[TheAdamAndChe]

That would be a great if school was actually about turning us into better people, but it's not. College nowadays is just a jobs training program separated from the employer so they can lower training costs. Almost all good jobs require degrees nowadays.

[dragonwriter]

“All good jobs require degrees” does not support that college is job training, only that it is used by employers as a filter. But the fact that it is used as a filter does not mean that it is indicative of needed skills, and even if it was that wouldn't mean it was training for those skills. It could be neutral impact as training but still tend to fail out unsuitable candidates, which would make it a useful skill or aptitude filter without being job training.

And, of course, it could be conmonly used as a (cargo cult) filter without actually being a useful skill/aptitude filter at all.

[TheAdamAndChe]

Yet an IT graduate is unlikely to be hired as a book keeper, right? And I bet a Law graduate would have a hard time getting a job involving direct healthcare. That association between college program and career does indicate that some job training is involved and necessary for career growth.

[smsm42]

Bookkeepers, lawyers and healthcare professionals require very specific and specialized training and in many cases it is not even legal to be employed as, say, lawyer or doctor without having specific credentials. But many jobs aren't like that - and still require degrees.

> That association between college program and career does indicate that some job training is involved and necessary for career growth.

For some jobs - definitely. But there are plenty of others where degree is just a very rough filter and degrees that do not provide any direct training for the specific job are still required (and accepted).

[dragonwriter]

> That association between college program and career does indicate that some job training is involved and necessary for career growth.

While I'd certainly agree that there are, in fact, at least some career paths for which that is true, but even a job having a preference for certain degrees doesn't have to imply that training is happening; different degree programs could have different filtering effects without being actual training.

And, of course, not all jobs that require degrees are narrowly focussed on specific fields.

[vultour]

> just a jobs training program

I was lucky enough to do my undergraduate at a university where this was sort-of true, we didn't do any math apart from some very basic things that I was taught early in high school, and most of the classes were hands-on programming. Most of the assessment was coursework-only as well, only about 20% of the modules had a final exam.

I barely had to do anything as I taught myself most of what they were teaching long before university, but for some of my peers that were only starting to code it was amazing. From my limited experience the quality of developers (at least the ones who actually put in some work instead of just trying to pass) coming from my university was miles ahead of the ones that studied at a 'regular' university where some of my friends went. They taught them theory, math, or even physics, but somehow forgot to teach them how to code.

[smsm42]

"Almost all good jobs" require degrees because it's a cheapest way (to the employer) to filter for certain qualities that they require (which usually have very little to do with actual content of the degree and more with being able to work in structured workplace, basic literacy and social skills, not being a career criminal, etc.).

For various reasons other ways have been made either hard to do or illegal, so the easiest way to select for candidates with certain capabilities is to require a degree. That doesn't mean candidates without a degree don't have them - but the cost of missing a viable candidate is near zero, and the cost of hiring bad one is substantial. Thus, degree is used as screener. The overall costs of it pretty bad, since degree costs way more than would a screening system that does screen for necessary qualities directly, but the alignment of incentives and costs makes it the best short-term solution for many employers.

[crankylinuxuser]

I believe where that started was after Griggs v. Duke Power, where pre-employment tests were found to discriminate against African Americans. These tests were effectively banned, even if the intent was not to discriminate against minorities.

What happened after that, was that the "testing" was legally sent to the colleges and universities for them to vet. And only with paper from them, could you obtain the job. It didn't matter, and doesn't matter, that many jobs would not need a degree. On the job training would completely suffice for most positions.

source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Co.

citation of claim of aftermath: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1121428?seq=1#page_scan_tab_cont...

[dragonwriter]

> I believe where that started was after Griggs v. Duke Power, where pre-employment tests were found to discriminate against African Americans.

That is not what was found that case. What was found was that any hiring criteria which had an unequal racial impact and was not sufficiently demonstrably tied to actual job performance was illegal racially discriminatory. It neither extended to all pre-employment testing nor limited itself to pre-employment testing.

> These tests were effectively banned

No, they weren't. Pre-employment IQ testing is still used.

> What happened after that, was that the "testing" was legally sent to the colleges and universities for them to vet.

Blaming that on Griggs v. Duke Power is especially rich because one of the hiring filters which was found to be illegal discrimination as applied by Duke Power in that case, because it was not demonstrably tied to job performance, was a diploma requirement.

Now, if you want to blame this on some kind of popular mythology about the legality of pre-employment IQ testing, based on a misperception of Griggs v. Duke Power, okay, fine. But that's a different story than the actual legality.

[mulmen]

Starbucks has an initiative to hire veterans and spouses of veterans. Starbucks is a for-profit corporation so they must believe at some level there is a benefit to the company in hiring these individuals. What skills do veterans and their spouses have that are useful to Starbucks?

To be clear: I think this is a great idea on Starbucks' part.