As college becomes more and more dumbed down, when will a degree become meaningless? I am not talking about top level school as degrees from those school will continue to have meaning for a long time. I'm talking about your state school or typical liberal arts colleges.
At some point those degrees will become just like a high school degree. My guess is around 2035.
Some tech firms are already doing that.
They don't care 'bout no piece o- paper, they care whether you can CODE!
no college wrote:
I'm talking about your state school or typical liberal arts colleges.
Yeah, those STEM degrees are useless, and those logic-based kids that attend said schools and graduate in those programs, are totally useless and inferior. You're far better off getting a neuroscience/psych degree from an Ivy League school.
no college wrote:
I am not talking about top level school as degrees from those school will continue to have meaning for a long time.
Soc-type degrees are already useless (I'm not going to name any, but they usually end in "studies"), regardless of from where it was obtained. Unhireable other than gubmint or "-eristy director" somewhere.
It’s already happened. Have you interviewed a college grad lately? You can no longer expect spelling and basic reasoning skills. Heck, even a master’s doesn’t guarantee you’ll be talking to someone with a modicum of intelligence.
It depends on your major.
Even if you get a crap major like Gender Studies or something paper-tiger-ish, if you have a great network, you can get a job, esp. if you are female, right away.
I went into journalism in 2006 and had to start at the bottom, which is fine, but I learned quickly to get good I had to have a good network. It didn't matter how good my writing was.
I changed careers and now do coding/java at a tech firm.
Look at us now wrote:
It’s already happened. Have you interviewed a college grad lately? You can no longer expect spelling and basic reasoning skills. Heck, even a master’s doesn’t guarantee you’ll be talking to someone with a modicum of intelligence.
Agreed. People talk about useless majors, but the real problem is lack of rigor. There is a basic set of skills that every college grad should have regardless of major. For example, if I know that you have a college degree in any field from any school, I should be able to confidently assume that you can communicate very well in both written and oral form.
I really can't make that assumption, though. If I ask an entry-level coworker to research something that should be within their wheelhouse, present their findings to the team, and write up a summary, it is very common that the product is lacking or that they need way more help than a college grad should need.
Again, this isn't an issue of joke majors. You should learn to research and communicate during college whether you are majoring in sociology or _____ studies or engineering or chemistry.
Soon AI will determine what are and are not useful majors. Anything a bot can do will soon be useless.
AI isn't going to take over as much as people say it is.
For one, software developers have to code the AI. AI doesn't just know what to do, the software developer told it what to look for. As the world and business change, the AI has to be changed to look for something else. And then just because AI figured something out, now a person has to act on what was discovered. If you do a computational job, yes AI will take that out, but the person that makes decisions on what the computation result is will still need to be there.
no college wrote:
As college becomes more and more dumbed down, when will a degree become meaningless? I am not talking about top level school as degrees from those school will continue to have meaning for a long time. I'm talking about your state school or typical liberal arts colleges.
At some point those degrees will become just like a high school degree. My guess is around 2035.
1. College doesn’t make one smarter. It just makes you more educated. As a higher and higher percentage of the population gets college degrees, it stands to reason that many people with very mild intelligence are getting those degrees.
2. Rather than asking whether college is sufficient to produce good employee candidates, the question should be whether college is necessary. If you think college graduates don’t communicate well, you should try talking to 21-year-olds who did not go to college.
Btw, What is the evidence that college is becoming more and more dumbed down?
no college wrote:
At some point those degrees will become just like a high school degree.
Yeah, but who's going to get hired without a high school diploma?
College degrees will be more common for most jobs in 2035, not less.
Are the companies really valuing the college education or comparing the candidate who has the college education vs. the one that doesn't?
The kind of person that doesn't go to college is not usually the kind of person that progresses well in a career or who has a chance at different careers.
killermike wrote:
1. College doesn’t make one smarter. It just makes you more educated. As a higher and higher percentage of the population gets college degrees, it stands to reason that many people with very mild intelligence are getting those degrees.
2. Rather than asking whether college is sufficient to produce good employee candidates, the question should be whether college is necessary. If you think college graduates don’t communicate well, you should try talking to 21-year-olds who did not go to college.
I agree with this except for your last statement. We’re selling our house and moving so over the last few months I’ve dealt with a lot of non-college-educated young people: movers, landscapers, house painters, etc. The percentage of those who can communicate intelligently and work smart in this particular cohort is far greater than among the recent college grads on whose interviews I’ve sat in lately. Regardless of the era you live in or the generation you’re dealing with, there’s something to be said for kids who were raised to work for things in life. A high school education isn’t useless if your parents or a mentor had taught you to make the most of the opportunities you’ve been given.
killermike wrote:
Btw, What is the evidence that college is becoming more and more dumbed down?
Let me count the ways... Anecdotally, though, I have a nephew who just graduated from my alma mater, so I’ve had a play-by-play of the new graduate experience. Let’s just say that between “essays” pulled straight out of Wikipedia that would’ve had him expelled for plagiarism 20 years ago and throwing fits at his professors that would have got him expelled and blackballed if not brought up on charges, it’s incredible that he got through the first semester, much less 4 years.
Some people can do well without a college education but most won't.
And even those that do well initially become limited in how far they can go.
I just don't see the college education rate going down or companies looking for candidates without college.
I got an Art History bachelors from a top 10 school. My GPA was 2.5 so it wasn't a surprise I wasted my time. But, other Art History peers of mine who had 3.9 GPAs went on to be Starbucks baristas because the degree was worthless to companies. I ended up getting a PhD in Economics and got a very high paying job at a company that loves throwing money around so things turned out well for me.
The key here is I HAD to get the PhD. I totally wasted four years of undergrad. So I needed 5 more years of graduate school to make up for it. If you're in high school, don't make my same mistake. I'm very happy now and doing a job I truly love, but still, don't waste 9 years of your life.
To answer the OPs question, it's been happening for a while. A Bachelors degree holder in 2019 is viewed as a high school diploma holder in say pre-1980. I think if you're talking about masters degrees then another 10-15 years and those will be viewed as worthless. In other words, in 2035 a Masters degree will be viewed as a Bachelors degree in 2019. At my company everyone has a MBA and CFA. Literally, close to 1,000 people with that combo in the same building.
Buckle up kids, it's going to be a bumpy ride.
So your evidence is all anecdotal based?
Just about any company is going to take the 22-year old with a degree over the person that just graduated from HS, for a management position. Later on the guy without a degree is likely to have blue collar/retail jobs on his resume and it will be difficult for him to ever get a more desirable position. If you look at biographies on corporate websites, the management people always have degrees.
Like it, or not, people without degrees are considered to be slackers.
hofst wrote:
So your evidence is all anecdotal based?
In my post — yes. I said as much. I can trot out the peer-reviewed publications, but so can you. Google Scholar is free.
There used to be things called Pre Employment Tests, but those were considered to be racially discriminatory, so in an effort to weed out people that cannot do the work, employers just started requiring college degrees for jobs that would be considers para-professional jobs in the past.