

Education Inflation - pjw1187
http://phillipwhisenhunt.blogspot.com/2009/10/education-inflation.html

======
hristov
You know it did not use to be like that. Things changed just recently. It is
interesting because I went to college exactly as things were changing so I saw
the difference first hand.

When I started college in the 90's personal computers and the internet were
just hitting the mainstream and people started hearing stories about how
computer nerds were getting rich. So of course the computer science and
computer engineering majors had huge in coming classes.

The first intro classes that start the cs and ce majors were pretty large. But
that did not phase the professors. Just because everyone wanted a degree did
not mean that everyone was getting one. So those first classes had some
shocking curves. There were rumors that more than 50% were failing the intro
classes. And then another 50% of the survivors would fail the next intro
class. Huge hordes of pissed off students were leaving cs for econ, bio,
social science, etc.

But the professors were unapologetic. They simply said that you cannot pass
their class unless you learn how to program and if 50% do not learn than 50%
will fail.

The funny thing is that those intro classes were not really that difficult,
but you just needed to know how to program to pass them and many people
couldn't. After that classes started getting really hard, but then the people
that remained knew what they were doing, so the curve normalised after the
first year.

Anyway, I started in a major of about 200 people and I graduated with about 30
people. Many people that graduated with me had started earlier than me having
taken more than 4 years to finish the major. But of course we all knew what we
were doing, and our diplomas meant something.

But for the class years after me things changed. I think someone in industry
told the school that they need to graduate 10 times more people each year.
They made everything easier. Classes started getting large throughout the
major. People were not failing as much. I met people junior to me that were
taking the same classes I had taken yet all the assignments they were doing
were much much easier than the ones I had to do. They started using a lot of
high level tools without knowing what happens under the hood. Nobody even knew
about pointers. So then my degree started meaning less and less.

This has to end. The solution they have now is that the really good people are
supposed to proceed to grad school, but life is too short for that. I think
they may have to use two levels of undergrad degrees -- one really challenging
that exposes you to all levels of computer science, and another easy one that
is for people that will be the future "X certified professionals."

~~~
xel02
As a student I agree that there should be a way to differentiate ourselves --
but I think there already is.

I started thinking Med school but I liked computer science so I did a Combined
Major in computer science and microbiology. I found computer science as my
passion, and more specifically I'm fascinated by machine learning.

Now I'm doing a Combined Honour in computer science and microbiology with a
minor in statistics. I'm choosing courses that emphasize artificial
intelligence and machine learning.

It will depend on the university but I think any student who really wants to
differentiate themselves can do so. If not through their specialization choice
(i.e. majors and minors) through course choices as well as activities outside
of courses but still within the university system like research.

Of course there is always freelancing, open-source and code contests.

------
camccann
Having a degree makes you look good in the job market, compared to someone
with the same skills but no degree, so you go get one. Good choice!

Now, many other people wisely do the same. The more people have degrees, the
more pressure is applied on those who don't to go get one. Awkward, that.

So, now we have a huge demand for degrees, plus a lot of degree-seekers who
(to be honest) aren't really cut out for college. But that's no big deal! The
market hears and obeys, as enrollment goes up, standards go down, and bottom-
tier schools admit anyone with a pulse. Hooray, everyone's getting educations,
isn't this great? Who cares if they're _learning_ anything.

Oh dear, it seems we've stumbled into a Nash equilibrium wherein the competent
people are still competent, the incompetent are still incompetent, you can't
tell them apart by seeing who has a degree anymore, and now everyone has
student loans weighing them down. Alas, game theory, she is a cruel mistress.

~~~
Fixnum
"... the competent people are still competent ..."

Sadly, one could adduce many reasons this no longer remains true.

~~~
RevRal
I'm trying to understand. Are you saying that the competent are being held
back?

~~~
Fixnum
As far as I can tell, opening the universities to the masses damages the
classes, standards, and student-faculty relations to the point where those who
really 'ought' to be at university rather than at technical colleges don't
benefit in the same way as previously. Perhaps this is just elitism, but I get
the feeling that the 'bright' entering students are still the 'bright'
graduating students, but gain much less deep knowledge than in the past. Of
course, this applies to all disciplines, not just CS. As famous mathematician
S Novikov said in 2002:

"In the West, however, there was also an abrupt fall in the level of college
and school education in physics and mathematics in the last 20-25 years, and
in the USA the decline in school education was apparently particularly steep.
I can clearly see that contemporary education cannot produce a theoretical
physicist capable of passing Landau’s theoretical minimum."
(<http://www.mi.ras.ru/~snovikov/cris_en.pdf>)

Basically, this education crisis seems to me to be endemic to developed
societies. I don't have a clear thesis on this yet, but it seems that when a
society progresses from "Education is a route from poverty to paradise" to the
anti-liberal "Everyone should receive fourteen years of education" that the
quality of education rapidly declines.

~~~
RevRal
Nice.

I see another problem. The bright are bored, school is tedious, and they go
unrecognized. Then the less intelligent "excel."

Good thing AI research will need more and more intelligent people.

~~~
pjw1187
I could not agree more.

------
yannis
From my own experience.

\- B.Sc. Learn enough to enable you to get on the job training

\- M.Sc. Meaningless, just a stamina test to check if you can focus adequately
on a narrow field.

\- Ph.D. A sort of a license to do research.

A 'degree' is just a 'key' to your first job. From there onwards its YOU, your
capabilities and most important your character. In many instances a Ph.D. will
be viewed by prospective Employers as a disadvantage calling you (theoretical)
rather than (practical). The greatest benefit of a PhD to me was it developed
my analytical and research skills, which I could apply in different settings
(i.e. not just Engineering). Its downside being too analytical screwed up
quite a few personal relationships :)

------
lionhearted
> If the inflation in education continues, I cannot imagine what kind of
> degree it will take to get a job in the future...imagine everyone being a
> PhD?

It's the opposite actually - when everyone is doing the same thing, you don't
differentiate by doing the same thing plus more of that same thing. You
differentiate by doing something totally different. Writing open source
software, freelancing, and traveling for four years would lead to much more
interesting and better credentials than four years in most universities.

~~~
bokonist
The problem is that the college/grad school credential is a legal requirement
for a vast number of well paying jobs.

~~~
barrkel
Migration from one country to another also generally requires credentials.

------
jacquesm
The upshot of all that is that you can expect job hunting to become more time
consuming. After all, if a masters (PhD less so) is essentially meaningless
(and I believe that's a point that in some branches of science is a thing of
the past) then you'll have to prove on the spot that you really know your
stuff.

------
enthalpyx
"As a side note, I am in no way bashing the cs program at UNCW... and the CS
program is awesome."

At a top 10 CS school, your experience would probably have been very, very
different.

------
AmericanOP
College provides a general sense of accomplishment over a long period of time-
a relaxed mental state conducive to growth and figuring out what you would
like to do in the future.

~~~
RevRal
Alone, not worth the price.

------
TheElder
As a white male, I felt pretty good in graduate school (for computer science).
I was often the only white in my graduate classes. While there were plenty of
Chinese, Koreans, and Indians, there weren't any whites. This made me realize
what a great opportunity I had. The whites were mainly in liberal arts,
business, marketing, accounting, and English. What does that mean for me? It
means that my peers, mainly other whites who I'll be competing against, will
probably not have CS graduate degrees. Good for me, but probably bad for the
overall state of the country.

I worked the entire time during my school career, and that experience is what
employers really care about, but I believe it helps that I have a graduate
degree when interviewing and getting through the HR door.

~~~
hooande
Wow. This is one of the most racist comments I have ever seen on hacker news.

~~~
TheElder
I'm honestly asking, what is racist about my comment? It's about race, but why
is it racist? I don't mean to be racist, nor do I want to be a racist. I
removed the article.

~~~
barrkel
Your post assumes that only "whites" are your peers, and that in competition,
non-"whites" are somehow automatically disqualified; and that lack of CS
accredited "whites", as opposed to non-"whites" is "probably bad for the
overall state of the country", i.e. that the relative status of "whites" has a
moral worth.

~~~
bokonist
If his peer group is in fact white, then it's not racist, just a statement of
reality. And as for competition, most people only care about competing within
their own peer/status group. And yes, it is bad for the economy if whites are
significantly under invested in engineering. It's bad for the economy if
anyone or any group is under invested in engineering. Anything "assumed" or
implied by his post, is added by you, not by the original poster.

Let's save the racist card/downvotes for when someone actually makes
personally disparaging remarks about someone of another race, not when someone
just makes earnest and frank observations about society.

~~~
barrkel
See now, you just equated peer group with status group. If you believe that
"white" can be a peer group, then that seems to imply that you also believe
that "white" can be a status group, which is a far more troubling scenario.

Racism is not about making disparaging remarks about someone of another race.
It's about prejudging, i.e. assuming that certain things are true, just
because of that person's race.

~~~
bokonist
I'm saying that one's peer group is almost alway's one's status group. People
don't personally compare themselves/compare self-worth versus a random sample
of the population. We compare ourselves to friends, neighbors, classmates, and
co-workers.

~~~
barrkel
By TheElder's _own admission_ , some of his co-workers are not white. Why
would he then choose to describe his status group as "whites"?

The more I read in this thread, the more I start to believe racism is deeply
embedded in the American psyche.

