More than a thousand Harvard students walked out of their commencement ceremony yesterday to support 13 undergraduates who were barred from graduating after they participated in the Gaza solidarity encampment in Harvard Yard.
Asmer Safi, one of the 13 pro-Palestinian student protesters barred from graduating, says that while his future has been thrown into uncertainty while he is on probation, he has no regrets about standing up for Palestinian rights.
Meanwhile, this is Harvard University senior Shruthi Kumar, who went off script as she gave the English commencement address, slamming Harvard for denying the degrees. She read from notes that she pulled out of her graduation gown.
This should get air time. While the others walked out in solidarity together, she’s putting herself on the line individually. It gives administration a name to the crowd.
There is a video in the article where her speech is aired. Her speech went so hard the word “slammed” might be justified for once.
This goes so hard
Damn that crowd went so wild if they cheered any longer Harvard would call the police to tear gas them.
where’s the piped bot when you need it?
Especially since the posters marked it “for kids” for some dumb reason, so you can’t save it for later.
Yes, so fucking stupid. I was looking for a way to report it as not a kids video but there weren’t any options that didn’t also flag it as something inappropriate.
Wow, how incredibly brave.
i cant save this for later because it’s made for kids? what?
Damn, Gen Z is killing it
If we do not stand together then we’ll fall alone.
If we don’t stand together, we fall apart.
Pithy and multi-faceted. (Also not mine.)
In looking to credit this, I can’t find anything, but apparently Franklin said “we must all hang together or we will hang separately”, which is 100% the same vibe.
We hang together, or we hang separately.
Asmer Safi, one of the 13 pro-Palestinian student protesters barred from graduating, says that while his future has been thrown into uncertainty while he is on probation, he has no regrets about standing up for Palestinian rights.
I guarantee this person that half a dozen institutions around the world will issue them a degree with full credits already earned just for their standing up for Palestine.
Are those institutions worth as much as Harvard on your resume?
At this point it looks like they are worth more… so…
As someone who has a great deal of respect for academia, my opinions on the administrations of many average and top universities has declined significantly. In the last month or so.
Sadly, probably not in practical terms.
Even if someone is angered by their actions, the employers are unlikely to hold it against those holding degrees, it isn’t their fault.
Meanwhile the jobs that only would accept Harvard or similar ivy League won’t care about why they didn’t actually get the degree, they just see that a degree was not from their precious “Harvard”. This may be a hard requirement or just a massive advantage branding wise for your university.
If this weren’t the case, Harvard couldn’t charge so much to attend, no one would pay.
So maybe if withholding the degree came with a big refund for all the money spent for the diploma they refuse to give, but as it stands…
Sure, but let’s say that, for example, La Sorbonne says they have credits earned for a degree instead.
There are many prestigious institutions in other countries that might offer them a degree.
I’ve never heard of La Sorbonne. Which is likely because I’m an ignorant American, but so are many of the people usefully swayed by the “Harvard graduate” title in professional life.
Why do you think that many of the people usefully swayed by Harvard wouldn’t be usefully swayed by La Sorbonne just because you’ve never heard of it?
Simple, because I could be in a position to hire someone and wouldn’t notice “La Sorbonne” as anything noteworthy when flipping through resumes. And it’s not just hiring where prestige can be useful, it’s business pitches, op-eds, political speaking. These aren’t things universally judged by HR managers who, making the assumption they’re even good at their job, might recognize elite foreign institutions, they’re judged by everyday people who might not even be able to name the full top 10 US-based universities, but know the name “Harvard”.
I’ve met plenty of Harvard undergrads so they don’t hold a mystique, but the paper they get from the institution is nevertheless a valuable asset.
I’d rather doubt it. They worked really hard to get into and graduate from Harvard, there’s a reason they got into that school. There’s a reason they got a degree there. It was probably their dream. It was an accomplishment they could be proud of, and one they knew that would help further their dreams in the future. To suggest they could just get one anywhere else is dickish.
And after this fiasco I’d wager their feelings have changed.
You think they’re entire life goals have changed? I’d rather doubt it.
Of course they are, because now you have this whole affair to write about. You were good enough to graduate from Harvard, so good that you got famous because of your just actions, and then you got a degree from somewhere else.
If you want to work at some unethical company, they might not take you, but if if it’s a place that has some semblance of integrity, then your resume is rock solid.
A lot of companies don’t like “troublemakers”, no matter their core ethics. They demonstrated that they’re willing to speak their mind publicly even if the people “above” them tell them not to and that’s something nearly all “above” people (e.g., managers doing hiring) can’t tolerate.
Very possibly depending on the institution.
Not sure why you’re being downvoted, it’s a valid question and I don’t think you’re asking it to be mean.
Of course not but you will get downvoted anyway cause this is Lemmy
Who the fuck cares
Probably those students who paid for the classes and work so hard to graduate at Harvard I would imagine. Probably matters a lot to them. I think maybe suggesting that it’s no big deal they had their degrees stripped from them unjustly Because they can just get one from somewhere else is kind of asinine to say.
You get why this tracks with Lemmy though right?
That’s not the point I’m making.
Attending a graduation ceremony is a different thing than being able to graduate. I think I read earlier that they were banned from the former, but I had not seen where they would literally be denied their actual degree.
As this article points out they’re barred from graduation itself.
Thank you for the correction. Yes with all the talk of the commencement I wondered… but this article updates & confirms it.
which essentially means that I am a student not in good standing and will not be allowed to get my degree
Your info is out of date. The university has since stated that the 13 students are on academic probation for a year, and will be ineligible for graduation. In short, they’re being held back for at least a full year.
And realistically, the uni is likely waiting for the fervor to die down, before they find some bogus reason to kick all 13 out entirely. But they know they can’t do that while the spotlight is on them, so they’re barring the 13 from graduating while they wait for people to lose interest.
In short, they’re being held back for at least a full year.
Which means they will have to pay for another year of tuition. This sounds like it’s going to work out pretty well for Harvard’s bottom line.
Thank you for sharing your perspective. Tbh I never even considered that as a possibility, though you could be right - we’ll see what happens.
No, they’ve been placed on probation and cannot graduate for at least 1 year.
Thank you - THIS Is the kind of detail I have been wanting to know. The college will not simply “delete” their grades for the prior 4 years, so being placed on probation is quite a significant hardship, but less than if that were to happen. Do you happen to know if they would simply get their degree one year later, or have to be “re-admitted” to Harvard again for that to happen? (my guess is the former, or even if the latter then a streamlined re-admission process proffered)
So this sounds like “introducing a delay in getting their degree” process, rather than “banning them from ever receiving a degree from that institution for life” one.
The article mentioned someone who gets to keep their Rhodes Scholarship even, so definitely people are sympathetic, and I wonder if the main harm from all of this will fall onto the institution of Harvard itself.
It is a spiteful action because they know they would lose the ensuing lawsuit if they went further.
I fucking sue you know how much it cost to go to Harvard.
They are doing the right thing.
The kids are alright.
That’s like 50% of the graduating class?
I just checked, and yeah, just over. The graduating class of 2024 has 1,980 students.
And Genocide Inc recruiters looking closely at the ones quietly graduating.
Good for them, it takes courage to go against the grain.
Trump will arrest all Palestine protesters on day 1 and promote REAL genocide in Gaza. All you anti-Biden assholes can eat a dick because that’s what you’ll get from orange Mussolini.
K, and how is that relevant?
In your mind, all these students were “Palestine protestsers” that hate Biden? Can you help us out here? Do you have a full thought you’d like to complete, or are you just scared and angry?
To everyone else, how did people learn absolutely nothing about politics, or even basic communication during the last 8 damn years? Yelling and nagging at people, even if you’re right, will always come off as being an insufferable, annoying asshole to anyone that doesn’t already agree with you and isn’t interested in something you’ve immediately felt the need to put down because you think you already know what’s important
There’s plenty of good books out there for anyone interested in learning how to communicate with others, especially those you disagree with - I recommend You’re Not Listening or I’m Just Saying as good starting points
Sure let’s go!
- They just now finalized the rule and it’s expected to be struck down in the courts under the major questions doctrine. Exactly like Obama’s. If it isn’t struck down then it still has to contend with the massive amount of wage theft in this country. Rights you cannot access are not rights.
- Lmao, that was a pharma corporate push. Biden just didn’t get in the way. But again, the republican courts are already on making sure we can’t have nice things.
- Oh so there’s money to give kids counselors after a shooting, but not money to let the CDC study gun violence?
- Biden came into office with renewable energy already at lower building and maintenance cost than fossil fuels. The IRA actually restricted the growth of renewable energy stuff to make sure American Rich people got more rich. It also protects Big Oil because it made renewable energy more expensive to build and maintain.
- This doesn’t matter because house prices are still accelerating ridiculously fast, now with high interest mortgages.
- The CFPB is as poisoned as the FCC. This rule will last as long as Biden does.
- This is awkward, but this was actually a Trump era law.
- The GOP ran an end-run around this law before it was even “reformed”. They have laws allowing their legislatures to designate a winner instead of listening to the “preference vote”.
- MIC goes Brrrrrrt no matter whose in charge.
- The family farm is dead. This is just another gift to corporations.
- Really? The paint on the special plane is on this list? People are fucking dying.
- Nobody in the Southwest expects the water deal to hold once the chips are down. The federal money is nice but Vegas and California aren’t going to cut back their usage when Phoenix reaches zero day. They certainly aren’t going to tolerate having a day like that themselves so city and state officials downriver can continue to pull water rather than ship it in. We need to incentivize moving people and corporations out of the area.
- Again, the family farms are dead. There are small(er) Ag corps, but nothing like the PR suggests. Corporations thank you for your donation.
- Marijuana did not get legalized. Schedule 3 drugs are still illegal to have without government permission.
- Oh hey, this could be great. If SCOTUS doesn’t kill it for being a novel regulation instead of a novel legislation. They’ve been very clear about that since their EPA ruling about coal.
- We actually just found out that Intel got a giant chunk of this funding for defense industry chips. The other fun problem is related to number 12. The new chip factory is in Arizona. It’s startlingly water neutral but it does still require water. And it brings more people into the water problem.
- This is something that could go either way. It’s not an unalloyed good without legislative follow up that doesn’t exist.
- The MIC goes Brrrrrt no matter who is president.
- As the 2018 plan showed, good vibes do not stop cyber attacks.
- The MIC goes Brrrrrt no matter who is president. But also this is taking credit for something the two countries were already coming around to. Fun extra - Both countries also have unpopular presences of US troops that domestic politics may force out.
- They seriously just gave Biden credit for decades of progress on Cancer. I didn’t know he was president for that long…
- Yup it’s true, look up ADHD symptoms and you too can get legal speed easier than ever.
- This one might actually be the gem on the list, I wonder why it’s buried so far down? Oh yeah that’s to do with Politico’s ownership. At any rate it’s super narrow, well based in law, and leaves a ton of room for companies to wiggle out of their unions still. So SCOTUS might let it stand as a PR show.
- Yes, we know Biden can run a functional government. That’s the basic job requirement.
- Doomed by SCOTUS. It’s not based in law and SCOTUS has made their opinion of that very clear.
- Damn they’re just going to ignore the Infrastructure bills passed by Clinton, Bush, and Obama? I know Trump’s presidency seemed like forever, but there was a before time.
- Yup Biden achieved the “All of the above” energy policy. It really made sure we’re moving towards more oil production. Yup you read that right. They just tried to positive spin Record US Oil Production. And gas prices just keep on climbing that staircase to heaven. So they’re producing more, and keeping record profits doing so.
- MIC goes Brrrrrrrt. Also a repeat of number 20.
- Repeat cyber attacks. I get the feeling someone mandated the list be 30 things long?
- Yay people who can afford air travel can get refunds! For real screw the corporations, but we’ve got bigger problems than airline refunds.
Okay so how did we do? Let’s have a look. 12 things on the list were in process before he started. 14 things that aren’t really more than performative politics. 10 things that are just gifts to corporations with fun wrapping. Okay though how many actually good things did he pass that SCOTUS doesn’t have a standing opinion against? 6, six things out of a list of 30. And they all come with giant asterisks. There’s one thing on the list that’s just straight progress and that’s the NLRB Cemex decision. As always it comes down to democrats failing to reform the supreme court. They aren’t willing to do the actual thing needed to stop living in a status quo set by republicans.
Completely unrealistic bullshit most of your whining isn’t even about Biden lmao. Brrrt my ass lol.
Well that’s because roughly half of the list wasn’t about Biden either, despite the try hard headline.
There’s plenty of good books out there for anyone interested in learning how to communicate with others, especially those you disagree with - I recommend You’re Not Listening or I’m Just Saying as good starting points
[✓] I’m not a robot
It is already a real genocide. Israel just bombed tents in Rafah, causing a child to be beheaded.
Nobody here said anything about biden, you’re just insulting people unprompted.
Edit: What exactly are you trying to accomplish by posting this?
It is related. Moreover, can’t blame him for preemptively calling out the typical bullshit and virtue signaling we’ve been seeing.
Do you consider virtue signaling to be inherently bad? Because I’m pretty sure his comment also qualifies as such.
That’s not quite virtue signaling. He isn’t proclaiming support of a good cause or expressing some distinct moral correctness, he is condemning a single perspective and common response in these posts. After all, we can infer his stance, though he makes no claim towards his beliefs, all we know is what he is against. It’s a petty distinction, though I feel it helps move it away from virtue signaling.
But no, few things are inherently bad. Our interpretation and our meaning(s) behind our words or actions make them that way. Which is why people tend to fall heavily on one side of a discussion or another.
edit: I see I am getting some downvotes. I am happy to take criticism on this take. No easier way to learn than to challenge oneself to listen and then do.
I’m trying to highlight the distinction between Biden and Trump options. There are many on social media that are proclaiming they will not vote for Biden because he is “promoting genocide”. Despite the fact that every POTUS in the last 50 years has had this exact policy (supporting and providing weaponry to Israel). Despite the fact that Trump is actively in favor of genocide and fascism. The lesser of 2 evils is also known as “the better choice.”
To what end are you trying to highlight that distinction though? What is the goal or motivation for writing that?
The lesser of two evils is also known as “the better choice”.
Unlike some paying lip service about “red lines”, my promises are real. My red line is genocide.
You can vote for your varying levels of evil, I will not vote for genocide.
Personally I think it’s probably best for Americans to vote Biden, since that will give the left some more time to organize, but I get that it’s just too much for some to swallow. I’m just glad I have actual options in my country.
It’s America, you don’t get the choice to vote against genocide.
Just like you don’t get the choice to vote against capitalism.
Democracy.
It’s America, you don’t get the choice to vote against genocide
If yout live in a swing state, maybe. Those of us in solid states can vote however we like as our votes don’t matter anyway
Great system we have
That’s not what I was asking about, what did you hope to accomplish? Are you actually trying to convince people or did you just think you’d feel better if you did?
Yeah genius, they’re out there protesting “Biden”
Because they aren’t being arrested now? Did you have some kind of news feed that didn’t show the police going after college kids with batons?
Your inability to understand the difference between much and few is embarrassing. Thanks for proving my point of lunatics asking for worse than now.
Joke’s on you, I love dick!
I can’t tell if you’re here to instigate as a right wing psyop or because you have so much electoralism brainrot that you have to make everything about an election that is still months away when there are more important things happening right now. People are dying.
JFC, pick your topic to get over outraged about. 150,000 people die a day in the world. Burning fossil fuels is responsible for nearly 1 in 5 of those deaths. https://seas.harvard.edu/news/2021/02/deaths-fossil-fuel-emissions-higher-previously-thought
Get some perspective and realize that there are more important things happening right now. People are dying. All over the world.
Are you trying to prove my point? I’m not going into threads about protesting or sabotaging dirty energy infrastructure and freaking out about how activists and the people who support them are all Biden haters and being overall inflammatory. Telling me to get some perspective is cute when it’s obvious you came to this thread focused on a single thing and ready to start shit, you didn’t come here to gain any perspective.
Not related to the article, and anyway if Biden wanted my vote he should actually try to earn it rather than bash his opponent.
lol how dense do you have to be to not realize Biden is the most progressive president in the last 50 years. Progressive enough? Of course not. But the most progressive in your lifetime. Good luck cutting your nose off to spite your face lol.
Yes he has green policies. Doesn’t change the fact that he actively insulted the Arab and Muslim-American communities and broke campaign promises. He’s completely ignored both of our communities this time around, and instead of saying any positive stuff he did it seems all his campaign attempts to our community are about how bad Trump is. So to reiterate, if he wants MY vote he will have to actually address my community at some point, otherwise he is treating the campaign as if he can win without me and thus doesn’t need my swing state vote.
Your article gives examples like he cancelled Trump’s plan to repaint Air Force One. That affects me how?
Let me save you time. He made campaign promises to the Muslim community and broke multiple ones, then stayed silent for years despite rising Islamophobia and instead focused his administration only on anti-semitism. (Both are terrible but he ignored our community despite our equal fears) He then decided to make it worse by saying he has zero trust for Palestinians, only to privately say he meant Hamas but never corrected the record. So he helped murder relatives of people in my community, and the only outreach to us is saying Trump would be worse. This is supposed to motivate a community that 80% voted for him last time? He’s not a good person and if he loses it’s his own fault.
Executive order 13769. If you’re happy with Trump being worse then by all means, vote for Trump. You deserve him.
And once again rather than show me something positive about Biden you again talk about how bad Trump was. You proved my point.
The origins of this are almost certainly rooted in right-wing operative and foreign troll farms intending to sow defeatism and wedge-drive the Democratic coalition. The people promoting this have a tendency to fall into the category of either being the ones serving the kool-aid, or drinking the kool-aid.
What’s more is that the right is trying so hard to use this moment to paint the left as being antisemitic. If Republicans didn’t paint with such broad strokes the pro-Gazan civilian protests by pointing to fringe protesters — often from outside groups — this wouldn’t have been a problem in the first place. Shame on any university staff that cave to the bullshit pressure.
Are the democrats actively supporting genocide and alienating the voters they need to win in November?
No, it is the children who are right wing troll farms.
Are the democrats actively supporting genocide
Circular reasoning fallacy / begging the question.
and alienating the voters they need to win in November?
Actually it’s a bit of a zero-sum situation, considering the number of Jewish Americans. However Biden has already shifted considerably since October 7th, obviously.
The real question you need to answer is why would Biden ever want to do this, if your premise was true. Realizing there is no good answer to that should permit you to reflect on the nature of how false your premise really is.
But I suspect you already know that.
Idk what any of this means.
It’s the principal skinner meme.
What do you think my premise is?
Idk what any of this means.
That’s all I need to know. Good day.
lol what do you think my premise is?
That speech and the crowd’s reactions gave me the chills.
Harvard, Harvard, Harvard… Isn’t that Bill Ackman’s school?
Anyone know who this dude at 11:26 in the speech and what his stance is? He looks like he’s upset at the speaker.
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Removed by mod
You know what I love about Lemmy? If you block someone, you legitimately just don’t see their comments.
Graduation is optional. The dream we were sold in highschool of “go to college” was propaganda spun up by colleges looking to pad their books with your tuition. Many jobs you are seeking have apprenticeship programs where they pay you to learn.
College is and remains a giant expensive mixer to find someone to date. That’s mostly it. Anything outside of a select few professions can be learned outside of a campus with fresher material.
If you want to learn a profession there is nothing gatekeeping you from doing it.
I can’t speak for you, but I personally want a doctor who learned the profession through an organization that gatekeeps people who didn’t go to college from doing it.
It’s almost as if you breezed by the acknowledgement that some jobs do require secondary education. A fun fact about those doctors, nurses, and other medical professionals: following school they then spend another 4+ years in residency where they actually develop the skills they need to be that doctor you were referring to.
You acknowledged that first and then you said- “If you want to learn a profession there is nothing gatekeeping you from doing it.”
So the second thing you said contradicted the former. I assumed via the way time works that the second one was the one you meant to say.
One statement does not contradict the other. Learning and education are not gatekept by a school. That is the point I made. Widen your view for a moment and maybe understand that a person can learn anywhere. The means to do so exist outside the hallowed halls of academia.
Learning and education are not gatekept by a school.
They are when it’s medical school.
Widen your view for a moment and maybe understand that a person can learn anywhere.
Not if they legally want to practice as a doctor.
The means to do so exist outside the hallowed halls of academia.
Not if you wish to legally practice medicine.
Anything outside of a select few professions can be learned outside of a campus with fresher material.
I can’t help but notice your… selection… seems to align with something I already covered. It really is a shame they dropped language arts from grade school curriculum.
edit:
To drill into this further - while there is a barrier to practice: that does not mean you cannot learn anything about the medical field while outside academia.
Yes, and then you keep contradicting that by saying things like “Learning and education are not gatekept by a school” and “Widen your view for a moment and maybe understand that a person can learn anywhere. The means to do so exist outside the hallowed halls of academia.”
It’s not my fault you can’t make up your mind.
The gatekeeping happens at the end or after the university and before you enter the profession.
It’s generally called a test (or multiple tests) which judge the quality of one’s knowledge before one is allowed to practice as an expert in a certain area.
The graduation is the part where the University produces a certificate in which they state that they have indeed tested somebody’s knowledge and how good it was determined to be. If a person goes through the whole learning process but don’t get that certificate, future employeers might not (in some areas, they legally can’t) consider that person for employment in that area (I explain why at the end).
Generally the actual learning is not gatekept: for example, in my area - software development - people absolutelly can do the entire learning outside formal education and still end up working in it professionally, though at the start of one’s career one still has to have some kind of evidence of one’s capabilities (which in this case isn’t provided by a University having assessed your knowledge on it), so normally the path to it that bypasses Academia involves first working professionally in an adjacent area (such as systems administration) and moving from that to software development (good sys admins have to know how to program)
However for “protected professions” (such as Law) or for were the costs of errors can mean death (such as Medical or Civil Pilot) at minimum you have to be assessed including a significant practical period under supervisions (a couple of years for a Medical doctor depending on speciality, 1000h of flight for Civil Pilots, plus specific training each kind of plane they’re flying) and that practicing under supervision is lot harded - often impossible - to get if a person didn’t come via a formal education setting.
Also in some areas it’s pretty close to impossible to get certified as knowledgeable without going through the entire formal Education process, which is indeed unfair and should not be the case - if should be possible for anybody to pay to be assessed and certified without having to pay for the formal learning.
Even in areas which are neither protected professions nor life-and-death, not having the certification which is the Diploma negativelly impacts a person’s chances to find their first and maybe second jobs. The problem is when hiring managers get lots of candidates for a position, they don’t have time to talk to them all because they also have to do their normal job alongside candidate selection, so instead they prune the list of candidates and not having something that in some way certificates that a candidate has the required knowledge (which for a first job is generally a Diploma, but for latter jobs is going to be previous job experience) is a common criteria because it usually works.
College increases your pay rate and opens the door to research and development, there is no alternative. You’re not going to engineer bridges and plan cities without a degree. The majority of Citizen Science papers submitted are students pursuing a PhD, and the vast majority of them have incredibly small sample sizes for data sources.
You’re just not going to have a large impact without a degree, and the number of exceptions prove the rule.
This is true. I went back to school for computer science. As soon as I graduated, received a significant bump in pay at my current job. Well worth it.
BLS data supports it as well, so not only is it true anecdotally but on a broad spectrum as well.
Pay rate increases while at your job and gaining “higher” education is a mixed bag. How much did that education cost vs the pay raise? How long is required to break even on that investment? With the constantly rising costs for said education that gap isn’t getting smaller either.
The sciences are, certainly, one field that can benefit from higher ed. Of course I made such an acknowledgement in my original statement as well. While it seems a few dozen people chose to take that as ‘we don’t need no education’… the statement was directed at funneling the masses through a system to extract profit… and to have a high hit rate offer courses that could be learned directly from the trade being entered. It’s a racket. A long con. And it’s an unfortunate reality a lot of students don’t realize they are caught in until they exit the machine on the other side.
According to the USA’s BLS the median pay going from a high school graduate to master’s degree more than doubles to 5988 a month, and this doesn’t even consider how employable that person is as a result of their degree rather only the ones who are employed meaning that the average HS graduate probably has even less to live off of.
A Graduate Student might pay roughly $950 USD a month, so even on master’s degree salary it’s a benefit of $2054 USD.
HS 746 * 4 = 2984 Masters 1497 * 4 = 5988 Difference 5988 - 2984 = 3004 After Loan Repayment 3004 - 950 = 2054In other nations the Education might even be offered for free, even for immigrants, in which case it is even better.
I may not like the state of academics as a profit driven business, it’s one of the many dead dream machines of our modern society, but education as an option for bettering one’s self and as a concept is something I vehemently defend.
I appreciate you taking the time to do the math. It was early enough to where I wouldn’t trust my caffeine deficient mind to do. Kudos.
You and I agree on your final point completely, I just simply believe in non institutional learning. (where applicable, of course)
Education does lead to better pay, certainly. The numbers are somewhat more complicated when it comes to the arithmetic behind it. This is where I find nothing but crippling faults with the American education machine.
An average cost of instate education for a masters is (this is low) 45k. If repaid at 6% apr in 3-5 years were looking at roughly 4500-7k in interest. Let’s call it 50k total deficit. During this same time (3 years education+3 years repayment) let’s assume our highschooler is working and investing his earnings in a moderate 6-10% fund. In 6 years how close are they? Which is closer to home ownership (it’s a joke. neither! but we can dream.)
Without question at a certain point the masters degree will pay off and assuming the same strategy - will overtake the highschool graduate in assets… but the time investment is far more significant than one would anticipate. The actual calculations are very complex as a lot more goes into each of these scenarios- but it does illustrate some of the flaws with assigning x wage vs y wage. In the end I am not specifically speaking against all higher education but speaking for an understanding that it isn’t the only path to take.
It massivelly, massivelly depends on the area.
In cases were errors can mean death, people will simply not be allowed to practice without the kind of “practical learning whilst under supervision and being assessed” that you see for example for doctors, and which are incredibly hard to conduct outside a formal education environment so in practice you’ll probably not find it (often only people who are trained doctors from countries whose universities are not recognized locally get that kind of opportunities without going through the local formal education system so that they can gain compatibility and practice locally).
In other areas it’s just because practically the having a Diploma or not is an easy way to prune down tons of candidates for entry-level positions: for example if you’re a hiring manager in IT still having to do all the other work alongside hiring and you have 20 candidates for a single entry level position, putting aside those who neither have relevant job experience nor a Diploma is pretty logical and has a high probability of avoid wasting time with people who have no clue how to do the job - you need to be pretty free of other work to spend the time interviewing all 20 candidates just in case one of the has all the necessary knowledge but no proof of it.
Mind you, even things like Software Development still hire people without Diplomas - they just have to show relevant experience such as having worked in an adjacent area which also uses those skill or having participated in open source projects.
However going through the whole paid for formal education process to get a Diploma and then not actually being able to work in that area because there are far fewer jobs that graduates can indeed often be considered a con - it really depends on how useful all that preparation in a formal education setting ends up being for your actual job.
I apologize for not responding to this sooner - you took the time to write that out and I had obligations which didn’t leave me much time to read through it.
First off- I agree completely that it depends significantly on the field- this was my reason for not stating all educational paths are irrelevant. With a nod to your mention of pruning - it doesn’t appear to be solving much considering how bad the entry level job market is for a lot of graduates. I have been fortunate in my career and know people from both camps. Both sides will freely admit the grass looks greener on the other side (which I would take as an acknowledgement of similarity.)
My issue is and remains with the for-profit education system we have now. We have basically sold these young minds on “you need to go to college or you will struggle and fail as an adult.” It doesn’t matter what field you take college is the only path. We then have a surplus of graduates flooding a market that simply cannot absorb that many new bodies. Aforementioned graduates have debt and a need to find work to pay that debt down … and they are desperate. Perfect. Here’s your underpaid entry level position with 0 job security - work harder than you should to maybe have a chance of not being laid off come earnings season.
Capitalism does not belong in higher education - and when that higher education wants to stand on some ivory tower and hold a students livelihood hostage? Fuck them. They may offer structured education but they do not gate keep learning. I digress.
Generally speaking I think your views more or less fall into the “technically yes, but it’s complicated” category… which I have 0 issues with. Education is complicated. Especially now- and I think a lot of the discussions that draw focus to it and its issues are valuable. Cheers.
Oh, yeah, I agree with you that at a systemic level, for-profit education isn’t serving the best interests of people in general or even of a country.
And it’s simply due to how any private company works: their objective is to maximize shareholder (or stakeholder, for companies which don’t have shares) returns, nothing else - they might provide the “customer” with something positive if that’s what it takes to generate said returns, but what you see very often in complex enough situations or those where the final outcomes for the “customer” take a long time to materialize is the companies selling something that ultimatelly doesn’t provide the promised benefit to the customer.
The For-profit motivation has no place in things which are strategical for a country’s future and its people, and that includes Education IMHO.
Personally I’m fortunate to have been born in a country where higher education is mainly a Public service (there are a few Private Universities nowadays, but they’re not considered the best ones) and selection for entrance is reasonably meritocratic (based entirelly on grades and domain specific entrance tests, though people who went to better highschools in nicer neighbourhoods or whose parents were themselves highly educated, provided them a good environment and taught them good practices like reading, still have some advantage).
That use to be the case for programming jobs, but ever since the layoffs, those with a degree are at an advantage. I was laid off, but it only took me 6 weeks to land a new job thanks to my CS degree. My cohorts without a degree have been looking for 6 months…
I’ve seen the opposite be true as well - but food for thought here: some of your cohorts probably had similar work experience as you… meaning the differentiator (tie breaker) was certainly the additional “experience.” I’m glad you found the job. Layoffs have been brutal lately.
Balls
College (esp private schools, more than community colleges) can certainly be overpriced for plenty of people.
Though…
What percentage of Big 4 and big tech company employees have college degrees?
Learning a profession is sadly a relatively small part of how an institution helps you get a good job.
There are a number of jobs that have an insurmountable check box for “has college degree” in the HR checklist. Doesn’t matter if every interviewer says “hire him”, HR will refuse. Hell about three years into my career, my employer lost some records including their documentation that I had a degree, and they had informed me that I had three months to get my university to prove my status again, or my job would be terminated, that I had gotten and by their own admission I could not possibly have had if hadn’t proven it before, but their process was clear, so I had to get them what they wanted to keep the job.
Further, there are particularly exclusive companies that may insist on a particular set of colleges, e.g a list of ivy League universities that they will accept applicants from and nothing else will cut it, because they advertise their ivy League credentials to clients.
Even without a formal list, the names carry weight. When I was working on vetting candidates, which was usually a pretty grueling interview process, management had one guy skip the interviews and go straight to job offer because they saw MIT as their school.
In my experience, the people from there are not special and are not particularly better equipped for the sorts of work I deal with, but branding carries a lot of weight.
That sounds like a rough experience friend, but if I was working at a company that needed to check up on my documentation after working there for some time - I’d probably find a new job where I wasn’t just employee 253966.
To your point about names carrying their weight - that’s a problem in itself: what about those that don’t go to ivy league? What about those that do that simply lack any marketable skill outside of where they went?
I agree that the interview process at a lot of aforementioned places is particularly awful. Once working there it typically doesn’t improve. The facilities are nice enough, sure… but I’ve seen far too many people working for companies like that get laid off regardless of how performant they were. They are just a line item.
The point I made initially was that many jobs do not require the degree to do the work. Many professions do not benefit from a 4 year college building a curriculum around now outdated information.
There are good companies and good professions that do not have those requirements.
That sounds like a rough experience friend, but if I was working at a company that needed to check up on my documentation after working there for some time - I’d probably find a new job where I wasn’t just employee 253966
It was a mild inconvenience inflicted by a bureaucratic HR I almost never dealt with. If I acted out by walking on the job, well that job was paying about 40% more than other offers I had on the table. It simply was an anecdote to demonstrate that some companies have formalities around the degree.
To your point about names carrying their weight - that’s a problem in itself: what about those that don’t go to ivy league? What about those that do that simply lack any marketable skill outside of where they went?
Not saying it is the most rational or the most fair, I’m simply saying it is a thing, and a thing that these would-be-graduates likely paid a lot of money for, specifically. Some of them might have had offers lined up at ‘Harvard-only’ companies (which sounds terrible, but I’ve heard it’s a thing and a thing that earn lots of money). Also, what if these would-be grads are in that camp of ‘no marketable skills apart from the name on their degree’? Then for them they especially want that institutional name on their degree.
I’ve seen far too many people working for companies like that get laid off regardless of how performant they were. They are just a line item.
This is good advice, but keep in mind you could lose your job wherever, so it’s less a game of trying to find out where you won’t get laid off, but about mitigation for if it happens, in terms of contractual severance and savings. Sure if a place is particularly layoff happy, maybe not worth the trouble, but no matter how personal and respectful the treatment you get is, layoff is always in the picture, up to and including the employer just completely going out of business.
There are good companies and good professions that do not have those requirements.
Sure, but these people paid for a Harvard degree and are presumably on a career track where that would be very valuable. The good companies and good professions may not be as lucrative for those graduation candidates as options that the Harvard degree would open up.
While it’s true that many people’s careers post-college are not directly related to their degree, it’s still valuable to employers.
What a degree says is that an individual can sucessfully complete a project that takes years of work and at least enough professionalism to get through.
I see this point used frequently - and it isn’t wrong … but it’s only half of a statement. In that time let’s say someone holds a position for 4 years of experience. These two things are not equally weighted, but very similar at that point. As time progresses that piece of paper continues to lose value when compared to experience in the field.
The degree is, in essence, a signal that someone has achieved at least the base level of competency in a field and stuck with it for x time. So assuming 2 parties with 0 work experience vie for a job naturally the degree holder will win out. It gets murkier when comparing someone with 4 years with in field experience to a 4 year degree holder with 0 experience.
The point I aimed to make was just that. It’s a perfectly reasonable assertion.
There’s a world of difference in dedication to completing a 4-year project when you’re being paid to be there working and when you are not.
Sucessfully completing a college degree shows that someone is driven, can accomplish goals, and make forward-looking decisions.
I respectfully disagree with the difference between someone working on a project or job for 4 years being less “driven” than their counterpart. Execution and follow through are based on per individual. Downplaying the efforts simply because it doesn’t align with your perspective is incorrect. Both individuals are putting forth similar efforts to learn a trade. As I asserted above.
Someone simultaneously spending money, building debt, and foregoing income for years to complete a project that will result in better longer-term prospects absolutely shows drive and a focus on the long-term.
Not going to college doesn’t mean someone doesn’t have those qualities, but the degree is prrof of minimum qualifications and drive.
I know everything necessary to build a house from the ground up, but if you want an electrical upgrade you should hire a licensed electrician and not me because they have the credentials to back it up.
As I asserted earlier - you are heavily downplaying the efforts of someone working in the same field for the same amount of time and treating it differently. That simply isn’t a fair assessment and is being used to sell a statement that is a half truth. Both individuals have something to show for their time investment that highlights their value. One has a degree which, for the reasons you have specified, is valuable - one has 4 years of experience in the field highlighting they are competent enough and skilled enough to be an asset to the same company for 4 years. To head off the followup: does every worker at a job have 100% “hire this man” energy? Certainly not. Conversely does every graduate have what it takes to succeed in a field? Absolutely not. With that in mind both individuals applying to a new job with the aforementioned experience/degree will, and should be, weighted similarly.
With regard to your electrician example: a licensed electrician is just that. When you hire one do you care if he got a degree in EE prior to getting his license? The result is what matters. This is the point I keep driving at. If I hire a lawyer, I could care less what is hanging on his office wall - I care that he passed the bar and wins consistently. There are many paths to the same result… don’t simply scorn one because it is a path you wouldn’t take.
You literally can’t take the bar without a law degree. The bar is just a test at the end of the journey.
Because the ability to pass one test is no replacement for a holistic education in the law.
Hell, I know more about the law in my particular field than 99% of attorneys. But that doesn’t mean shit in a courtroom.
Do you care of your electrician is licensed? You should. Because someone can know enough about electricity to get by and make things work and still be dangerous. That shortcut they used to steal a return off a separate circuit to save a wire run in the garage works great until the GFI fails on a short and you get electrocuted using the sink.
Credentials are important. Some college degrees are essential for their specific jobs (doctors, lawyers, scientists). Others are useful skillsets combined with a degree that acts as a credential that says “independantly accomplishes multi-year complex goal involving 40+ successful milestone tasks (courses) with no supervision required.”
