Relative integrity of educational systems. How trustworthy are degrees?

[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.