The Glade 4.0

Are you using the male pronoun in the generic sense? Or is this indicative of your critical reading skills?

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I think some folks pursue success like a hungry lion chases a zebra because that's just the kind of people they are. To them, an education is the equivalent of a running start. It makes it easier, but in the end you're gunna have to run your *** off and really work for it, no matter what. A college education just makes the beginning of your life a bit easier.

The folks that think a college education makes the zebras serve themselves up with an apple in their mouths will blame any and everything for their less successful selves. They settle for eating grubs from under fallen trees and talk about the failure of the system because a degree in medieval history won't get you six figures ... so perhaps they need to go for their masters. Call them hipsters, hippies, bums, whatever. Slapping a label on them doesn't change anything.

Bottom line, I don't care what others do with their lives and I'm not going to critique anyone's diet...

...but personally, I like red meat. So, for as long as I CAN run, I might as well chase the tasty stuff. Doesn't make me better, it just makes me happier.

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In time, this too shall pass.

I really don't see what's going to burst the bubble. This is the era of computer applications. If you don't have a degree, and can't check the "yes" box to the "Do you have a bachelor's degree?" question on the online application, no human being is ever going to even see your resume because the computer will just filter it out.

The potential future cost is simply not going to deter people when getting any sort of white collar job requires a degree and all the blue collar jobs are in China.

Well, there's the fact that not even close to "all" blue collar jobs are in China, and the fact that sooner or later people simply aren't going to be able to afford the loans. They already explained what's going to burst the bubble; you're just engaging in your usual tactic of trying to present the problem as unsolvable.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

1. I already explained that. Even if you can't pay at all, they can just garnish your Social Security to get their money back.
2. I'm not presenting the problem as unsolvable, I already suggested a solution. I didn't crap on anyone else's solutions either, other than Khross' argument that we should do nothing and the problem will solve itself.

I don't have tall enough boots to wade through this much stupid.

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/save the watch ?

Because that's politically feasible.



You slung this "but computers can just screen resumes!" thing out there as if that alone makes it insurmountably difficult to change the demand for degrees. Eventually that degree will no longer be meaningful at all. Will they then go to a Master's? Possibly, but degrees take time and time is irreplaceable. Eventually someone is going to figure out they can get the best workers earlier by not demanding unnecessary education.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Uhm, that wasn't a hypothetical, that's legal right now and happening. It's one of the major reasons student loans are almost completely risk free for lenders and they'll continue to lend no matter how high tuition skyrockets.



It's not relevant to the demand for degrees, but in an environment where "too many" people have degrees it makes it very difficult for people who don't have degrees to even be considered by an employer. If you don't have a degree but you happen to have other relevant skills, that's too bad, because an actual human HR person is never going to see your resume.

How many people right now are of an age to get their social security garnished? what happens when more and more people get older, and you start seeing stories on the news about old people eating dog food because the loan companies garnish most of their social security? This is exactly the sort of problem you normally throw right in people's faces "it can't be done because the public will never go for it!" As my generation and those after me get older and outstanding student loans become more common, it will become more of a political issue.



Except that it's not, once people realize the degree is no longer a discriminator. In any case, there are still many jobs out there where they don't care about degrees. This idea that "all" the blue collar jobs are in China is complete nonsense.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Absolutely untrue.

I don't have a degree, and I don't give my resume to HR folks. The people I give my resume to, when I give it to them, give it to the HR folks with instructions to hire me. It's not hard at all.

This is the part of the conversation where folks usually tell me that I'm an exception or the field I'm in is the exception, so go ahead, have at it. Personally I think it's bullshit, but I have another theory that kicks in - folks that think they can, can, and folks that think they can't, can't (Thanks Henry!).

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In time, this too shall pass.

This is exactly how I got my last two positions.

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"If you haven't got anything nice to say about anybody, come sit next to me." - Alice R. Longworth

"Good? Bad? I'm the guy with the gun." - Ash Williams

Depends on the school. Get an undergrad degree from Harvard, Columbia, NYU, etc. in business or almost any math-heavy field and the career office will set you up with a dozen interviews at investment banks, hedge funds, and so on, all of whom are tripping over each other to pay you $80-100k per year straight out of school. And yes, I'm talking now, post-crash. Pre-crash they were getting more like $120-150k.

Bypassing HR is often difficult. I've done this for every job I've gotten, but I have applied to a couple of federal jobs, and... no.

I have never submitted a resume to anyone for anything. I spent a lot of time putting a really nice one together when I retired from the Air Force, but the guy that hired me was a former Air Force superior who tracked me down and called me out of the blue. He had a specific job in mind for me and asked me to fill out a web form to make the application official.

That was in July 2001. I haven't even updated my resume since then.

You're not an exception, you have decades of experience. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess it didn't work that way for you when you were 25.

And you'd find yourself falling... darn limbs!

It's been my experience that consulting companies typically interface directly with functional managers at companies, and I've always turned to consulting for getting in any door.

I went into the Army in '74, served my 2 years, came out and started with a consulting company as an electronics tech while going to college for a electronics technician type degree. I never finished school, mainly 'cause I got good jobs doing what I wanted without the degree, and when I did, I changed degree programs, first from tech, then to electrical engineer, then to management, but always got the title on a business card before I got the title on a diploma.

I ended up (after a few other gigs) doing subcontract consulting through Bendix at McDonnell Douglas's St. Charles electronics plant in MO and was offered a full time position by the management there. Then came IBM after McDonnell outsourcing, then back to consulting with a few perm gigs along the way as a result of consulting at the place.

Now I know people. When I want to move, I tell them I want to move and wait for calls. I used to get calls all the time, but I've told my contacts that I'm happy where I am and won't move without an offer I can't refuse... I have a challenging job I love, I make enough money and I work from home. I don't really do anything - I'm a "storage architect", so I just design stuff and validate the work folks do for me. It really doesn't get any better, in my opinion.

Thing is, I still study all the time, several hours a week, and I have all my adult life. Like I said, if you think you can, you can... but it just doesn't happen, you have to make it happen.

Want a nice cake? Put nice ingredients in, wash, rinse, repeat. It may not turn out right the first time, but you'll get the hang of it. It, however, starts with the ingredients, then you stir in the skill. Careers work the same way. You don't need college, or HR, or any of that... for sure it'll help, but it's not mandatory.

All that aside, I don't buy into the whole "degree as a commodity" philosophy where more folks having a degree does anything. Degrees have been a great way to differentiate one guy from another, but if more folks had degrees and it became less a measure for differentiation then something else would be used. More education in a citizenry is a good thing and any suggestion otherwise is mistaken, in my opinion.

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In time, this too shall pass.

Yeah the FM or PM is going to make hiring decisions in these cases and HR processes. That is fairly standard. If you go outside without dealing with an approved vendor then you'll have to go through the process that almost 0 hires come in through - that pre screened HR ****.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

At one time, my dept tried to require even the administrative assistants to have at least 4-year degrees. We had a few folks with A.S. degrees who were told they had to go back to school, even though they had more than enough experience and relevant board certifications to perform their duties. It was just an arbitrary requirement, that didn't last long, thankfully. (HR smacked down the manager trying to push it, IIRC. New hires, fine, but not those who have already been employed by the company for years.)

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When he's underwater does he get wet? Or does the water get him instead?

The value of a degree is that it's proof that you can stick with something that isn't necessarily fun for 4 years, and finish it.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

If that were true then the brand name of the school should not matter.

I would argue the true value of a degree is the connections you acquire while obtaining it and the better the network the higher the cost of the degree.

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ding ding ding

I think both of those things are important parts of the value of a degree - and the value of networking from a degree demonstrates a fairly serious problem. I read an article about the overemphasis of networking and social capital in top schools not long ago.. wish I still had that paper.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

It's a really poor value for what people pay. Can you prove you can stick to something simply by borrowing the money for college then just paying it back for 4 years instead?

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"...the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn