The death of university degrees

[plodder]

https://www.inc.com/justin-bariso/googl ... id=sf01001

Google decides to get straight to the point. They obviously feel that there’s a significant market here.

[bjn]

https://www.inc.com/justin-bariso/googl ... id=sf01001

Google decides to get straight to the point. They obviously feel that there’s a significant market here.

Note that all the skills listed were geek skills. While I might consider hiring someone with a UX design cert from google (along with relevant experience) I don’t see the NHS employing doctors that way.

ETA: I always have visions of visiting violence upon tech w.nkers who say “disrupt”.

[secret squirrel]

The master said, 'the gentleman is not a vessel'.

More seriously, a lot of currently fairly high paid data analysis type jobs come down to using fairly basic excel and making charts for managers to glance at. Similarly, a lot of programming jobs are specialized to the point of being borderline data entry and don't require any depth of knowledge or understanding. Presumably a big influx of people qualified to do this kind of thing and not much else would drive wages down considerably. Turning positions for skilled craftspeople into positions for unskilled laborers is the capitalist dream, after all.

[El Pollo Diablo]

If someone came to me with only a google certificate, they'd not get an interview.

[bob sterman]

More seriously, a lot of currently fairly high paid data analysis type jobs come down to using fairly basic excel and making charts for managers to glance at.

Indeed. If you can make pivot tables - and create data "dashboards" in Excel you can become an organisation's data guru.

[lpm]

More seriously, a lot of currently fairly high paid data analysis type jobs come down to using fairly basic excel and making charts for managers to glance at.

Indeed. If you can make pivot tables - and create data "dashboards" in Excel you can become an organisation's data guru.

That's not what the job is.

You want an entry level person to be doing that, but building their skills into something far greater. The challenge is determining what information managers should be ignoring or studying carefully. If an employee's reports are being glanced at, that employee is not doing their job. The progession is Data to Information to Knowledge to Decision, with Information to Knowledge being the hardest stage.

6 months might be enough for a data analyst, but that's a dead end job becoming largely automated. An employee who's done a 4 year STEM MSC is much more likely to be able to tell the CEO "don't look at that, look at this" or "to be able to take this decision, you will need the following knowledge which I will provide to you".

[lpm]

I'm willing to bet that the last 6 months has brought this home to senior managers. People able to adapt quickly, obtaining new information and using it to support unprecedented decisions, have been incredibly valuable. A person with a 6 months "degree" in doing X is worse than useless when there's an urgent need for Y and Z.

[Bird on a Fire]

Those are vocational qualifications. It's not unusual for a vocational qualification to take a few months, and if it's offered online it can be pretty cheap.

It's nothing like a degree, though.

In some cases, employers might find that a Google qualification in data analysis has more of the skills they need than somebody with a degree in statistics. Tech jobs are the modern equivalent of blue-collar manual labour, cranking out widgets on demand. Degrees have never been necessary for that kind of thing.

It's an interesting experiment for a large employer to design a training course for entry level positions, then pass the cost on to workers. But I don't see this model as particularly new, or at all threatening to university degrees.

[bob sterman]

More seriously, a lot of currently fairly high paid data analysis type jobs come down to using fairly basic excel and making charts for managers to glance at.

Indeed. If you can make pivot tables - and create data "dashboards" in Excel you can become an organisation's data guru.

That's not what the job is.

You want an entry level person to be doing that, but building their skills into something far greater. The challenge is determining what information managers should be ignoring or studying carefully. If an employee's reports are being glanced at, that employee is not doing their job. The progession is Data to Information to Knowledge to Decision, with Information to Knowledge being the hardest stage.

Hey - I'm not saying how things should be! Just reporting on what happens - people who can make a spiffy chart / dashboard get worshipped as data gurus.

[jimbob]

https://www.inc.com/justin-bariso/googl ... id=sf01001

Google decides to get straight to the point. They obviously feel that there’s a significant market here.

Note that all the skills listed were geek skills. While I might consider hiring someone with a UX design cert from google (along with relevant experience) I don’t see the NHS employing doctors that way.

ETA: I always have visions of visiting violence upon tech w.nkers who say “disrupt”.

Exactly. And particular geek skillset. I'd say that my core skillset (device physics, design, simulation, measurement, and data analysis) is a geek skillset, but wouldn't be amenable to such a course.

Most of them - the design and simulation, as well as actually using the test and measurement equipment were developed at work.

It must be time for "disruptive" to go out of fashion again... although the concept's been around for a long time - early 90's at least.

[plodder]

well, the more the competition stand around with their hands in their pockets expressing scorn the better, from a rapacious and huge capitalist market leader’s point of view.

[jimbob]

well, the more the competition stand around with their hands in their pockets expressing scorn the better, from a rapacious and huge capitalist market leader’s point of view.

But not if it's the potential customers' customers

[Bird on a Fire]

I don't really see how these are competition for degrees. They're training courses to do one particular job. It's not a new idea at all, other than the way Google have been marketing them.

[plodder]

I dunno. An 18 year old looking at 4 years at 15 grand a year to be average probably feels differently.

[Bird on a Fire]

There are loads of intensive courses for data professionals already - Lisbon's got loads, for example. An 18 year old wanting to take a vocational course can already do so.

For instance, I see loads of questions in stats groups online from maths or stats graduates who don't know the first thing about analysing real-world data. University degrees don't seem to be tailored towards providing skills industry wants, but I think twas ever thus, and graduates are still comparably more employable.

Accreditation is important. It will be interesting to see how industry ranks these things versus degrees in related areas. Maybe a Google certificate will be highly regarded by tech startups, or maybe they'll make a bunch of cash out of kids' aspirations.

But I don't think on its own this is doing much that's novel to disrupt universities.

[Stephanie]

I thought these types of courses existed already tbh. I recall my husband looking at the CCNA years ago

[secret squirrel]

Vocational courses are nothing new, but what I think is relatively new is the idea that they are in competition with university degrees. This ties in with the general anti-university sentiment in, particularly American, tech and Conservative culture (especially the part of the Venn diagram where these overlap). See e.g. Peter Thiel's fellowship program, and Bryan Caplan's writing about education. And of course the fever dream narrative of cultural Marxist professors indoctrinating the youth.

To be fair, universities have marketed themselves into a weird position, particularly in the US. The Humboldt model of higher education has always been a bit strange, as effective teaching and performing cutting edge research are very different skills. Even more so now the distance from the undergrad curriculum to the frontiers of knowledge is very long in many areas. It makes sense from the perspective of universities as 'communities of scholars', where people would go to be exposed to interesting people and ideas as a path to becoming a more fully realized person and citizen, but it doesn't make sense if you think about universities as places where you pay money (sometimes a lot of money) to learn skills you can get a good job with. Unfortunately for universities, the trend towards 'universities as businesses' is taking us away from the ideals which justify the Humboldt model. In many places university administrators seem to be fully embracing, and even driving this trend, so it is likely to continue.

At the moment I think employers give a lot of weight to university degrees (see e.g. EPD's post above), despite the various points brought up in e.g. Caplan's book. This is a problem for Caplan, because as an AnCap he's committed to the essential rationality of markets, so if he can't interpret the value placed in university degrees by hiring committees as indicating some actual value in the university system he's coming dangerously close to admitting his ideology is founded on bollocks (full disclosure, I haven't read his whole book, maybe he resolves this tension somehow). But I believe his ideology is founded on bollocks, so it's conceivable to me that university degrees don't provide much value for the mechanistic work many people who get them do for a living (from the narrow perspective of their employers), and that one day employers will notice this and act accordingly. It's also conceivable that, even if the degrees do provide good value, employers will be swayed by the increasing anti-university sentiment and irrationally disregard them anyway.

[bmforre]

The university as meeting place, discussion scene and network building center has to be very important. Now with corona the meeting opportunities are severely restricted and likely to remain so possibly for a long time. Therefore the university is no longer offering what it did one or two years ago.

Inevitable question: Is it still worth paying so much for? And what are or can be built to be alternatives?

[plodder]

Important for who? For researchers, maybe, but presumably a lot of collaborative research is extended way beyond faculty colleagues.

For students its the social scene that’s important, and a lot of kids see it as a bit of a poncy overpriced luxury.

[Rich Scopie]

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

[plodder]

Fake or irrelevant qualifications are already an issue, as is greed and mendacious behaviour.

[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?

[Woodchopper]

I don't really see how these are competition for degrees. They're training courses to do one particular job. It's not a new idea at all, other than the way Google have been marketing them.

It could be competition due to prestige.

Students in the US are spending $25 000 to $50 000 per year to get a degree.

If someone's aim is just to get a decently paying job on graduation then University is a very expensive way of getting it. As mentioned, there are already lots of vocational qualifications. However, as a rule they don't have the prestige of a degree. Lots of employers won't consider candidates without a degree, so the student feels that they have to run up debts of tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars.

If an organization like Google can lend prestige to vocational qualifications then people might prefer them over getting a degree. A six month course would be far better value if it was still considered by employers.

[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).

This sector is ripe for the taking as its offering is now miles away from what the market requires, due to subsidy, a closed shop approach and tradition.

Google would not be taking this seriously if they didn't think they could make money.

[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).

This sector is ripe for the taking as its offering is now miles away from what the market requires, due to subsidy, a closed shop approach and tradition.

I agree that its ripe for reform in the US. Year on year university fees have risen faster than inflation. That's not just the fault of universities, as there have been big cuts in state funding for public universities. Nevertheless, even after adjusting for inflation overall US university fees have doubled since the end of the 80s. This is a huge problem for all the people who end up owing tens of thousands of dollars.

Google would not be taking this seriously if they didn't think they could make money.

They'll make money, but Google also take a long term view.