When the facts change, I change my mind - what do you do, sir?
— John Maynard Keynes
When the facts change, I change my mind - what do you do, sir?
— John Maynard Keynes
smarties — Friday, 27 April 2007
by Donald W. Taylor II
Given that the story of the resignation of MIT Dean of Admissions, Marilee Jones, is in the news today, I am going to take the opportunity to comment on a related issue.
I have participated in many a hiring process, all the way from rewriting job descriptions, reviewing the resumes, conducting the interviews to making the hiring decisions. In my current office there is a terrible rate of turnover so I have had a little too much opportunity in this regard.
We live in an age of inflated educational expectations. My assessment is that the requirement for a four year college degree for most entry level positions is unnecessary. There are very few four year degrees that have any direct use in the world of business. Engineering and related fields, computer science or accounting might be the only cases. Even in the vaunted hard sciences — physics, chemistry, biology — a four year degree isn't that useful. A four year degree in physics might be completely useless. A degree in biology might be adequate for a lab assistant position. To succeed in the sciences, one really must go on to advanced education. (I tell college age people to study what ever they want; their degree is going to be useless anyway.)
One might say that one picks up essential skills such as writing time management or experience with major software packages along the way in college. But since colleges increasing do such a terrible job teaching writing, this doesn't impress me. I used Excel quite a bit in college, but still not enough to be ready for the business world. Most of the candidates that I interview are just adequate in this regard.
I know that I was completely unready for my first real job after college. I was completely bowled over with the pace of work and the myriad of responsibilities and deadlines with which I was beset every day. The number of procedures, practices and attendant exceptions that I had to learn was daunting. I frequently compared learning my first office with learning calculus in those years.
The last time I changed jobs, I spent two weeks training my replacement, a kid relatively new out of college. It was a construction management office and he had bachelors degree in architecture (not an easy degree to attain) and had spent a few months reviewing construction documents for improvements to the IMF building. These seemingly relevant experiences weren't enough to prepare him for his new role. I could see that he was having a similar experience to that of my first real office job. He couldn't believe the pace and the number of details to be managed.
There used to be something of a debate in this country about the relevance of the traditional four year university versus something more like the apprenticeship programs or technical schools of other countries. Germany was often invoked as the model here.
I am all in favor the ideal of the Renaissance person still somewhat held up by the universities. Everyone, especially citizens in a democracy, deserves a few years off to devote to character building and honing the mind in abstract thought. But that is not what is going on today in most universities. Students are all take by pretending after relevancy and contemptuous of the requirements for a well rounded education. How many business majors have you heard in one way or another scorn their, say, art appreciation or philosophy requirements? Under duress from the business world and students (their clients) educators increasingly let this aspect of the four year degree decay. Hence the popularity of business and psychology degrees — a psychology degree being a business degree dressed in pink. A certain segment of students, the university system and the business world would all be better served by some sort of alternative path into office life.
I have concluded that the reason that the four year degree is nearly always included on the list of requirements is because the hiring manager has a four year college degree, all their peers have a college degree and they all had to have one to get the positions that they have. The purpose of the four year college degree requirement is to enforce social class, not guarantee performance success. The fact is that office jobs are all occupied by a certain social class. It is one distinct from other social classes and between it and the others there is a certain amount of animosity and alienation. The classes have different manners and social protocols and don't much care for those of others. The best predictor of who is in the office-based class is attendance at four-year learning institution .
Oddly enough, as access to dental care becomes a major and visible class divide in the United States, the state of ones' teeth — as if we were animals being judged at an animal show — is another major predictor as well.
The fact that Ms. Jones could rise as high as she did, do a competent job in a fairly high-powered position, and even earn herself a reputation as an industry leader shows that one can do just fine without a four year degree — except that the requirements to maintain the purity of the class might catch up with you.
URL for this article: http://www.goodleaf.net/smarties/?eid=360
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Donald W. Taylor II Washington, D.C. United States of America taylordw@goodleaf.net |