
Americans don’t need more degrees, they need training - sylvainkalache
https://venturebeat.com/2017/06/22/help-wanted-americans-dont-need-more-degrees-they-need-training/
======
Animats
This is from the operator of a coding school. They have an interesting payment
plan. "There is no upfront cost to join Holberton school. We only charge 17%
of your internship earnings and 17% of your salary over 3 years once you find
a job." That's more interesting than anything in the article. The school takes
the financial risk on students not getting a job. This is the reverse of most
for-profit education, which relies on loans and doesn't guarantee a job.

I wonder how this is working out for Holberton School.

~~~
julien421
[I am the cofounder of Holberton] it is working great for us. As you said we
do take the financial risk on students not getting jobs. Education is so
broken today: students get in debt and don't find jobs because too many
universities are in the business of signing in students and not finding them a
job :( hopefully we can show the way and we'll make this change. Purdue
university is now offering this too, which is a good sign that things are
changing. Honestly I think that this is going to become the norm simply
because the current system is broken an unsustainable (US students debt is in
Trillion USD! and cost of atudies is getting higher and higher -> more devt
and more ppl who can't afford Education anymore) 10 years from now ppl will
simply look back and laugh at today's system.

There are two other important things that this model solves too: 0. There is
no more financial barrier to high quality Education. Anyone can afford
Holberton* 1. Colleges need to make sure that you are a fit to their
system/culture/field. Today this is not the case so students are wasting time
and money in programs they are likely to fail. By having this tuition model
they will need to be transparent and make sure everyone succeed

(*) we are in SF so cost of living is high. this is a pb for a lot of
candidates. We are activally working on a solution.

~~~
treehau5
> too many universities are in the business of signing in students and not
> finding them a job

If you are a university in the "business of finding students a job" you are
university'ing wrong.

~~~
throwawayjava
_> If you are a university in the "business of finding students a job" you are
university'ing wrong._

Then everyone is university'ing wrong!

Universities spend an _enormous_ amount of time and money getting students
jobs. Maintaining relationships with recruiters, developing alumni networks,
and entire departments of full time staff dedicated to "career services".

There's a solid critique of education programs that are overly sensitive to
industry fads [1], but IMO universities and educators should definitely
include "finding students a job" as an explicit curricular goal -- balanced,
of course, with "ensuring students have a long and healthy career beyond that
first job".

[1] [https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2005/12/29/the-perils-of-
java...](https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2005/12/29/the-perils-of-
javaschools-2/)

~~~
treehau5
> Then everyone is university'ing wrong!

Hey hey! I tend to agree!

Finding students a job should be a secondary byproduct of first giving them a
world class education where you prepare and enable the student for society
through being able to learn. Universities are to teach students how to learn
so they can learn and be more aware and active about what is happening around
them in society. Universities gives you exposure to a wide array of subjects
for a purpose. It isn't random, and if you are attending a university where it
does feel random, then find a better university.

"The goal of university education is to help build a fairer, more just
society" \- Steven Schwartz. [0]

Indeed this aligns with Plato's view on education -- "Plato regards education
as a means to achieve justice, both individual justice and social justice."
[1]

[0]:
[https://www.timeshighereducation.com/comment/columnists/the-...](https://www.timeshighereducation.com/comment/columnists/the-
higher-purpose/176727.article)

[1]:
[http://epublications.marquette.edu/dissertations/AAI9517932/](http://epublications.marquette.edu/dissertations/AAI9517932/)

~~~
throwawayjava
I agree with you, philosophically.

But when I apply this philosophy to concrete curriculum design questions in
CS, I end up caring about placing students at internships and jobs.

First, internships are a form of education, and I find that students who
complete internships come back the next Fall as much more mature programmers.
I can then leverage that maturity in programming to dig deeper into
interesting theory. Because I'm not helping debug for loops, I can students
debug proofs or design more complex algorithms. So I consider internship
placement a major goal for the first two years of a CS curriculum, even when
my goal is to teach pure theory.

Second, I have a hard time justifying the situation where students are debt
slaves to banks. How does that achieve individual or social justice?

Third, your work output is an enormous aspect of your contribution to society.
Someone who can build a software platform that helps rural poor in Nigeria get
access to micro-loans under a fair terms is making a much greater impact on
the world than a philosopher with a perfect understanding of what it means for
the world to be just, but without the means to act on that knowledge.

------
msluyter
" _There was a time when most people could make a career out of a skill, or
stay within the same type of job, but workers today constantly need to adapt.
They must become lifelong learners: Teach a student one skill and you got him
one job; teach a student to learn and you got him lifetime employment._ "

It's far from clear to me that any beyond a small percentage of people
generally, but perhaps Americans in particular, have the capacity to become
lifelong learners. Not saying folks are stupid -- the problem isn't a lack of
raw cognitive capacity, IMHO.

What actually makes someone a lifelong learner? Curiosity. If you don't _want_
to learn, it's going to be very difficult to do so, except perhaps while under
the gun for short periods of time. And, unfortunately, our education system
seems ideally tailored for stamping out children's natural curiosity. If that
sounds overly pessimistic, I'd welcome a demonstration to the contrary.

I feel that the answer is basically "let's fix our education system," which I
-- again, perhaps overly pessimistically -- believe to be politically
impossible.

~~~
KGIII
I kinda disagree. It is a long story. I will skip a lot and make it as brief
as I can.

I used to own my own company. It has long since been sold and I am retired. We
modeled traffic and I helped bring traffic modeling to the computer age.

This was way back in the dark ages of the early 1990s, when you actually had
to work to find people who could write good code. You also had to pay them a
goodly amount of money.

One of the things I offered was to help with continued education. For example,
we had one lady who was a secretary and she wanted to learn to code. So, we
sent her to school part time, on our dime, and she eventually found a home in
QA.

When we began to provision services in other areas, besides vehicular modeling
for municipalities, I sent people to get the training they felt they needed.
I'd even go with them, if I had time and it would benefit me. I love Defcon,
and have gone even after retiring.

We'd get a local university to do some research and then poach the folks who
stood out - and help them complete their education.

Quite a few acted on this and I have to say we benefited greatly from this. I
don't have exact numbers but it was well over a third.

So, in my experience, they want the education. In my experience, they can be
educated. Maybe try offering to pay for it, if you're in a position to make
that choice? Cover their total costs - including ensuring they can afford the
time.

In my case, there weren't exactly a whole lot of traffic engineers. We had to
make them, and we did.

~~~
uiri
I think that your company had to send its employees off to formal education in
a classroom (or similar) setting is indicative of the problem highlighted by
the person you are replying to. Your employees would not have been anywhere
near as successful with some combination of textbook, lectures on video (e.g.
on VHS), and a study group made up of other employees. Lifelong learning means
being able to acquire new knowledge and skills outside of the traditional
educational setting.

Often, a University will claim that its students are not there to learn
specific subjects but to learn how to learn. A lot of that learning is
studying and solving problems outside of lecture time. These are the skills
which are lacking because of a cultural perception that learning happens in a
class.

~~~
KGIII
I am addressing the part about not being lifelong learners. My experience
suggests this is not quite accurate and that people will do so, if they can.

~~~
jasode
_> I am addressing the part about not being lifelong learners._

I'm not disagreeing with you but I do want to point out that your semantics of
_" lifelong learner"_ is not the same as msluyter's:

msluyter's "lifelong learner": self-directed, self-motivated learning driven
by _inner_ curiosity. Perhaps another word would be _auto-didact_ [1].

KGIII's "lifelong learner": the learner's brains can continue to receive new
knowledge well into old age especially if an _outside_ factor (e.g. you the
employer) provide structured education

Your definition isn't wrong... but it differs from msluyter's so you're
talking past each other.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autodidacticism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autodidacticism)

~~~
watwut
The "motivated by curiousity" part should be irelevant imo and so should be
preference for self direction as opposed preference for classroom setting.

More meaningful definition is the one about what the person does -
continuously learning whole life. Whether it is curiosity or feeling of duty
or attempt to mimic some role model in the past or pragmatical strategy should
not matter.

------
WheelsAtLarge
Yes, this is very true. Most companies aren't going to keep you long enough to
spend lots of money to train you. In the old days you expected to be at the
same company until you retired. These days you're lucky if you are there for
five. Training should really start at the high school level. It's a disgrace
that most students graduate from 12+ years of school without the training to
get a good job but they can attend a codecamp for 1 year and get a starting
job as a coder. It's no wonder we have a large number of workers that feel the
american dream is slipping away. They never learned the skills they need to
survive and thrive in our current economic system.

What's even sadder is that leaders are not focusing in this part of the
problem but instead in silliness like who uses what bathroom. Things need to
change.

~~~
TheAdamAndChe
> In the old days you expected to be at the same company until you retired.
> These days you're lucky if you are there for five.

It sounds like you want to shift the onus of training from the organization
that benefits from the training to taxpayers and workers. Why is that? Why not
try to shift the employer/employee leverage balance to incentivize employers
to again train its labor force, provide long-term employment, and give an
improving quality of life to its workers? It's not like people stopped being
long-term employees for no reason. Employers stopped showing loyalty because
they didn't need to anymore. Given the fact that wages have been stagnant
since the 70's when trickle-down economics were enacted, yet large
corporations have seen massive gains, wouldn't you say it's time for a
different approach to the direction of our economy?

This is all also assuming that Americans need a combination of experience and
education to get ahead, which is just false. Education does help, but only
pockets of highly populated areas of the country are experiencing growth at
the moment. The rest is stagnating or on the decline... But that is a
different issue that involves the dissolution of anti-trust laws more than an
employer/employee leverage shift[1].

[1] [http://washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/novdec-2015/bloom-
and-...](http://washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/novdec-2015/bloom-and-bust/)

------
wcummings
I cringe when I hear about plans for "tuition-free" 4-year college. I went to
a fancy private high school, with a bunch of kids who graduated and went to
fancy private universities. From what I can tell, it's done very little for
them. The people who aren't working in tech or finance are literally on food
stamps, extending their time in college, doing something like Teach for
America, or working retail jobs. _With 4-year degrees_.

As if that weren't agitating enough, universities seem to relish their role in
"not providing job training" and being "not a vocational school" and
"producing well-rounded students". The government shouldn't be footing the
bill to send people to these schools (through subsidized loans or other
mechanisms), which for most students are glorified daycare centers for young
adults who don't want to join the workforce yet. It's a huge waste of money,
as the current levels of student loan debt attests to.

I don't know all the details here but an apprenticeship program seems like a
step in the right direction. The federal government should forgive student
loans (lay the cost on the universities)

~~~
zanny
Problem is the university lobby is now massive. Tons of free money, using the
only non-dischargable debt there is. The flaws in education are the flaws in
politics at large - too much corruption that is too detached from the
suffering of the commons. All major structural social issues trace back to a
broken incentives structure and an absence of transparency and accountability
at all levels that produce policy.

Of course, that means changing the framework of that decision making, which is
constitutional. And the established structure is wholly intentional, it is not
just some mistake the people just need to "wake up and realize is wrong, and
then we can all fix it". There are antagonists who prosper under the
establishment, who now wield controlling influence in all spheres.

The question for humanity in the 21st century looks to be how to fix that kind
of structural misalignment of incentives towards the will of power.

------
panic
You could make the same argument from the worker's perspective. Companies
don't need to hire graduates, they need to offer training for their employees!
Why are we focused on what people should do when companies are the ones
setting the bar?

~~~
prostoalex
The skills need to be non-transferable to other places, otherwise the company
is just paying to supply their competitors with a better-trained workforce.

~~~
examancer
This a very dim, short-sighted view. Most large companies do have training
programs and don't artificially limit the skills to ones that are not
transferrable. Investing in the skills of your current employees can be far
cheaper than trying to hire for those same skills.

Even in your worst case scenario you've presumably gotten some benefit from
the employee before they depart and spent less than you would on a bad hire
who has the desired skills (and therefore makes more).

If the result of your investments really is competitors with better trained
employees then you have a higher skilled pool to recruit from when you need
it. Plus, you've saved money in the meantime.

------
PeterStuer
Jobs are for machines, life is for people. How many of the 'jobs' realy
contribute to a better world? You can't blame people wanting them regardless
as we tied in their whole right to live with 'employment'. I'd say especially
Americans could do with a broad scientific and cultural renaissance style
education.

~~~
token_throwaway
That's sweet and all but the rest of us have to pay rent

~~~
wu-ikkyu
There are ~23 empty homes for every homeless person in the US[1].

For those of us living in the US, have you ever wondered why we have "housing
crises" and such high rents when we have such an absurdly high surplus of
empty homes?

[1][https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/22336](https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/22336)

~~~
randomdata
The problem is those empty homes aren't located where you want to live. Among
cities in the US, Flint, Michigan has the highest home vacancy rate.
Coinciding with that surplus, the median rent is more than a couple of hundred
dollars per month below the national median.

If someone is feeling like there is a housing crisis in some part of the
country, the obvious solution is to move to Flint, or another community with a
similar surplus of housing and cheap rent. However, there is probably a good
reason why they haven't already done so.

They've done the math and have realized that while rent may be higher, that
higher rent has much greater value (access to better jobs, lifestyle,
environment, etc.) and is actually worth every penny.

~~~
wu-ikkyu
>that higher rent has much greater value (access to better jobs

Indeed, and this is getting to the point that the parent and I are making. The
same system which ideologically mandates maximum employment, is the same one
maintaining the artificially inflated housing prices.

~~~
randomdata
But the economy always seeks equilibrium eventually. Rents are rising in
places like San Francisco because it is trying to reach equilibrium with
Flint. While it may take time to get there, eventually we should see rents
reach a point where it is a better deal, or at least no worse of a deal, to
live in Flint, even if the career opportunities are not as good.

For instance, as a hypothetical, if you make $70k post-tax as a developer in
SF, or $15k working part time at Mcdonalds in Flint, once your rent reaches
about $5,000/month, you may actually be better off in Flint career-wise. But
in fact, the median household income in SF is only $88k/year (pre-tax), which
means that there are probably people already living in SF who aren't far off
being better off moving to Flint for career reasons (not necessarily for the
other reasons listed).

~~~
ocb
This seems like kind of an absurd oversimplification. Maybe what you're saying
is true over geologic timescales but if SF suddenly had a large amount of
vacant housing, rents wouldn't continue to increase regardless of what's
happening economically in Flint.

~~~
randomdata
Why would SF suddenly have a large amount of vacant housing that isn't there
now, unless people lost interest in the city? A large surplus like that
suggests that things have swing too far in the other direction. At that point,
rents will decline to try and bring equilibrium back the other way, exactly
like you see in Flint today.

~~~
ocb
I don't know, overoptimistic real estate developers? My point is just that
asserting that rents in SF are increasing because they are trying to reach
some kind of equilibrium with Flint, MI obviously involves glossing over tons
of factors that affect rents more in the short term. You might as well argue
that rents in SF are rising because they are trying to reach equilibrium with
the rents in rural villages in Mali

~~~
randomdata
_> I don't know, overoptimistic real estate developers?_

If developers in SF become too optimistic then those homes become a drag on
the economy, and SF soon loses the career advantage it currently has, still
leading to equilibrium eventually.

 _> tons of factors that affect rents more in the short term._

I felt I was quite explicit that finding equilibrium takes time. I am not sure
why you are focusing on short term movements in price.

 _> You might as well argue that rents in SF are rising because they are
trying to reach equilibrium with the rents in rural villages in Mali_

In some ways that is true. China's rags to riches story happened in large part
due to costs in the US rising to the point where it became cheaper to move
(some) operations over there. Reaching equilibrium at the international scale
is more difficult due to many artificial barriers found along the way,
however. There is really nothing stopping an American citizen living in SF
from moving to Flint.

------
eksemplar
I agree to some extend, but for a lot of jobs the degree is your skill. I
employ a lot of low level coders who are trained to do what we want them to
do. Haven't had trouble finding those.

What I do have trouble finding is someone with the theoretical knowledge on
how to utilize machine learning patterns, which design patterns, paradigms,
techs and libraries we should use and why and so on.

~~~
happy-go-lucky
There’re people that have CS degrees but can’t code. After learning the syntax
of a language, anyone can write simple programs, and with some experience and
dedication some can even write well-crafted code that others can use. What
matters is one’s approach to problem solving and this is learnable and you get
better at it as and when you work on such stuff as machine learning, and if
you’ve adaptability that’s an advantage.

~~~
nradov
A CS degree isn't intended to teach students how to code. What did you expect?

------
jliptzin
Education in this country needs to be totally reformed. High school is
basically day care in most places. No reason the average 4 year degree cannot
be completed at ages 14-18. Then if people want to get a masters they can go
ahead, but it shouldn't be expected like going off to college is.

~~~
SimbaOnSteroids
Idk about you,maybe you won the Putnam, but when I was 15-20 my brain was
still working on getting fiber down for the last mile of the prefrontal
cortex. The bandwidth required to really grok calculus (or even write a
coherent essay on the metaphors of The Great Gatsby) would have been a bit
untenable.

Don't get me wrong, I would have loved to have been given these types of
challenges at a younger age, if only to be forced to learn time management
skills sooner. However the intuitive understanding of something like the
mechanism by which integrals work would have been lacking, and resulted in an
employee that lacked the ability to use the lesson taught by that particular
type of abstraction in a diverse and creative way.

~~~
BearGoesChirp
> I was 15-20 my brain was still working on getting fiber down for the last
> mile of the prefrontal cortex.

From what research I've read, that is happening later than 15-20. Its more in
the early to mid 20s.

~~~
SimbaOnSteroids
That was the implication I was trying to make, I apparently failed in that
regard.

------
acscott
No evidence to support the thesis. No special personal perspective to share
the secret sauce.

The unfilled job number of 6 million is an interesting data point. I'll give
them that. But a job does not equal having a good life.

In short, the only data point to take away from this is waste of time. Am I
being harsh? Not as harsh as un-empathic, presumptive declarative what people
in America need (by the way you need to provide evidence and support to make
claims like this at least).

------
PaulHoule
Job training has been universally popular among US politicians for a long
time, but the evidence that it helps people find work is weak. See

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITT_Technical_Institute](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITT_Technical_Institute)

~~~
zanny
A lot of this is because nobody wants to be honest.

A huge portion of "vacant" jobs are companies that maintain listings for 10
year fully stack veterans while offering $60k a year salary. Unreasonable to
anyone, but the point is to dangle the carrot in case you can get super lucky
and nab talent at well below market rate. It doesn't cost you anything to keep
the offer on the market. They are a great excuse to complain about vacancies,
though.

If there were _real_ demand, truly authentic _honest_ demand for work, that
wasn't a known fleeting thing, humans adapt. Human history is nothing if not
the demonstration that people migrate towards opportunity. It might be
considered on the order of days or generations, but people will do it. So
don't sit around complaining about nobody wanting to move somewhere where the
salary is "competitive" but you have rigged the externalities like taxes and
property ownership so far against civilians your bafflement that nobody wants
to go where the "jobs" are is dastardly.

------
jseliger
A useful point and one I make in this essay on boosting apprenticeships:
[http://seliger.com/2017/06/16/rare-good-political-news-
boost...](http://seliger.com/2017/06/16/rare-good-political-news-boosting-
apprenticeships/). The "College for all, all the time and everywhere" mantra
needs to end. College is great but is not a panacea.

------
Aoyagi
I heard that most American degrees are, in terms of knowledge and whatnot,
worth a high school diploma from some European countries. Any truth to that at
all?

~~~
skgoa
The german realschulabschluss is similar to an american hs diploma. Students
on the track towards university will add the abitur on top of this, which is
similar in depth and difficulty to an undergraduate degree at an american
comunity college. Which is why Germany doesn't have pre-med, pre-law etc.

------
Kenji
>Companies, especially in the science, technology, engineering, and
mathematics (STEM) industries, are shifting their recruiting process from
“where did you study?” to “what can you do?”.

But are they really? Go look at job openings. You will find more often than
not 'X degree required' (or at least recommended). If you don't have a degree,
your application will often go straight into the trash, before the question
"what can you do?" is asked.

~~~
ju-st
Two recruiters from Switzerland recently told me that the only things that
matters is your study programme (should fit the one given in job opening) and
your degree (B.Sc/M.Sc). Salary is non negotiable for entry level jobs. "What
can you do" or whatever you did while in college increases only the chances of
getting hired. But having basic programming skills is usually already enough
to get an offer.

~~~
julien421
> Salary is non negotiable for entry level jobs

I can assure you that our students (Holberton) do negotiate their entry-level
jobs. The majority successfully do so :)

> the only things that matters is your study programme and your degree

When we started we had no track record whatsoever. Our first students found
internships but also jobs everywhere including both completely unknown and
super cool startup and very high-profile companies such as NASA, Apple etc...
they were all selected on what they could do and not on a degree (we are not
accredited) nor the school itself (we had no track record)

Today we atart to have a very good reputation so the problem is different, our
atudents don't have to fight anymore, companies come to them. But for the
first students it was very clear that ppl didn't care about degrees or "where
do you come from".

------
dpflan
There is a New York Times article today (6/28/17) about the idea of skills vs.
degrees.

> [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/28/technology/tech-jobs-
> skil...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/28/technology/tech-jobs-skills-
> college-degree.html)

------
remotehack
When I was in High School, I went to 2 years of Vocational School at the same
time and took advanced studies for college so I'd have something to fall back
on one way or the other.

~~~
Taylor_OD
What vocational trade?

~~~
remotehack
Industrial and Residential Electricity. We learned mainly residential but our
instructor wanted us to be prepared for industrial as well. In the end, I was
accepted to a small college but didn't want to work a FT job and attend
college so I went into the Navy instead, into the AEF (Advanced Electronics
Field).

------
DiNovi
These articles for the most part live off of an imagined past. It wasn't hard
to train someone to work an assembly line, which used to be all you needed to
do.

Skilled employment such as plumbing electrical had and still have
apprenticeships...

------
rbanffy
Can critical thinking and debate skills be taught? Throw in some geopolitics
and I can support the idea...

