dagblog - Comments for "The Other Thing College Is For (and Why It Matters)"

I think Snowden (assuming he

Verified Atheist — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 12:09:47 +0000

I think Snowden (assuming he wrote that) is better explained as an exception. I work in a highly specialized field, but I wouldn't have been able to do so if I didn't know the right people, and knowing these people is a direct result of me having graduated from one of the "right" universities. (Not an Ivy, but consistently one of the top 5 public universities.)

That said, it might also be true that you can still get a good job fairly easily (earning ~$100k) if you have the "right" knowledge, although I'm not sure how you convince someone else of that if you don't have either good connections or good experience, which gets back to a boot-strapping problem.

Actually, Snowden probably isn't an exception. IIRC, someone already wrote about his father providing a foot in the door.

I should add that after 27

EmmaZahn — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 05:36:47 +0000

In reply to Now that is a really radical

I should add that after 27 years working for brokerages, I cannot recall a single stockbroker was not hired for their connections -- iow, for how much business s/he could bring with them.

Now that is a really radical

EmmaZahn — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 05:23:36 +0000

In reply to I thought of these two

Now that is a really radical interpretation of my comment which in no way contradicts what you wrote. I was just casting an aspersion on what the human resources profession has become - a bunch of risk averse, politically-correct bureaucrats who overcomplicate the job market.

I am very well aware of the value of connections in finding work. The first stockbroker I ever worked for hired me as his sales assistant because I had a college degree (he thought it added to his status since the other sales assistants at the firm didn't) then on my first day told me his secret to success and I quote: "it's not what you know; it's who you know". In a way, I proved him wrong but also right. He got me in the door where I met people along the way who helped me move up.

I thought of these two

artappraiser — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 03:17:46 +0000

In reply to "They sometimes forget that

I thought of these two comments reading this 2006 forum entry purported by Buzz Feed to be by Edward Snowden. Forget whether it's by Snowden or not, I think it makes the point:

.....You’re going into IT. Nobody gives a shit what school you go to. Choose the cheaper school.

Listen to what they say about networking. This is absolutely vital. If somebody likes you, it doesn’t even matter if you put your pants on before your underwear in the morning — you will get the job.

What you will need is IT work experience. You must get a job in IT while you’re going to school. The sad reality is that an IT degree means DICK in terms of competency to an employer. You need demonstrated, specialized skills to be competitive. SO, you need work experience.

Get a part-time IT gig anywhere you can. Even if you don’t want to work through college, that’s fine. Get it. Here’s the dirty little secret: you can scale back your hours until you’re only working four hours a week if you need more school time. Take leaves of absence, but remain employed. It doesn’t matter how many hours you work, because the only thing going on your resume is the number of YEARS you worked there. What DOES matter is that you are the absolute best of friends with your supervisor and when your new post-college employer calls them for a reference, they absolutely BLEED love for you.

As long as you’re good at what you do, you’ll never have a problem, and that work experience will make that degree worth far more than it is on its own.

People might argue, but they’d be wasting their breath. I speak from personal experience in the most disadvantaged position in the job market. I don’t have a degree of ANY type. In fact, I don’t even have a high school diploma.

That said, I have $0 in debt from student loans, I make $70k, I just had to turn down offers for $83k and $180k (they’re going in a different directions than where I’m heading), and my co-workers have BSs, MSs, and ten to fifteen years of experience. Employers fight over me.

And I’m 22.

That’s networking. Good luck...

Sure, if you're applying for an entry level job with whoever is hiring with a Bachelor's Degree, the Human Resources will pay more attention to one from Harvard or Yale.

But if you have set your mind on doing something specialized, I'm with Trope. And it's because of teh networking, as teh geek purported to be Snowden says. If you want to be in commercial real estate development, your best bet is to network with a bunch of people and professors in one of the best known damn programs for an MBA in that in the country, at UW. Far better than Harvard or Yale. If you want to get into American art dealing, Harvard or Yale gets you: basically zilch. Unless going to Harvard and Yale means you have some family connections to some really rich collectors ready to sell. Otherwise, that art dealer internship that Professor Bill Gerdts can get you into when you're enrolled at CCNY's graduate program in art history is what is going to do the trick. (I believe it has worked every single time.) If you're a young Matthew Yglesias and you blog and write very well, your financially successful parents' support allows you to blog without pay until someone's willing to pay you to blog, and the Ivy and other upper class diplomas are actually a thorn in your side that other people are always rubbing in your nose. Etc.

I don't know where you go to network if you want to go into agriculture or oceanography, but I am pretty sure it's not Harvard or Yale. What is prestige for good jobs, headhunter's jobs, anything other than "just a job" is having studied where there is the most famous program in the subject area. Hence, the big money being spent on certain professors and certain departments allover the country.

Also, the job thing is different from the status thing. I think Demosthenes' comment downthread is quite accurate in this in elaborating that this has become very regionalized. People in different areas of the country make very different judgments about your social status and even what sub-culture you are pegged with by where you went to college. But I don't think most human resources cares about this regional social status thing unless you are in sales or marketing of luxury goods.

Two books that come to mind

AmericanDreamer — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 17:17:08 +0000

In reply to Forgive me if you've already

Two books that come to mind that bear on themes in this thread are:

Christopher Hayes' Twilight of the Elites, on the subject of meritocracy and oligarchy, which has gotten a fair amount of buzz in the year or so since it's come out, for a book of its type. The first few amazon reader reviews give a sense of what his argument is. I found the book, which is not long, well-written and interesting.

Robert Frank's early (1996), The Winner Take All Economy: Why the Few at the Top Get So Much More Than the Rest of Us, looking at what the subtitle suggests it will look at

Thank you, Demosthenes. Yes,

Doctor Cleveland — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 16:13:17 +0000

In reply to This article and the comments

Thank you, Demosthenes.

Yes, it's an important point that the "right" schools are not just the top handful. I used the super-elite schools as shorthand for this post, partly because everyone understands how prestigious they are and partly because I was pivoting to the MOOC argument, where some of the top ten schools have been prime movers.

This article and the comments

Demosthenes — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 15:55:18 +0000

In reply to The Other Thing College Is For (and Why It Matters)

This article and the comments are spot on! I live in an affluent Chicago suburb. Graduates of the local (and excellent) public high school vie with one another to get into the most prestigious schools. The parents understand that going to a college with the "right kind of people" matter almost as much as the actual education. What your article ignores (but some of the comments allude to) is the fact the "right kind of people" go to all sorts of schools, not just the top 3 Ivies. For kids who are not brilliant, folks in this area understand what are the "right" schools. Thus, for example, Colgate, Grinnell, Tulane, Duke, Vanderbilt, and Skidmore are the "right" kind of schools, even though they are far easier to get into than the top Ivies. Kids from this area flock to schools like this. It's no coincidence. It's totally a class thing.

This does happen in certain

Doctor Cleveland — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 01:01:00 +0000

In reply to The accountant in me would

This does happen in certain high-stakes professions, at least. Law schools can't license you to practice law; you get your degree and then take the state bar exam. Medical schools can't give you a medical license. And your accounting degree couldn't make you a CPA. You had to pass the exam.

But that still doesn't separate out credentialing entirely. Someone who went to a fancier law school is likely to have more opportunities than someone who went to law school nights. The fancier degree confers advantages.

The accountant in me would

EmmaZahn — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 00:44:22 +0000

In reply to The Other Thing College Is For (and Why It Matters)

The accountant in me would really like to see a separation of roles between educating and credentialing. Universities could still award certifications for course completion aka degrees or diplomas but then have another organization test or measure the knowledge and skills acquired against independent standards generally accepted as necessary to actually use them.

"They sometimes forget that

EmmaZahn — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 00:27:44 +0000

In reply to Sometimes it is easy to slip

"They sometimes forget that not everybody embraces the Fortune 500/law firm approach to what confers prestige and what doesn't."

Though sadly most human resource departments do.