Alert the media - I think we are in total agreement.
In college, it was just understood that engineers were smarter than business majors who were smarter than liberal arts. Engineers could determine the area under a curve by calculating the integral while the business majors had to approximate by drawling little rectangles. But at least the business folks were still dealing with math and practical theories. And the liberal arts majors…well, we (the engineers and business majors) just took their classes to get an easy elective A.
I mean this all assumes you define “smart” as in an ability to do or learn complex intellectual tasks.
A liberal arts education trains students to think creatively. However, creativity unrestrained by reality, is simply fantasy. I have a lot more respect for engineers and other people who must think creatively to find solutions within the confines of budget, time and physical requirements than someone who can just sort of spitball stuff out of their ass.
It’s like saying someone is illiterate because they never read Oliver Twist. I either forgot or never learned recursion, but it took me all of 2 minutes to Google and understand the concept. That’s what I think of when people say “college teaches you how to learn”. But a lot of people say that but what they really mean is “I think I’m smart and I’ll just bullshit”.
My company has deluded themselves that they are like a Google or Facebook, just because we work with computers. Really, we are just a tiny version of an Accenture or Cognizant style outsourced consulting firm. It’s a very insular place where they think they are the best and brightest because most of them have never been exposed to people who truly were.
Personally, I think one of the advantages of a college degree is that it provides some tangible representation that you put in the work to obtain that degree. It’s one thing to actually think you’re smart because all your friends are high school dropout morons. It’s quite another to have a degree proving that you are able to graduate from MIT or Stanford or some other top school.
Were you a computer science major? If not, then recursion is not something I (or Sam) would expect you to know. But I think Sam was getting at that a program not teaching recursion is like an English Lit program not teaching Shakespeare - and I agree. Recursion is not a hard concept, and not something that pops up in normal life very much. But I’ve used it in real life.
Cool.
I wouldn’t say that it’s not being taught - it’s just that it’s not always learned, and it’s possible to graduate without that knowledge. Perhaps not with honors, but you can squeak through.
To me, really understanding an average or marginal applicant’s education requires a very careful review of their full transcript - not just GPA, but what courses were taken, where the bad marks were, etc. But if you’re marginal enough that we’d have to scrutinize the transcript to see if you can do the job, we’d never get to that point anyway.
But in engineering we’re lucky - it’s a concrete field with some concrete skills, and it’s easier to measure an applicant than it would be if you’re hiring a new office manager or HR person or business analyst.
In many schools you can earn a low passing grade in a course while learning shockingly little. So if you slept through the classes where recursion was covered, then skated through the programming exercises by relying on group marks or a ‘D’ for a project because you had terrible style (like not using recursion where appropriate), you can still graduate with a degree. And if you can find some ‘easy A’ breadth classes, you can even come out with a solid middle of the road GPA - and be useless as a programmer, let alone someone who might be expected to do computer science.
To Sam Stone and Voyager (and others).
I have heard that an interviewer is basically looking at 4 things. The are;
- What do you bring to the job?
- How well will you fit in?
- How long will you stay?
- How much will you cost them?
Do you agree on these?
Also, I’d like to ask, what is the effect or influence on referrals in your hiring process? For example do you give a preference in interviewing or hiring people who have been referred by another employee?
I was actually a civil engineering major, but I changed careers and do a lot work with a lot computers, math and analytics. But I think we’re in agreement. There are just certain basic things you expect a graduate of a program to have, whether it’s computers, accounting or philosophy of basket weaving.
That’s one of the great things about being forced to learn a bunch of stuff you think is useless at the time. You never know when you might come up with a use for it!
Cost usually isn’t considered during the interview, unless their salary expectations are really out of whack.
I’ve interviewed tons of people. Typically, the company is looking to fill a roll. It could be kind of nebulous and abstract (we need to increase our pool of really smart analysts with backgrounds in stats or programming), or it can be very specific (we need a Finance Director to replace Jim who is leaving at the end of the month). Typically what we look for are:
- do they have the skills to do the job
- do they have the right attitude and desire to do the job
- will they be a good fit for the culture.
It can be very challenging, especially for senior level positions. And each company looks for different things, so it’s not like one size fits all.
And most companies absolutely give preferential treatment to referral candidates. It’s much less risky to hire a candidate who already has someone in the company vouching for them.
Another reason why (a good) college is “worth it”. You develop a network of similarly minded smart people with a good work ethic.
Or maybe they learned it and forgot it. Recursion is simple - it can be demonstrated by a two line factorial program. I’ve taught it to third graders (smart one, but still). But lots of people will never use it. Still, not understanding it can turn a simple programming problem into a complex one.
I’m glad I’m not allowed to deal with marginal applicants. I feel your pain.
Okay with these, except that fitting in is about mindset in doing this job, not social skills.
HR sets pay ranges, and I sure don’t care about that, except in the sense you don’t want to try to hire a guy who was a second level manager for a programming job. As for how long they will stay, I steer away from people with a string of 1 or 2 year jobs, but it is our job to create a good environment. On the other hand, there is pretty much no such thing as being over-qualified for our positions.
Absolutely. Someone with a referral goes to the head of the line. We might not hire them, but we sure interview them. Anything you’ve heard about the importance of networking is not strong enough. I got my current job because my neighbor was good friends with the HR guy for a director who was looking for someone just like me. I got a Doper in my field an interview (and I think he got the job) with a guy I knew at another company. So much better than job boards.
You probably will never need to write a recursive program. But your example points out why I’m suspicious of the stereotypical lab tech who is sure he is a lot smarter than those dumb Ph.Ds who are his superiors. He only judges them by the stuff he knows, and has no idea of the stuff he doesn’t know. A bigger toolkit is very valuable. I really learned data structures when I taught it. I can tell that even the engineers here who know how to program a bit don’t really understand them. Using the right data structure can let me knock out a utility in an hour as opposed to days.
“Cost” can be more than salary. If they need a home office. If they have alot of health needs. If they have family needs that will require alot of time off.
But yeah, that’s why its #4 on the list.
On networking - Almost everyone I know who has a good paying job got either that job or at least got their foot in the door in the industry thru networking.
Which going back to the college question, is why I push fraternities/sororities. When one needs a job they can always just open up their alumni book and start making phone calls.
Yeah, I’m not sure why the conversation got so skewed to skills and intelligence focusedness. Pretty much nobody, in any field I’ve ever talked to - Engineering, the Pharmaceutical industy, construction, IT, accounting you name it who has been successful has ever put that much emphasis on those things. I went back to school after years of failing at everything and just sort of eeking out a living. My personality kind of stinks - I used to think I had Aspbergers; so I thought, you know I’ll go to school for accounting. Well the first accounting class I had the professor (who had 30+ years of experience in accounting) said the number 1 thing in accounting that you will need to succeed is social skills, I forget what the second one was, the third was actual skill in accounting:smack:.
That’s why I hear in China learning the game of Golf is part of business school.
The summer after I graduated high school I worked in a big accounting office on Park Avenue. Your professor was full of it.
I think you overstate things here.
I think social skills are important if you want to advance. There aren’t a lot of awkward social-types who work in management at my agency.
But no one got in the door because of social skills. Social contacts help inasmuch as finding out about job openings. And of course, having good references is always wise. But everyone must demonstrate knowledge, skills, and abilities in their application (which sometimes contains essay questions) and interview (which may require a writing sample). Is the process purely objective? No. But you can’t schmooze your way into a civil servant position. This includes engineers, accountants, and scientists.
Interestingly, though, the college one attends is a proxy for “who you know”. My coworkers tend to be alums of either two big state schools. If you went to State U., then you likely know Professors X, Y, and Z. If you went to University of State, then you likely know Proessors A and B. Which means, in both cases, people know you learned critical skills One, Two, and Three. You can sit in the breakroom and trade colorful “war” stories. Just by having either of those two colleges on your resumes, you become a known entity in a way that someone who doesn’t have them, doesn’t. I don’t think those of us who were hired without either pedigree are particularly disadvantaged. But I have noticed that our schools tend be more prestigious than those two state schools. (Upper management has graduates of schools like Cornell and Duke and VMI, not those institutions.) And I have also noticed that people who are hired to oversee contracts from State U. tend to be graduates of State U., alums from University of State oversee UofS contracts.
So yes, “who you know” is important. But there are different ways of broadcasting who your associates are. College is one relatively easy way, especially for folks like me who are not professional schmoozers and hate golf.
I’ve even seen this go down to the high school level. Here in Kansas City their is a certain all male private high school that also has a tight alumni network and many people get jobs thru it.
Well I kind of hope he is full of it, I suck at most things, but generally I suck less at academics and anything that requires logic and attention to details - so if I could just get by with those abilities, I have a better chance of success.
I think a great deal can be attributed to people skills. Having high emotional intelligence can allow a person to read a teacher/interviewer/manager. In some fields, this type of person will excel far more than a more qualified candidate who leans on what they know.
My wife is like this. She did average in undergrad, and because she was the first in her family to go to college and went to a bad elementary school/middle school, she lacked many skills other college students take for granted. But because she knew she had that deficit, she worked hard at it and also developed a skill other college students lacked: understanding the teacher’s expectation. While some students would go into class thinking they had to memorize the material/do a bunch of extra credit/pad out their essays to make them appear “better”, my wife would simply determine what exactly she needed to do to get an A, and focus all her efforts on that. Sounds obvious, but you’d be surprised how many undergrads waste time (or don’t spend enough time!) On things in the class. Part of it was adaptation on her part; English is her second language, she reads extremely slowly, and had to work full time while an undergrad. But her skills in reading people paid off- the same skills to determine a teacher’s specific expectation allowed her to interview well and she got a job straight out of college.
In her job, she applied the same skill- learning the expectations of her manager and focusing on that. Even though she didn’t know as much as some others, she was able to apply what she knew much more efficiently.
My stepbrother’s girlfriend took the opposite approach. She simply assumed the only way to get an A was to spend as much time as possible on the material, whether it would even count toward the grade. She was a perfectionist and took things extremely literally. If something wasn’t explicitly explained she didn’t know how to do it. She defined herself on what she knew, but couldn’t communicate it well to interviewers. So even though she did better in a more prestigious school, her and my wife had the same major, my wife has been continuously employed in her field while my stebrother’s girlfriend has been marginally employed.
I wouldn’t recommend university to my daughter or her friends unless they can get the grades to go to a good uni. Degrees from universities that aren’t Russell Group are worth a hell of a lot less than other degrees, and cost about the same.
(The Russell Group unis also have a lot more hardship funds and scholarships, so can actually cost less, but most poor kids don’t know that or have anyone to help them fill in the applications just right. Some sixth-forms do do that now, to give them credit.)
A friend of mine works in the admissions dept for a postgrad section of a Russell Group university, and they automatically dismiss any applications from graduates of non-Russell Group unis. Doesn’t matter how good your grade was or what your work experience was or what your extra-curriculars were: you went to the wrong uni. I see that more and more in other businesses, too.
If my daughter and her friends don’t get into a Russell Group uni, I see no value in them going to uni. If they don’t, they can apply for entry-level office jobs and retail work and be available for all working hours, while their college friends can only work around their school schedule. They’ll have about the same chance of getting that job as they would after uni, but with three extra years of experience and pay and no student loan debts.
You do, actually; I’ve noticed it before.
I was like that at uni; even though we had grants then, they didn’t come close to covering living costs unless your parents heavily subsidised you.
So the not-poor kids spent their summers interning or taking extra courses, or just hanging out with the rich kids; in all those ways, they built up really good contacts for the future. “Oh, you need a job? My Dad just got me a job at x company, and they need someone else - I’ll put in a word for you.”
The poor kids spent their summers working at McJobs they could have got without going to college and generally stayed on in jobs that like afterwards because they didn’t have the contacts that the not-poor kids had.
And going to a crap uni also got you fewer of those lucrative networking opportunities. You’d be hanging out with someone whose Dad worked at a factory; at the good unis, you’d be hanging out with someone whose Dad owned the factory. Big difference.
Not necessarily. If it meant that they studied business for those two years rather working in business, they’ll be all theory and no praxis and that would actually prejudice me against them.
However, a lot of MBAs are completed part-time while working, and I’d respect them for completing that degree, but their worth as my manager would still be how well they managed me, not whether they’d studied for an MBA. It seems to me to be a box-ticking exercise people have to do to satisfy their employers rather than something that actually makes them a better manager.
Wow, super varied opinions and experiences here.
As a point of reference, the company I work for is restructuring it’s career ladders. Previously, those with a technical degree (2 years) and those with an undergrad degree had the same opportunities for earnings and promotion. No more. Now, those with technical degrees will cap out just below management level, while those with an undergrad can keep going up in to management. This is a multi-national American company.
Lots of folks aren’t too pleased, including my boss, who is a supervisor now, but can’t go much higher once this comes in to effect (he has a tech degree but 25 years of experience as well).