[Zarath]

Come on, have we really swung so far on the "game is rigged" and "college isn't what it used to be" pendulum that we're acting like college doesn't build useful skills. Before college I had never written a program in my life outside of my TI-83. Coming out of college I was able to secure a full time job at a highly respected software company. They didn't hire me because my program was great (it wasn't that great), but they hired me because I can code well, or at least I like to think so.

[pembrook]

We’re in the minority. Most professions aren’t engineering. Or medicine.

Think of the average student graduating with a generic business degree. What actual skills does this person possess after 4 years of schooling?

This is why so many Fortune 500 companies have new grad trainee programs that they funnel people through. The fact is, most of these generic “business” jobs can be done by anyone with a few months of on the job learning.

How many project managers, marketing managers, account executives, sales people, HR professionals, tech support, etc. could’ve stepped into those same roles without spending 4 years at an extremely expensive party (as they would have 50 years ago)?

[alexandercrohde]

As somebody who doubled in business and psychology, you are on point. Undergrad degrees in those two are borderline useless, with the two most practical classes being statistics and accounting.

"Conjoined triangles of success" is a joke that is actually a very accurate representation of what it mocks.

[snowwrestler]

Surprisingly few. New grad training programs still depend on the "grad" part.

It's not like Fortune 500 businesses are stupid. If they could hire random high school grads for all their jobs and pay them less, don't you think they would? As you point out, college degree requirements have not always existed, they were added. Chesterton's Fence is a useful mental guide here. People don't generally make things harder on themselves for no reason.

[hopler]

Many many jobs today that require a college degree used to require a high school diploma. Yes those require intelligence and studiousness in varying degrees, but these skills can be assessed by interviews and hiring people in entry level positions for 4 years (or less!), not making them sit through irrelet college classes.

Half of a US college degree curriculum (the liberal arts distribution) isn't part of the curriculum at all in the UK for a science degree; are those UK degrees producing useless employees?

[chongli]

This article is just a companion piece for the author's book, The Case Against Education [1]. I'm reading this book for philosophy class and one of my top questions going in was "what about the engineers?" Well, Caplan heads that off at the pass: his father was an engineer and he says repeatedly that vocational degrees like engineering and medicine are about more than signalling. His earnings data prove that point, too, because it shows that the arts degrees people people poke fun at the most, earn the least.

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36319077-the-case-agains...

[analog31]

I would also ask: "What about the musicians?" After all, music degrees are heavily vocational. But the music vocation itself is overcrowded unlike engineering or medicine.

The article cites as evidence the large disparity in value between three and four years of college. This is much more prevalent in engineering than in music. Taking three years of college music study, or learning it informally, will in fact prepare you for a music career. I know people who have done it.

In my view, the need to make special exceptions for certain college majors weakens the signaling hypothesis.

Disclaimer: One of my kids is a music major, and I earn part of my income as a musician.

[mcguire]

Does he have anything to say about the difference between the engineering and engineering technology degrees?

(The only firm difference I know is that, if you have the latter, you need not apply to any NASA engineering job.)

[exelius]

I had a philosophy degree and taught myself to code as a teenager. I was able to secure a full time job with a highly respected software company upon graduation, and they didn’t give a fuck what degree I had as long as I had one and could code.

I learned a lot in college, but I definitely didn’t learn any direct job skills. I just went to a big state school with a respected CS program (that I was not enrolled in) which drew a lot of companies to our career fair. I think that kind of shows the multiple layers of signaling involved here...

[slowmovintarget]

The only outcome the article focuses on is employment. Collectively, we used to know that a well-educated populous led to a better society. This applies doubly so for a representative democracy, where making informed choices leads directly to better policy.

Training of the mind also allows the educated to penetrate deceptions, deliberately muddled claims, and contradictions. But that result seems so uncommon these days.