The death of university degrees

[Rich Scopie]

Oh great - now anti-vaxxers will have an actual piece of paper to wave as proof of their "University of Google" credentials.

Which of the four qualifications listed at https://grow.google/certificates/ (Data analyst, Project manager, User experience designer, IT support specialist) do you think would make someone believe they were qualified to discuss vaccines on the same level as doctors and medical researchers?

Any - in much the same way that quacks make a point of being a "Doctor", even if that is a PhD in Scandinavian Studies.

[shpalman]

Oh great - now anti-vaxxers will have an actual piece of paper to wave as proof of their "University of Google" credentials.

Which of the four qualifications listed at https://grow.google/certificates/ (Data analyst, Project manager, User experience designer, IT support specialist) do you think would make someone believe they were qualified to discuss vaccines on the same level as doctors and medical researchers?

Any - in much the same way that quacks make a point of being a "Doctor", even if that is a PhD in Scandinavian Studies.

I'm assuming though that at least that's a real PhD and not a diploma they bought online, it would make them an authority outside (well outside) their expertise.

Your average antivaxxer who does all their research watching youtube videos isn't going to get one of these google diplomas to make themselves look more authoritative in the antivax community.

[plodder]

I'd argue that the prestige is no longer warranted and it's mainly vestigial. The average young person now has a degree. Subjects that were previously vocational (eg nursing) now have degrees. Grade inflation means that a masters is needed where previously a degree would have done (and A levels would have done before that).

I think those are all arguments for signalling being important (ie employers wanting to see a degree certificate rather than being concerned with what the student actually learned).

We can't *all* be prestigious. There's no alternative to degrees at the moment, and individual HR managers don't want to be the ones to make the first move. Google have some work to do convincing employers their qualifications are up to scratch, but it's not that difficult. There are easy-to-get vocational qualifications all over the place that can unlock all sorts of careers, so the competition isn't exactly difficult either. Prince2, I'm looking at you. Similarly lots of H&S qualifications, where the main criteria for success seems to be wading through a load of boring and extremely easy bollocks.

Basically adult (i.e. post-18) education seems to fall into one of two main categories. Overpriced and poor quality or overpriced and high quality.

[AMS]

I'd argue that the prestige is no longer warranted and it's mainly vestigial. The average young person now has a degree. Subjects that were previously vocational (eg nursing) now have degrees. Grade inflation means that a masters is needed where previously a degree would have done (and A levels would have done before that).

I think those are all arguments for signalling being important (ie employers wanting to see a degree certificate rather than being concerned with what the student actually learned).

Isn't it partly that some subjects have genuinely become much more complicated over time? Notably, nursing.

Do we have any other examples of *subjects* that have become *graduate degrees* rather than vocational, as opposed to jobs becoming generically taken by graduates, whether they are related to the degree subject or not?

[FlammableFlower]

I haven't gone through and fact-checked thus, but the was an Adam Ruins Everything on US university (college) loans.

No idea if what's spouted here is bobbins or not, but iiitf correct it gives a good reason why the overall cost of US university attendance had gone up so much.

[Woodchopper]

I haven't gone through and fact-checked thus, but the was an Adam Ruins Everything on US university (college) loans.

No idea if what's spouted here is bobbins or not, but iiitf correct it gives a good reason why the overall cost of US university attendance had gone up so much.

That's on the debt side of it. I don't know how accurate it is but the video was amusing. Here's some data on the rapidly increasing costs (after adjusting for inflation).
https://educationdata.org/average-cost-of-college/

[Woodchopper]

I'd argue that the prestige is no longer warranted and it's mainly vestigial. The average young person now has a degree. Subjects that were previously vocational (eg nursing) now have degrees. Grade inflation means that a masters is needed where previously a degree would have done (and A levels would have done before that).

I think those are all arguments for signalling being important (ie employers wanting to see a degree certificate rather than being concerned with what the student actually learned).

Isn't it partly that some subjects have genuinely become much more complicated over time? Notably, nursing.

Do we have any other examples of *subjects* that have become *graduate degrees* rather than vocational, as opposed to jobs becoming generically taken by graduates, whether they are related to the degree subject or not?

Yes, there is that. I was just disagreeing with plodder, but it is a complex situation.

[Woodchopper]

I haven't gone through and fact-checked thus, but the was an Adam Ruins Everything on US university (college) loans.

No idea if what's spouted here is bobbins or not, but iiitf correct it gives a good reason why the overall cost of US university attendance had gone up so much.

That's on the debt side of it. I don't know how accurate it is but the video was amusing. Here's some data on the rapidly increasing costs (after adjusting for inflation).
https://educationdata.org/average-cost-of-college/

And here is an interesting report on the cost increases in education and reasons for them.
https://www.mercatus.org/system/files/h ... igh_v1.pdf

tl;dr its down to rising salary costs due to increases in the general market rate for highly qualified workers.

[Gfamily]

And here is an interesting report on the cost increases in education and reasons for them.
https://www.mercatus.org/system/files/h ... igh_v1.pdf

tl;dr its down to rising salary costs due to increases in the general market rate for highly qualified workers.

Is it really the "average cost of college"?

only if all students are equally distributed across the 4 college categories and periods
* public 2-year institution (in-state rate)
* public 4-year institution (in-state rate)
* public 4-year institution (out of state)
* private nonprofit 4-year institution

[Woodchopper]

And here is an interesting report on the cost increases in education and reasons for them.
https://www.mercatus.org/system/files/h ... igh_v1.pdf

tl;dr its down to rising salary costs due to increases in the general market rate for highly qualified workers.

Is it really the "average cost of college"?

only if all students are equally distributed across the 4 college categories and periods
* public 2-year institution (in-state rate)
* public 4-year institution (in-state rate)
* public 4-year institution (out of state)
* private nonprofit 4-year institution

Some of those are disaggregated in the educationdata link above.

[Gfamily]

And here is an interesting report on the cost increases in education and reasons for them.
https://www.mercatus.org/system/files/h ... igh_v1.pdf

tl;dr its down to rising salary costs due to increases in the general market rate for highly qualified workers.

Is it really the "average cost of college"?

only if all students are equally distributed across the 4 college categories and periods
* public 2-year institution (in-state rate)
* public 4-year institution (in-state rate)
* public 4-year institution (out of state)
* private nonprofit 4-year institution

Some of those are disaggregated in the educationdata link above.

Yes, it did occur to me to say that you were making a valid point; that degrees (and US degrees in particular) can be cripplingly expensive, meaning that those who look to advance their education, often have to maximise its financial return to themselves (and their bankers), rather than returning its worth in less tangible means.

[dyqik]

Is it really the "average cost of college"?

only if all students are equally distributed across the 4 college categories and periods
* public 2-year institution (in-state rate)
* public 4-year institution (in-state rate)
* public 4-year institution (out of state)
* private nonprofit 4-year institution

Some of those are disaggregated in the educationdata link above.

Yes, it did occur to me to say that you were making a valid point; that degrees (and US degrees in particular) can be cripplingly expensive, meaning that those who look to advance their education, often have to maximise its financial return to themselves (and their bankers), rather than returning its worth in less tangible means.

The other aspect of that is that not that many students pay the full rate at places like Harvard or MIT. Very large numbers get scholarships, alumni discounts etc.

[Martin_B]

Do we have any other examples of *subjects* that have become *graduate degrees* rather than vocational, as opposed to jobs becoming generically taken by graduates, whether they are related to the degree subject or not?

When I started working as an engineer there were many older engineers who joined a company straight out of school as a trainee and got trained up that way rather than go to university for a degree. But by the time I came to get a job in the industry a degree was a minimum requirement.

Perhaps counter-intuitively, higher degrees and doctorates are often seen as a bit of a drawback in industry (being too academic!), although my company is a consultancy and does encourage research and attending (and speaking at) conferences as a way to highlight our supposed superiority over our competitors.

[Woodchopper]

Some of those are disaggregated in the educationdata link above.

Yes, it did occur to me to say that you were making a valid point; that degrees (and US degrees in particular) can be cripplingly expensive, meaning that those who look to advance their education, often have to maximise its financial return to themselves (and their bankers), rather than returning its worth in less tangible means.

The other aspect of that is that not that many students pay the full rate at places like Harvard or MIT. Very large numbers get scholarships, alumni discounts etc.

True. But even in public universities we are looking at the average cost of fees and dorm accommodation being over $20 000 per year. Which leads to crippling levels of debt.

If Google can offer people an entry into a well paid corporate job for a far lower cost then that’s going to be attractive.

[FlammableFlower]

Do we have any other examples of *subjects* that have become *graduate degrees* rather than vocational, as opposed to jobs becoming generically taken by graduates, whether they are related to the degree subject or not?

When I started working as an engineer there were many older engineers who joined a company straight out of school as a trainee and got trained up that way rather than go to university for a degree. But by the time I came to get a job in the industry a degree was a minimum requirement.

Perhaps counter-intuitively, higher degrees and doctorates are often seen as a bit of a drawback in industry (being too academic!), although my company is a consultancy and does encourage research and attending (and speaking at) conferences as a way to highlight our supposed superiority over our competitors.

This is a very good point and when I was on placement at Sandoz/Novartis in Basel they still had a company trainee system for practically all jobs in the company (certainly for both chemistry and biology lab-based roles) - they were Pracktikants. One bloke I know there had worked his way up that way. They did do some day-release to the uni or hospital as needed for their training.
I suspect though that, in the UK at least, this had largely gone in the general out-sourcing trend. It's another thing off the balance sheet. Leave it to universities to do the training.

[Bird on a Fire]

I've tended to think of universities as providing, primarily, education in a general sense, rather than vocational training.

The world is moving quickly, and there's no guarantee that whatever job a twenty-year-old graduate gets will continue to exist for ten years, let alone the fifty-ish before they can retire.

Some jobs, or career paths, require the kinds of transferable skills a degree teaches, such as researching unfamiliar topics, synthesising conflicting information sources, or various forms of communication.

It's no secret that a lot of tech jobs don't, really - they're the modern equivalent of industrial work. Loom operators never needed degrees to crank out lengths of cloth to order, and nor do programmers cranking out lengths of code. But it's a lot easier to move tech jobs online and force western workers to compete with equally-qualified workers in poorer countries, than it was to move the textile industry to the east (though that still happened). Code-cranking might be a decent job for now, but I wouldn't bank on it as a lifelong career.

There's also - and I think we have to be quite firm about this, even though a lot of people will scoff - a lot more to life than work, and a lot more to society than producing workers. Education is recognised the world over as empowering, as a pathway to self-actualisation, and so on. The gifts that universities provide - of deep knowledge of a subject, breath of contact with others, and opportunities for contact with a host of other forms of cultural activity from sports to performing arts - may be underestimated by a lot of people (including many students!) but I think society is all the richer for having people who've benefitted from that experience.

I have no idea how to quantify that, but it won't be through workplace statistics. Society is badly let down by handing the reigns of power to capitalists who only view people in terms of their potential productivity as workers.

Most people recently have had more free time. We might be moving to a regime of more working from home. Many businesses have been experimenting with shorter workdays, or fewer workdays per week. Countries like Spain have been experimenting with universal basic income. The resolution to the crisis in late-stage capitalism may well involve all of us working less, so we would be foolish to prioritise developing an employer's wishlist over developing ourselves.

Thank you for listening to my ted talk.

[AMS]

There's also - and I think we have to be quite firm about this, even though a lot of people will scoff - a lot more to life than work, and a lot more to society than producing workers. Education is recognised the world over as empowering, as a pathway to self-actualisation, and so on. The gifts that universities provide - of deep knowledge of a subject, breath of contact with others, and opportunities for contact with a host of other forms of cultural activity from sports to performing arts - may be underestimated by a lot of people (including many students!) but I think society is all the richer for having people who've benefitted from that experience.

Thank you, especially this bit.

[murmur]

I'd argue that the prestige is no longer warranted and it's mainly vestigial. The average young person now has a degree. Subjects that were previously vocational (eg nursing) now have degrees. Grade inflation means that a masters is needed where previously a degree would have done (and A levels would have done before that).

I think those are all arguments for signalling being important (ie employers wanting to see a degree certificate rather than being concerned with what the student actually learned).

Isn't it partly that some subjects have genuinely become much more complicated over time? Notably, nursing.

Do we have any other examples of *subjects* that have become *graduate degrees* rather than vocational, as opposed to jobs becoming generically taken by graduates, whether they are related to the degree subject or not?

It is most definitely true that nursing has become more complex and technical and that the old stylee apprenticeship model, like wot I did, was highly inadequate in terms of any class of theoretical underpinning or training in critical thinking. However, a practical content remains necessary and the college-based part can (personal observations of many, many students and their tutors...let alone syllabuses) be pretty inadequate and doesn't do what I'd wanted from the move to university, while at the same time depriving students of essential practical experience. In some respects we ended up with the worst combination.

Dunno if this is true of other disciplines.