[newsmania]

The purpose of requiring a college degree, I have come to realize, is not to demonstrate knowledge, but rather to demonstrate submissiveness. It shows that you are decently capable of doing what you are told, and that's all most employers want to know.

[14113]

What drivel is this? The purpose of a college degree is to show to your peers that an academic institution is satisfied with your level of knowledge in a particular area.

There are legitimate criticisms of the current university system (such as cost, political interference in teaching, irerelevant curriculums etc), but claiming that a college degree "demonstrates submissiveness" is utter horseshit.

[acty1]

What benefit is it to me to show off to my peers?

My peers are not the ones hiring me. By definition it is my superiors hiring me.

Seems like an exoensive way to demonstrate to my peers.

I think it is better to demonstrate by actually doing (building products, providing service, insightful writing, etc).

The fact remains that a person who stakes money into a multi-year process is signalling a few things:

- they have money/credit - they are time committed - they work mostly within the system - they acknowledge the authority/validity of the degree

[tallanvor]

That's an extremely insulting thing to claim.

A college degree from most universities shows that you have at least a decent ability to take in information, interpret it, and use what you have learned.

GPA itself is not necessarily a high predictor for job performance in some cases - Google isn't likely to be considering many applications from new graduates who had a 2.0 average, for example. They are also able to more easily cherry pick from the top schools. And most employers don't want to waste their time doing a battery of cognitive ability tests, which is often the best indicator of performance, so your GPA combined with other information from an interview is one of the best tools they have.

Smaller companies, of course, may have more flexibility and can consider a tryout period, but for larger companies, the contract and potential for IP disputes can make it not worth their while.

Obviously your GPA becomes fairly irrelevant once you have a decent amount of experience and have developed personal references who can vouch for you.

[coldtea]

>That's an extremely insulting thing to claim.

That wouldn't matter if it was also true.

>A college degree from most universities shows that you have at least a decent ability to take in information, interpret it, and use what you have learned.

Isn't that what similar to what the parent said? It shows you have the skills others need to perform tasks for them.

Especially modern degrees, which become all the more vocational, than actually giving a general culture and knowledge.

[tallanvor]

The parent claimed the "purpose of requiring a college degree ... is not to demonstrate knowledge, but rather to demonstrate submissiveness."

So no, I don't agree that my statement about college is anything at all similar to what the other person claimed. And unless you can cite any evidence that college is an indicator of subservience, I maintain my position that such a claim is insulting.

[coldtea]

>And unless you can cite any evidence that college is an indicator of subservience, I maintain my position that such a claim is insulting.

Some things don't come with stats, figures and evidence. People either feel them or they don't.

[s3nnyy]

Wow, you verbalised something I thought for a long time

[mcv]

So being a drop-out shields you from getting accidentally employed by abusive employers?

[jacobush]

Yes - instead you are targeted by abusive employers!

[Chris2048]

"decently capable of doing what you are told" is not the same thing as "submissiveness"..

[x2398dh1]

I don't know what college or University you went to, but at the large public University I went (University of Minnesota) one literally receives no governmental authority and extremely little guidance dictating what path you should take whatsoever. Students are literally tiny specks of nothing helping to finance an ivory tower and they can do whatever they want, whenever they want, it's an extremely lax environment behaviorally speaking. There are no authority figures, no hierarchy, and professors do not know your name or care if you come to office hours, because you are one of 500 students in a class. There were classes that I never showed up to except for the first day and tests. People who manage to come across the financial means to get a degree are able to finish while others drop out over time - so I think it's seen as more of a financial stability indicator, which could perhaps be a surrogate metric for submissiveness but not necessarily as you purport. I slunked my way through an Electrical Engineering degree while running a landscaping business I had started in high school, because I wanted to build stuff rather than be a landscape dude for the rest of my life. I see nothing in the University world resembling the corporate politics world what so ever. Perhaps you attended Hogwarts?

[comice]

The book "Disciplined Minds" by Jeff Schmidt explores this idea pretty well.