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If you ever need to strike up a conversation with a group of academics, a surefire way to get them talking is to ask about their graduate training. Where did they train, in what methods, in which lab, under what mentor? People will speak with great pride about their training as an economist, historian, chemist, philosopher, or classicist. If, on the other hand, you need to make a quick exit, try sharing the opinion that undergraduate education should include a lot more vocational training. You'll soon find yourself standing alone or responding to accusations of classism and questions about your commitment to social and racial equality. You might even hear that "training is for dogs," a common refrain in higher education that carries the unpleasant implication that skills-based education is the equivalent of teaching students to sit, stay, and shake hands.
For reasons that are not entirely clear, in the United States training is widely understood to be the end, not the beginning, of an educational journey that leads to a particular job or career. Undergraduates are supposed to get a general education that will prepare them for training, which they will presumably get once they land a job or go to graduate school. Any training that happens before then just doesn't count.
It is because of this belief that general-education requirements are the center of the bachelor's degree and are concentrated in the first two years of a four-year program. The general-education core is what distinguishes the B.A. from a vocational program and makes it more than "just training." It is designed to ensure that all degree holders graduate with a breadth of knowledge in addition to an in-depth understanding of a particular subject area. Students are exposed to a broad range of disciplines and are pushed to think critically about the social, cultural, and historical context in which they live. It is supposed to guarantee that all graduates can write, have a basic understanding of the scientific method, have heard of the Marshall Plan and Maslow's hierarchy of needs, and know that iambic pentameter has something to do with poetry.
While few would challenge the importance of general education, both to students and to a well-functioning democracy, there is good reason to question why it has to come at the beginning of a B.A.—and just how general and theoretical it needs to be. The pyramid structure of the bachelor's degree, which requires that students start with the broad base of general requirements before they specialize, is what makes college unappealing to so many young people.
It doesn't have to be this way. There is no iron law of learning dictating that students must master general theories or be fully versed in a particular historical or cultural context before learning how to do things. Some students will do well under this approach, but there is solid evidence that some students learn better through experience. For these students, theory does not make sense until it is connected to action. Putting a lot of general or theoretical courses on the front end just leaves them disengaged or, even worse, discouraged. They will do better if they start by learning how to master certain tasks or behaviors and then explore the more abstract concepts behind the actions.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 4, Insightful) by DBCubix on Thursday March 16 2017, @04:08PM (18 children)
Then on the other side of things is strict vocab training, all hands-on, no theory. Some students do good in this and there is some good money to be made. Oil drillers, many service industry managers, mechanics, hvac/electrical/plumbing techs do not need a bachelors degree.
However, I believe that to really push yourself, you need that blend of theory and practice. Practice reinforces the theory and teaches you why we do things the way they are. Theory gives enough of an understanding to realize how to fix a specific problem to improve the practice. They go hand-in-hand. But again, it isn't for everybody.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by melikamp on Thursday March 16 2017, @05:21PM (9 children)
I don't have a strong opinion, just kind of being devil's advocate here.
Having gotten the concept in college, they lack the specific skill applicable to a particular database your company deployed, it looks like. May be this company should simply train them? I think there's an efficiency problem with using public tax dollars on honing skills which are both narrow and have an uncertain future, and a lot of skills in IT are like that. For example, there are hundreds of programming languages these days, and in the few short years of a BS program, many colleges hope to impart the basic understanding of programming concepts which are universal to all/most languages. There is simply no time to do anything else, and it's next to impossible to predict which 1 or 2 specific languages should be taught to aid in a job search, so the training languages are often picked based on their educational value rather than applicability.
A small nitpick, but I would rather call it "specific" knowledge, in opposition to the "basic" computer science, which is general, conceptual and often mathematical. Knowing how to whip some SQL database into shape may be a basic requirement for a particular job, but it's not what we usually think of as basic knowledge. And while I have absolutely nothing against certifications, I'd like to point out, once again, may be the industry itself should take care of it, since they are in the best position to determine which "basic" skills they desire to see in applicants.
By the way, all of this may be different in other fields and vocations, but I feel like CS really stands out because everything is changing so fast.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 16 2017, @05:51PM (1 child)
^^^^^^^
Industry doesn't want to shoulder the burden of training their employees, they just want smooth non-stop productivity. It is stupid and short sighted, much like just about everything else in the US. The system is crashing because all the bad decisions and unrealistic expectations have had delayed costs which are finally coming to a head. The worst decision we made was to defund education and shove the debt on to students, it is creating a generation of desperate and cynical people.
The only real benefit I see to all of this is that with more people disconnecting from general society we'll have a plunge in the birth rate that should help the overpopulation problem.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday March 16 2017, @08:57PM
Industry doesn't want to shoulder the burden of training their employees, they just want smooth non-stop productivity.
Industry already has a massive training burden. They need to train anyone who works for them on the regulations of the industry and the quirks of their particular culture and location. To expect them to also on top of that train someone from scratch in a profession is absurd.
It's time schools did their job. That's the massive, short-sighted problem here.
The worst decision we made was to defund education and shove the debt on to students, it is creating a generation of desperate and cynical people.
Ever wonder why US education inflation has massively exceeded general inflation for around 40 years? The answer is because we haven't defunded education, but instead turned it into a subsidized loan program with the worst traits of several worlds.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 16 2017, @07:01PM (2 children)
skill applicable to a particular database your company deployed
No it is as simple as they can not write 'select * from x,y where x.col1 = y.col2' AND understand how the all of the theory they learned relates back to it. I regularly bump into other programmers who 'dont do SQL'. I then teach them how easy it is and they sit there stunned that no one ever showed that to them in college. I would say 3/4ths of the jobs out there need some sort of back end SQL datastore. So pick the NoSQL route but knowing why to pick one over the other is learned skill too where the theory helps you decide. Do not confuse technical minutia with not even learning the basic theory in the first place.
This has been going on for a long time. I graduated with other CS majors in the early 90s. "which languages have you picked up" was a common question amongst us and short hand for how you ranked. I would regularly come across people who had 1. The one they learned in CS150. They went no further than that. I had ~4. That stuff is the glue how to make CS practical. They had 0 interest in it. Knowing a few langs let me land a job fairly quickly after graduating.
Want to hear something scary? I have had no less than 4 different recruiters in the past month tell me 'python is a hard skill to learn'. It was one of the easiest skills I ever learned and something I picked up in a few weeks. I could do that because I had taken the time to learn how to apply my theory to vocational. They ignore all the other actual hard goop on my resume for that on lame ass language.
(Score: 2) by mechanicjay on Thursday March 16 2017, @07:08PM
'python is a hard skill to learn'.
Come on, they've got to be kidding! I too picked up python in a week or two, as probably my 4th or 5th language -- easier than falling off a log.
My VMS box beat up your Windows box.
(Score: 2) by Zinho on Thursday March 16 2017, @09:47PM
No it is as simple as they can not write 'select * from x,y where x.col1 = y.col2' AND understand how the all of the theory they learned relates back to it.
Sounds similar to an experience of mine from when I supervised a bunch of Java developers at a university. I was giving initial orientation to a new programmer another team lead had hired, and when I sat the newbie in front of a freshly-imaged machine he gave me a blank stare, then admitted that despite being in year 3 of a 4-year CS degree he had never installed a program on a computer in his life. He got put on a fairly steep learning curve when I insisted that he put together the standard toolset and test environment himself. To his credit, he picked things up pretty fast, and ended up being one of my best programmers afterwards. It's a good thing I wasn't the one who interviewed him, or else I'd have rejected him.
=^/
"Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
(Score: 3, Insightful) by sjames on Thursday March 16 2017, @09:46PM (3 children)
The first step is to recognize that we do NOT have a shortage of STEM workers, we actually have an over-abundance. If we ACTUALLY had a shortage, employers would be willing to provide training or even tuition in employment contracts. It used to be expected. That's what junior and trainee positions were for. These days, they expect to just tick off a few boxes and have pre-trained people walk in the door with sterling resumes. If they don't get it, they cry for more H1-Bs and other shortcuts.
(Score: 1) by varsix on Thursday March 16 2017, @09:59PM (1 child)
If the IEEE report on the overabundance of STEM college graduates is correct, then I agree with you.
What I don't agree with you about is the idea that what they are looking for is pre-trained younglings with sterling resumes. They are simply looking for cheap labor, which is why they cry for H1-Bs and continue encouraging universities to pump out a surplus of STEM graduates.
Simple law of supply and demand here. If there are more people that want the jobs than can provide them, the employers set the rules and the wages go down. The attempt by large tech companies to criticize the potential of American workers is simply a farce that hides the ulterior motive of wanting cheaper labor.
This is something that concerns me, in general. Not only do we have too many STEM grads, but everyone knows humanities majors aren't really that employable either. I agree with what I said in my last comment, that we need to get better at re-skilling people so that they can adapt more quickly to a quickly changing economy.
But we also need to be better about supporting people through welfare who cannot re-skill and cannot find new jobs. We have to realize that, eventually, computers are going to be capable of doing the things that the vast majority of humans can do. If we don't see this coming, and unemployment reaches critical mass (don't believe the numbers the BLS hands you), then we face the possibility of having to endure political instability and a lot of unnecessary death and destruction. Our lack of ability to understand how technological unemployment works has at the very least gotten us to the point where we elected a bombastic idiot for a president.
Most politicians are old. They don't understand that technological unemployment not only exists, but also the important fact that it is *accelerating*. That's pretty much the key to realizing that not all jobs will be replaceable by new fields.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Thursday March 16 2017, @10:41PM
I agree that they want cheap labor. One aspect of that is they don't want to incur any training costs. They want senior level employees for junior costs.
They also want boundless loyalty to the company but offer none to the employee.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 16 2017, @11:35PM
the first step is for VC idiots to get over themselves and stop diving society into destruction.
yes that is step one
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 16 2017, @05:33PM (7 children)
Skills is what is needed, as I said up thread certifications should be demonstrated in specific skills not a general assumption of competence which is almost always wrong.
That would tell you something that BA/Bsc doesn't if I have my cert in lab procedures for making LSD you know I can do it but I may not be able to make Xanax or rohipnol but you do know I know something about how to do chemistry, I know far to many prof's and one has contributed anything of value to human knowledge, having dedicated thinkers in society has real value but most of those we award with that privilege have never demonstrated any original or constructive though, my fathers own Phd is marginal at best but he had tenure right out of grad school(it was the 70's) he never contributed anything of value but he was paid decently and spent a lot of time at expensive Italian restaurants, my step mother didn't even have a degree in the field that she was a prof in and constructed out of whole cloth institutes and approval that was not in any way demonstrably real but they gave her lots of awards(not to many you understand).
credentials are a sociological tool to promote some and exclude others, certs in specific skills would eliminate this fraud.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 16 2017, @05:59PM (6 children)
credentials are a sociological tool to promote some and exclude others, certs in specific skills would eliminate this fraud.
I agree with your solution, but disagree that it is a sociological tool. I would call it an artifact, something that has come into being based on societal circumstances.
Skills are important, but there is more to life than work. Vocational programs should be more common in the US and people will eventually drop their bias now that so many kids are going through college. With so many college grads it will soon be common thinking that college does not equal a smarter or better person.
I hope you don't hit your midlife crisis before you start thinking more deeply about life, and with less cynicism.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 16 2017, @07:00PM (5 children)
"I agree with your solution, but disagree that it is a sociological tool. I would call it an artifact, something that has come into being based on societal circumstances."
OK your not allowed to disagree with me and then agree with me again in the same sentence.
I agree with you that there must be more to life than work but what's happening is a sociological construction of value and credentialism is attributed value of the person not of skill, it is a method of violence not of merit.
" With so many college grads it will soon be common thinking that college does not equal a smarter or better person."
this is part of my point that college education not only does not make you smarter it in many cases makes you dumber since conforming to the desires of the profs is the path to success not critical thinking or knowledge university has become a way of limiting understanding not expanding it.
It's a bit to late on the mid life crisis front, I had it sometime around 15 and though I regret the existence of most people I do know it is not my fault.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday March 16 2017, @09:16PM (4 children)
"I agree with your solution, but disagree that it is a sociological tool. I would call it an artifact, something that has come into being based on societal circumstances."
OK your not allowed to disagree with me and then agree with me again in the same sentence.
Allowed by who?
I agree with you that there must be more to life than work but what's happening is a sociological construction of value and credentialism is attributed value of the person not of skill, it is a method of violence not of merit.
Sounds like someone's education got wasted! First, you're agreeing with the prior poster and then disagreeing. Not allowed! Second, it's emergent phenomena. People who spent years earning a degree a priori have decided that a degree is valuable. The rest follows without any deliberate construction.
Finally, "violence" has particular meanings. You're not using them.
this is part of my point that college education not only does not make you smarter it in many cases makes you dumber since conforming to the desires of the profs is the path to success not critical thinking or knowledge university has become a way of limiting understanding not expanding it.
I agree yet disagree. I agree that college has a variety of opportunities for making yourself dumber. But I disagree that those ways are the only ways. There's still plenty of opportunity for bettering yourself, should you try.
It's a bit to late on the mid life crisis front, I had it sometime around 15 and though I regret the existence of most people I do know it is not my fault.
That's a bit early for the alleged mid life crisis. And the "regret the existence" thing is a typical adolescent fantasy. Some people learn to appreciate other people despite them not being shiny perfect.
Mid life crises are more "I've lived this long and done what?" Sometimes the knowledge that you're more than halfway through your life encourages people to try to do something with the rest of their lives.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 16 2017, @11:43PM (3 children)
I was clear.. In the same sentence denial and acceptance.
none of what you assert is actually happening if you read which you can't apparently
yes violence has a particular meaning from the wiki and the UN
"Violence is defined by the World Health Organization as "the intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another person, or against a group or community, which either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment, or deprivation""
as for your what with my midlife crisis at 15 yep your an idiot
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday March 17 2017, @01:25AM (2 children)
I was clear.. In the same sentence denial and acceptance.
So what? Still not feeling whatever concern you seem to have about it.
none of what you assert is actually happening if you read which you can't apparently
Um, so for example:
Second, it's emergent phenomena. People who spent years earning a degree a priori have decided that a degree is valuable. The rest follows without any deliberate construction.
Why would people who have spent years earning a degree do so, if they don't think it's valuable? And tribalism is a routine human habit. Forming a tribe around college experiences is little different than forming one around ethnicity or sport team.
Somehow I doubt you found every bit of what I asserted to be a nonevent.
yes violence has a particular meaning from the wiki and the UN
"Violence is defined by the World Health Organization as "the intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another person, or against a group or community, which either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment, or deprivation""
So we're done with that nonevent. Now that you know what the word means, you won't continue to misuse it, right?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 17 2017, @01:41AM (1 child)
Second, it's emergent phenomena. People who spent years earning a degree a priori have decided that a degree is valuable. The rest follows without any deliberate construction.
Why would people who have spent years earning a degree do so, if they don't think it's valuable? And tribalism is a routine human habit. Forming a tribe around college experiences is little different than forming one around ethnicity or sport team.
good jorb spending a lot of energy tracking me AC from another thead but I doesn't change what I am asserting that we need to move passed tribalism and when we judge people for a task they should be able to have certification in that or related tasks and skills without the assumption that they are competent because credentials that are mostly wrong.
you need to learn how to read words because language is clearly not a certification you can pass
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday March 17 2017, @12:52PM
good jorb spending a lot of energy tracking me AC from another thead but I doesn't change what I am asserting that we need to move passed tribalism and when we judge people for a task they should be able to have certification in that or related tasks and skills without the assumption that they are competent because credentials that are mostly wrong.
Certification is just another credential. While it often is more focused on things actually desired by an employer, it can still go wrong in the same way. As to the alleged tracking, while I think I've seen your style of posting elsewhere (use of loaded sociological terms is a giveaway), I was just replying to stuff in this thread.
you need to learn how to read words because language is clearly not a certification you can pass
Why dig the hole deeper? Your use of the term, "violence" was inappropriate. The definition of the word you cited, demonstrated that. When someone biases based on credentials, they aren't using physical force or power. Nor is the harm caused of the source associated with violence (a missed opportunity is not equivalent to physical injury). It's an absurd dilution of the meaning of violence.