrors when it comes to finance.

Well there you go, of course they are accomplished people from top colleges in London that walked into a few previous jobs and one of them learnt to code an arduino, I bet they didn't even design the circuitry that simply interfaces an off the shelf inverter with the grid so as to minimize grid power import. the result is a shambles that they don't know how to fix. The sales guy Tom thanked me for my long email that he would pass onto the MD for technical feedback. I said don't be silly, he has a degree in physcology....... and some people think they are gaining the moral high ground by calling those that hold these sorts of people inverse snobs. If "this" is what I have to look up to as an example of an accomplished degree holder then yes please do call me an inverse snob!!!
 

Offline cdevTopic starter

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • !
  • Posts: 7350
  • Country: 00
Re: Relative integrity of educational systems. How trustworthy are degrees?
« Reply #127 on: December 13, 2017, 08:40:18 pm »
Suppose a company has a ten job contract- ten jobs - that involves a fifty Euro government subsidy

and 400 companies from 60 different countries apply through the WTO's online bidding system, and eight of them supply the same low bid, say all offer to do the approximately one week long project for 1000 euro.

what should they do to make sure the best qualified corporation gets the jobs, that wont cause an international incident in this age of globalization?
« Last Edit: December 13, 2017, 08:41:56 pm by cdev »
"What the large print giveth, the small print taketh away."
 

Offline Galenbo

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 1469
  • Country: be
Re: Relative integrity of educational systems. How trustworthy are degrees?
« Reply #128 on: December 27, 2017, 08:33:59 am »
...One similar technique is very useful with statements from salesman and politicians. You take the core statement and invert it. If the inversion is nonsense then the original contained no information or was "motherhood and apple pie". Example: "the UK is an excellent place to do business" vs "the UK is a terrible place to do business".
I ll try that one next time a drama sentence is spoken to me.
The current technique I use is make those airy generalist sentences longer.
Like... What part of the UK is since when an excellent place for who to do what kind of business and why ?
If you try and take a cat apart to see how it works, the first thing you have on your hands is a nonworking cat.
 

Online Simon

  • Global Moderator
  • *****
  • Posts: 17729
  • Country: gb
  • Did that just blow up? No? might work after all !!
    • Simon's Electronics
Re: Relative integrity of educational systems. How trustworthy are degrees?
« Reply #129 on: December 27, 2017, 08:36:07 am »
what?
 

Offline Alex Eisenhut

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 3330
  • Country: ca
  • Place text here.
Re: Relative integrity of educational systems. How trustworthy are degrees?
« Reply #130 on: December 28, 2017, 02:33:08 am »
I saw a recent EE graduate who didn't know what a JTAG port is. I wanted to be a farmer that day.
Hoarder of 8-bit Commodore relics and 1960s Tektronix 500-series stuff. Unconventional interior decorator.
 
The following users thanked this post: Galenbo

Offline coppice

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 8605
  • Country: gb
Re: Relative integrity of educational systems. How trustworthy are degrees?
« Reply #131 on: December 28, 2017, 02:40:15 am »
I saw a recent EE graduate who didn't know what a JTAG port is. I wanted to be a farmer that day.
Why would you expect a fresh EE graduate to know what a JTAG port is? Most working electronics engineers know the name, but most really don't know much about it. Maybe you've spent a lot of time in one of the corners of the electronics world where JTAG is a big deal - e.g. MCU debugging and FPGA development.
 

Offline Alex Eisenhut

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 3330
  • Country: ca
  • Place text here.
Re: Relative integrity of educational systems. How trustworthy are degrees?
« Reply #132 on: December 28, 2017, 03:11:05 am »
I saw a recent EE graduate who didn't know what a JTAG port is. I wanted to be a farmer that day.
Why would you expect a fresh EE graduate to know what a JTAG port is? Most working electronics engineers know the name, but most really don't know much about it. Maybe you've spent a lot of time in one of the corners of the electronics world where JTAG is a big deal - e.g. MCU debugging and FPGA development.

Are John Deere good tractors?
Hoarder of 8-bit Commodore relics and 1960s Tektronix 500-series stuff. Unconventional interior decorator.
 

Online tggzzz

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 19280
  • Country: gb
  • Numbers, not adjectives
    • Having fun doing more, with less
Re: Relative integrity of educational systems. How trustworthy are degrees?
« Reply #133 on: December 28, 2017, 09:51:10 am »
I saw a recent EE graduate who didn't know what a JTAG port is. I wanted to be a farmer that day.

If hiring, that wouldn't bother me one little bit - because there are many many things in this job that nobody outside the company will know.

What does matter is whether the graduate can learn, can appreciate the significance (or uselessness) of something novel when it is presented to them, and can apply their past knowledge to this job.

EDIT: I'll modulate that statement, which is principally relevant when hiring an engineer.

OTOH, if I was hiring a technician that claimed competence in that area, I would want them to demonstrate that they have more detailed practical experience of JTAG than I do.
« Last Edit: December 28, 2017, 10:32:44 am by tggzzz »
There are lies, damned lies, statistics - and ADC/DAC specs.
Glider pilot's aphorism: "there is no substitute for span". Retort: "There is a substitute: skill+imagination. But you can buy span".
Having fun doing more, with less
 

Offline cdevTopic starter

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • !
  • Posts: 7350
  • Country: 00
Re: Relative integrity of educational systems. How trustworthy are degrees?
« Reply #134 on: December 29, 2017, 02:48:10 am »
Increasingly contracts will be awarded to firms, not individuals, though.

 This is a way of saving money on wages.

It makes it nobody's business what the individual workers are paid. Its between them and their employers.

Bidding Firms in the WTO's e-GPA system bidding for jobs are weighed by the formal educational accomplishments of their workforce and the aggregate price quoted.  This seems to sort of be derived from somewhat related provision in the European context (maybe the Services Directive?) that created a legal precedent favoring formal qualifications over allegedly subjective written recommendations. OECD also has published a procedural guide for the cross-recognition of formal qualifications between countries. Its argued that allowing the use of personal recommendations as opposed to amount of degrees won -  was too subjective and that would stand in the way of full services liberalization.

Some least developed countries firms will get a leg up.  But generally set-asides are being eliminated because they stand in the way of this huge transformation.
« Last Edit: December 29, 2017, 02:57:29 am by cdev »
"What the large print giveth, the small print taketh away."
 

Offline Bud

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 6877
  • Country: ca
Re: Relative integrity of educational systems. How trustworthy are degrees?
« Reply #135 on: December 29, 2017, 02:57:42 am »
What does matter is whether the graduate can learn, can appreciate the significance (or uselessness) of something novel when it is presented to them, and can apply their past knowledge to this job.

And this is what some of the posters here are missing -  universities do not teach how to write code for Arduino. The uni school task is to develop your mind to be able to apply the fundamentals. Know how to work with information.
Facebook-free life and Rigol-free shack.
 

Offline cdevTopic starter

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • !
  • Posts: 7350
  • Country: 00
Re: Relative integrity of educational systems. How trustworthy are degrees?
« Reply #136 on: December 29, 2017, 03:02:30 am »
It wont matter to the dispute arbitration panel, all that will matter is whether the firm's employees have degrees and how many they have, and the amount of their bid, lower being better.

I think this will create an atmosphere where firms will race to increase the qualifications they can claim for their workforces. In order to get the contracts and increase services exports.  But really, nobody knows what will happen except that the shift will likely result in large scale privatization of jobs and offshoring/outsourcing to international firms. At least thats its intent.

Trickle down theory. Help the wealthy and you heal the wealthy.
« Last Edit: December 29, 2017, 03:09:31 am by cdev »
"What the large print giveth, the small print taketh away."
 

Online tggzzz

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 19280
  • Country: gb
  • Numbers, not adjectives
    • Having fun doing more, with less
Re: Relative integrity of educational systems. How trustworthy are degrees?
« Reply #137 on: December 29, 2017, 09:59:34 am »
Increasingly contracts will be awarded to firms, not individuals, though.

 This is a way of saving money on wages.

Nonsense.

The majority of contracts have been awarded to companies not individuals for centuries!

There are many reasons companies exist; saving money on wages is not one of them.
There are lies, damned lies, statistics - and ADC/DAC specs.
Glider pilot's aphorism: "there is no substitute for span". Retort: "There is a substitute: skill+imagination. But you can buy span".
Having fun doing more, with less
 

Online tggzzz

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 19280
  • Country: gb
  • Numbers, not adjectives
    • Having fun doing more, with less
Re: Relative integrity of educational systems. How trustworthy are degrees?
« Reply #138 on: December 29, 2017, 10:11:00 am »
What does matter is whether the graduate can learn, can appreciate the significance (or uselessness) of something novel when it is presented to them, and can apply their past knowledge to this job.

And this is what some of the posters here are missing -  universities do not teach how to write code for Arduino. The uni school task is to develop your mind to be able to apply the fundamentals. Know how to work with information.

Precisely. That's an imprecise differentiator between engineers and technicians.

Isaac Asimov helped me realise that when I was a schoolkid. His short story used Beeman and Hensler machines rather than Arduinos, though :)  http://www.abelard.org/asimov.php
There are lies, damned lies, statistics - and ADC/DAC specs.
Glider pilot's aphorism: "there is no substitute for span". Retort: "There is a substitute: skill+imagination. But you can buy span".
Having fun doing more, with less
 

Offline coppice

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 8605
  • Country: gb
Re: Relative integrity of educational systems. How trustworthy are degrees?
« Reply #139 on: December 29, 2017, 11:17:10 am »
What does matter is whether the graduate can learn, can appreciate the significance (or uselessness) of something novel when it is presented to them, and can apply their past knowledge to this job.
And this is what some of the posters here are missing -  universities do not teach how to write code for Arduino. The uni school task is to develop your mind to be able to apply the fundamentals. Know how to work with information.
I think too many people in these discussions conflate university with trade school.
 

Offline bd139

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 23017
  • Country: gb
Re: Relative integrity of educational systems. How trustworthy are degrees?
« Reply #140 on: December 29, 2017, 11:36:12 am »
I think there's a deeper problem:

Universities don't give you any practical experience.

Trade schools don't give you the knowledge abstraction.

Neither of those is a good solution really. There are compromises to the above which are pretty good and the universities issuing these courses are producing very capable people on both sides of the fence. They're not in the UK though.

The "sandwich course" which I did was supposed to do this but really meant a year of tea boy. In the university it was known afterwards as the "shit sandwich course". In that year I developed more skills in my own time.
« Last Edit: December 29, 2017, 11:38:00 am by bd139 »
 

Offline IanB

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 11790
  • Country: us
Re: Relative integrity of educational systems. How trustworthy are degrees?
« Reply #141 on: December 29, 2017, 01:20:20 pm »
The "sandwich course" which I did was supposed to do this but really meant a year of tea boy. In the university it was known afterwards as the "shit sandwich course". In that year I developed more skills in my own time.

There's probably a bit of luck involved in what industrial placement you get. In my sandwich year I learned about reading and reviewing technical drawings, checking installations against the spec, commissioning and troubleshooting, fixing bits of designs that didn't work, preparing safety cases and legal permits, issuing requests to contractors and reviewing the incoming proposals, and a whole lot of industry specific technology. And I got paid too! It was quite a good thing for me.
 

Offline bd139

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 23017
  • Country: gb
Re: Relative integrity of educational systems. How trustworthy are degrees?
« Reply #142 on: December 29, 2017, 01:25:58 pm »
Possibly right, although universally everyone got the same turd apparently. I got paid and sent to Vegas. That bit was good. But the company was run by old farts who didn't want to help anyone.
 

Offline cdevTopic starter

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • !
  • Posts: 7350
  • Country: 00
Re: Relative integrity of educational systems. How trustworthy are degrees?
« Reply #143 on: December 29, 2017, 01:26:53 pm »
They made a regulatory change which will change the makeup of professions to preferentially employ a certain group of people deemed politically desirable to occupy - wealthy adult children from certain countries labor markets- with ms degrees or better - albeit for low pay.
"What the large print giveth, the small print taketh away."
 

Offline Mr. Scram

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 9810
  • Country: 00
  • Display aficionado
Re: Relative integrity of educational systems. How trustworthy are degrees?
« Reply #144 on: December 29, 2017, 02:14:57 pm »
I see a lot of universities and university courses upselling engineering related trades as such. A university of applied sciences is an oxymoron. When everything is a university, nothing really is.
 

Offline R005T3r

  • Frequent Contributor
  • **
  • Posts: 387
  • Country: it
Re: Relative integrity of educational systems. How trustworthy are degrees?
« Reply #145 on: September 15, 2018, 09:08:31 am »
I think there's a deeper problem:

Universities don't give you any practical experience.

Trade schools don't give you the knowledge abstraction.

Neither of those is a good solution really. There are compromises to the above which are pretty good and the universities issuing these courses are producing very capable people on both sides of the fence. They're not in the UK though.

The "sandwich course" which I did was supposed to do this but really meant a year of tea boy. In the university it was known afterwards as the "shit sandwich course". In that year I developed more skills in my own time.

My boss solved this problem by investing money on pepole, and selecting personnel based on their interests and how far they want to go instead of degrees and certificates. School can go wrong, but this does not mean, you are more stupid, because you can also graduate from university at full marks, but the problems you have to face are generally less complex, but more difficult at the same time, so the winner skill you absolutely have to have is problem solving... Knowledge at this age of information is widley acessible- and it is to anyone! - So, it becomes fundamental you know how to document yourself.
 

Offline cdevTopic starter

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • !
  • Posts: 7350
  • Country: 00
Re: Relative integrity of educational systems. How trustworthy are degrees?
« Reply #146 on: September 21, 2018, 02:05:48 am »
A terrifying new development is the use of (often FPGA-based) "deep" neural network hardware which 'learn' skills but store them in a non-human readable form in a binary blob that can only be read by the machine that made them or its twins.

A prime example is the Google Tensor Processing Units - "TPU's" they're the ones likely making decisions like which YouTube videos to demonetize!

This is the wave of the future. Its scary because they make decisions that are opaque to humans that will effect humans in life or death ways.
"What the large print giveth, the small print taketh away."
 

Online tggzzz

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 19280
  • Country: gb
  • Numbers, not adjectives
    • Having fun doing more, with less
Re: Relative integrity of educational systems. How trustworthy are degrees?
« Reply #147 on: September 21, 2018, 07:05:49 am »
A terrifying new development is the use of (often FPGA-based) "deep" neural network hardware which 'learn' skills but store them in a non-human readable form in a binary blob that can only be read by the machine that made them or its twins.

A prime example is the Google Tensor Processing Units - "TPU's" they're the ones likely making decisions like which YouTube videos to demonetize!

This is the wave of the future. Its scary because they make decisions that are opaque to humans that will effect humans in life or death ways.

Indeed.

There are already signs that they will be a good source of income for the legal profession. For example, I look forward to HR people explaining why their "the AI algorirm which we trained using our past hiring/firing practices" isn't institutionally sexist/racist/stupid etc.
There are lies, damned lies, statistics - and ADC/DAC specs.
Glider pilot's aphorism: "there is no substitute for span". Retort: "There is a substitute: skill+imagination. But you can buy span".
Having fun doing more, with less
 

Offline bd139

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 23017
  • Country: gb
Re: Relative integrity of educational systems. How trustworthy are degrees?
« Reply #148 on: September 21, 2018, 07:21:11 am »
Having done a lot of work in that space already I wouldn’t worry. Most of the “AI” you see isn’t even applicable to those sorts of problem domains despite the marketing. It’s usually well defined ranking and weighting algorithms based on the output of analysts. Most AI isn’t AI but dumb ass band wagon same old crap they’ve been using for 20 years. I very much doubt that will change.

Incidentally one of the companies using machine learning for risk profile generation actually has a worse success rate than inexperienced users flagging stuff. They have more lawyers than engineers if that suggests how they operate.
 

Offline MrW0lf

  • Frequent Contributor
  • **
  • Posts: 922
  • Country: ee
    • lab!fyi
Re: Relative integrity of educational systems. How trustworthy are degrees?
« Reply #149 on: September 21, 2018, 07:25:36 am »
There are already signs that they will be a good source of income for the legal profession. For example, I look forward to HR people explaining why their "the AI algorirm which we trained using our past hiring/firing practices" isn't institutionally sexist/racist/stupid etc.

Theyd better learn fast how to punish AI for politically incorrect decisions. Only try punishment can free intellect made into something useful... :P
 


Share me

Digg  Facebook  SlashDot  Delicious  Technorati  Twitter  Google  Yahoo
Smf