It’s so hard to learn from morons!
So you pay a fortune for an “education” that leaves you just as ignorant, four or five years later, as you were when you first came through the door. Maybe more so.
All over the country, “higher education” is responding to a crisis in performance by drastically lowering the standards.
Someday they will close the circle. People who know what they’re doing will age out and be replaced by ignoramuses. Mass idiocy will be the basis of our nation’s economy. Those who can’t do… will simply have to pretend that they can.
The problem is, if they lower the standards, the value of the degree issued plummets. In my parent’s generation, a High School Diploma was enough to have the doors swing open for most jobs. Obviously, physicians, lawyers, engineers, etc. required college education, but many people, including some in very high positions, were high school educated, at best.
During WW II, they needed help with logistics, and needed it badly. The “whiz kids”, including McNamara, were brought onboard, and the Harvard MBA became a highly valued credential.
Flash forward to our day, and MBAs are everywhere. I worked with an MBA for many years who was impressive, to say the least. He was the head of our Finance Department and he was as good as any finance man I had ever met. But … his MBA came along after years of real world experience in accounting. He learned in the MBA program, but his learning was applied to real world experience.
Nowadays, MBAs are everywhere in the workplace. McNamara’s MBA was earned in a very strict environment; in his day, getting into a Harvard Master’s program was quite an accomplishment. These days, there are MBA programs all over the place, and the requirements for getting into such a program are little more than being able to put steam on a mirror and having the tuition fee, for some of these programs.
I’ve met persons with Master’s Degrees who were poorly spoken, obviously hadn’t read a book since they left college, and were much more interested in Game of Thrones than in anything truly significant. They might have strong opinions about political events, but many of them couldn’t find Ukraine or Israel on a map, without coaching.
In my business, there are industry certifications, for highly specialized tasks. Going back about 30 years, the “Certified Netware Engineer” was the hot ticket, because Netware was the dominant networking software. Far and wide, people flocked to get their CNE, by going to training boot camps, where they’d funnel information at you, and then you took the test, and you would, in theory, be eligible for a job which paid $60,000 per year, in 1973 dollars.
In theory, yes, but in the real world, no way. Networking is a complex subject, and passing a CNE didn’t give one nearly enough background knowledge to be able to design and implement a network. Not by a long shot. Within the industry, experienced workers would quip that CNE stood for “certified, no experience”, and they were right.
My entry into networking were two of the five, very expensive CNE courses, and while I could perform certain network administration tasks, I had no perspective or experience, so the information was inadequate to the task at hand. I was fortunate to be able to build experience, over the years, but those courses were only a couple of small pieces in the puzzle. 30 years later, I am highly experienced in networking, and network security, but most of the things I now work with didn’t exist in the real world, back in ‘93.
People enter my field, these days, brandishing impressive credentials, but many of them have no idea of how to apply these in the real world. Sadly, more than a few end up on the advanced degree treadmill, and will pursue even doctorate level degrees, while still lacking in hands on experience. It makes for a very strange situation, where decision makers don’t always understand the technologies involved, and some very poor decisions are made, which then require years of applying fixes and bandaging of problems caused by poor design choices.
At the end of the day, experience becomes all but sacred, which inverts the entire logic.
I think back to 1971: me and my Honors degree serving up hamburgers on the graveyard shift. It’s the kind of thing that makes you cynical about the value of an education.
It’s a tough question. My grandfather learned how to be a farmer, by working on his father’s farm. My mother learned how to work on a farm, but never lived farm life as an adult, so she had to develop other skills.
If we go back in time, far enough, many, if not most things, we’re learned by apprenticeship, formal, or informal. A skilled person probably felt a degree of obligation to mentor people entering their trade. Being an apprentice was not a walk in the park, either. Apprentices were a very low rung on the ladder, and got the least desirable tasks.
Lest you think that his is obsolete, ask any physician about their internship, because it’s pretty much the same thing. Medical interns have experienced a sawtooth pattern of ups and downs, from being tops in their high school class to college freshmen, then going from college seniors to being at the bottom of the heap in med’ school, then going from fourth year med’ school students to interns whose status is about zero, then they get to do it over again in residency. Once they are in practice, they are probably in a group with more experienced physicians, and get the dirty jobs, once again.
Our current world is complex. Business people now deal with a regulatory environment which is very complex, and even contradictory. I can see the need for specific education in order to deal with all of this. Beyond that, Finance, IT and in many cases Product development all require very specific regulatory knowledge, and these requirements change rapidly. The company I work with has a stand-alone department, just for compliance issues, and they have to sign off on any number of things done by other departments.
The problem, IMHO, is that things are now so complex, and move so fast, that education is never ending. I don’t like this, but that is the reality. The educational system that (somewhat) worked 50 years ago, is hopelessly obsolete, in the high tech world. Industry training is accurate, but industry sources have decided to milk it for every possible thin dime, so individuals probably can’t finance such training for themselves.
As you mentioned, fresh out of college, you were flipping burgers, which seems outrageous, but such things are commonplace. The only thing I can offer is that maybe it’s time to have another look at apprenticeships. Electricians, for example, have to take classes in electrical theory, while working as apprentices. By the end of four years, they have experience, and have seen the real world, for themselves.
I’ve apprenticed people into IT roles, and with more than a little success. One fellow was holding a menial driving job, when I got him as a temporary worker. He showed some promise, and I hired him as a full time employee, teaching him one task at a time. Eventually, he got a four year degree in Network Administration, which was exactly what was needed, but he told me afterward that he really didn’t learn anything he hadn’t already learned from on the job training. When I resigned that position, he was hired as my replacement, and has done a good job of it, ever since.
Most importantly, he went from being a raw recruit to being a valuable employee very quickly. He was relieving my burdens within a few weeks, and was earning his keep. It wasn’t like he was being paid for nothing in return. From day one, he made a good wage, and he earned it. Apprenticeship can work, in today’s world.
Part of my problem was that, after 17 years of schooling, I simply didn’t want any more! All I learned in school, including college, was how to be a student.
My next job–a big step up, I thought–was writing term papers for Michigan State students. I liked it! Too bad they made it illegal. I can’t say it was an honest living.
“ All I learned in school, including college, was how to be a student.”
That’s a mouthful. In any endeavor I have undertaken, the learning begins in earnest when I actually have to do for myself. When I was signed off for my pilot’s license, the examiner handed me the signed document which would serve as my temporary license, he said “this is a license to learn”, which is somewhat a tradition when you pass your flight test.
These are wise words. In order to earn your pilot’s certificate, you’ve had to learn many things, and you are tested thoroughly, in a written exam which can take up to four hours, and a flight test which requires you to demonstrate the you know how to handle in-flight emergencies. But even after all of that, the next fifty flight hours are when you really learn, because you are on your own, and something unexpected will happen during those hours, and that’s when you find out what you are made of.
Actually, flight instruction is somewhat like apprenticeship, because you have book learning, AKA Ground School, hands on dual instruction with a flight instructor in the right seat, and solo practice, which happens after you have learned enough to safely operate the plane alone, and is interspersed with more advanced dual instruction.
Once you have a Private Pilot’s Certificate, you can advance to a Commercial Certificate, which involves more instruction, including learning how to establish more precise control and how to extract maximum performance from the aircraft, maximum performance in this case relates not to speed, but instead in how to maneuver in situations which require a maximum performance climbing turn or other demanding maneuvers which may arise in an emergency.
It goes on from there, with a mix of instruction and experience, until the student is shaped into a well trained and, most importantly, an experienced pilot, ready to operate, not as a captain, but as a first officer , AKA a copilot. After years in the right seat, the first officer is eligible to become a captain, and actually command a transport aircraft. It’s one of the better examples of balancing training with practical experience.