
How many jobs really require college? - woodcroft
https://devinhelton.com/how-many-jobs-require-college
======
mnm1
With the quality of education as it is today, and no improvements in sight in
the near or long-term future, I'd say a college education--or self-guided
personal learning for the few who have the motivation and ability to do it--is
required in the US if one is to not be considered stupid. There are exceptions
at certain private--and usually incredibly expensive schools--but overall,
even the best public schools are atrocious and don't teach children the skills
and knowledge they need to be decent citizens, let alone how to prosper. This
is why attending college is not primarily about job preparation. Even when job
preparation is not necessary, the rest of the education is. Yes, much of it
should have been taught in grades K-12, but since that isn't happening,
college is the last defense against stupidity that's likely to last a
lifetime. Thus, the question the article asks is not very important, and the
article's dismissal of any use for college other than job preparation is
short-sighted and ill-defended.

------
acslater00
One of the things _I_ learned in college is that when someone says "I have
thought about this social problem and understand both the cause and solution,
please join me as I attempt to radically address it via state action" you
should get as far away from him as possible. The history of such programs is,
to say the least, not a story of success and progress and rainbows.

------
chx
My father led the chemical safety laboratory of a ~10000 employee Hungarian
drug company from 1990 to 2010 or so. He said this and this stuck with me,
that when he started he was able to hire the lowest level assistants straight
out of trade school but by the end everyone needed a univ degree because every
instrument became so complicated.

------
oldopsguy
The author makes a lot of great points here but I took issue with this
sentence:

 _All jobs that currently require a degree, should instead require a knowledge
test. The employer should not care how the knowledge was obtained, just that
the applicant has the knowledge._

I would argue that the degree does provide some value beyond what can be
easily tested in an interview setting. I'm not sure if it is the only way but
the type of person who completes a degree is the type of person who is able to
sit down and start a difficult task and complete it. Often these tasks are not
directly related to what the student is passionate about, and sometimes not
even necessary without taking into consideration the bigger picture of a
multi-year program. In my experience dealing with the drudgery of the tedious
day-to-day of most white-collar jobs, this college education degree provides a
coarse litmus test for the type of person who will thrive in this environment.
A person who will do things well and thorough for their own sake and deal with
the bullshit.

~~~
merrywhether
Just as a hypothesis: is it possible that the sheer number of people we're
putting through increasingly bureaucratic college curricula (do this busywork,
now go sit in this room listening to a topic you don't care about for a while,
etc) is creating a feedback system that encourages the creation of tedious
drudge work since that's what we've "trained" people to be good at? Though I'm
not sure which is the chicken and which is the egg in this situation.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
Not only have we trained people to be good at it but we have filtered and
sorted them based on that.

------
aphextron
Any "job" does not require a college degree. A "job" is something that anyone
can be trained to do. If you think that the purpose of college is to train you
for a "job" then you're doing it wrong. The point of college is teach you the
underlying fundamentals of how things like language and science work, so that
you can extend those rules and use them to create new things and new ideas.
You go to college to learn how to create value, not get a job. There will
always be a need for vocational training. But putting in the long, hard work
of accumulating intuitive knowledge of the fundamental sciences, and having
that knowledge verified by society to assure you haven't deluded yourself, is
the only way to operate at the highest level of intellectual ability for
anyone short of a true genius.

~~~
humanrebar
There's a lot good about this point of view, but it comes from a fundamentally
privileged point of view.

For first generation college students, the goal is to get a return on the
substantial investment they are making. Achievement in abstract notions is
fine, but paying off loans and escaping the career trajectories of their
parents and neighbors is paramount.

Maybe the "advancement of humanity" education needs to be more distinct from
elite vocational training.

------
dahart
Sure, very few jobs give you the direct day to day skills required to do a
job. That's neither the claim colleges are making, nor the primary reason that
business require degrees. This feels like pure opinion with almost no evidence
to back it up, divorced from reality. The table displaying apparent sub-
percent accuracy for the completely subjective (made up) number of jobs
requiring degrees is demonstrating this disconnect hilariously.

I've actually tried hiring people with less schooling than college -- has the
author? It tends to not work out that well, especially in tech. Programmers
with high school diplomas and two year degrees are usually missing all the
theory and most of the practical experience you get during a 4 year degree.
Not because someone who skips college can't learn these things, and not
because they can't get experience or learn on the job, it just so happens that
in the real world they usually don't.

One of the biggest reasons that college is a good idea is that someone with a
degree in a field related to the job is more often more capable than someone
with only a high school diploma. Not always, of course, but statistically more
frequently. So who will the employer choose? The college grad is an easy
choice. This means getting a degree is simple market competition for
employment, and probably won't go away even if people make convincing sounding
arguments. Why would employers choose the minimum necessary qualifications if
some candidates will do more? Why would people who want good jobs expect to
get hired with less experience than others who are applying for the same job?
College is something many people are choosing.

------
tptacek
The premise of this post is that the author has performed an analysis of the
educational requirements for jobs and can extrapolate from it. But this author
thinks that only a grade school education and not more than 6 months of
training is required to be a cook --- a profession people go to post-secondary
school for --- and that some college study is required to be a programmer. How
seriously should I take their conclusions?

~~~
massysett
The arrogance of the opening of this piece is amazing. Essentially: "I know
nothing about analyzing occupations, I do not work in or hire for any of these
occupations, now I will classify these occupations based on my subjective
analysis of how much education one _really_ needs to do these jobs."

~~~
tptacek
Unfortunately, if you read any of the other posts on this blog, you'll see
this is kind of par for his course.

------
Theodores
I recently helped transform a customer service department from being an
embarrassing shambles to something we could be proud of. The queue of tickets
is now empty whereas before, when we didn't have things automated, our many
customer service agents were struggling to keep up with the back of a 4000
long queue. Things are now pro-active, we fix problems before customers know
rather than wait for them to complain.

Essentially it is the same job but done properly, however, now everything is
in order, we just need two people rather than hordes of people. Note that
these two people are college educated, i.e. able to listen and learn, write
good English and show up in the morning.

We get customer service ratings and these also come in for the things that the
computer does rather than just what a human agent has done. The computer
always writes impeccably, my human colleagues are nearer grunt and point
level. The humans are lucky to get 76% satisfaction level, the automated stuff
consistently gets 91% satisfaction level.

The net result is that our remaining customer service staff are the educated
ones, their work is now pretty professional albeit not to rocket surgery
levels and the job pays fairly rather than it being a temp type of
arrangement. As a company we no longer need the hordes and the people to
manage/hire/fire them.

My point being that college education is more helpful than one might think. It
does not matter what the education is in particularly, it is the skills of
being able to do basic things like work without disrupting others, being able
to write and being able to learn that matter.

~~~
tyingq
Was the college degree itself really the difference here though?

I would guess it was more of a high level indicator of someone who has
ambition, some base level of intelligence, perseverance, etc.

That still leaves you with false negatives and false positives. Just something
somewhat better than hiring randomly. There are other criteria you could have
used that had nothing to do with a college degree, that would likely have
similar results.

The enlisted ranks of the US military, for example, use something called an
ASVAB test as a bar for certain highly skilled jobs. It's also not perfect,
but yields at least similar results. And the pool has very few college grads.

------
analog31
In my view, something that has to be considered is the feedback of a worker's
education level on the nature of their job. If you stop requiring a college
degree for a particular occupation, the nature of that occupation may change,
and it may open up a space for new occupations to form.

Remember, anybody can stop requiring a degree for any job, today, so long as
the degree isn't required by law. We could stop requiring an engineering
degree for Solid Works operators. (Just to choose an example)

In fact, about half of our mechanical CAD operators have degrees. I notice a
big difference between those groups when getting CAD work done. If the
operator has a degree, it's much more likely that they can take a vague idea
of mine, and come back with a nice design that even handles a bunch of issues
that I overlooked.

If not, then I pretty much have to give them a complete specification (taking
longer than just doing it in CAD myself) or sit next to them at the CAD
terminal and direct them. If a design step requires math, I do the math. If a
decision is needed, I make it. K-12 teaching would become a different
profession if the college degree requirement were dropped, as was proposed in
my state.

------
gumby
The article's classifications aren't even observed in other OECD countries:
for example law and medicine are undergraduate degrees is most of Europe and
Australia and people do fine (obviously doctors still need residency etc in
order to become skilled). And those countries are doing fine -- better than
the US in many ways.

------
figushki
This sort of article comes up on Hackerrank a lot. Zero research, a
spreadsheet, and a prescription to change eduction from the ground up. The
author advocates curiosity as a motivator for education, yet he doesn't appear
to know anything about professional architecture (certification is complicated
and not always tied to education) and doesn't seem to care enough to research
it before bloviating.

I read his article dedicated to architecture on his blog, and it was equally
ill-informed. Of course buildings built in the 1880s didn't require architects
with a college degree. They didn't require that you know CAD, either.

What appeals to people about this type of article? The author doesn't bring
any experience with education policy or teaching. He doesn't back his
assertions with research, primary sources, or even secondary sources. He
doesn't bother interviewing anyone with experience with the problem or who has
thought about it.

And, his reasoning is fairly shoddy. Much of what he's arguing for already
exists in parallel with formal education. Nothing stopped me in the past from
supplementing my learning on Coursera or hiring a programmer without a degree
in computer science. A good friend of mine dropped out of high school, got his
GED, and went back to college. Nothing is stopping anyone, you just limit your
opportunities.

Even if formal education was abolished or fully privatized, businesses would
find a similar, expensive process for screening applicants. The government is
rarely requiring this. It's usually industry associations.

I read this article because I'm curious about this sort of thinking. Why do we
not only have a desire for simple solutions but a need for radical ones from
people with no experience in the field they're discussing? Why is this
appealing?

If you're curious about radical approaches to education and the deschooling
movement, read Ivan Illich or research the free schools movement. I read
Illich before sending my daughters to public school. I didn't think Illich had
any answers, and much of what he advocated wasn't precluded by formal
education. School doesn't take that much time. My kids thrived in public
school, and one of them wants to be a teacher.

~~~
Noumenon72
The author also has a huge blind spot for treating the world like it's a
computer program where you can just increment everybody's account by $100,000
in education coupons and there will be no taxation effects, bubbles, scams, or
opportunity costs. No understanding of economic incentives, no humility about
the difficulty of social engineering, no respect for freedom. "Let's require
all businesses to hire 14% apprentices, this will inevitably have exactly one
effect, the positive one I envision. We won't require any input from the
people I am commanding to carry out my untested plan."

Like you say, for this to get upvoted there must be a high demand for
sweeping, uninformed radical change.

~~~
figushki
I'd like to propose a Star Trek test. A lot of people get extremely worked up
when sci-fi cooks up something entirely unrealistic, and Hollywood has all
manner of advisors on call just to keep fans from jumping down their throats.

People in computer programming professions should extend the same courtesy to
the social sciences we expect from Hollywood. There's no reason for Hollywood
to care that they're making stuff up, but they have enough shame to care that
their imaginary worlds pass the sniff test. Our pronouncements on education,
politics, and economics should require us to do the same.

------
Zak
College degrees largely serve the social function titles of nobility once did.
Having one shows that you have a shared set of experiences and a personal
investment in a certain set of values and social norms. Requiring one for many
jobs is much more about ensuring applicants belong to the class the employer
prefers than any specific education the job requires.

~~~
rnd33
True, but regardless of whether you think that is a good or bad thing it's
part of the value of a college degree, and should be included in your
calculation when you decide if college is worth it.

I've seen the insecurity of some of my colleges without degrees, almost like
they think college is a mystical place where deep and unique knowledge is
shared. That insecurity can really cripple your career.

~~~
aphextron
> That insecurity can really cripple your career.

I struggled with it daily as a self taught developer working at a large
company. I eventually dropped out of the workforce and went back to school
because of it. I feel pretty awkward now as a 30 something in class with
freshman, but the satisfaction and confidence of having that piece of paper
seems worth it to me.

~~~
Neliquat
Just realizing the paper is not the change might be a cheaper solution to what
amounts to a psychologocal issue.

~~~
aphextron
Well, "just the paper" isn't really all of it. Since I've started going back
to school and learning the fundamental maths and science that I missed out on,
I've come to understand how ignorant I am to practically everything. If I had
just kept going the path I was on as a web developer, I feel like I would have
ended up with a career as a specialized technician, which is something I
really don't want. Learning just calculus and basic physics is really blowing
my mind and opening me up to completely new ways of thinking.

------
camgunz
Advocates of this general position, whether it's Peter Thiel and "hey don't go
to college I'll just pay you" or this author's "hey your job isn't that
complicated, you can figure it out in less time for less money", all miss the
point of college.

The best purpose of college is to make you a reasonable citizen in a
democracy. Most Americans voting in elections can't even name the Vice
President, let alone articulate what plenary powers are, what the 4th and 5th
amendments say (or seriously any amendment), name more than 3 executive branch
departments (Defense, State and... uh...), point out where Iraq is on a map,
etc. It's really no surprise we get the elected officials we get.

Sure, professional training is important and I think our education system is
not particularly efficient about it. But education is more than just "here's
how you work for the man". It's supposed to make you a well-rounded, well-
educated citizen so you can participate effectively in a democratic
government.

Which is why things like public education, state colleges and universities, a
separation of religion and education, and state subsidized college tuition are
so important, and why religious schools, charter schools, and for-profit
colleges/universities are so antithetical to democracy: their agenda is
entirely separate from "be a well-educated democratic citizen".

~~~
akuma73
I had a different college experience. A degree in computer engineering
required very little coursework outside of engineering. Due to human nature, I
ended up hanging out with primarily other engineering students. All of the
non-academic socializing, in retrospect, was very limited to a narrow college
bubble.

It was only after I graduated and lived in the real world for a few years that
I felt more 'well rounded'.

The tools to become a 'well informed citizen' should be taught at the high
school level since not everyone goes to college.

~~~
camgunz
Yeah I don't have a strong preference about when they're taught. I think
college is probably best because the 17-23 age is probably the earliest that
most people are equipped to start learning stuff like this, but then again if
you can vote when you're 18 maybe it should start a lot earlier.

I think there's too much siloing between, say, STEM majors and Liberal Arts
majors. You get Philosophy majors who are pretty good with concepts like
confirmation bias (just for example), but super bad when it comes to things
like "why is the sky blue" and "just what is the Internet, anyway". Conversely
you get engineers who are pretty good programmers or EEs, but really don't
understand things like "Affirmative Action isn't racist" or "taxation isn't
government theft or class warfare".

I... mostly think high school is useless? I guess it's more accurate to say I
think middle school (6-8th grade) should be more like high school, and high
school should be a lot more practical, applied learning. If you're interested
in cars, do that. If you're interested in chemistry, do that. Do them both at
the same time, and do some music too, whatever.

~~~
literallycancer
>Conversely you get engineers who are pretty good programmers or EEs, but
really don't understand things like "Affirmative Action isn't racist" or
"taxation isn't government theft or class warfare".

You can't teach opinions. What you can teach is how to talk to people with a
differing opinion.

Let's take this statement: _" Affirmative Action isn't racist"_

The disagreement probably wouldn't be about affirmative action at all, but
rather about the definition of racism and whether both parties define it the
same way.

~~~
camgunz
> You can't teach opinions.

I mean, you can. Basically every parent does this.

> The disagreement probably wouldn't be about affirmative action at all, but
> rather about the definition of racism and whether both parties define it the
> same way.

Yeah classes about race in the US define the difference between isolated cases
of discrimination and institutional discrimination against a racial minority.
They go over the history of racial discrimination in colleges and universities
and other public institutions as a method to disenfranchise and disempower
minorities. They illustrate that college admissions or job positions aren't
zero-sum quantities, and that the state goes to great lengths to increase the
capacity of universities and add jobs every day so that there are enough for
everyone. Finally, they point out that failing to enact policies to level the
playing field entrenches privilege: without something to break the cycle of
institutionalized racism (and other institutional discrimination), minority
groups remain trapped in a cycle of lower opportunity and higher risk.

------
grigjd3
I knew a lot of people in college that didn't work all that hard except for
last minute rushes to get things turned in at finals. Those people had a hard
time finding jobs that justified the cost of their education. I also saw
people that consistently worked hard. They are doing quite well. I think going
to college is something you shouldn't do if you're not taking it seriously. If
you're using college to put off real life, you might be better off waiting
tables.

------
codingdave
How many jobs require college is a fair question when you are young. But at
the other end of life, I ask how many jobs would have taught you the same
things as college. Lifelong education and self improvement is important.
Whether it come from college, work, or somewhere else is not as important as
just making sure it happens.

------
woogiewonka
I am 100% convinced that colleges were created for good reasons but were
quickly exploited for profit. Today's version of college is designed to empty
savings in the maximum way possible. I can't think of too many professions
that require the general education requirements that colleges claim you need.
I'd say most if not all professions can be learned through training and on the
job practice. Take nursing for example. Today's nurses have to write countless
nonsense papers that have nothing to do with improving their knowledge. Dental
Technician can do their job without prior education yet many are swindled into
a technical program. They say designers need formal education to be taught
human computer interaction, color theory etc yet here providing for myself and
family with less than 8 months of self-taught reading. One time I wanted to
check out a Standford online course to see what designers learn there and was
blown away by the uselessness of that information. Pardon the typos, I'm on
mobile with whacky autocorrect.

------
sbuttgereit
In my experience as a hiring manager, a degree _can_ be useful as an
indicator, but I wouldn't actually require it for most positions. A degree
requirement can also be a crutch for HR departments that are overwhelmed by
applicant volume and lesser hiring managers that put more stock in a
culturally defined checklist than their own judgement about any given
candidate's suitability.

The biggest problem with the degree-as-a-substitute-for-judgement approach is
that not all degree programs are equal to start with. There are degree
programs which absolutely speak well of a candidate (on a resume) and there
are programs you can graduate from which would be less of an indicator of
suitability than relevant work experience. Certainly not all degrees are
equal. There are some real bullshit things you can major in insofar as being
an indicator for employ-ability is concerned. So for me to care about a degree
on a resume, it has to be an appropriate degree and it has to be from a
program that _I know_ indicates some skill and perseverance on the part of the
candidate... otherwise I dismiss it as an evaluation factor: at that point
it's simply an uninformative data point.... it's just noise.

To be fair, I say this as someone that has had a good career in technology
without a degree. I have do have a fair amount of college (in one of those
bullshit majors I was mentioning), but no sheepskin. (Actually, one of the
schools I attended seemingly attached so little to the degree in terms of
success of the candidate, that they had a policy of indefinite re-admittance
since many wanted to finish solely for self-enrichment after they had gone off
and had their career success pre-graduation :-) ).

------
amelius
The author risks to make mistakes related to the Dunning-Kruger effect [1].

Quote:

> The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which low-ability
> individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly assessing their
> ability as much higher than it really is. Psychologists David Dunning and
> Justin Kruger attributed this bias to a metacognitive incapacity, on the
> part of those with low ability, to recognize their ineptitude and evaluate
> their competence accurately. Their research also suggests corollaries: high-
> ability individuals may underestimate their relative competence and may
> erroneously assume that tasks which are easy for them are also easy for
> others.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect)

~~~
always_good
"Dunning-Kruger" has become the new "cognitive dissonance", a phrase everyone
recognizes just enough to throw around as an epithet in lieu of making an
actual point.

------
noonespecial
The question implies "how many jobs require college _to do_ ". A better
question is "how many jobs require college _to get_ ".

------
bjourne
I can't help but feeling this has something to do with women. Namely that
women are "winning" the education game. Each year, the fraction of women to
men in (almost) all programs are steadily increasing.

Since men aren't winning anymore, the game clearly wasn't that important.
Let's create a new game and play that instead!

------
didibus
The mistake of the education system is its focus on jobs. Education should be
motivated by virtue, to raise a generation that can think, reason, innovate,
in all aspects of life, emotionally, culturally, artificially, physically,
scientifically, spiritually, etc.

If we educated more people that way, we'd probably have a society that could
solve the job problem.

------
jlarocco
The author's cherry picked examples from the 19th century are pretty
misleading. The state of the art, as well as society's expectations for most
professions have changed significantly since the 19th century.

I wouldn't want to live in a building made to 19th century safety and
efficiency standards, and while I'm sure some people can teach themselves how
to design and build modern buildings, I'm also sure that a good way to get up
to speed is to go to school for architecture or civil engineering. Ditto with
law and mechanical engineering.

I'm also wary of anybody claiming software engineers and computer programmers
don't need a degree or other training. Software quality in general is really
crappy, and I'm skeptical the solution is less education.

------
matchagaucho
When writing Developer job descriptions I typically settle on _" Bachelors
degree or equivalent"_ for the education requirement.

The best Programmers I've worked with were self-taught autodidacts with
insatiable curiosity.

~~~
Noumenon72
How do people prove they have autodidacted the "equivalent" of a bachelors
degree?

~~~
matchagaucho
I prefer a take-home coding exercise for interviews, paid at an hourly rate.
Equal parts subjective and objective.

The exercise requires candidates to git clone, unit test, document, submit PR,
and walk a reviewer through the solution.... basically go full lifecycle on a
coding task.

------
scythe
College may improve the bargaining position of laborers vis-a-vis employers.
Compare eight apprenticeships which provide the ability to work one job each
vs a college which provides the ability to work all eight jobs. If students
filter into one of the apprenticeships they're locked in; if they go to
college then employers must compete for labor across sectors.

------
Gormisdomai
One of the best things you can support, whether you agree with Bill Gates, or
with OP, is investment in making primary education as good as is absolutely
possible. The result is:

1) people are smarter and more mature even if they don't go to college 2)
people who do go to college are already ready to do great work

If, like OP, you seriously want people to effectively graduate at age 13 you
need to put a lot of work into primary education first. I admit, if like
Gates, you just want more competent graduates, then it is probably going to be
more nuanced.

------
jobu
College has become little more than an aptitude test for many jobs. If you're
willing to grind through the years of studying and financial hardship to get a
degree, then you'll probably be able to handle the job.

~~~
randomdata
More importantly, you'll probably not have the financial resources to walk
away from the job.

~~~
branchless
I may be putting words in your mouth but I think you are saying that non-
graduates who are not soaked in debt have more choices, and if so I'd agree.

Employers want in order of preference:

* h1-b - work late or life as you know it ends

* big mortgage with family - work late or I ruin your family's life

* big university debt - work late or I ruin your life

Debt is a tool of control.

~~~
nebabyte
I, or my high-paying competitor who wants you working for him :)

~~~
randomdata
Although, with some exception where protectionism ensures high pay, the higher
the paying the work, the less concerned the market is with degrees. This is
more due to the fact that high paying jobs are high paying because it's
difficult to find people, and you can't be choosy when your options are
already limited. But the secondary effect is that with the high pay, the
benefits of "debt control" is lost anyway, so there's still no reason to look
for workers with degrees.

Hence why the reasonably high paying software industry couldn't care less
about formal education, but lowly office jobs that barely pay minimum wage
expect the world from their applicants.

------
mankash666
It's cute how software engineers are attributed as the likely inventors of
HVAC robots. Whatever happened to mechanical & electrical engineers?

~~~
madengr
EE and ME are not sexy; so 20th century. Labor to be farmed out offshore. Most
people think EE is hooking up an Arduino, or ME using Legos. Meanwhile the
money is tossed at brogrammers writing sexting apps. /sarcasm.

------
jostmey
How many jobs _will be_ really required?

------
bufordtwain
I agree with the author's conclusions that college is mostly an expensive
waste of time and money. Job training can and should be done in a more cost-
effective way with paid apprenticeships. Universities should focus on pushing
the boundaries of knowledge (research) not job training.

------
kdamken
Almost none of them, outside of STEM fields. Even then, not even some of
those.

One of the biggest scams of modern times.

------
jacksnipe
I think that the really fundamental problem is the proposition that college
has the goal of getting you prepared for a job.

That should not be (and IMO is not) the primary goal of education.

The primary goal of education should be to make you a better, more informed
member of society. That's the only way democracy can work.

------
Grustaf
Very few. I think it's much more a matter of job culture and a bit of red
queen (useless arms race) competition that has brought on this situation.
Probably with a sprinkling of politicians wanting to be able to say that "in
my country 50% of high school students go on to university" when they hob nob
at international conferences.

In almost all white collar jobs the apprenticeship model would work just fine,
but that doesn't work well when people want to change jobs every few years.
It's not that most desk jobs are actually harder to learn that most skilled
manual labor jobs.

~~~
komali2
>the most elite companies in the valley have discovered correctly that remote
work doesn't work

That's extraordinarily presumptive. Is IBM and a handful of others gods of all
things HR? Why? There's conflicting data on both sides of the table, IBM just
went with one choice over another. Recently, by the way, so we don't even know
it's going to work. Furthermore, there's a strong argument that the move was
an easy way to achieve layoffs, which kind of nullifies the "IBM is big and
smart and so they switched because remote work doesn't work" argument.

Finally, I'm not even sure some of these companies you're describing as elite
(I'm assuming you mean "companies in the bay area we've all heard of that
don't do remote work") are universally regarded as elite. And how do you
account for the actual bay area giants that do allow for it, such as Google?

~~~
dhimes
Good point. Didn't Yahoo abandon remote work as soon as Mayer took over?

~~~
matwood
Depending on who you talk to, this was either a ploy to do a non-layoff
layoff, or since all the good people had already left the people still at
Yahoo were just cashing paychecks. It didn't matter if they were in the office
or not.

Pointing to the burning, foreclosed house is not a very accurate way to draw
conclusions about the whole neighborhood.

------
dpeck
I don't understand all the agurments for apprenticeship, what we're dealing
with now are the problems of workers being unable to move over/up after being
displaced by technology.

Apprenticeship systems would only exacerbate that problem.

------
drostie
Nobody has really commented yet on how highly suspect the methodology here is,
nor the tradeoff between education and experience, nor the tradeoffs inherent
in the world "acceptable" when you're trying to figure out what the minimum
acceptable education is to land a certain job.

Just for the easiest example, the given education stat for top executives
(chief executives, general and operations managers, and legislators) is listed
as "high school." It's not even "some college". Now if I come to you and say,
"hey, my niece actually just graduated high school and she's pretty smart, has
a lot of ambition and drive, really great extracurricular involvement -- can
we set up a job interview where she might take over your company as CEO?" you
would laugh at me! You would say, "let her get her MBA and manage real people
for a few years, and then let's talk. Or I mean if she really can't wait,
let's give her an entry-level position and if she's really as good as you say,
she'll be managing in 5 years and might be able to get to the top in 5 more."

But if we say "minimum" as in "could you start a company with only a high-
school education and find yourself as its CEO?" then of course the answer is
yes. Heck, let's knock this one down a peg, that could happen even if you
don't graduate high school, it's just less likely. Legislator? Sure. I mean,
most legislators today are presumably former lawyers who have 7 years of post-
high-school schooling in them, but all you really need to legislate is to be
elected.

Or for another example, Devin has said, "Any job specific training takes less
than six months. Examples: ...cook." I mean, that's partly true, some 1/4 of
cooks in this country work at fast food joints, some other 1/4 of cooks work
in cafeterias etc., but placing it at "high school" as if culinary school
isn't a thing is just deluding yourself for the other half or so of cooks. And
if you have the choice between going to culinary school for a year or going to
work in a kitchen that will take you for a year, probably if you're fresh out
of high school you're going to get a lot more out of the culinary school. And
that's because education has a different _sort_ of value from work experience,
which makes them very hard to compare evenly. The cook who went to culinary
school for a year probably knows how to cook a much broader diversity of
things, but the one-year-anniversary line cook will probably have greater
appreciations for, say, prepping quickly and efficiently, taking multiple
orders at once, estimating the time that dishes take to cook and communicating
that to others, and so forth. They're not easily comparable.

------
scotty79
From my experience college is not so much about actual knowledge acquired but
mostly about learning to learn and think. I could have studied civil
engineering instead of CS and be exactly as good software developer as I am,
maybe even better.

Is college absolutely necessary to perform some jobs? Probably not. But I
think I'd benefit if my hairdresser or tailor (I don't actually use services
of any of those) attended some technical university during his/her career.
Real shame is that not everybody has time and money to do that.

~~~
andrewvc
That's totally confirmation bias. Smart people are more likely to go to
college. Almost everyone becomes wiser between the ages of 18 to 22.

Why are you so sure that college is causative here?

I don't doubt that college is where many people grow up more intellectually,
but I have yet to see proof that it is the cause of that growth.

~~~
scotty79
> I don't doubt that college is where many people grow up more intellectually,
> but I have yet to see proof that it is the cause of that growth.

I can agree that it's not the sole cause. But I really have trouble believing
that being exercised and lectured about the stuff you knew nothing about every
working day and being strongly challenged at least semiannually has no effect
on people.

~~~
andrewvc
Well it's not as if people who don't go to college sit about twiddling their
thumbs.

Additionally there's an argument to be made that people who don't spend those
years having their life structured and defined by a university learn other
important lessons.

There's particular irony to making the point that college is where you learn
to think on HN. Many founders, like Bill gates dropped out of college to be
hyper focused on their mission.

Rather than thinking of college as a blanket solution for everybody I wish
people viewed it as a tool. Some people need it, some people flat out don't.

~~~
scotty79
> Well it's not as if people who don't go to college sit about twiddling their
> thumbs.

If I never went to college I'd just play more computer games and probably get
a job few years earlier. Jobs are easy so I don't expect them to develop and
challenge me anywhere near as much as college did.

> Bill gates dropped out of college to be hyper focused on their mission.

As I said, shame that not everybody has the time or money do go through
college. Bill didn't have time.

> Some people need it, some people flat out don't.

You don't exactly need much in life. Not starving and not dying in the cold on
the streets is pretty much enough. The thing is that everything is better when
people are doing some things they don't really need to do.

------
krallja
Number of births in US per year: 4.24 million

Proposed stipend: $100,000

Budget for proposal: $424B/yr, assuming no overhead (lol)

That's 2.5% of GDP, minimum, which is almost as much as the total non-defense
discretionary budget is today.

------
ThomPete
The question to ask is what jobs require you to get educated through either
close social interaction with others or needs access to resources you can't
just get at home.

------
tomrod
Most, according to economic signaling theory.

------
midnitewarrior
Far fewer than most will admit.

------
jdonaldson
How many jobs really require people?

------
Spooky23
Most do.

Most high school graduates can barely string a sentence together in writing,
and are more likely to have similar limitations in reading.

~~~
Noumenon72
"You need to be able to read and write to do this job" is not the same as "You
need college to do this job."

~~~
aidenn0
But the pool of college graduates who can read and write is much larger than
the pool of high school graduates who can read and write.

Considering that requiring interviewees to pass a literacy test may open you
up to lawsuits, and that there is a large pool of college grads with no jobs
and lots of debt, it's easier to just hire only college grads.

------
seppin
I go a step further, how many jobs can be done by most people, and things like
college or personal connections decide who fills those jobs.

------
jtmcmc
christ - reading through this person's website he seems like a parody of the
'arrogant engineer' stereotype.

------
kartan
The article has some interesting ideas. But it tries to solve a problem that
is already solved in other countries. Why do not, instead, start looking at
how those countries do it?

The problem needs thinking out-of-the-box. Education is not "too expensive",
remove that from your equation. Education is a great investment.

Why is your country not paying for it? Try to solve that instead.

------
socrates1998
1) People don't know what they want to be when they are 11 years old, so how
you do determine who gets what kind of education?

2) People don't want to be truck drivers for their whole lives. Hell, truck
driver might not even be a job.

3) The goal of education isn't to get a job, it's to get an education. The job
comes after and can be unrelated to the education.

Those are the three things I can think of that make me think this guy hasn't
thought his argument through very well.

------
anymouse-
tl;dr I should have been able to get a 4 year degree after taking 3-4 classes.
Why do people who have equivalent education need to _waste_ 4 years of their
life?

I think that the largest problem is that there is no way for people who have
achieved the equivalent or more of a college education to gain the same
recognition. But possibly that is just because it affects me directly.

While working a technician type job for years with lots of downtime, I studied
CS at home and with my work downtime. I took lots of the free courses from the
elite universities and finished them. I read lots of good book, most of the No
Starch Press books, and did all the exercises. Then I had the money to fund a
four year degree, with high expectations for the higher level classes I
persisted through the absolutely painfully trivial, tedious work. I got
anxious about wasting so much time not learning, after I was not just out of
high school.

I've burnt out on busywork, started neglecting schoolwork for stuff that
actually improved my skill, or to drill way deeper into some interesting bit
of a class than needed to get to something challenging. I ignored school for
side projects that stretched my legs. It really hit when I took 300-400 level
courses and realized that i really wouldn't learn anything CS at all. I've
even helped nearly 10 other students learn Python which the school doesn't
even teach pair programming with them on a very non-trivial project.

But now here I am, way more advanced and capable than a standard graduate,
terrible GPA, not going to graduate, and no job opportunities. I don't even
care how much I make, I like programming, I like making things, I like solving
problems. Probably going to have to go back to what I was doing.

That said I did pick up a couple math tricks, but _wasting_ 4 years of my life
for 3-4 good classes which could have been taken in 3 months, not even
remotely worth it.

Been here for a while but using a throwaway for obvious reasons.

------
besogno
The solution is to be long in anti-fragile assets such as bitcoins and gold.
If approximately everybody else is getting it wrong about degrees, the economy
and the value of its fragile assets, especially paper money, will shrink
systematically, while my assets will keep gaining value. In that sense, it is
better to encourage most other people to get it wrong. Hence, they should get
MORE useless degrees and saddle themselves with MORE stupid and MORE enormous
student loans. That is what will eventually sink the boat completely and make
me more money.

~~~
NotSammyHagar
Come on, bitcoin and gold are very fragile. Look at their huge variation in
value over short time frames. A new crypocurrency could arrive to take
bitcoins place, also, or govt regulation could make it hard to use in the us
or china. There might be an argument for diversifying your investments in
these things, but these aren't the certain safe places to put your money for
long term.

~~~
nebabyte
Yup, and inb4 "it's anon so impossible to regulate". You're not fighting
someone trying to stop you from purchasing it, you're fighting an apathetic
system that will go with "whatever works" and isn't a pain in the ass to use.

All it takes is for some litigators to decide that operating businesses
anonymously is illegal, and now those "anonymous customers" could be police
stings making your "system" more trouble than it's worth to use anonymously.

Truly-anonymous currency is either a fantasy or will only exist in niche
markets. In reality all they really have to do is scare people at the point of
sale, and the point of sale is by the nature of markets not hard-to-find or
'hear about on the street' (because it has to attain customers).

------
GCA10
Lots of interesting ideas here, but also some wacky or condescending
assumptions about other people's lines of work. Let's take two:

TRUCK DRIVERS: They don't just move big rigs around. They also need to keep
detailed log books, plan out routes, pass inspections -- and know how to talk
civilly and constructively to DOT inspectors. An eighth grade education will
not get you there. Especially on the last part. The back-and-forth of a high-
school classroom socializes teenagers to work with authority. Most high school
dropouts give up because they can't conform to those norms, not because they
can't do the work. Trucking companies rightfully insist on a high school
degree for exactly this reason.

FINANCIAL ADVISERS: Met any lately? I work in a co-lo space with several
within 50 feet. They're all college educated, and they put non-obvious skills
from their education to work, every day. They need to provide their clients
with highly literate, personalized updates via quarterly letters. They need a
sophisticated understanding of clients' expressed and unstated needs -- and
you're not going to be fully capable of doing that with just a high school
education. Some college-level psychology classes, history classes or
behavioral econ classes will get you in the game. And if you actually want to
be a financial adviser with some understanding of how markets work, an
econ/finance major is your best path in.

Some of the other analysis is quite interesting. But the classification errors
in this piece are more than just a matter of tweaking a spreadsheet. They come
from a deeper misunderstanding of what many jobs are all about.

~~~
mynameishere
Far from needing a college degree, financial advisors benefit from the unique
professional advantage of not needing to exist.

~~~
dsacco
Let me guess - you think financial advisors aren't worth their fees, and their
jobs are entirely obviated by index funds with sensible portfolio allocations.
Is that about the sum of it?

Everyone who agrees with you already nodded to themselves in agreement and
scrolled on. No one who doesn't already agree with your just-so statement was
persuaded to consider a different perspective. You came into a conversation
about the professional merits of education and used a passing comment about
financial advisors to inject your ideology.

So what'd we achieve? What's this all been for?

~~~
Neliquat
Problem is, like used car salesmen, lawyers and mechanics, they are a useful,
if not nessarry people in many cases, but are also in a unique position to
fuck you. A good one is worth their weight and then some. The extremes make
for most public perception, and here we are.

------
pen2l
I think the author of this post is making the same mistake that a lot of other
people (particularly smart folks) make whenever they are thinking about the
ills of modern education system and what can be done to improve it. Like Peter
Thiel and others, I don't think they understand how and why students are
failing in classrooms today.

Take for example the author's suggestions on how school systems can be
improved:

 _Create a set of free, online high school and college degree programs that
any American could enroll in, and pursue at their own pace._

Can you really expect high school students to perform well in online classes?
The most elite companies in the valley have correctly found out that remote
doesn't work (in most cases)... and yet we're going to do remote with our
students? I took online classes when I went back to complete college at an
older age... it was the worst mistake of my life. As a human, I needed the
social imposition of a disappointed teacher telling me that I performed poorly
on my test, I needed the camaraderie of students with whom I could study
somewhere. Online classes, _especially_ at high school stage are very bad
(perhaps with the exception of "gifted" students who probably would benefit
from being in a fast-tracked line).

 _At age 13, give everyone a $100k education voucher._

You're giving too much credit to students, they don't know what is best for
them. This $100k will be exploited in some way by profit-seeking companies
before you have a second to glance back at the money.

 _Legalize and normalize apprenticeship contracts._

I agree with this.

~~~
kazagistar
Aren't apprenticeship contracts functionally slavery? You think free money
will be abused, but this won't be?

~~~
brianwawok
So I don't know about all fields, but I know about programming.

Do you know how much value a high school type person has in writing computer
programs for an actual software company? Something fairly negative. Say -$10
an hour or -$50 an hour, based on how much experienced person time they take
up and how much damage they do.

If you run a small profitable business, even if you could get high schoolers
to work for free to write you code, you should not do it. If you need to pay
them minimum wage... even MORE reason not do it.

I feel this is a situation that other industries have dealt with for 100s of
years. For example the day 1 statue carver was probably a huge negative value
also. I suspect they had to sign something like "I will work for enough pay to
feed myself for 2 years, and then work for a industry standard wage for 2
years after that if you agree to train me". So all in agreeing to 4 years of
work for training. (And some pay, but not really break the bank pay). At the
end of the 4 years, the company got a decent amount of value out of the statue
carver, and the statue carver learned a bunch of skills without going to
college.

Not really anything like this in programming. Not even sure it would be
legally enforceable. But I think that is a big reason why there is a gap in
needs of programmers vs people willing to train people to do the job. It
really would suck for most people to train someone how to do a job for a year
(losing tons of money), and then the person job hops to someone who pays
higher and bears none of the training cost. This is why so many jobs advertise
1-3 years of experience required. They want people over the initial learning
hump, but not making the big bucks yet.

So perhaps I am proposing a way to bring back bonded labor apprentices? Hum,
seems terrible. But also seems like it could work...

~~~
kazagistar
It sucks for the big corps to not be able to contractually force labor out of
workers who they have trained. But it sucks far far more if you are stuck in
an abusive contract.

~~~
brianwawok
Maybe. But the end result is where we are now. People go to college to try and
learn a skill. Don't really learn the skill as well as an apprenticeship. Get
a lot of debt.

------
NotSammyHagar
This person has a bunch of essays but he comes across as an sad person who
doesn't believe in civil rights for women.

In an eassy on his website [1], he says "Men have natural abilities and
disposition towards leadership. To deny this, to mandate equality of results,
to push women into masculine roles, to domesticate and feminize men, only
results in misery for both men and women.

Universal suffrage elections are virtually always a bad idea."

1\. [https://devinhelton.com/principles-of-
formalism](https://devinhelton.com/principles-of-formalism)

~~~
overgard
This is like the definition of an ad-hominem attack. Your argument is
basically "he believes some unpopular things so all his ideas should be
discredited." I dont know this guy and I doubt I think the way he thinks, but
the essay is the essay -- it should stand or fall on its own merits.

~~~
woodruffw
You're right that it's an ad hominem, as it rightly should be - the character
and state of mind of author should be considered when judging their work.

We might have an obligation to read charitably, but we shouldn't be obsequious
towards ideas (or people) that are ontologically broken or fly in the face of
basic humanism. This author falls firmly into that category, and a quick
survey of their work will confirm that for you.

~~~
overgard
I would counter that the reason we consider ad-hominem bad is because it
enables lazy thinkers to avoid the topic at hand and redirect it to something
thats a lot easier to criticize. Thats the path of sophistry.

~~~
woodruffw
Maybe it does, but that's perhaps not the point.

The point, at least in this case, is that the author is _counting_ on being
treated as a serious thinker at the table of ideas. He is relying on our good
faith to promote ideas that are fundamentally incompatible with the existence
of exactly the kind of dialogue he's being given on this site. Do not think,
should he win, that he will afford you the same charity.

Criticizing someone who uses dialogue in bad faith is an exercise in futility.
It's better to recognize their actions before hand and label them as such -- a
sophist, or a pseudophilosopher, or whatever. That won't stop them from
speaking (nor should we want it to), but it gives us the power to redirect
dialogue towards more serious participants.

Edit: I realize that I didn't make this clear: criticizing the easier thing is
_not_ sophistry. At the worst, it's poor argumentation. Sophistry involves
using rhetoric to hide intellectual bankruptcy and bad faith.

~~~
overgard
Ok but still youre not arguing what he said, youre arguing what he is. To me,
thats the dark path. It's intellectually dishonest. This is what generally
annoys me about the social justice scene: its always about silencing or
shunning people, never about engaging them.

~~~
woodruffw
Intellectual dishonesty would be denying it. I make no such denial - I have
rejected this person's writings because I can't find any reason to believe
that this person entertains discussion (or even the _idea_ of discussion) in
good faith.

I do _not_ do this out of hand, or on a whim. I've read this person's writings
before, and have made a genuine attempt to read him charitably.

> its always about silencing or shunning people, never about engaging them.

Shunning, maybe. I don't think it's inappropriate to stop a conversation that
you know is going to be _used as a weapon_ against you later by someone with
truly onerous views. I don't have an obligation to engage with people whose
only interest in engagement is to use it a token of their ideological
legitimacy. Silencing, never.

~~~
overgard
Your actions contradict your words though. None of what this guy said about
_education_ matters to you because ideas from "this kind of person" is the
overwhelming factor to you. Who cares if he has a point about college if he
doesnt towe the feminist line, basically.

~~~
woodruffw
My actions are commensurate with my words. I don't ask that he be censored - I
ask that his status as an intellectual hack be considered, and that we
recognize that his writings on education are informed by his much more onerous
positions.

We don't debate round-earth denialists, since we know that their only motive
in debate is to maximize their audience and legitimacy. It doesn't matter
whether they're actually talking about their ungrounded views in a particular
instance, because all that matters is that they _gain legitimacy_ to be spent
later.

You're the one who keeps bringing up feminism and social justice, not me. Have
you considered that you're trying to imply an ulterior motive that doesn't
exist? Every movement has its fair share of people just like Devin Helton.

------
Apreche
If your job doesn't require college, then pretty soon it won't require a human
either. The more brain required the longer you have until a robot or computer
can do it better.

~~~
iamacynic
this is a bimodal distribution. my plumber/electrician/mechanic and my
investment banker/lawyer aren't going to be replaced by robots any time soon.

~~~
Const-me
I once worked for a company that aimed to replace investment bankers with
their robots. Basically an AI that reads news and other data sources, and
gives stock trading advices.

~~~
malthaus
investment banker != trader or investment manager

an investment banker typically advises on M&A transactions which is a very
human business where your career path is strongly correlated with your social
skills and status rather than technical knowledge.

~~~
iamacynic
correct - it's a sales job. very few people actually know what an investment
banker does. it's just selling or (selling disguised as) buying ownership of
shit to rich people.

