Relative integrity of educational systems. How trustworthy are degrees?

[cdev]

How free from corruption are educational systems in your country? Can a graduate degree in a field or multiple degrees be trusted to be a good enough indication of somebody's skill that it can truly be called an objective measure of their skills?

(as opposed to other means of demonstrating their skill, which might rely on recommendations or a portfolio of work they had done.)

Are there any better means of determining professional qualifications that are based on objective and transparent criteria, such as competence and the ability to supply the service?

[T3sl4co1l]

A degree or certification just means that the student was capable of answering the test questions.

Sometimes that's applicable in real-world duties.  Often it is not.

I don't think this property varies from country to country, though the strength and rigor of the questions and answers may vary.

Tim

[Kremmen]

How free from corruption are educational systems in your country? Can a degree or multiple degrees be trusted to be a good enough indication of somebody's skill that it can truly be called an objective measure of their skill level?

(as opposed to other means of demonstrating their skill, which might rely on recommendations or a portfolio of work they had done.)

Very. Yes, though for employment purposes individual qualities of course play a role as they do anywhere. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Finland

[cdev]

If you have two firms from completely different parts of the world which have both put forward similar proposals for a government contract, involving professional work delivering some service, and its required that the contract only go to one of them, how can their relative merits be weighed in a manner that will survive a dispute if its challenged to an international trade body?

They may both be comparable in terms of the professional qualifications of their workforces. Its presumed they will all have advanced degrees.

A lot of the ways people have determined who to hire in the past may not be allowed. Just pick the one with the lower bid, even if they are close?

There might be preferences - requiring that under some circumstances preference be given to some countries firms, countries that have particularly low levels of development. 

Paradoxically, it may even turn out that those service providers staffs have more degrees from more prestigious internationally known universities (Harvard, Oxford, Cambridge, Princeton, etc.)  than the staffs of firms from countries without the "Least Developed" label attached to them.

[Someone]

A degree or certification just means that the student was capable of answering the test questions.

Or a student/stooge standing in for them...  yes it happens, more so for submitted works but also for examinations.

[aargee]

Or this...

"A degree or certification just means that the student was capable of answering the test questions paying a fee."

Cynical not. There has been so much dilution of education as opposed to financial gain for an institution (at least here in Australia).

[cdev]

Universities are only too happy to accept their money.

[trophosphere]

A degree from an accredited institution means that the person was able to have the patience and dedication to stick to something long term - on the order of years - in order to reach an end goal. Anything extra (such as actual pertinent skills or useful knowledge) is a plus.

[tggzzz]

You need to know the institution; some are much better than others. In the UK, the "Russell Group" of universities is a good starting point, followed by universities with towns in their name, and be suspicious of universities with vague regions in their names (South Bank, Thames Valley spring to mind). There are, of course, honourable exceptions (West of England springs to mind).

Beyond that a decent degree or lack of a degree is a strong bias in certain aspects of competence. Whether those aspects of competence are relevant to any particular job is for a company to decide. Whether any particular candidate has the necessary skills needs to be assessed at interview.

Summary: a good degree is a sensible bias, and the lack of a degree another bias. But neither are absolute.

Analogy: if someone is choosing your course of medical treatment, you really want them to have a relevant degree. Similarly, if someone is sticking a needle in your vein to take blood, you want them to have relevant (but different) qualifications. Even then, you get notably bad doctors and notably good nurses.

[tszaboo]

There was this student, when I was graduating. He revived Summa Cum Laude. And I know he was a complete idiot. Absolute 0 logical thinking skill, and common sense. Which I believe is more important in this field than anything.
But, he knew how to study for tests. There wasn't too much variety in the types of the test questions, he learned how to answer them. Now he is working at a big corporation, pushing buttons on the computer. I guess they told him how to do it, and he is good at it. Good thing about established big corporations, is that they are more tolerant to the individual idiots.

[bd139]

Some good points in this thread.

Education isn't a sign of competence, merely of hoop jumping and available funding. That's something you can only evaluate by employing someone and waiting to see what happens. Usually interest in the subject matter is of more significance than education as well.

I could write a long rant about the state of graduates these days but Russel Group universities (one of which I'm a grad from, just to quell any bias fears) turn out some of the lowest utility graduates into the computer science side of things. Education is supposed to equip you for the real world but none of the faculty or course designers appear to have actually worked in the real world past research collaboration so there is a large disparity between graduates and the industry. Now I don't expect people to sit down from day one and be productive but after 6 months trial period and hand holding and training on a daily basis I expect them to be able to trace a relatively simple defect or fill in the gaps in an implementation without leaving us in O(n!) complexity problems.  Guys from supposed UK B-rate universities, unqualified from a Sainsburys car park (yes we recruited someone there), or some university in the former Eastern Bloc that no one has ever heard of and probably no longer exists, straight in there, done and dusted - good people!

[tggzzz]

There was this student, when I was graduating. He revived Summa Cum Laude. And I know he was a complete idiot. Absolute 0 logical thinking skill, and common sense. Which I believe is more important in this field than anything.
But, he knew how to study for tests. There wasn't too much variety in the types of the test questions, he learned how to answer them. Now he is working at a big corporation, pushing buttons on the computer. I guess they told him how to do it, and he is good at it. Good thing about established big corporations, is that they are more tolerant to the individual idiots.

Shrug. So what.

That's the kind of thing that can and should be found at interview. Bits of paper aren't guarantees; neither are interviews - but they are both indicative and have complementary advantages and disadvantages.

[cdev]

I became interested in this issue some years ago when I noticed that when sometimes when I brought up some research thing I have read, sometimes it would elicit cynical remarks of unusual "something" maybe "fervor"?

When I've gotten the occasional cynical comment like "don't believe all the research you read", my ears always perk up, and I really want to know, why did this person say that?

I would have expected the cynicism about research in guests who were born outside of the US to be inversely proportionate to their educational levels, With US born people, that's been my experience. Some less educated Americans are very cynical about scientific research generally.

I don't know. The group of people is not a representative one at all.

[Mjolinor]

Verifying research papers is extremely dull and extremely difficult. Thankfully organisations such as the IEEE and others do a really good job of removing the dros before it is published.

Verification is also now a lot easier than it used to be before Internet. I once needed a specific book on electromagnetic theory that was last published in 1947. One copy only at the British library on long term loan to a UK university. It took me four months to get the book and I could only have it for a few weeks. That was absolutely normal pre 1990 ish. It was months of work and a lot of travelling. Now we have Internet and you can answer most questions within minutes. Is it an improvement? The longer we have Internet the less I think that it is.

[T3sl4co1l]

Research is almost wholly incremental; any article claiming something revolutionary is, at best, trying to sell you something.

Academic reporting is almost uniformly bad.  Anything to do with quantum physics is bad without exception.

This is probably more cynicism about reporting in general, rather than research itself (which does have its own, internally recognized problems).  It goes hand-in-hand with the phrase, "the answer to any headline asking a question is 'no'".

Tim

[cdev]

Research is almost wholly incremental; any article claiming something revolutionary is, at best, trying to sell you something.

Well, an example of research I think is interesting is a paper I've tried to explain here about toxicology, that glutathione levels change expression of two genes (fyn and c-cbl) that seriously impact unborn children, and showing that the effect of multiple quite chemically diverse toxicants can be modulated by dietary availability of cysteine, glutathione's precursor, showing that any of literally thousands of pro-oxidant substances and other processes (of all kinds) that impact cells by creating reactive oxygen species, should be considered to be additive in that context.

It didn't claim to be revolutionary, I thought it was.

[T3sl4co1l]

Hmm, interesting.

Tim

[HalFET]

Stupidity is a universal constant, and I include myself in that one. Nothing quite as frustrating as teaching labs to master students in engineering, something I can attest to...

Half of them you feel like taking out back and shooting after they asked for the 5th time how a lock-in amplifier works. But you do it for the two to three folks per group who do get it, who do understand. And sure, a few more of them will understand later on. But you can be rest assured that the rest of them will be shoved onto a management or sales track most likely 

That being said, there are some universities which put out so many crappy papers which are either copied or just plain wrong that it gets silly. Bonus points if you pay to get published in Nature Scientific Reports I suppose?

[cdev]

I think its quite stupid to expect that one is going to be able to get a job in a field in the future if you don't like it enough to immerse one's self in it, i.e. do it for fun in your spare time.

Thanks to globalization, we'll each be competing with seven billion other people instead of just a few hundred million (or in the case of India and China 1.7 billion and 1.3 billion respectively.) 

Short term, we may see a lot of skilled workers trading places with those on the other side of the world, for much lower wages, just so they can keep working.

(See "Rising powers' venue-shopping on international mobility" NCCR (Swiss think tank) Working Paper No 2014/3, March 2014 by Flavia Jurje and Sandra Lavenex

And then after a few years, if current trends continue, machines will just do more and more of everything. People will just say what they want and the computers will show them examples of it.

[HalFET]

I think its quite stupid to expect that one is going to be able to get a job in a field in the future if you don't like it enough to immerse one's self in it, i.e. do it for fun in your spare time.

Thanks to globalization, we'll each be competing with seven billion other people instead of just a few hundred million (or in the case of India and China 1.7 billion and 1.3 billion respectively.) 

And then after a few years, if current trends continue, machines will just do more and more of everything.

Depends a bit on the field I'd say, but for electronics the non-theoretical part requires a certain degree of passion for the subject. You're not going to get good sitting at your desk from 9 to 5 looking at SPICE outputs.

[razberik]

PhD degree from CZ or SK university in technical field is a red light for me.
The most unsuccessful and lazy master graduates who are unable to find job goes for PhD to waste taxpayers money.

[floobydust]

Fake university degrees are not too expensive, there are diploma mills in pakistan

"Ezell, who co-wrote the book Degree Mills: The Billion-Dollar Industry That Has Sold Over a Million Fake Diplomas, estimates half of new PhDs issued every year in the U.S. are fake."

[cdev]

Education and diploma-ed workers are supposed to become trade-able commodities, like pork or iron or computer chips.

http://www.jceps.com/wp-content/uploads/PDFs/02-2-02.pdf

[IanB]

How free from corruption are educational systems in your country? Can a graduate degree in a field or multiple degrees be trusted to be a good enough indication of somebody's skill that it can truly be called an objective measure of their skills?

At degree level it is less about skills and more about professional competence. (Skill = able to perform defined tasks efficiently. Professional competence = able to solve previously unseen problems using general knowledge of the field.)

Completing a degree course or program means someone has been given the opportunity to learn and develop competence. The task of the hiring process is to assess whether a candidate has taken advantage of that opportunity to acquire the competence desired. No one ever should just rely on a piece of paper as an objective measure.

[cdev]

Maybe they want inefficiency. Basically they want to funnel most of the savings upward and a tiny bit downward.

Are you familiar with the provisions I am alluding to which give previously disadvantaged corporations equal rights to other corporations?

https://web.archive.org/web/20080313195303/http://www.afsc.org/trade-matters/issues/LaborMobility.pdf

[IanB]

Are you familiar with the provisions I am alluding to which give previously disadvantaged corporations equal rights to other corporations?

Quite irrelevant.

[Simon]

Maybe they want inefficiency. Basically they want to funnel most of the savings upward and a tiny bit downward.

Are you familiar with the provisions I am alluding to which give previously disadvantaged corporations equal rights to other corporations?

https://web.archive.org/web/20080313195303/http://www.afsc.org/trade-matters/issues/LaborMobility.pdf

Are you done?

[Simon]

With respect to your original question why don't you fill in your country, then we all know "where you are coming from" In the UK I have no faith in the education system. I am studying a HNC by distance learning, the materials are uninspiring and the assignments sometimes over complicated sometimes look like they are designed for an easy pass.

Personally I don't put any value on degree's, learning a procedure and memorising things in one thing, actually having skill is another that cannot be taught. I have done contract work for people with higher qualifications than myself (and run rings around them to make a bigger job of it than it was) and in my day job i have had to correct the work done by graduates at a subcontractor because while they could sort of program they could not lay out a PCB properly, or understand the job specifications and write the code correctly or generally be very good at problem solving.

Formal education does mean you get given all of the tools you will need but not all know how to use them in real life or sometimes they won't be needed and other practical kills are more useful (anyone ever done a degree in PCB layout? no I thought not).

In the UK the further education system is run by private companies, universities and Pearson's that run the marking system known as BTEC.

[bd139]

I think you nailed the U.K. perfectly there.

Also Pearson are evil to the core. I actually had a comedy moment looking at one of their books in Foyles a few years ago. The book was £55 and they has printed the pages monochrome on glossy white. You couldn’t read the thing easily at all. The killer was that some of the pictures used real resistor representations with colour bands and you had to answer questions. But the print wasnt colour. Clearly putting economy first there.

[Mjolinor]

I would venture to say that most do not know how to apply the things they learn. Above A level the learning process changes and if people expect it to be the same as school then they will get little from it, it is very much up to the individual to take as much as they can from what is offered.

Having said that, there is a lot of truth in the statement "those that can do, those that can't teach" People that have been in academia all their life cannot teach the practical side as they do not know it and there are altogether too many of them in every aspect of life now. We haven't had a Prime Minister that actually worked for a long time, how can they know?

I had a lab in Greece with four people working for me. All had a degree or higher. None of them knew that if you had a red wire and a black wire connected to something then the red wire would be +ve. That astounded me, these people had never operated as much as a screwdriver.

[Simon]

I once started a level 3 course in electronics marked by BTEC sold by a bunch of fraudsters called ICS learn. The material was full of errors, which I had to supply to other students, one was a picture of an op amp with the power pins swapped but lots of factual errors in the text. I was sent a kit to do my assignment with that required me to use a 9V battery and a 10K pot as a variable voltage source to at....... 1K load.

ICS learn were very uninterested even when faced with criticism from others, one assignment question did not even make sense, and Pearson's did not care. All Pearson's were concerned about was that they had a complaints "procedure" in place (email us and we will ignore you). Pearson's were not interested in the course material or the errors. I sent it all off to Which in the end but I'm not sure if they got anywhere. Years later the company continues to rip people off.

Unfortunately as my boss is over 50 he remembers the good old days of schooling and qualification and does not understand what a farce he is paying for.

[tszaboo]

With respect to your original question why don't you fill in your country, then we all know "where you are coming from"

I believe he is from the USA, and he deleted the flag, after a reality celebriti/russian spy/stand up comedian was elected president.

[IanB]

Personally I don't put any value on degree's, learning a procedure and memorising things in one thing, actually having skill is another that cannot be taught.

But learning a procedure and memorizing things is actually the definition of what a skill is. Consider all of the skilled trades out there like plumbing, joinery, electrician, bricklayer, welder, etc. All of those jobs involve learning how to perform various tasks accurately and correctly so as to do them fast and well. And absolutely these things can be taught. Someone who can get a degree should be able to acquire necessary skills as they need them, but they should also be able to operate in unfamiliar territory and find new solutions to previously unseen problems.

I have done contract work for people with higher qualifications than myself (and run rings around them to make a bigger job of it than it was) and in my day job i have had to correct the work done by graduates at a subcontractor because while they could sort of program they could not lay out a PCB properly, or understand the job specifications and write the code correctly or generally be very good at problem solving.

Have you considered the possibility that contracts may be awarded on price, with the lowest price winning? And that the subcontractor with the lowest bid is paying lower wages and therefore cannot attract and retain the top talent? I mentioned in a previous comment that you cannot rely on a piece of paper as a sole measure of someone's competence. Your experience shows why this is so.

[Simon]

With respect to your original question why don't you fill in your country, then we all know "where you are coming from"

I believe he is from the USA, and he deleted the flag, after a reality celebriti/russian spy/stand up comedian was elected president.

oh 

[Simon]

Personally I don't put any value on degree's, learning a procedure and memorising things in one thing, actually having skill is another that cannot be taught.

But learning a procedure and memorizing things is actually the definition of what a skill is. Consider all of the skilled trades out there like plumbing, joinery, electrician, bricklayer, welder, etc. All of those jobs involve learning how to perform various tasks accurately and correctly so as to do them fast and well. And absolutely these things can be taught. Someone who can get a degree should be able to acquire necessary skills as they need them, but they should also be able to operate in unfamiliar territory and find new solutions to previously unseen problems.

What I mean is you can learn something on paper. You can tell your plumber how to solder copper pipe, he can memorise the procedure but that does not guarantee that he will be able to do it commonly refereed to as "having the knack" and some never get the knack. Working in unfamiliar territory is something that you need in addition to a degree. I don't have one but that does not stop me from being fairly good at problem solving (yes i do miss the theoretical backup of formal learning), which is why i had to do the job of the aforementioned graduates because one of them could not find a solution to the problem posed so I did instead and it took me all of seconds to come up with a solution. It went something like this:

We needed to detect a hand being placed under a unit that sat over a sink. The graduate used a PIR sensor that was over sensitive and had too wide an angle (it even detected the piece of glass in front of it). Because it was designed to set off something above a sink the result was that it would just detect a sink as easily as a hand and work spuriously. So after a lot of going round in circles with him I thought how would i do this? It took mere seconds to establish that the problem was that the sensor could not distinguish between near and far objects. I also realised that finding something off the shelf with the desired narrow band was going to be impossible. BUT if I could get a sensor that could tell me the distance the object was i could interpose a micro-controller (the systems uC could have done it too but it was out of my scope) to filter the result and pass on a suitable input to the control board. The simple result was distance sensors and for speed a hand-build arduiuno board, read the sensors analogue reading, interpret it and send the high or low expected to the control board. The customer was most relieved to see a working solution. but it took little old me with no qualifications to work out the solution. The guy with a degree was just good at programming.

[bd139]

The guy with a degree was just good at programming.

That's a rarity! 

[Simon]

The guy with a degree was just good at programming.

That's a rarity! 

OK, I never got to see he program and I'm no expert there myself so can't really comment. the guy that succeeded him was not good at anything. I saw his code and had to correct it, one massive file spanning 50 A4 sheets, he didn't even have the sense as i do with my poor skills to break it down into modules. In the end I printed it all out and laid it out on a very long bench so that I could "run over it" and make notes. His hardware design was also atrocious and the customer blew it up on first installation.

[bd139]

It certainly doesn't surprise me. I've seen lots of people working in the defence sector who shouldn't be allowed near a keyboard or a soldering iron. One reason I skipped out of the EE sector was that the commercial programming side of things had more people with a clue and it wasn't hard to rise to the top due to skills shortages, and that's where the money was (and still is!)

[tggzzz]

I would venture to say that most do not know how to apply the things they learn. Above A level the learning process changes and if people expect it to be the same as school then they will get little from it, it is very much up to the individual to take as much as they can from what is offered.

Having said that, there is a lot of truth in the statement "those that can do, those that can't teach" People that have been in academia all their life cannot teach the practical side as they do not know it and there are altogether too many of them in every aspect of life now. We haven't had a Prime Minister that actually worked for a long time, how can they know?

I agree with the  first paragraph. Some people will fail to take that opportunity, and that can and should be assessed at interview.

People in decent universities (i.e. not most of the rebranded Polytechnics) are principally motivated by research; teaching undergrads is somewhat of a chore that some like and some don't.

I was always annoyed that the polytechnics rebranded themselves as universities; the polys had a focus (practical rather than research, technician rather than engineer) that was equally valuable but different. It is difficult for a schoolkid to understand the difference and/or to distinguish between the two, and that's made worse by both having the same name.

I had a lab in Greece with four people working for me. All had a degree or higher. None of them knew that if you had a red wire and a black wire connected to something then the red wire would be +ve. That astounded me, these people had never operated as much as a screwdriver.

That illustrates why one education system cannot be directly compared to another.

[Simon]

I am afraid that in the UK it's down to one word: privatisation and a policy that everyone should have a degree even if it's media studies.

[bd139]

I am afraid that in the UK it's down to one word: privatisation and a policy that everyone should have a degree even if it's media studies.

True. I know someone who has a BA in Puppetry. Currently acing a career in Iceland (not the country, the shitty supermarket).

[tggzzz]

I am afraid that in the UK it's down to one word: privatisation and a policy that everyone should have a degree even if it's media studies.

Polys rebranded themselves long before privatisation. The political desirability of everybody having a degree is detrimental.

There are increasing noises about apprenticeships, which I regard as desirable. Different people benefit more from apprenticeships, polytechnics and universities; those differences should be recognised and celebrated. Snobbery and inverse snobbery are equally destructive.

[Simon]

Different people benefit more from apprenticeships, polytechnics and universities; those differences should be recognised and celebrated. Snobbery and inverse snobbery are equally destructive.

Precisely

[cdev]

These following lines might be helpful to search on individually or together...    You all may find yourselves as bewildered and worried as I am..

----------------

GATS Article I:4

a) Based on objective and transparent criteria, such as competence and the ability to supply the services;

b) Not more burdensome than necessary to ensure the quality of the service;

c) In the case of licensing procedures, not in themselves a restriction on the supply of the service.


------

GATS Article I:3 (b) and (c)
"For the purposes of this Agreement…

(b) 'services' includes any service in any sector except services supplied in the exercise of governmental
authority;

(c) 'a service supplied in the exercise of governmental authority' means any service which is supplied
neither on a commercial basis, nor in competition with one or more service suppliers."

--------

 "the freedom to provide services" is a potential mine field of problems.

To get the ball started, large segments of the public sector and quasi public sector (wherever or however tax money is spent, unless it qualifies as a "service supplied in the exercise of governmental authority" which seems to mean totally noncommercial and with no competition) are supposed to be privatized irreversibly. The literature points out that virtually none of the services most people think of qualify as public under this very narrow definition. They have largely been ignored and this juggernaut just rolls on, determined to disrupt the planet, to turn everybody against one another in competition for the same jobs, as it were by privatizing and then putting "into play" internationally one thing after another.

The scope of these privatizations are based on the two prong test/definition in the lines of Article I:3 above, Its ever evolving definition of "service supplied in the exercise of governmental authority" is then borrowed for many other international agreements.

 So public money being spent is basically the trigger for all sorts of new Draconian rules involving other countries and their soon to be globalized services ("deregulation") which are expected to be delivered at rock bottom prices.

Where does the concept of formal qualifications being preferable to "subjective measures" come in? It originated in EU trade law and the lines above are from GATS Article I:4 .

There is a body of academic literature on this all. Its not some new thing that just came along.

Sites which have a lot of materials are the universities, the SSRN network, various think tanks, and so on.

[MrW0lf]

So what small man can do? Relatively glued into corner like with pretty much everything else.

[Simon]

So what small man can do? Relatively glued into corner like with pretty much everything else.

I started my own company, customers don't ask me what my qualifications are or tell me i can't do it because i am not qualified....

[cdev]

I think that the interpretation that all non-degree based qualifications should be deprecated, if indeed that is what is intended, is really stupid, and it will lead to endless disasters. The problem is, they already have decided they are going to do this. Its being framed as "a big gift to developing countries for playing the game". But as it creates a sort of second class noncitizen guest worker who are tied to a specific job, who make less money, likely replacing many decent jobs, including many done by recent legal immigrants and naturalized citizens, as well as native born workers, due to this I suspect the total amount of money sent back home and earned by workers from countries such as India, will likely fall, not rise, a lot, because the gains for the companies that supply (in their words) three workers for the price of one. is money that doesnt go to other workers. Also, it creates emnity which otherwise would not exist. Perhaps the ost income will be a lot. Confidence in the system and trust will plummet. The MNCs wouldn't be pushing it if it reduced their profits.It will however shift many jobs from the public sector and professions where they are the anchor jobs holding communities together, to turn them into precarious employment. They probably are determined to disregard experience as non-objective because they have gone to great lengths to set up an extremely complicated system which turns all the advantages of the current system into nothings, all the arguments which would require we return things to the way they were, have all been systematically done away with. What emerged is a system which wont engage on them. A system totally deaf to the public's needs and wishes and common sense, and based on dishonest everything, by design.

Of course, that is not how these changes are framed.. (Note that the source for these words below is NOT about the changes I am talking about, I picked these words because they were appropriate to the situation but the author and his work are not about them.. not about these things specifically, although in the case above it does well at explaining the how these changes are being sold)

"When a leader gives his daughter a government contract, it’s nepotism. But it’s also cooperation at the level of the family, well explained by inclusive fitness , undermining cooperation at the level of the state. When a manager gives her friend a job, it’s cronyism. But it’s also cooperation at the level of friends, well explained by reciprocal altruism, undermining the meritocracy. Bribery is a cooperative act between two people, and so on. It’s no surprise that family-oriented cultures like India and China are also high on corruption, particularly nepotism. Even in the Western world, it’s no surprise that Australia, a country of mates, might be susceptible to cronyism. Or that breaking down kin networks predicts lower corruption and more successful democracies. Part of the problem is that these smaller scales of cooperation are easier to sustain and explain than the kind of large-scale anonymous cooperation that we in the Western world have grown accustomed to". 

But, thats not it, although they pretend it is. (Unless large scale cooperation is the cooperation to eliminate things like minimum wages and unions and five day work weeks, as a "trade barrier")

They're saying all the right words, pushing all the right buttons to appeal to a certain segment of people.

But what they are actually doing is not helpful to anybody except them. So its the nullification of democracy, something completely different.

Anyway, please forgive me. I have to stop now.

[coppice]

Personally I don't put any value on degree's, learning a procedure and memorising things in one thing, actually having skill is another that cannot be taught.

Which degree course at a reputable institution puts an emphasis on memorisation that is anything like as high as their emphasis on demonstrating understanding? Even the last years at high school (e.g. A level courses in the UK) put significant emphasis on being about to combine pieces of knowledge to break down and solve exam problems. Not as much emphasis as a generation ago, but its still there. Any respectable university takes this up several notches, so regurgitating doesn't get you very far at all.

[Mjolinor]

I think that generally as your level of knowledge increases through learning, the things you have to remember reduce.

As an example when I was 14 or so I learned the equation for solving quadratics -b +- (sqrt) b^2 etc etc. I just learned the equation. Some years alter I learned the B2-4AC was the important part to know if the result is complex. That was a eureka moment but I had to be taught it, I spent several years wondering why I had never noticed that. Yet later on I learned to derive the equation from scratch, at that point there is no need to remember it as you know where it came from

Once you learn calculus you quickly see that circumference and area of circles are so obviously related so suddenly you do not need to remember the equations, deriving them is so easy.

This is what education does for you, it teaches not to bother wasting brain power remembering stuff when you can much more easily find it out when you need it.

[cdev]

Hi quality technical (technician) training for jobs INDEED DOES CREATE PEOPLE READY FOR EMPLOYMENT however in the eyes of some those people would then have "unrealistic expectations" - which really means have high expectations of employment for decent wages and reasonably so because they would be capable of doing the work. In the past this would have been and still should be a reasonable expectation, HOWEVER, the free market approach to pay is "supply and demand is everything" and

 They may have already decided to outsource those jobs, and now they just want "the optics" so are creating a fake process by which this can appear to happen, a rigged process of manufacturing a phony record where, alas, the pampered professionals and soon afterwards working people of the Western countries - got "due process"  in some way, and.. "Lost".

After all, the winners write the history books.

We're not in the loop, or even at the table, we're on it, being carved up. Like a Thanksgiving turkey.

So, basically, everybody's been wasting their time and in many cases, lives, training for jobs for nothing. 

Young people have been learning and training for naught, because their expectations are unrealistic, perhaps they are in debt, they want to move out of their parents houses, they want to be able to afford to marry and start a family, they want a life.

However, to TPTB, bluntly, they and everybody else in those countries, just simply would want too much money.

I have gotten into this argument too many times to not know it by heart. Supply and demand is it to many of them. They consistently underestimate the costs to poor people of everything and attempt to pretend people have choices which in fact are systematically denied us all. Some see absolutely no reason to pay workers in developed countries more. Some see unions and basically all he changes of the last century as fair game, and targets to roll back. Living wages to them are extortion. (Luckily, it seems they are in the minority, even among wealthy people)

Some see wages everywhere falling rapidly as natural and the profits to be made as their entitlement. (Also, I dont think this attitude is as widespread as some would have us think)

Not going back to the people in any way. Its not that they simply don't care about them or feel at all guilty about what they are doing. They might feel some pangs but not very frequently. They have no contact with poor people except as their servants.

 They see themselves as above the law because they own the world. Its a fact at this point, they do. And the percentage they own is growing exponentially. Given that this is the case, they see tax evasion as a bond of sorts uniting them all against a common enemy. The people. "Mob rule". Thats what GATS and its progeny are about. Stopping the world from adjusting to the loss of jobs everywhere - and the disengagement by the wealthy from society because it no longer needs human labor as much or eventually perhaps practically at all, Not the slightest amount of guilt at all. They just want to be left alone to get richer and richer at an exponential rate uninterrupted by humanity and its demands. Who the hell do we think we are.

All of that said, many are still not evil people at all but they think very differently than the rest of us in these areas and its an impasse. People don't understand how large this gulf is.

They don't understand the rest of our lives at all - Maybe this could change- though but not unless people actually make it change. Its not going to come from them.

And this is the most important thing. Wealthy people see more of a bond uniting themselves with one another than with any country.

They vacation at the same places. They live in their own world.

We need to make the case that the path they are on will hurt everybody and destroy the engine of wealth creation, the middle class.  They are likely responsive to this argument but afraid to acknowledge it because of group think..

So, this is a solvable problem, TPTB are just trapped in a collision course with the rest of the planet.

Google for something called the "elephant chart". You will see a lot of spin blaming the middle class in developed countries for the rest of the world's poverty. However, its wrong. Its that tip of the elephants trunk thats at fault.

They are trying to make the middle class out as the bad guys to keep themselves grabbing more and more until its all gone. Leaving just them and a planet of poor very angry people. Thats guaranteed to turn out badly.

The people just have to tell them "no" for once.

[MrW0lf]

Anyway, please forgive me. I have to stop now.

Well it seems you have done your homework. But important not to go Alex "we are all doomed" Jones path and think what would be practical solutions to prolong existence that we consider normal... in fact probably singular case in known history when small man has some limited freedom, rights, basic education (carefully avoiding fundamental subjects but still).

Being own master and somewhat stepping out of the system certainly helps. Waste time on something formal only if actual ROI in sight.

[cdev]

While reading about the cross-licensing of professions in the EU I stumbled upon the "European Qualifications Framework" and the "Bologna Process" which appear to be slightly different programs to do similar things. (certify the quality of relative educational systems for cross-recognition in other Member States.) Also, in a 2011 paper I am reading they mention something about a special European Professional Card (EPC) which is supposed to be issued by 2016?  Anyway, thought their existence might inform the discussion.  Ive read about the Bologna Process many times before. (they seem like they are responsibly fighting against the privatization of public higher education)

[MrW0lf]

Here they realized that long-history academic university may be not best place for focused IT/tech education so for some time modern tech college operated offering "Diploma ('Bologna-type' the first degree, enabling access to Master's studies)". This was very welcome for more result-oriented students. Not by coincidence their robotics team wiped floor with ones from "academic background" teams every year.
AFAIK now they modernized big one somewhat and absorbed modern school. Probably robotics team complained and demanded if cannot beat them must join

[cdev]

The main EU organization of 800+ universities is fighting the FTAs.

http://www.eua.be/Libraries/publication/EUA_Statement_TTIP.pdf

Note their bullet item #1

[AG6QR]

Speaking from my experience in the software world...

University work is nearly always done solo, and the student, at least at undergraduate level, is doing work that many people have done before, and they are generally made-up exercises that many people are doing simultaneously.  An individual project may last a week, a few weeks, or rarely a full semester.

Commercial work after graduation is usually done in teams, and each individual is doing a task that nobody else has done before (in software development, if you ever catch someone doing the same thing more than about twice, that's a clue that someone needs to write a program to automate that task).  Software development often continues over years, occasionally decades.

I've known a few good software developers who lacked a university degree, but those were the rare exceptions.  A degree did force one to be exposed to certain techniques, algorithms, and ways of thinking.  Some people got that exposure in other ways, but that was not common.

I remember my graduation day, looking around at my classmates, and thinking, "Are these the kinds of people I would want to work with?".  The answer was a definite, "Many of them, absolutely!  Others, absolutely not!"  University education does not necessarily teach one to be a team player, nor does it always teach understanding.  There are some who grasp concepts intuitively, others who seem to be clueless but get by through brute force cramming facts in their brains for just barely long enough to regurgitate them onto an exam, after which they are lost forever.  Perhaps there are jobs for which that temporary "cramming" skill is valuable (actors remembering their lines, maybe?) but software development isn't such a job.

So I'd say a university degree is neither necessary nor sufficient, but it's extremely valuable, nonetheless.  It's very difficult to succeed without it, and my advice to anyone who will listen is, "go get the degree!"  It's possible to fail even with a degree, though.  Some people aren't cut out to understand concepts and apply them, while contributing more to a team than they take from it.  Those people aren't fun to work with, and they don't last long at good employers.

Lately, I've been interviewing a lot of university graduates for entry-level positions at my employer.  A university level degree is a basic prerequisite for many types of positions, but by itself, it's not nearly enough.  For programming jobs, we always present a problem to a candidate and ask him/her to develop a solution and talk us through it.  We look for high-level understanding of logic and algorithms, along with ability to explain; not whether they get the commas and semicolons in the right places. 

One question I always ask at an interview is, "Have you worked on any projects outside of your coursework?"  A "no" answer isn't a disqualification, but the right kind of "yes" answer can hugely increase one's chances of moving on to the next stage of the selection process.  The candidate who has a passion for doing this kind of work, and initiative to do it independently, is far, far, ahead of someone who is tolerating being in the field because someone told them it pays well.

[IanMacdonald]

"There are some who grasp concepts intuitively, others who seem to be clueless but get by through brute force cramming facts in their brains for just barely long enough to regurgitate them onto an exam, after which they are lost forever.  Perhaps there are jobs for which that temporary "cramming" skill is valuable (actors remembering their lines, maybe?) but software development isn't such a job."

Used to work in industrial training, and we got a fair proportion of what I would term 'Human USB sticks' going through the courses.  Some would refuse to do the course practical work, instead just sitting there handwriting-out sections of textbooks over and over. The interesting thing was that while these 'EPROM on legs' students failed the practical work as was to be expected... most of them also got a poor mark in the written test. 

 

[tggzzz]

Speaking from my experience in the software world...

University work is nearly always done solo, and the student, at least at undergraduate level, is doing work that many people have done before, and they are generally made-up exercises that many people are doing simultaneously.  An individual project may last a week, a few weeks, or rarely a full semester.

Commercial work after graduation is usually done in teams, and each individual is doing a task that nobody else has done before (in software development, if you ever catch someone doing the same thing more than about twice, that's a clue that someone needs to write a program to automate that task).  Software development often continues over years, occasionally decades.

I've known a few good software developers who lacked a university degree, but those were the rare exceptions.  A degree did force one to be exposed to certain techniques, algorithms, and ways of thinking.  Some people got that exposure in other ways, but that was not common.

I remember my graduation day, looking around at my classmates, and thinking, "Are these the kinds of people I would want to work with?".  The answer was a definite, "Many of them, absolutely!  Others, absolutely not!"  University education does not necessarily teach one to be a team player, nor does it always teach understanding.  There are some who grasp concepts intuitively, others who seem to be clueless but get by through brute force cramming facts in their brains for just barely long enough to regurgitate them onto an exam, after which they are lost forever.  Perhaps there are jobs for which that temporary "cramming" skill is valuable (actors remembering their lines, maybe?) but software development isn't such a job.

So I'd say a university degree is neither necessary nor sufficient, but it's extremely valuable, nonetheless.  It's very difficult to succeed without it, and my advice to anyone who will listen is, "go get the degree!"  It's possible to fail even with a degree, though.  Some people aren't cut out to understand concepts and apply them, while contributing more to a team than they take from it.  Those people aren't fun to work with, and they don't last long at good employers.

Lately, I've been interviewing a lot of university graduates for entry-level positions at my employer.  A university level degree is a basic prerequisite for many types of positions, but by itself, it's not nearly enough.  For programming jobs, we always present a problem to a candidate and ask him/her to develop a solution and talk us through it.  We look for high-level understanding of logic and algorithms, along with ability to explain; not whether they get the commas and semicolons in the right places. 

One question I always ask at an interview is, "Have you worked on any projects outside of your coursework?"  A "no" answer isn't a disqualification, but the right kind of "yes" answer can hugely increase one's chances of moving on to the next stage of the selection process.  The candidate who has a passion for doing this kind of work, and initiative to do it independently, is far, far, ahead of someone who is tolerating being in the field because someone told them it pays well.

That's a very sensible, balanced and accurate overview.

That's a pleasant contrast to people that push a dogmatic opinion.

Too often the people that push dogmatic opinions are any or all of:

• not acknowledging their own failings or limitations (we all have those; the wise acknowledge them)
• basing it on some bad experiences (we all have those; the wise use them as a basis for increasing the probability of future good experiences)
• snobbery (where that is dominant, it is best to avoid such people since they don't bring out the best in people/situations)
• inverted snobbery (very difficult to deal with; such people rarely change and can be quite destructive)

[CJay]

How free from corruption are educational systems in your country? Can a graduate degree in a field or multiple degrees be trusted to be a good enough indication of somebody's skill that it can truly be called an objective measure of their skills?

I wouldn't rely solely on evidence of a degree (from a reputable and verifiable university/college) as proof of someone's ability or knowledge, same as I wouldn't suggest universities are corrupt just because some graduates are bloody useless and have little to no ability.

Experience and demonstrable skills are the only way to pick the good ones, even then, there's an LED cube somewhere in this office block that was presented as an interview piece by one graduate who is now a full time and valuable employee, I've chatted to him a few times now and during one conversation he admitted he copied pretty much all of it including the code (he had to cut the code down because it was for an Arduino with more memory than the one he used) so all it shows is that he can solder a circuit into a functional state and present it nicely.

You can, if you work hard, gain a degree in an awful lot of areas of study just by virtue of that hard work, it doesn't necessarily imbue an ability or understanding of anything outside of the reference material or indeed any interest in the subject studied, it's just a means to an end and that end is often a career because a degree opens doors that remain firmly closed if you can't show one.

[tggzzz]

[a degree is] just a means to an end and that end is often a career because a degree opens doors that remain firmly closed if you can't show one.

True, except that they can be fun to do as well!

And "because I want to" is almost the only valid reason to do a PhD.

[CJay]

[a degree is] just a means to an end and that end is often a career because a degree opens doors that remain firmly closed if you can't show one.

True, except that they can be fun to do as well!

And "because I want to" is almost the only valid reason to do a PhD.

Oh absolutely, it really should be fun and most probably will be if you have an interest and/or ability in the subject.

I do know a couple of people who have been paid to complete their PHD as part of their job, it wasn't 'required' but it was 'desirable' and opened up further career progression, indeed I have a friend who is allowed to call herself Professor because one job 'desired' PHDs, the employer paid for it and as a result of that she lectured at one well known red brick Uni, she's now moved on to another, arguably lesser, university for a *lot* more money and plenty of regular travel.

[tggzzz]

[a degree is] just a means to an end and that end is often a career because a degree opens doors that remain firmly closed if you can't show one.

True, except that they can be fun to do as well!

And "because I want to" is almost the only valid reason to do a PhD.

Oh absolutely, it really should be fun and most probably will be if you have an interest and/or ability in the subject.

I do know a couple of people who have been paid to complete their PHD as part of their job, it wasn't 'required' but it was 'desirable' and opened up further career progression, indeed I have a friend who is allowed to call herself Professor because one job 'desired' PHDs, the employer paid for it and as a result of that she lectured at one well known red brick Uni, she's now moved on to another, arguably lesser, university for a *lot* more money and plenty of regular travel.

My "almost" was because 40 years ago you needed a PhD to progress beyond a certain point in the scientific civil service. I doubt that is still true, but I haven't checked.

[hans]

Speaking from my experience in the software world...
[...]

I agree with large parts of your post.

But, atleast in Dutch universities, there is some emphasis on group collaboration on projects. But I'm afraid this is not completely driven to benefit the students, but also to ease the workload on some of the profs/PhDs/student assistants. 45 candidates for the course? Pff, what if I let them make groups of 3, only 15 project reports to read. Wow that's a lot of work saved!

Additionally some people can hide their incompetence in assignments and group work. You can team up a good coder + bad coder, both a good grade for their assignments. People can copy solutions from each other assignments, etc.

Once we had an assignment & test in a software course. Some groups were boasting they got an 8.5+ average on the assignments. They barely passed the test with a 5. There was a prominent gap from 4.4 to 5.0, because any grade <5 was a fail for the complete course, so they got the benefit of the doubt probably.

I can rage about writing code on paper tests and all, but that is primarily because of lack of convenience. In the end, it's still "writing code". People that want to go into software development should be able to read code and just understand it without tools explaining what their work does (especially embedded which sometimes a lack proper debugging tools).

And even at a graduate level, it isn't self explanatory that people have these skills. There was also a course on programming in C++, that supposedly as of "advanced" level. It started out explaining what C header files were and that C++ contains something called classes. It was dumbed down to the level for people that know what if-else and for loops are, but not much more. The aimed end level of the course was to write a project with some classes that used inheritance. "Advanced", graduate level?

On the other hand, some of the things I mentioned is also just hands-on experience, which is barely touched in graduate courses. I think hands-on experience can/should be gained outside of university, i.e. hobby projects, or if you're a willing desperate employer, on the job. Eventually you still see a difference in people that have done programming ever since they were a kid and became "infected (same goes with electronics). The people that keep doing some projects in their spare time, etc. You can find these smart people in university as well, but they are certainly a lot more rare.

I think the biggest take away for someone that finished university, is that they don't need every formula spoon fed to them. As said before, the formulas for volume/surface area of spheres/cones/etc. at a graduate level Calculus are shortcuts rather than "I need to use this formula to calculate this". We derived these 'shortcuts' by hand with volume and surface integrals. It was basically exercises 1 and 2, because they were some of the simplest shapes... the very weird shapes became much more interesting to calculate.

What value such understanding and different skill set has depends on the position and perhaps the company. Practical skills are also invaluable, and you certainly don't need university for that (look at all the self trained people around here doing amazing stuff). But for some positions, a degree is the only foot between the door you can get.

[coppice]

I've known a few good software developers who lacked a university degree, but those were the rare exceptions.  A degree did force one to be exposed to certain techniques, algorithms, and ways of thinking.  Some people got that exposure in other ways, but that was not common.

I've known quite a few good software developer without a degree, and that used to be extremely common. However, these days its much more common to find good software developers with a completely irrelevant degree that couldn't get them a job. Software seems to be a go to profession for people with degrees in things like archaeology, where there are quite a few students, but only a very few career openings. Its takes a lot of knowledge to be a flexible broadly based player in the software field, but you can become useful enough to get a basic job in a much shorter time than in most professions.

[amyk]

I'd say to mostly disregard degrees and other certifications (especially if someone has gathered a huge number of the latter) --- the only way to be sure is to practically test someone in the interview. An example of something designed by someone with a degree. And another one. The list goes on...

[coppice]

[a degree is] just a means to an end and that end is often a career because a degree opens doors that remain firmly closed if you can't show one.

True, except that they can be fun to do as well!

And "because I want to" is almost the only valid reason to do a PhD.

Quite a few people do a PhD because they want to spend their lives in academia, and a PhD is now the only route to that. Quite a few people do a PhD because they want to spend their lives in pure research, and it has become hard to get taken seriously there without a PhD (not quite so hard in engineering research, but pretty hard in pure science research, especially for life sciences).

You might say that people with those goals in life would be the kind to find a PhD appealing in itself. My experience is a lot end up trudging through a tedious PhD, with a supervisor they don't get along with, purely to get the PhD and open up opportunities beyond it.

[rstofer]

I'd say to mostly disregard degrees and other certifications (especially if someone has gathered a huge number of the latter) --- the only way to be sure is to practically test someone in the interview. An example of something designed by someone with a degree. And another one. The list goes on...

In some places you need to be very careful about 'entrance'  tests.  They need to be administered to every candidate, they can't have implied bias and a whole lot of other conditions.  They are very risky for the employer.  For example, the test uses highly technical words, in english, and the candidate isn't really proficient in english.  Unless proficiency was one of the stated qualifications, there's likely to be a problem should the candidate be rejected.  Check with an HR lawyer...

A better choice, awkward as it might be, is to have a 90 day 'probationary' term.  If the new-hire makes the grade during the first 90 days, they stay.  If not, they are shown the door.  But even in 'employment-at-will' states like California, this needs to be done carefully.  Done badly, the discharged candidate owns the company.

A wide-ranging BS session over lunch or dinner might be a better way to handle things.  Kick back, discuss things somehow related to the position and then decide.

An even better way is to rent a candidate through a body shop.  If you like their work, you hire them away.  If you don't, you send them back.  At no point were they your employee and they weren't your problem.  Just make sure they don't stay longer than 1 year.  IBM got hit with this back in the early '80s.

As to a degree:  These days you are going nowhere without one.  Unless, of course, you are truly gifted.  A graduate degree carries a lot of weight.  Everybody has a BS degree, far fewer have an MS and a very few have a PhD.  In my view, the MS is the sweet spot.  It might be as few as 31 additional units and is well worth the effort.

As to the credibility of universities:  Well, I guess I would rate Stanford above Cal State Stanislaus.  No doubt they cover the same ground in the classes but Stanford is Stanford.  Stanislaus isn't!

In Physics, I might prefer Cal Tech...  That ought to start a war!

[Simon]

[a degree is] just a means to an end and that end is often a career because a degree opens doors that remain firmly closed if you can't show one.

True, except that they can be fun to do as well!

And "because I want to" is almost the only valid reason to do a PhD.

Oh absolutely, it really should be fun and most probably will be if you have an interest and/or ability in the subject.

I do know a couple of people who have been paid to complete their PHD as part of their job, it wasn't 'required' but it was 'desirable' and opened up further career progression, indeed I have a friend who is allowed to call herself Professor because one job 'desired' PHDs, the employer paid for it and as a result of that she lectured at one well known red brick Uni, she's now moved on to another, arguably lesser, university for a *lot* more money and plenty of regular travel.

There is nothing fun about the poorly presented material in my HNC course. It is pretty obvious that degrees have value because they are degrees and "you have to have one" in a tick box approach but having knowledge is often optional. Universities that are now private companies getting another private company to set standards and mark papers are all in it for the money and it's becoming money for old rope. You make a token effort and you get a qualification, if mummy and daddy have enough money and know the right people you get to go to a historically recognized institution (where lecturers hand out exam answers beforehand) and get a better degree than ones from other institutions that are supposed to have the same value. the whole point of standards is that any degree in a subject is the same no matter where you get it, but apparently not so on the one hand we have standards but on the other one institutions degree is worth more than another's. I have no respect for BTEC and Pearsons that run the BTEC standard (or lack of) don't care about the quality or even correctness of study material. As the government has devolved the running of our schooling standards to a private company they don't care either (beleive me I have tried).

So in the name of playing the game i am studying a poorly presented course my employer put me one when what I am studying has no use to my work and there are plenty of other things of more use i would prefer to study but last time i checked there are no qualifications for can bus or other digital protocols, pcb layout, software writing on MCU's so instead in order to get a peice of paper I am studying physics with an electrical bent...... Poorly explained Laplace transforms anyone? I am only making progress by using online resources and books i have had to buy despite my employer already paying for the course that comes with it's own shambolic materials.

[A Hellene]

"There are some who grasp concepts intuitively, others who seem to be clueless but get by through brute force cramming facts in their brains for just barely long enough to regurgitate them onto an exam, after which they are lost forever.  Perhaps there are jobs for which that temporary "cramming" skill is valuable (actors remembering their lines, maybe?) but software development isn't such a job."

Used to work in industrial training, and we got a fair proportion of what I would term 'Human USB sticks' going through the courses.  Some would refuse to do the course practical work, instead just sitting there handwriting-out sections of textbooks over and over. The interesting thing was that while these 'EPROM on legs' students failed the practical work as was to be expected... most of them also got a poor mark in the written test. 

'Human USB sticks'?
'EPROM on legs'?

Very well put! Meaningful and catchy terms that I agree with but, what about this one: 'Monkeys with a Degree'?
Would it be an exaggerated one?


-George

[cdev]

"Shambolic"  what a great word.

[Simon]

"There are some who grasp concepts intuitively, others who seem to be clueless but get by through brute force cramming facts in their brains for just barely long enough to regurgitate them onto an exam, after which they are lost forever.  Perhaps there are jobs for which that temporary "cramming" skill is valuable (actors remembering their lines, maybe?) but software development isn't such a job."

Used to work in industrial training, and we got a fair proportion of what I would term 'Human USB sticks' going through the courses.  Some would refuse to do the course practical work, instead just sitting there handwriting-out sections of textbooks over and over. The interesting thing was that while these 'EPROM on legs' students failed the practical work as was to be expected... most of them also got a poor mark in the written test. 

'Human USB sticks'?
'EPROM on legs'?

Very well put! Meaningful and catchy terms that I agree with but, what about this one: 'Monkeys with a Degree'?
Would it be an exaggerated one?


-George

The problem with today's graduates as I explained earlier is that they lack problem solving skills. the term engineering basically means the exercise of cleverness to come up with novel solutions to practical problems. You can't do this by memorizing stuff. My work environment is sniffled by "we have never done that" and "best stick to what we know", it is indeed a pleasure the few occasions I get told to go away and do what is necessary usually with my favorite contractors enlisted as I/we can just do it right - does not always last for long though.

[bd139]

Agree. Every time someone whines at me at work about never doing something before and stick it to what you know they get bitchslapped back to a junior code monkey position very rapidly. Literally the only thing separating you from your competitors in any market is innovation and to do that you have to come up with original ideas and take (calculated) product risks. There’s no place for market complacency in even the most established companies.

[A Hellene]

The problem with today's graduates as I explained earlier is that they lack problem solving skills. the term engineering basically means the exercise of cleverness to come up with novel solutions to practical problems. You can't do this by memorizing stuff. My work environment is sniffled by "we have never done that" and "best stick to what we know", it is indeed a pleasure the few occasions I get told to go away and do what is necessary usually with my favorite contractors enlisted as I/we can just do it right - does not always last for long though.

Exactly, Simon! Exactly. After all, since the late Seventies it has been hypothesised (if not proved) that the product of <memory> * <critical thinking> is constant: The more of the former one someone possesses the less of the latter one also does...

But, the problem with higher education nowadays is that they do not need clever ones as the so-called education outcome; all they need is people trained to be clever enough to be finishing their tasks but not clever enough to be realising their real position in society. All they are creating is trained monkeys to be pushing the right buttons in the right order in order to receive their bananas..

This is something similar I have written a few years back:

( * ) Just look at the quality of the "engineers" the educational institutions spit out today. Their eduction is oriented rather in their marketing skills than in actual Electrical Engineering. Quoting a friend of mine, "The only engineers who get promoted to management are the ones who can be spared. The real walking disasters are the ones who think they got promoted because they were good."

And this:

In a few words, education is a widely acceptable and a desirable means of conditioning the people to be functioning in a strictly controlled fashion, under the pretext of "gaining knowledge." Two and a half millennia ago, our ancient forefathers documented in great detail these methods of creating willful bondmen, in the Allegory of the Noble Lie. Today, these methods are euphemistically called Social Engineering. Does the two and a half millennia old Allegory of The Cave (also documented by the same author) remind of our contemporary indoctrination machines called the TV and the Cinema, which the vast majority of the people globally think of as beneficial sources of news, education and entertainment?
[...]
If we are making the people smart enough to be pressing the right buttons in the right order but dumb enough for anything else, this is not education; it is conditioning. If we are making the people able to memorise anything required in order to receive paper qualifications, but also unable of thinking on their own, this is not education; it is conditioning. If we are making our pets to be doing somersaults on demand, this is not education; it is conditioning.

After all, creativity is not something that can be taught or be given; it can only be earned...

-George

[tggzzz]

This discussion is missing a key concept: to be successful a team has to have multiple "personalities" that cannot be found in a single person.

My favourite characterisations are, in no particular order, ideas man, critic, worker, finisher, chairman, communicator. In practice individuals have a primary personality, but can also double-up in a second role. Each personality has required strengths and allowable weaknesses.

If you have two critics, then everything will work but there will be nothing innovative.
If you have two ideas men, then there will be wonderful sparks, but nothing realistic.
If you have an ideas man and a critic, then you will get innovative realistic plans, but nothing more.
If you don't have a communicator then the project might get canned or nobody will buy it.
A chairman doesn't have to know anything, but does facilitate interactions between team members.
Etc, etc.

Complaints about "lack of realism" or "not innovative" are missing critical points about human beings.

[Simon]

The problem with today's graduates as I explained earlier is that they lack problem solving skills. the term engineering basically means the exercise of cleverness to come up with novel solutions to practical problems. You can't do this by memorizing stuff. My work environment is sniffled by "we have never done that" and "best stick to what we know", it is indeed a pleasure the few occasions I get told to go away and do what is necessary usually with my favorite contractors enlisted as I/we can just do it right - does not always last for long though.

Exactly, Simon! Exactly. After all, since the late Seventies it has been hypothesised (if not proved) that the product of <memory> * <critical thinking> is constant: The more of the former one someone possesses the less of the latter one also does...

But, the problem with higher education nowadays is that they do not need clever ones as the so-called education outcome; all they need is people trained to be clever enough to be finishing their tasks but not clever enough to be realising their real position in society. All they are creating is trained monkeys to be pushing the right buttons in the right order in order to receive their bananas..

This is something similar I have written a few years back:

-George
[/quote]

Quite likely. My memory is shit, which is why I am finding the qualification so hard to do because i can't memorize enough math in one go to solve a problem. Society has a strict idea about what my role should be. I once had an assessment for dyslexia that included an IQ test, I wasn't given a number but was told it was off the chart. My much used phrase these days at work is "told you so" as my judgement is never headed but i am always proven right and it is so frustrating to try and explain why something should or should not be done only to be treated like an idiot and then a long time later well after my warnings have been forgotten I am proven right. These days I have taken a don't care attitude and do as little work as possible, and i'm starting to fit in after 5 years of scorn.

[R005T3r]

Universities are only too happy to accept their money.

Depends on where you are living, however, I belive that most of the things you learn in university are just overdone to make you not pass the exam.

However, I think that instead of wasting 3 year on a course, it might be better learing a ton of other things, such as how to operate a lathe, learining another language, and so on, because it might be true that it's hard to compete whit someone who holds a degree, but it's also true that he can't compete with you if he has less experience and less perks than you have!

If you are hired by someone, that someone is looking foward to have his problem solved, not the qualifications you have. Not to mention that they want you to do a good job, or you are fired!

[Simon]

Not really, people are hired based on qualifications by people who don't understand their work....

[tggzzz]

Not really, people are hired based on qualifications by people who don't understand their work....

Only once in my career have I seen that. It was a suboptimal company.

OTOH non-standard people are often filtered out too early by clueless HR-droids.

[IanB]

Not really, people are hired based on qualifications by people who don't understand their work....

That's really not universally (or even commonly) the case. When you hire someone you need someone who can do the job and you don't want to make a mistake. So hiring decisions are made by people who do understand their work. Engineers hire engineers, accountants hire accountants, etc...

Many people here have described their hiring process, so it's not just me saying this. It seems you have had some bad experiences, but that does not mean the whole world is like that.

[Simon]

I was hired because I was cheap! And I often get thrown in my face the fact that I am not qualified. Any job offer I see for any other company demands a long list of qualifications and often experience.

[IanB]

Ah yes, but that's the opposite thing.

People may often be refused for a job because of lack of qualifications. However, that is not to say that having a certain qualification will automatically get someone hired.

[Simon]

oh no, it will be a careful balance of what their experience is and how little can they be payed, we live in a cut throat world driven by profit, and what we don't understand can't hurt us attitudes.

[tggzzz]

I was hired because I was cheap! And I often get thrown in my face the fact that I am not qualified. Any job offer I see for any other company demands a long list of qualifications and often experience.

That statement should be repeatedly presented to anybody that advocates not getting a degree because "degrees are worthless" or "engineers are idiots" or similar.

Note that degrees are neither necessary nor sufficient, and that in an ideal world people would give the appropriate weight to a degree and other evidence of capability. But if you can get a degree at the normal time, that's a good bet.

I make no comment on your specific case whatsoever, since I don't know the details.

[Simon]

Well my employer has a habit of moving people from the shop floor to the engineering office whereupon they are thrown in the deep end. Usually they spend around 6 months making small mods to drawings and 3D models so as to get the hang of the filing system and companies existing legacy stuff (like we have one section of the server for BOM's and another for drawings which is a nightmare if you come to it after the fact....... we have grown up in the last few moths and moved to BOM's on drawings driven by the drawing in turn driven by the model).

So on the one hand qualifications are not really taken into account but then in house training does not really happen either and if you want to go further than the boss is comfortable with because "best stick with what we know" the qualifications or lack of is brought up, at 50+ he remembers the days when going to university was about learning not about being a factory for harvesting money and dishing out certificates for low levels of attainment. these days the wealth of information available and things like this forum do slightly take the edge off a qualification if one is intelligent and can get on with it anyway.

As i have often explained we have in the past used an electronic subcontractor who for less that believable prices offered full product design only to present us with work from unintelligent degree holders that I assume were also hired because they were cheap. fortunately for my employer i am intelligent (above average if i believe a test I was given as part of a disability assessment) and was able to make good the mess they made and I'm talking stupid things like a lack of bypass capacitors coupled with a board layout that crashes a uC when you PWM 2amps to the load. Or just being able to write code that did what was asked but code that did what they thought was right when they actually did not understand how the system worked or care and by system I mean the basics of air-conditioning so me with my rudimentary C skills had to fix the code.

We have a guy that has just been brought up to the office and my boss thinks that he can offload some of my work onto him. So he was expected to redesign the wiring of a past system he knows nothing about whilst changing all of the archaic relay based boxes and crude electronics that is now gone from our company with what we now use bearing in mind how it all works. Never going to happen. the guy knows nothing about electronics or electrics, sure he can follow my instructions mostly if I need a little bit of wiring doing like put "x" meters of "x" gauge wire into "x" size pin and fit in "x" location of "x" connector. Sure i could train the guy but then I'd not be doing my job either and I'm not trained or qualified for that matter apparently so they can forget that. For example how will he know which pairs of wires in the loom to have twisted and which to screen.

They have been nice enough to put me on a HNC course (1st year of uni) but this will not teach me what is required to design military grade wiring looms and interact with a subcontractor that uses can communications between devices so I should learning the CAN software and CAN inside out but they are not official qualifications for that...... so I'm learning advanced physics that whilst useful is no good on the job really.

What they should be doing is getting someone in that is qualified AND capable or someone that is newly qualified and intelligent with a view to training them in the practical side of things knowing that they have the theory to understand it all.

[tggzzz]

My comments below are only tangentially relevant to the thread, since they are specific to your case. Nonetheless I hope they have wider applicability.

So on the one hand qualifications are not really taken into account but then in house training does not really happen either and if you want to go further than the boss is comfortable with because "best stick with what we know" the qualifications or lack of is brought up, at 50+ he remembers the days when going to university was about learning not about being a factory for harvesting money and dishing out certificates for low levels of attainment. these days the wealth of information available and things like this forum do slightly take the edge off a qualification if one is intelligent and can get on with it anyway.

Previously the generic skill was to know how to gather and extract the necessary information from the few available sources. Nowadays it is the opposite: knowing how to quickly ignore 99% of the available information sources. A problem is that without a good solid theoretical understanding, it can be difficult to spot which sources are insufficient. The same is true for salesmen's claims, where they knowingly don't state where the pitfalls are to be found.

Besides, for most of my engineering career there have been very few available sources because we were pushing the known boundaries. Hence the "old skills" remained vital.

(I hate stackexchange, because it is deliberately designed to cater for "which button do I press" questions. This forum avoids that trap.)

As i have often explained we have in the past used an electronic subcontractor who for less that believable prices offered full product design only to present us with work from unintelligent degree holders that I assume were also hired because they were cheap.

Things never change.

When I was in contract r&D in the 80s, clients would occasionally say they could get it done cheaper elsewhere. Our standard response was to smile and remind them "pay peanuts, get monkeys".

They have been nice enough to put me on a HNC course (1st year of uni) but this will not teach me what is required to design military grade wiring looms and interact with a subcontractor that uses can communications between devices so I should learning the CAN software and CAN inside out but they are not official qualifications for that...... so I'm learning advanced physics that whilst useful is no good on the job really.

An HNC should not teach you those skills. Those skill are far too specific and should be part of a training course.

The theoretical knowledge will help you understand the limits of the possible and where you are being technically bullshitted.

What they should be doing is getting someone in that is qualified AND capable or someone that is newly qualified and intelligent with a view to training them in the practical side of things knowing that they have the theory to understand it all.

Apprenticeships and "polytechnics" are unfashionable, and that is highly regrettable. "Merging" unis and polys was a bad mistake in my opinion. Vive la difference!

[Simon]

They have been nice enough to put me on a HNC course (1st year of uni) but this will not teach me what is required to design military grade wiring looms and interact with a subcontractor that uses can communications between devices so I should learning the CAN software and CAN inside out but they are not official qualifications for that...... so I'm learning advanced physics that whilst useful is no good on the job really.

An HNC should not teach you those skills. Those skill are far too specific and should be part of a training course.

The theoretical knowledge will help you understand the limits of the possible and where you are being technically bullshitted.

What they should be doing is getting someone in that is qualified AND capable or someone that is newly qualified and intelligent with a view to training them in the practical side of things knowing that they have the theory to understand it all.

Apprenticeships and "polytechnics" are unfashionable, and that is highly regrettable. "Merging" unis and polys was a bad mistake in my opinion. Vive la difference!

Yes I am aware of that but this is the big pitfall. We are a small company really, I am the sole electrical person and therefore I have limited time. I am doing the HNC on my own time. I was the one that had to pick the HNC as my boss did not know what to have me study but said that if i was willing to take the qualifications they would pay bearing in mind the amount of electrical work I was starting to do. This however meant that I am doing it on my own time and with difficulty using material that looks like it was written by someone who just read a book or is not very good at explaining things so I am reading another book to fill the gap. However the HNC won't help me in many aspects of what work do. In my opinion they would benefit more from "higher level" knowledge like a working knowledge of CAN bus because we use it in our products. That I am aware of there is no "degree" in CAN bus. Recently my boss came and talked to me about being trained in IPC standards as we have had failures on subcontractors products and he is concerned about stuff I or another subcontractor that works closely with us may be doing. Now that is more useful to the company than the high level physics of the HNC. But for my struggles with the maths I can see the benefit for ME of the HNC, but not to my employer.

It was only this year my boss figured out it might be useful to take me with him on a trip to a customer to resolve the electrical maters. In the past he had thought sitting there describing the fault to me on a vehicle i had no knowledge of would fix it. the result was that i was busum buddies with the customers electrician in hours and he was more open to my suggestions and we gelled even more when I told him i didn't have a degree because he no longer felt threatened and was willing to accept my help.

[tggzzz]

It was only this year my boss figured out it might be useful to take me with him on a trip to a customer to resolve the electrical maters. In the past he had thought sitting there describing the fault to me on a vehicle i had no knowledge of would fix it. the result was that i was busum buddies with the customers electrician in hours and he was more open to my suggestions and we gelled even more when I told him i didn't have a degree because he no longer felt threatened and was willing to accept my help.

That's normally the case.

Within well-functioning large companies one function of management is to figure out which minions ought to be talking to each other, introduce them, and get the hell out of the way. The same is true, but can be more problematic, with relations between two SMEs.

"Send reinforcements, we're going to advance" => "send three and fourpence, we're going to a dance" is a traditional problem. A classic joke is:

How Shit Happens

In the Beginning was The Plan
And then came the Assumptions
And the Assumptions were without form
And the Plan was completely without substance
And the darkness was upon the face of the Workers
And the Workers spoke amongst themselves, saying "It is a crock of shit, and it stinketh."
And the Workers went unto their Supervisors and sayeth, "It is a pail of dung and none may abide the odor thereof."
And the Supervisors went unto their Managers and sayeth unto them, "It is a container of excrement and it is very strong, such that none may abide by it."
And the Managers went unto their Directors and sayeth, "It is a vessel of fertilizer, and none may abide its strength."
And the Directors spoke among themselves, saying one to another, "It contains that which aids plant growth, and it is very strong."
And the Directors went unto the Vice Presidents and sayeth unto them, "It promotes growth and is very powerful."
And the Vice Presidents went unto the President and sayeth unto him, "This new Plan will actively promote the growth and efficiency of this Company, and in these Areas in particular."
And the President looked upon The Plan, And saw that it was good, and The Plan became Policy.
And this is how Shit Happens.

[Simon]

The problem is that being small and not understanding that we are actually supplying electrical systems just because there is an amount of braketry so it gets thought of too much in mechanical terms. typically my boss who is the technical director goes out with an air con expert to commission a system. the result is that he is dealing with local contractors on things he does not always understand and often I get a call every 30 minutes relating to electrical things. while it may appear to be the most efficient way with low resources it actually solve nothing to "phone home" to a guy that can't see the problem or put a meter on it. And yes when a technical director talks to a local electrician the guy knows that firstly the technical director knows nothing about electrics and secondly that he is a director so he won't admit to anything or want to appear to not know what he is doing. Let him talk to "another electrician" and he will ease up and allow you to help.

fortunately back here my boss has learnt to let me and the subcontractor we use get on with it without interfering as he has learnt we can be trusted to come up with the best solution with the aims of the company in mind, and we are much faster and more efficient if we are left to get on with it.

The project I am working on now is something that my boss had virtually no hand in and just had to accept my decisions. I am working on it with a fellow mechanical engineer that sits right behind me and it is great. We can just turn around and discuss it when needed and make minor adjustments and optimizations as we go. I tell him i need space for my PCB he asks how much, I state a figure, we look at the mechanics, he plays around and proposed an envelope and we agree, mean time i can give him a 3D model of my PCB so he can see exactly what I am putting in. We need to mount the board while protecting it from vibration so can both go over potential solutions as we are both aware of the mechanical's of the project, we have gone from fully potting the thing and making the assembly hard to an easy solution, but this is the first time two people have been left to get on with it without being micro managed, they trust him as he is good an experienced, and don't have a flipping clue what i am doing.....

[coppice]

Apprenticeships and "polytechnics" are unfashionable, and that is highly regrettable. "Merging" unis and polys was a bad mistake in my opinion. Vive la difference!

If you are going to use wording like that in a global forum it needs boldly prefaced with "UK", as polytechnic means very different things in different countries. Some of the highest tier colleges are called polytechnics in some countries, while in the UK it was a term for colleges somewhere between the technical colleges (craft schools) and the universities. It is most unfortunate that they have gone. The UK has almost wiped out its tertiary education for craft and technician level work, persuing a poorly though through goal of getting huge numbers into university. This goal had more to do with creating a fake reduction in youth unemployment, than any meaningful goal of improving the individuals or the country.

[tggzzz]

Apprenticeships and "polytechnics" are unfashionable, and that is highly regrettable. "Merging" unis and polys was a bad mistake in my opinion. Vive la difference!

If you are going to use wording like that in a global forum it needs boldly prefaced with "UK", as polytechnic means very different things in different countries. Some of the highest tier colleges are called polytechnics in some countries, while in the UK it was a term for colleges somewhere between the technical colleges (craft schools) and the universities.

That's a fair point, but it was clearly discussing someone's experience in the UK.

It is most unfortunate that they have gone. The UK has almost wiped out its tertiary education for craft and technician level work, persuing a poorly though through goal of getting huge numbers into university. This goal had more to do with creating a fake reduction in youth unemployment, than any meaningful goal of improving the individuals or the country.

I don't quite agree with that. In my view it was reducing youth unemployment plus academic snobbery, and that appears a sufficient explanation.

Since there is still a vast difference between different UK universities and courses, it isn't clear to me how much the technician level work has been removed. I do dislike any merging of doctors with nurses, since they have complementary skills. I do dislike the pushing everybody to be a doctor - since being a paramedic or nurse suits some people better.

[Simon]

unfortunately in the UK university and education have become both political and private profit making tools. One government indeed sought to hide the unemployment figures by getting everyone into university. Education in the UK has long been a class war tool as is much evident in the UK sitcom "yes minister" where the senior civil servant looks down on his own minister based on the universities they attended and jokes (that are probably closer the truth than admitted to) about the quality of roads leading to certain parts of the country based on which part of the country high ranking civil servants went to university in.

I was just the other day told of a "college" where the rich can stuff their not so clever kids for £40K per year and then obtain automatic entry to top universities. This is I am afraid what drives inverse snobbery and a lack of respect for degrees by those who don't understand that there are degrees and degrees. but it should not be like that, that a degree from one place is worth more than another. but it is like that and those that have a reputation for good degrees no doubt guard it  and select their students by having high fees.

Despite the Victorian times being long over we still have in the UK a strong class partitioning that albeit falling apart at the bottom is still strong in higher places, and cost of admission to a university that in turn guarantees admission to certain jobs and incomes is a well cherished system by some. You then up in situations with people in high places who have very little practical knowledge or experience because at a certain level jobs are dished out in the "old boys network".

What is left from this tattered mess is many "universities" having to self fund by attracting students that will go to the university that will "get them by" so standards have fallen and the administering body of those standards is a private company that makes a fee for every certificate given out and does not really care for the quality of the material.

There have been arguments about school grading systems and grade inflation but basically what i have described above is simply grade inflation but in an environment where it is "too polite to talk of grades". There was a massive row when they wanted to change the marking system half way through the year as it meant some school students would be say 1/2 a grade worse off because it's all about the numbers scored in a rigid system that must be played and it's no surprise children emerge from school and university for that matter with no ability for critical/analytical thinking because all their life they have been taught to pass the test instead of solve a problem.

[coppice]

It is most unfortunate that they have gone. The UK has almost wiped out its tertiary education for craft and technician level work, persuing a poorly though through goal of getting huge numbers into university. This goal had more to do with creating a fake reduction in youth unemployment, than any meaningful goal of improving the individuals or the country.

I don't quite agree with that. In my view it was reducing youth unemployment plus academic snobbery, and that appears a sufficient explanation.

I'm not sure academic snobbery is quite the right angle. The big deal to me was that in the 80s, when Japan was doing really well, there was a mantra in the UK that Japan put 18% of its youth through university while the UK only put a few percent through university. This totally ignored what the word university might mean in those countries. It appears Japan put about 18% of its youth through some kind of tertiary education. The UK put about 15% of its youth through some kind of tertiary education, when you include all the day release courses and other non-full time tertiary education. So, the UK wasn't doing as well for its youth, but it wasn't that far away from Japan. The response to the mantra was to turn most of the colleges in the UK into universities. There are now >350 degree awarding places in the UK, which is a pretty big number for a country of <60M people. It leads them to market themselves globally on a growing scale, because they can't maintain good academic standards simply by recruiting more students from UK schools. They would have to accept people with poorer grades in their A levels to do that. You can accept students with better grades if your pool of potential students is expanded. The downside is you can't fail too many people who are paying you lots of money for their courses. Its hard to have solid academic standards when you've become an industry with the motivations that implies.

Since there is still a vast difference between different UK universities and courses, it isn't clear to me how much the technician level work has been removed. I do dislike any merging of doctors with nurses, since they have complementary skills. I do dislike the pushing everybody to be a doctor - since being a paramedic or nurse suits some people better.

I don't understand the use of "still" here. In the 70s there wasn't a massive difference between places tagged university. There was a robust system to prevent the weaker universities awarding watered down degrees. Sure Oxford, Cambridge, UCL, Imperial College, and a few others were more prestigious than the remainder. However, people first asked if you had a 1st or 2nd, and then they asked where you studied. These days the first question is where you studied, and a degree from many places seems barely worth the paper its printed on.

From what I have seen the choices for learning basic craft skills, like construction, have massively contracted. So many of the well run technical colleges that used to run solid craft courses have become universities. Universities don't do craft skills. I don't think anyone is trying to merge doctors with nurses. The only change I've seen is that nurses still study what they always studied, but at the end their academic qualification is now termed a degree.

The key bad result from the current system is the government can't afford to put so many people through 3 or 4 year full time courses, so the cost has been pushed onto students or their families at a time when UK incomes are falling. When 2 or 3% of the people with the best academic results from school, plus a similar number of possibly less able people with plenty of money, went to university in the UK the government could afford the bill. Everyone had their tuition paid, and students from poorer families were given living expenses. People generally walked away from their education without debt, which is a critically important thing for a healthy society.

When I was a kid (1960s) the centre of London was littered with college age backpackers in the summer. I believe most major capitals were the same. Now you don't see many backpackers. People start at university already thinking about how they are going to pay their education debt back. They aren't thinking in broader terms. They aren't trying to do original things. They lack the financial flexibility to be innovative. People are reporting more and more that innovation is slowing. What could possibly be the cause?

[Simon]

Unfortunately in the Uk we all expect our free services while admiring those that dodge tax and saying, well if i had that sort of money I'd do the same. As a country on the one hand government is wanting to spend less while collecting less tax, we are being forced down the road of privatization in everything, don't like paying taxes? sure we will reduce them but you will no longer have your safety nets or the services that just need providing like education that maybe are not profit making but have been cut off and told to stand on their own two legs and basically left to run like businesses. So when you do have so many universities having to self fund guess how they attract students........

[tggzzz]

There are now >350 degree awarding places in the UK, which is a pretty big number for a country of <60M people. It leads them to market themselves globally on a growing scale, because they can't maintain good academic standards simply by recruiting more students from UK schools. They would have to accept people with poorer grades in their A levels to do that. You can accept students with better grades if your pool of potential students is expanded. The downside is you can't fail too many people who are paying you lots of money for their courses. Its hard to have solid academic standards when you've become an industry with the motivations that implies.

There's always been the motivation to award higher grades; that's why the "levelling" you mention below existed. Introducing money does highlight and exacerbate the problem.

Brexit is going to be  a crunch point for overseas students; currently many of their fees are paid for by the (European) governments.

Since there is still a vast difference between different UK universities and courses, it isn't clear to me how much the technician level work has been removed. I do dislike any merging of doctors with nurses, since they have complementary skills. I do dislike the pushing everybody to be a doctor - since being a paramedic or nurse suits some people better.

I don't understand the use of "still" here. In the 70s there wasn't a massive difference between places tagged university. There was a robust system to prevent the weaker universities awarding watered down degrees. Sure Oxford, Cambridge, UCL, Imperial College, and a few others were more prestigious than the remainder. However, people first asked if you had a 1st or 2nd, and then they asked where you studied. These days the first question is where you studied, and a degree from many places seems barely worth the paper its printed on.

There was a significant difference between unis and courses in the 70s, speaking as someone that was actively involved then. There some were electronics courses that I profoundly disagreed with even then, e.g. having to choose telecoms vs something else before applying!

Nowadays the generic question is "Russell group or other", modulated by specific cases and knowledge, e.g. UWE for robotics and aeronautical.

The key bad result from the current system is the government can't afford to put so many people through 3 or 4 year full time courses, so the cost has been pushed onto students or their families at a time when UK incomes are falling. When 2 or 3% of the people with the best academic results from school, plus a similar number of possibly less able people with plenty of money, went to university in the UK the government could afford the bill. Everyone had their tuition paid, and students from poorer families were given living expenses. People generally walked away from their education without debt, which is a critically important thing for a healthy society.

When I was a kid (1960s) the centre of London was littered with college age backpackers in the summer. I believe most major capitals were the same. Now you don't see many backpackers. People start at university already thinking about how they are going to pay their education debt back. They aren't thinking in broader terms. They aren't trying to do original things. They lack the financial flexibility to be innovative. People are reporting more and more that innovation is slowing. What could possibly be the cause?

I thought a silver lining to introducing fees would be that people would consider the usefulness of a specific qualification before starting. It seems many people aren't that foresighted, and have been taken in by the glossy advertising. Curiously foreign students seem more clued up, if you believe some of the statements about the proportion of people on STEM degrees.

As for backpacking, I disagree. I backpacked around S India with my daughter when she was 14-16, she self-financed herself around Australia for 6 months between school and uni, and today is <10km from Ankor Wat My feet are itching.

[coppice]

Brexit is going to be  a crunch point for overseas students; currently many of their fees are paid for by the (European) governments.

UK universities have been stepping up their marketing in Asia for a long time. They have also been expanding collaboration with Asian universities, or setting up campuses in Asia (e.g the Nottingham University campus in China). It feels like they are stepping this up, and brexit might be the reason.

There was a significant difference between unis and courses in the 70s, speaking as someone that was actively involved then. There some were electronics courses that I profoundly disagreed with even then, e.g. having to choose telecoms vs something else before applying!

It was much more common in the 70s for courses to only narrow at the end of the first year. For example, we only had to choose between electrical and electronic engineering at the end of the first year, and only at the end of the second year did we really start to narrow down to specific areas, like digital or comms. When our daughter was looking for biology degree courses 3 years ago I was really puzzled by their titles. At 18 she knew she wanted to study biology. She also knew she was interested in biology at the microscopic rather than macroscopic level. She also knew that genetics and neuroscience really interested her. That's a more focussed view of interests than most 18 year olds have, yet even that wasn't focussed enough to select between the available course options. One university had 3 subtly differently worded course titles in the area of neuroscience, and the blurb explaining them gave us little idea what would really be different in their focus.

Nowadays the generic question is "Russell group or other", modulated by specific cases and knowledge, e.g. UWE for robotics and aeronautical.

The better education agents in Asia tend to advise potential students that if a college isn't in the Russell Group they should question whether its worth the cost of studying in the UK. Most of the agents are happy to place anyone anywhere for a buck.

I thought a silver lining to introducing fees would be that people would consider the usefulness of a specific qualification before starting. It seems many people aren't that foresighted, and have been taken in by the glossy advertising. Curiously foreign students seem more clued up, if you believe some of the statements about the proportion of people on STEM degrees.

In an age when ads for clerical jobs ask for a degree, it becomes a baseline that even people of clerical job ability levels feel the need to have. The content of the course may be as irrelevant to the student as it is to performing the job on offer. People travelling to the UK to study probably have loftier expectations of what they might get out it, even if its just a chance to improve their English. Good English, studied in the UK, can still be a very marketable ability in many parts of the world.

As for backpacking, I disagree. I backpacked around S India with my daughter when she was 14-16, she self-financed herself around Australia for 6 months between school and uni, and today is <10km from Ankor Wat My feet are itching.

That sounds like a rather different class of backpacking than I was referring to. If you travelled around southern India more than 10 or 15 years ago, you might find it interesting to go there today. So much has changed. On the other hand, if you went there recently, you've missed out. 

[Simon]

For some reason the idea of studying in the UK hold some charm for people around the world who think we are still ruled by queen victoria........ people easily forget how outdated the view of the ignorant in other countries is of the UK.

The titles and blurbs about my course make no sense. "analytical methods for engineers" turned out to be A level maths, I thought it would about measurements and tolerances etc. The modules have a video that is supposed to enthuse you and a guy on them talking about physics like it's a fashionable item of clothing, it's pathetic how commercialist it all is.

[tggzzz]

There was a significant difference between unis and courses in the 70s, speaking as someone that was actively involved then. There some were electronics courses that I profoundly disagreed with even then, e.g. having to choose telecoms vs something else before applying!

It was much more common in the 70s for courses to only narrow at the end of the first year. For example, we only had to choose between electrical and electronic engineering at the end of the first year, and only at the end of the second year did we really start to narrow down to specific areas, like digital or comms. When our daughter was looking for biology degree courses 3 years ago I was really puzzled by their titles. At 18 she knew she wanted to study biology. She also knew she was interested in biology at the microscopic rather than macroscopic level. She also knew that genetics and neuroscience really interested her. That's a more focussed view of interests than most 18 year olds have, yet even that wasn't focussed enough to select between the available course options. One university had 3 subtly differently worded course titles in the area of neuroscience, and the blurb explaining them gave us little idea what would really be different in their focus.

Good for her (and you!). I chose a course (Southampton University) that gave a good and detailed curriculum in the prospectus. That meant I could see it was not only wide enough but also covered topics I knew I ought to know such as Fourier Transforms.

There was minor specialisation in the 2nd year, and significant in the final year.

If I was starting again, I would probably choose life sciences - for the same reasons I chose electronics+computing.

Good English, studied in the UK, can still be a very marketable ability in many parts of the world.

So it seems. I suppose it is might be summed up as "if all else fails, try TEFL as a career". No doubt that is far too patronising and too cynical.

As for backpacking, I disagree. I backpacked around S India with my daughter when she was 14-16, she self-financed herself around Australia for 6 months between school and uni, and today is <10km from Ankor Wat My feet are itching.

That sounds like a rather different class of backpacking than I was referring to. If you travelled around southern India more than 10 or 15 years ago, you might find it interesting to go there today. So much has changed. On the other hand, if you went there recently, you've missed out. 

I first went in 1981, including a 48hr train journey from Trivandrum to Bombay where I was listed as "Sri tggzzz" on a sign glued to the outside of the train. I also saw real literal red tape in Bombay VT.

When we went, she was able to horrify her schoolfriends by telling them that we landed, ate, caught an overnight train, got off at 04:30 and walked to find a hotel room to crash. Gave her a certain independence and self-confidence that I've "regretted" ever since ;}

We last went ~10years ago (gulp). What's changed?

[coppice]

For some reason the idea of studying in the UK hold some charm for people around the world who think we are still ruled by queen victoria........ people easily forget how outdated the view of the ignorant in other countries is of the UK.

Most foreigners are quite pragmatic about why they study in the UK. Huge numbers of people want an education in English, for obvious reasons. They prefer that be in an English speaking country, as they expect better English standards there. Many people were blocked from getting a US student visa after 9/11, and went to the UK instead. The US still hasn't fully relaxed the weird restrictions they put in place at that time (why were so many Chinese people suddenly being denied a visa to study in the US after middle eastern muslims attacked the US?). If they do, there will probably be less people choosing the UK, and the UK will need to compete on value for money.

The titles and blurbs about my course make no sense. "analytical methods for engineers" turned out to be A level maths, I thought it would about measurements and tolerances etc.

I would expect a course called "analytical methods for engineers" to be applied maths, and be puzzled if it strayed far from that.

[coppice]

That sounds like a rather different class of backpacking than I was referring to. If you travelled around southern India more than 10 or 15 years ago, you might find it interesting to go there today. So much has changed. On the other hand, if you went there recently, you've missed out. 

I first went in 1981, including a 48hr train journey from Trivandrum to Bombay where I was listed as "Sri tggzzz" on a sign glued to the outside of the train. I also saw real literal red tape in Bombay VT.

When we went, she was able to horrify her schoolfriends by telling them that we landed, ate, caught an overnight train, got off at 04:30 and walked to find a hotel room to crash. Gave her a certain independence and self-confidence that I've "regretted" ever since ;}

We last went ~10years ago (gulp). What's changed?

There are lots of roads (ones with a surface other than mud), airports, hotels, etc. that are quite recent additions. Travelling south of Bangalore is a trvial exercise now. Its not an adventure any more.

[Simon]

I would expect a course called "analytical methods for engineers" to be applied maths, and be puzzled if it strayed far from that.

Even the blurb did not clearly mention maths, they managed to write a few lines without actually saying what the course contents was.

[cdev]

Indian universities are hoping to pick up a lot of students from Western countries as a benefit from globalization. State provided subsidies (which are supposed to be temporary, serving as a bridge of sorts) that might not take a student very far in a Western country might be adequate, at least at first, to pay for an engineering education in an Indian university. One big plus is that classes are likely given in English. This could mean that students could get free tuition at Indian schools instead of ending up hugely in debt.

In a hypothetical economic downturn caused by the job losses caused by globalization, they could then find themselves priced out of their local job markets by debts just as average wages were falling, unable to take those jobs. Lacking the means to work at lower wages because of heir huge debts, they would likely end up defaulting on their loans en masse. This is likely a big concern that getting one's education overseas might prevent.

Also getting an education overseas would be a good way of seeing the world through a different perspective, although its debatable if it is a more desirable or realistic one as some would argue. (The alternative to standrds falling in developed countries is stadards rising in developing countries) My question is, are these other schools good enough to be considered the equals of other better known schools in the developed countries, (as they are required to be by WTO GATS Article 1:4 for the purposes of awarding subcontracting contracts to foreign services firms, which hope to take up the great many jobs which will must be privatized and put up for international bidding due to he same rules, in the quasi-public and public sectors). Also, schools in some developing countries have a reputation for high levels of corruption. Is this true?


The potential windfalls they might see accrue from the opening of the Western subsidized services markets to their providers of various services is why India is pushing hard that longstanding rules allegedly requiring public benefits paid in committed service sectors be portable to commercial vendors when commercial interests are involved in a service sector at any level, be enforced by the WTO, (via a new Trade Facilitation Agreement or "TFS" on services)

The 22 year old WTO rules requiring minimally trade restrictive policies that applies to subsidized services does not apply to free services, or services paid completely out of pocket. So students or patients who spend their own money, would not have any restrictions on where or how their money was spent. Countries (for example, primary health care in Canada) that have kept a service sector completely noncommercial could keep their free services under that agreement also, at least in theory. (although their exemptions are so narrow it may be difficult in practice)

That sounds like a rather different class of backpacking than I was referring to. If you travelled around southern India more than 10 or 15 years ago, you might find it interesting to go there today. So much has changed. On the other hand, if you went there recently, you've missed out. 

I first went in 1981, including a 48hr train journey from Trivandrum to Bombay where I was listed as "Sri tggzzz" on a sign glued to the outside of the train. I also saw real literal red tape in Bombay VT.

When we went, she was able to horrify her schoolfriends by telling them that we landed, ate, caught an overnight train, got off at 04:30 and walked to find a hotel room to crash. Gave her a certain independence and self-confidence that I've "regretted" ever since ;}

We last went ~10years ago (gulp). What's changed?

There are lots of roads (ones with a surface other than mud), airports, hotels, etc. that are quite recent additions. Travelling south of Bangalore is a trvial exercise now. Its not an adventure any more.

[coppice]

I would expect a course called "analytical methods for engineers" to be applied maths, and be puzzled if it strayed far from that.

Even the blurb did not clearly mention maths, they managed to write a few lines without actually saying what the course contents was.

How can it possibly be analytical if its not packed with maths?

[Simon]

I would expect a course called "analytical methods for engineers" to be applied maths, and be puzzled if it strayed far from that.

Even the blurb did not clearly mention maths, they managed to write a few lines without actually saying what the course contents was.

How can it possibly be analytical if its not packed with maths?

I thought it would be more practical and sure some maths but more along the lines of collecting measurements and treating them statistically and error analysis, instead if was stuff like advanced integration and differentiation. Like i said even the short blurb actually avoided the contents of the course

[Simon]

Very topically the following program just came on talking about university: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09gh5hr

they increased the fees from 3000 to 9000, I remember the government claiming that they only expected the best to increase fees, of course they all did. In the program you will hear David Cameron our last prime minister saying that with increased fees there would be more places, so yep everyone goes to uni, including those who perhaps are not suited, and who wants to fail their course? and so down comes the standards so that everyone can "pass". There is a lot of talk in that program about uni marketing and money, products, investment, debt, not much talk of the quality of the education.

I have a  friend studying at Coventry, it's £7000 a year. He came round for some help as he is doing an electrical/mechanical HNC, he showed me a mock exam he was attempting, it was all that lovely mesh/node analysis stuff, just what I had done but unlike me it was in very simple DC not AC with complex numbers. His ability to even write out the equations was poor and he lacks the math skills i had learned in my "analytical methods for engineers". the questions were very easy and the hardest one in the mock was unsurprisingly also in the actual test that had a 40% pass rate. He got 57%, when he left my house I felt he was still quite confused...

[CJay]

they increased the fees from 3000 to 9000, I remember the government claiming that they only expected the best to increase fees, of course they all did

It priced me out of obtaining a degree, I was about to sign up for an OU degree when that happened, almost immediately the OU increased their prices, making it impossible for me to study and work, it seems if I want a degree the only way to do it now is to be a benefits claimant or earn below the threshold for payments to begin, it was affordable before abnd would have been a net benefit to my employer and my career but now, on a purely financial level, it's just not feasible.

I would dearly love to get a degree but I will have to wait until I retire and then study as a silver student. Which benefits nobody as the money I'll spend will be purely an ego trip.

I have a  friend studying at Coventry, it's £7000 a year. He came round for some help as he is doing an electrical/mechanical HNC, he showed me a mock exam he was attempting, it was all that lovely mesh/node analysis stuff, just what I had done but unlike me it was in very simple DC not AC with complex numbers. His ability to even write out the equations was poor and he lacks the math skills i had learned in my "analytical methods for engineers". the questions were very easy and the hardest one in the mock was unsurprisingly also in the actual test that had a 40% pass rate. He got 57%, when he left my house I felt he was still quite confused...

I have family who went to uni, one (alright, on my ex partner's side) dropped out after two years and Student loans are still chasing me as, unknown to me, I was somehow named on her loan (yes, it's fraud, that's another story entirely), the 'degree' she was doing was 'tourism' which would seem to be an utter BS qualification and totally useless other than as a way for a university to rinse 27,000 out of students.

The value of a university education has been diluted so far by such BS courses as to make most degrees less than a doctorate pretty much worthless and yet, by some amazing coincidence, all degrees cost pretty much the same per year, regardless of how good or bad the course.

A cynical person might begin to suspect it's just a way of keeping university staff in cushy jobs.

[coppice]

I would expect a course called "analytical methods for engineers" to be applied maths, and be puzzled if it strayed far from that.

Even the blurb did not clearly mention maths, they managed to write a few lines without actually saying what the course contents was.

How can it possibly be analytical if its not packed with maths?

I thought it would be more practical and sure some maths but more along the lines of collecting measurements and treating them statistically and error analysis, instead if was stuff like advanced integration and differentiation. Like i said even the short blurb actually avoided the contents of the course

Its sounds like you are confusing "analytical methods" with "methods of analysis". They aren't the same thing at all.

[bd139]

they increased the fees from 3000 to 9000, I remember the government claiming that they only expected the best to increase fees, of course they all did

It priced me out of obtaining a degree, I was about to sign up for an OU degree when that happened, almost immediately the OU increased their prices, making it impossible for me to study and work, it seems if I want a degree the only way to do it now is to be a benefits claimant or earn below the threshold for payments to begin, it was affordable before abnd would have been a net benefit to my employer and my career but now, on a purely financial level, it's just not feasible.

I would dearly love to get a degree but I will have to wait until I retire and then study as a silver student. Which benefits nobody as the money I'll spend will be purely an ego trip.

I have a  friend studying at Coventry, it's £7000 a year. He came round for some help as he is doing an electrical/mechanical HNC, he showed me a mock exam he was attempting, it was all that lovely mesh/node analysis stuff, just what I had done but unlike me it was in very simple DC not AC with complex numbers. His ability to even write out the equations was poor and he lacks the math skills i had learned in my "analytical methods for engineers". the questions were very easy and the hardest one in the mock was unsurprisingly also in the actual test that had a 40% pass rate. He got 57%, when he left my house I felt he was still quite confused...

I have family who went to uni, one (alright, on my ex partner's side) dropped out after two years and Student loans are still chasing me as, unknown to me, I was somehow named on her loan (yes, it's fraud, that's another story entirely), the 'degree' she was doing was 'tourism' which would seem to be an utter BS qualification and totally useless other than as a way for a university to rinse 27,000 out of students.

The value of a university education has been diluted so far by such BS courses as to make most degrees less than a doctorate pretty much worthless and yet, by some amazing coincidence, all degrees cost pretty much the same per year, regardless of how good or bad the course.

A cynical person might begin to suspect it's just a way of keeping university staff in cushy jobs.

Don't even mention SLC. I had 17 years of trouble with those turd blossoms. Had to small claims them to get 6 months of overpayments back they had docked from my PAYE due to being too damn stupid to send the right notifications out and handle it properly. They didn't even reply to the claim and it was awarded. Then a cheque turned up with the wrong value on it. It was out by £18 but I decided it wasn't worth arguing and cashed it.

One comment popped into my head yesterday that my tutor said to me at university: "education is a privilege" which says it all.

[Simon]

As mentioned on the Radio 4 program people are taking degrees as a gateway to a good job, so basically we are living in the elitist society some politicians strive for where you have, have and have not's, never mind the "not have paid for what they had".

[CJay]

As mentioned on the Radio 4 program people are taking degrees as a gateway to a good job, so basically we are living in the elitist society some politicians strive for where you have, have and have not's, never mind the "not have paid for what they had".

Even a degree doesn't guarantee you a good job, all that's happened is that the goalposts have moved and a degree has become the entry level qualification instead of A levels or GCSEs, there are companies that won't hire anyone without a degree which is why the proliferation of BS degrees like tourism etc.

[Simon]

As mentioned on the Radio 4 program people are taking degrees as a gateway to a good job, so basically we are living in the elitist society some politicians strive for where you have, have and have not's, never mind the "not have paid for what they had".

Even a degree doesn't guarantee you a good job, all that's happened is that the goalposts have moved and a degree has become the entry level qualification instead of A levels or GCSEs, there are companies that won't hire anyone without a degree which is why the proliferation of BS degrees like tourism etc.

Yep which is why i setup my own company, no customer asks me what my degree is, just how much!

[cdev]

they increased the fees from 3000 to 9000, I remember the government claiming that they only expected the best to increase fees, of course they all did

It priced me out of obtaining a degree, I was about to sign up for an OU degree when that happened, almost immediately the OU increased their prices, making it impossible for me to study and work, it seems if I want a degree the only way to do it now is to be a benefits claimant or earn below the threshold for payments to begin, it was affordable before abnd would have been a net benefit to my employer and my career but now, on a purely financial level, it's just not feasible.

I would dearly love to get a degree but I will have to wait until I retire and then study as a silver student. Which benefits nobody as the money I'll spend will be purely an ego trip.

I have a  friend studying at Coventry, it's £7000 a year. He came round for some help as he is doing an electrical/mechanical HNC, he showed me a mock exam he was attempting, it was all that lovely mesh/node analysis stuff, just what I had done but unlike me it was in very simple DC not AC with complex numbers. His ability to even write out the equations was poor and he lacks the math skills i had learned in my "analytical methods for engineers". the questions were very easy and the hardest one in the mock was unsurprisingly also in the actual test that had a 40% pass rate. He got 57%, when he left my house I felt he was still quite confused...

I have family who went to uni, one (alright, on my ex partner's side) dropped out after two years and Student loans are still chasing me as, unknown to me, I was somehow named on her loan (yes, it's fraud, that's another story entirely), the 'degree' she was doing was 'tourism' which would seem to be an utter BS qualification and totally useless other than as a way for a university to rinse 27,000 out of students.

The value of a university education has been diluted so far by such BS courses as to make most degrees less than a doctorate pretty much worthless and yet, by some amazing coincidence, all degrees cost pretty much the same per year, regardless of how good or bad the course.

A cynical person might begin to suspect it's just a way of keeping university staff in cushy jobs.

Don't even mention SLC. I had 17 years of trouble with those turd blossoms. Had to small claims them to get 6 months of overpayments back they had docked from my PAYE due to being too damn stupid to send the right notifications out and handle it properly. They didn't even reply to the claim and it was awarded. Then a cheque turned up with the wrong value on it. It was out by £18 but I decided it wasn't worth arguing and cashed it.

One comment popped into my head yesterday that my tutor said to me at university: "education is a privilege" which says it all.

There has to be a better way to do this.

The cutbacks in public higher education hurt everybody, and create an impossible situation for people.

The consensus in technology is that lifelong learning is the new normal and we really need to be giving people the tools to think scientifically and solve problems creatively on their own.  Some alternative way of cooperative learning that leaves these dysfunctional government and commercial entities out of the picture entirely.

You know, the organizations that accredit institutions of higher learning might be receptive to discussing something like that.

They feel embattled too.

[Simon]

Its sounds like you are confusing "analytical methods" with "methods of analysis". They aren't the same thing at all.

and I'm sure I am not the only student that does not understand the jargon until he has studied it, the course titles are made to make it look easy, the first step of the marketing ploy and then a stupid video about how fun my study of mess and nodal analysis is going to be like it's an invitation to go clubbing....

[tggzzz]

The consensus in technology is that lifelong learning is the new normal and we really need to be giving people the tools to think scientifically and solve problems creatively on their own. 

From personal suspicion, then belief, then experience, that has been the case for the past 50 years. I see no reason why it would have been different before, and no reason why it will be different in the future.

It was famously described 150 years ago as "The Red Queen's Race" by Lewis Carroll:

"Well, in our country," said Alice, still panting a little, "you'd generally get to somewhere else—if you run very fast for a long time, as we've been doing."

"A slow sort of country!" said the Queen. "Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!"

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/12/12-h/12-h.htm#link2HCH0002

[Simon]

Degrees really could hold value but they don't because the system has been hijacked. But there is a new system based on financial ability to "enter the club"

[tggzzz]

But there is a new system based on financial ability to "enter the club"

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

[cdev]

This may be more problematic, as it creates a new kind of guest work/worker who is both high skill and low pay, working for developing country temping firms, as a subcontractor in the developed countries.  So developed country firms wont have a shot in hell of being the low bidders and therefore getting the jobs. The guest workers will receive very low pay and in many cases will displace other recent immigrants who made good pay and sent money back home, so everybody loses except the multinational corporations.

https://web.archive.org/web/20080817110126/https://www.afsc.org/trade-matters/issues/Missingfromthedebate.pdf

[CJay]

And therein lies another problem that contributes to the degradation of the value of a degree.

It's become a numbers game for the politicians, 'my country has more graduates than yours' (paraphrasing for brevity but I have heard essentially that argument being spouted by politicians)

There is, at some levels of the political landscape, a touchingly naive belief that all degrees are born equal (and yes, they are if all you want to be able to say is 'x% of our citizens have a degree') so the headlong rush to make a degree entry level and something every school person should aspire to and obtain, what they failed to realise is that setting that as the gold standard just encourages a degree at any level of ability.

Unfortunately where you set a KPI as the number of successes and reward accordingly it encourages the lowering of standards and creates 'degree mills' where it becomes almost possible to fail to obtain a qualification unless you just don't bother to turn up.

[Simon]

Oh yes all degrees are the same, except the one "you" happen to hold, "oh i went to oxford you know". You can see more snobbery in the film "micromen" about the making of the UK computer industry. Chris curries company only takes off because his business partner has a degree and the bank manager is happy to lend to someone that went to a "good college"

[Galenbo]

How free from corruption are educational systems in your country? Can a graduate degree in a field or multiple degrees be trusted to be a good enough indication of somebody's skill that it can truly be called an objective measure of their skills?...

My scientific education learnt me the skill to ask these questions:

-How free from corruption are...    How to quantify freeness from coruption, where is what going to be measured by who?
-educational systems in...    Which educational systems of the 5000+ that exist in my small country ?
-Can a graduate degree in a... be trusted...  Yes it can. Everything can. the human decides what to trust.
-a good enough indication...    Define: good enough, define indication.
-it can truly be called...   Everything can truly be called, in the definition of "truly" of the last 15 years.
-an objective measure...  which objective measure, by which interpretation of which standard?

...looks like there are only dramatic, religious and political answers to your emotional collection of questions.

[CJay]

Oh yes all degrees are the same, except the one "you" happen to hold, "oh i went to oxford you know". You can see more snobbery in the film "micromen" about the making of the UK computer industry. Chris curries company only takes off because his business partner has a degree and the bank manager is happy to lend to someone that went to a "good college"

That wasn't quite what I meant, sadly the redbricks still command more respect than the concrete unis and that's distinctly unfair because it still gives an unfair advantage to those who can afford to study there.

I was actually, against all my better nature, suggesting, cynically, that some of the graduates from other countries that I've worked with had somewhat less than a thorough education and that perhaps their degrees were more a product of the amount of money spent than any innate ability on their part.

I'm a fairly well balanced cynic though, I have a chip on both shoulders as a result of a few bad decisions made when I was a teenager which lead to my turning down the opportunity of a free university education (possibly due to circumstances, probably more due to my bad judgement)

[tggzzz]

How free from corruption are educational systems in your country? Can a graduate degree in a field or multiple degrees be trusted to be a good enough indication of somebody's skill that it can truly be called an objective measure of their skills?...

My scientific education learnt me the skill to ask these questions:

-How free from corruption are...    How to quantify freeness from coruption, where is what going to be measured by who?
-educational systems in...    Which educational systems of the 5000+ that exist in my small country ?
-Can a graduate degree in a... be trusted...  Yes it can. Everything can. the human decides what to trust.
-a good enough indication...    Define: good enough, define indication.
-it can truly be called...   Everything can truly be called, in the definition of "truly" of the last 15 years.
-an objective measure...  which objective measure, by which interpretation of which standard?

...looks like there are only dramatic, religious and political answers to your emotional collection of questions.

Good questions, and a good observation.

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".

[tggzzz]

Oh yes all degrees are the same, except the one "you" happen to hold, "oh i went to oxford you know". You can see more snobbery in the film "micromen" about the making of the UK computer industry. Chris curries company only takes off because his business partner has a degree and the bank manager is happy to lend to someone that went to a "good college"

Firstly, I'll bet I know which branch of which bank that refers to, and what happened when the bank manager was replaced Secondly, that was 35 years ago; things might have changed since then.

What you probably don't understand about Cambridge is that it was (and probably is) a very small community where there is far less than 6 degrees of freedom between people. That means someone can easily find out someone else's reputation merely by asking an acquaintance, probably an acquaintance from their college.

Finally, is it so surprising that people "feel comfortable" with and can easily assess others from a similar background? That happens in all walks of life, not just at "the upper echelons", whatever that might mean.

[bd139]

Bank managers are now software. When you walk into a bank and talk to a business manager, they are merely meat puppets for an algorithm. You can't trust a human to make rational evidence based decisions.

Really it goes like this:

Business manager: "Oh John went to Cambridge and is the son of Lord Bejesus. I met his father and his uncle at the lodge and we had a good private party. Give him £50k for his startup."

DENIED - he has 2 criminal records, Lord Bejesus has £10 mil in high risk investments with private army 'Academi', HMRC are after his balls for breakfast and he lives in a house paid for by his uncle who is in jail for sexual assaulting a minor at a party. You've got to be insane to give him a penny, but you can give him a 34.9% credit card because the interest offsets the risk and it'll have a small enough balance that we can write off the whole amount worst case. Ho ho ho.

[Simon]

Oh yes all degrees are the same, except the one "you" happen to hold, "oh i went to oxford you know". You can see more snobbery in the film "micromen" about the making of the UK computer industry. Chris curries company only takes off because his business partner has a degree and the bank manager is happy to lend to someone that went to a "good college"

Firstly, I'll bet I know which branch of which bank that refers to, and what happened when the bank manager was replaced Secondly, that was 35 years ago; things might have changed since then.

What you probably don't understand about Cambridge is that it was (and probably is) a very small community where there is far less than 6 degrees of freedom between people. That means someone can easily find out someone else's reputation merely by asking an acquaintance, probably an acquaintance from their college.

Well I don't know if you have seen the film but the situation portrayed was that the name of the college (which could be seen from the managers window - yes I'm sure it was a mix of caricature, comedy and exaggeration) was enough to assert the mans ability to take on the debt and be a safe borrower with no actual analysis of the business plan, his partners face talls the rest of the unspoken interaction as he is the main man but does not have the "acceptable" background for the bank manager.

Finally, is it so surprising that people "feel comfortable" with and can easily assess others from a similar background? That happens in all walks of life, not just at "the upper echelons", whatever that might mean.

Yes and no. So you would only lend money to someone like you because you feel uncomfortable with anyone else because they are different? A recent stint selling raffle tickets in a high end supermarket bares out what I already know. In business being so closed minded means one of two things: A) your an idiot and won't go very far because you have limited yourself and your market at the outset, B) indeed the business while "open to all" is actually a place of discrimination accessible only to those in a certain category. Of course things have changed somewhat but attitudes do change very slowly. The degree earner of 40 years ago can be todays employer of others and not fully up to date with reality

[Simon]

If you want a classic example of degrees not being the be all end all take a look at this collection of toffs: https://www.powervault.co.uk/about-us/team/ I have just purchased one of their units and it's going right back as it's a poor joke. I think they know more about extracting grants and tax breaks than actual project design. Of course all of the actual "engineers" have only just joined the company, I wonder who's been doing the design work so far.

[CJay]

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.

[Kire Pûdsje]

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.

[Simon]

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!!!

[cdev]

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?

[Galenbo]

...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 ?

[Simon]

what?

[Alex Eisenhut]

I saw a recent EE graduate who didn't know what a JTAG port is. I wanted to be a farmer that day.

[coppice]

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.

[Alex Eisenhut]

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?

[tggzzz]

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.

[cdev]

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.

[Bud]

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.

[cdev]

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.

[tggzzz]

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.

[tggzzz]

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

[coppice]

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.

[bd139]

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.

[IanB]

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.

[bd139]

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.

[cdev]

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.

[Mr. Scram]

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.

[R005T3r]

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.

[cdev]

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.

[tggzzz]

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.

[bd139]

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.

[MrW0lf]

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...

[bd139]

I suppose that goes with my personal opinion that you can only teach stupid people with pain

[tggzzz]

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.

I don't doubt that, but it isn't very important.

Your training set is key; if that is biassed then the recognition will be biassed as well - whether or not you recognise it. Example: mid 80s attempt to distinguish cars from tanks worked well in the labs but not in, literally, the field. Eventually they realised the training set had cars in glossy sunny pictures, and tanks in grey overcast pictures. Guess what was being recognised.

Now swap sunny/overcast for black/white or old/young.

Now prove in a court that the algorithm is acting fairly and legally.

And the consider all the non-illegal cases that will never get to court but can still screw up your life. Start with are you a bail/probation/credit/health risk?

[bd139]

The very reason they aren't applicable is an algorithm must be idempotent to be accountable. For the same inputs, however many times you call it, the output must be the same. No one wants anything else.

[tggzzz]

The very reason they aren't applicable is an algorithm must be idempotent to be accountable. For the same inputs, however many times you call it, the output must be the same. No one wants anything else.

I don't understand that reasoning.

Besides, idempotency as a concept is dead in the water if the training set is changed at any time.

[bd139]

That's kind of the point. It's about being able to actually validate a risk model restrospectively when inevitably some shit hits a fan. You know what the inputs were at the time, you know what the algorithm was at the time therefore you can execute it and determine the same risk profiling outcome again. A lot of the models are based on findings from these exercises.

Think of it as an old fashioned input / process / output block. The process block is usually stateless with a static algorithm whereas in an AI type system (I should use machine learning) the state is permanently volatile. This means you can't go an execute that risk profile again. Unless you store the state of the ML implementation as well, which is impractical.

You sacrifice accountability and determinism instantly the moment you chuck ML in there.

[coppice]

The very reason they aren't applicable is an algorithm must be idempotent to be accountable. For the same inputs, however many times you call it, the output must be the same. No one wants anything else.

I don't understand that reasoning.

Besides, idempotency as a concept is dead in the water if the training set is changed at any time.

I agree. Accountability comes from accounting. The system needs an auditable trail to its decision to be accountable. It doesn't need to reach the same conclusion twice.

[bd139]

Accountability comes from being able to do more than account for it but be able to reproduce it and analyse the outcome again. To go from A to B you need to understand A properly. Replaying the event from scratch allows A to be retrospectively understood without looking at just a steaming pile of outcome and trying to work out how you got there.

This is the sort of stuff where we tend to use event sourcing for. You can go pull the events out and replay them against the original state to get the profile or ATR out.

[coppice]

Accountability comes from being able to do more than account for it but be able to reproduce it and analyse the outcome again. To go from A to B you need to understand A properly. Replaying the event from scratch allows A to be retrospectively understood without looking at just a steaming pile of outcome and trying to work out how you got there.

This is the sort of stuff where we tend to use event sourcing for. You can go pull the events out and replay them against the original state to get the profile or ATR out.

You seem to be conflating accountability with diagnostic requirements.

[bd139]

The requirements are the same.

[cdev]

Meet your new AI-ttorney. (pic below)

Everybody's doing it, it seems.

Law is all gobbledygook anyway, right?

Just think of all the money this will save! Read the TOS, they can make arbitrary decisions for any reason whatsoever, or none. It's cheaper.

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1704.04760.pdf

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.

[tggzzz]

That's kind of the point. It's about being able to actually validate a risk model restrospectively when inevitably some shit hits a fan. You know what the inputs were at the time, you know what the algorithm was at the time therefore you can execute it and determine the same risk profiling outcome again. A lot of the models are based on findings from these exercises.

Think of it as an old fashioned input / process / output block. The process block is usually stateless with a static algorithm whereas in an AI type system (I should use machine learning) the state is permanently volatile. This means you can't go an execute that risk profile again. Unless you store the state of the ML implementation as well, which is impractical.

You sacrifice accountability and determinism instantly the moment you chuck ML in there.

OK, we are on the same page.

AI/ML demonstrates that the algorithm's code is only part of the story. The fact that the behaviour is strongly(!) influenced by all the magic neural net coeffficients is a lovely illustration of the rquivalence of code and numbers.

[tggzzz]

Accountability comes from being able to do more than account for it but be able to reproduce it and analyse the outcome again. To go from A to B you need to understand A properly. Replaying the event from scratch allows A to be retrospectively understood without looking at just a steaming pile of outcome and trying to work out how you got there.

This is the sort of stuff where we tend to use event sourcing for. You can go pull the events out and replay them against the original state to get the profile or ATR out.

Understanding is indeed the key to accountability, because it enables the outcome to be explained.

Reproducability is highly desirable to the point of being necessary, but it isn't sufficient for understanding. Consider taking the same code, the same neural net coefficients and the same inputs. You will get the same output but won't be able to explain why it gave that output rather than another.

"Because the computer('s neural net coefficients) said so" isn't an explanation, however many times CSRs repeat it!

[cdev]

Read your EULAS...

Case closed. Game over.  Welcome to the theft of the world via adverse possession, our new normal. When can you all be "out" by?

---------

It may be the end of work but the falling costs wont be passed on to anybody. Except as rising profits.

The new way of doing tasks requires no understanding at all, from people, as its done by machines who simply learn how to do things by watching humans do them for a bit of time.

They base their decisions on that. I see the future of literally thousands of different professions ending up in a quite similar situation. Sure they will do a really crappy job, thats a feature, not a bug, a way to cover up the fiasco.

Right now innumerable online services are sucking up information on how people solve problems. Thats being done so that those problems wont require people in the future.

For example, I see electronics design, architecture, and so on being a lot like the procedural generation of say cities and forests in games. 

The customer will simply select what they need on a screen and the fabricator will generate the requested number of them/it for them.  This process will be extremely efficient.

Once it becomes easy to do so, the thinking goes: there is no longer any point boring costly people with drudge work they (or a machine) could do in their sleep.

This will come as a shock to those who have been counting on getting those jobs, either through merit (actually being really good at them) or by undercutting others on price.

Neither can compete with free labor. Even slavery (i.e. prison labor) can't.

The demand for more and more credentials and the reduction of wages through labor arbitrage to the point where the jobs become unattractive is just a polite way of reducing the numbers of the 'deserving' masses 'voluntarily' - Given the scarcity of jobs I am sure they will think of something else to exclude those who manage to get the requisite credentials, they have to. The check will come back insufficient funds as MLK said.

They can't tell people the truth so even the best educated people will have to be excluded other ways. It will look like that famous chart by Minard.

[See image linked]

Because the jobs just wont be there once it becomes easy to do them some other way. Thats the lesson of history.

So at some point educational level, artificial handicaps created by trade deals, willingness to work almost for free for years, etc. will not create any more jobs, because they just wont exist even if people will do them for free, supply and price and skill levels of human workers will become irrelevant to creating 99% of all jobs. Because there simply will be so very few of them for people any more. This change will happen very quickly and I suspect it will happen soon.

[cdev]

What will people (or countries!?) sue for once the likelihood of them actually having lost any income from anything will be nill? Since all lawsuits for discrimination, pain and suffering, damages, etc are based on lost EARNING POTENTIAL, the decline of work will mean the end of accountability and legal damages.