education is primarily a barrier to entry: true or false

education creates an environment and then measures people's ability to adapt to and succeed within it

so does, well, anything that would replace it nobody is advocating teen anarchy here

thought this thread was going to be about sex

i think that one of the best things that educational institutions teach students is (pace Howard Stern) when to shut up and to sit down.

i was about to literally say the same thing, but not in approbation

I don't mind the general college-prep drift of US high school education, but the whole 'learning a manual trade' aspect of high school (e.g. welding or auto repair) has completely gone to hell locally and I suspect nationally, too. It needs to be revivied and strengthened, imo. There are a substantial number of students who respond well to this sort of trade-school emphasis, but who find the whole college-prep side of school unbearable. A lot of them drop out or tune out.

that these are purely artificial barriers, designed more or less to suss out your socioeconomic background or parent's educational level

this is wildly otm

he once told me that they have a unofficial policy of just throwing out any resumes from recent ivy league grads, MIT grads, caltech grads, etc and skipping down to the resumes from state school / community college transfers

dude obviously doesn't work for a large law firm or a hedge fund ... where such people are hunted after like foxes on an english moor (and by people with the same type of mindset, too).

among the most basic lessons taught and screened for in high school are "get along" and "do what's required

yeah i mean if we want to teach this to kids we could just send them coal mines

the problem w/ 'barrier to entry' is that it sorta suggests that it's a system that was designed from above. in some cases that's true, but not that many. a md is definitely a 'barrier to entry' to the medical field - legally, you cannot be a doctor without an md. it's a profession that requires tons of technical skills and a small mistake can kill somebody, having a strict barrier to entry is probably a good thing, though people might argue that there are better ways to go about it than the system we have set up today.

for the most part education doesn't provide highly technical skills and doesn't get you past *legal* barriers to entry. it's better understood as a collection of ~signals~ and the job market / society responds to those signals, sometimes creating what effectively adds up to a barrier to entry in the collective response.

if mark zuckerberg wanted to work for a tech company, despite not having a college degree, I imagine he could get a job. if he wanted to be a lawyer, he'd still have to go to school and pass the bar. if he wanted to be a mechanic, he'd still have to learn technical skills.

I've linked this before, but this is my favorite writer on the subject:
http://www.quickanded.com/2011/05/is-higher-education-a-bubble-fraud-conspiracy-ponzi-scheme-part-ii.html

that's a great article

i think the argument in the OP is that school these days is 90% #1, 2 and 3, which (like most ivy league grads i know) are of dubious value to anybody

Why is it that students can graduate from MIT and Harvard, yet not know how to solve a simple third-grade problem in science: lighting a light bulb with a battery and wire? Beginning with this startling fact, this program systematically explores many of the assumptions that we hold about learning to show that education is based on a series of myths

http://www.learner.org/resources/series26.html

^^ this is from the annenberg foundation, btw, so steer clear if you hate liberal bullshit

yeah i mean if we want to teach this to kids we could just send them coal mines

yeah, but i didn't say that's all we're teaching. the college/white collar workplace prep environment part is just as crucial.

uh

college and the white-collar workplace have little in common

speaking of which, which white-collar workplace are you referring to?

the only interchangeable white-collar workplace i can think of is admin

white-collar workplace rules taught in high school:

1) do what the boss says
2) don't get in fights on school (work) property
3) timeliness and neatness count
4) dress appropriately and speak with deference to your supposed "superiors"
5) etc, etc, etc.

college and the white-collar workplace have little in common

i'd say that they have a huge amount in common, having spent a good deal of my life in both.

xp to my own post

I missed mordy's post upthread but I'm generally in agreement w/ robin hanson on this / said more or less the same thing / as does kevin carey

colleges are totally different from one another. and even different programs at the same college are totally different from one another! I don't think you can really make any generalizations about colleges as such. I think its more, and this has been discussed on ilx plenty before, that if enough of yr. applicants have degrees, and given that a degree is going to have some correlation with capacity as a first-order filter, then you might as well not even consider the applicants without it.

College students sleep in and sometimes cut classes and basically make their own hours. The #1 rule of workplaces (white collar and otherwise) is pretty much show up on time and don't leave early. And you can't put your head on your desk and sleep if you get bored while somebody is talking. Also college students can dress pretty much however they want. Meanwhile the #2 rule of white collar workplaces is look somewhat together.

but as I said this is a total generalization and I know there are colleges and b-school depts w/in colleges that make a big deal about being on time and dressing sharp and etc.

well the institution wasn't *designed* as something to signal the perfect office worker, it just slowly grew into a signal that's used in that way. if employers got a say, 'being on time' would be an important part of getting your college degree, cause that tells them more than the fact that you got a B+ in anthropology.

another important point of connection between high school, college and the white-collar workplace (including blue-collar management and the "professions"): emphasis on paper and computer work.

WTF are you even talking about

mechanics handle 10x as much paper (in triplicate no less) than most white-collar workers i know

also these

white-collar workplace rules taught in high school:

1) do what the boss says
2) don't get in fights on school (work) property
3) timeliness and neatness count
4) dress appropriately and speak with deference to your supposed "superiors"

are also the rules at "mcdonalds"

also if by "computer work" you mean "word processing" then i gotcha but i guess you've never been to a bank?

ah i'm sorry man

i have no idea why i am taking such a nasty tone

it's just that you're saying so much does not compute stuff and in such an authoritative tone that it makes my temples pound

your tone is fine, contenderizer is just being willfully obtuse & argumentative for the billionth time

I've been made fun of behind my back for caring too much about the content of my classes. It's definitely still not cool to appear to be enthusiastic about anything except money.

i'm perhaps being argumentative, in that i'm stating things rather bluntly, but it's my experience of the white collar workplace that paper and computer work really are central to it, much more so than at the blue collar jobs i've had. note that i was including management, office/admin stuff and the professions in "white collar".

some of the blue collar work i've done: cleaning sites & offices of various sorts, groundskeeping, light carpentry, drywall, bus driving, prep cook, register jockey

white collare work i've done: database design & maintenance, technical writing, manuscript evaluation, contract checking, qa/qc, accounting, research

^ perhaps skews my perception of things

white-collar workplace rules taught in high school:

1) do what the boss says
2) don't get in fights on school (work) property
3) timeliness and neatness count
4) dress appropriately and speak with deference to your supposed "superiors"
5) etc, etc, etc.

i was awesome at all of these things at high school and completely useless at them in a white-collar workplace

in school i don't think even i would've guessed i had a latent problem with authority but i found i was pretty unable to tolerate my "superiors" talking to me rudely in the office

anyway, what i'm saying is, i find it pretty depressing if those are the things we're meant to take from our school experience

nobody in a workplace should talk rudely to colleagues, it's fucking unprofessional imo

it's pretty endemic ime

well yeah here too but it's unacceptable i think. not the occasional "had a bad day" snap but a general level of disrespect and sense of hierarchical entitlement

ughhhh workplace hierarchies and the multiple little ways in which people attempt to reinforce them ALL THE TIME that have nothing to do with your actual job or the work you're meant to be doing. at my last job there was a senior guy who was always throwing his weight around in a really argy-bargy at the junior staff, always little menial stuff about why is your desk so untidy or why is there no paper in the printer. it takes two seconds to put the paper in the printer, fucking do it yourself, as i snapped at him once. when he tried to make a fuss about why i was speaking to him like that i was just like, you may be ~senior~ staff but i don't actually report to you. do it yourself. this kept on happening so my own boss eventually just moved my desk so i wasn't anywhere near him.

*hugs freelance lifestyle with no boss and no senior staff and no hierarchies*

and the thing is, i'm fully aware that was actually a fairly decent workplace environment and a good company to work for, as these things go. some of the places i temped at, my god, inhuman

i think that one of the best things that educational institutions teach students is (pace Howard Stern) when to shut up and to sit down.

― kurwa mać (Polish for "long life") (Eisbaer), Thursday, 15 March 2012 01:05 (9 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i will never forget the first time i visited a university i was applying to (as a high school senior), to, i dunno, somehow soak up its ambience and see if i wanted to join its gestalt, and i attended a class (it was a lecture) and NO ONE WAS TALKING TO EACH OTHER while the professor spoke!!!! you could hear a pin drop! the only place i'd been in my life that was similar was church.

How did this fall of sna so quickly? Ilx is growing up.

'ilx is growing up' = cause this didn't cause a clusterfuck or 'ilx is growing up' = lol kids who cares?

I think it's an interesting subject

The first one. I think it's an interesting subject, too.

i'm perhaps being argumentative, in that i'm stating things rather bluntly, but it's my experience of the white collar workplace that paper and computer work really are central to it, much more so than at the blue collar jobs i've had. note that i was including management, office/admin stuff and the professions in "white collar".

― Fozzy Osbourne (contenderizer), Thursday, March 15, 2012 3:57 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

luv u bro but you are mind-bogglingly relentless on all subjects

great thread tho, good convo

i want to make it clear that i disagree w/ the OP and i value the idea of a comprehensive liberal arts & sciences education for everyone, but that i also see (from the inside) that a lot of what is said and done in the name of (not only providing that education but also assessing it) is really counterproductive and based more in tradition and expedience than outcome

otmfm

I tried to write a post on how all this applies to law school, but I was boring the shit out of myself and had to stop.

Turn it into a law school entrance essay.

white-collar workplace rules taught in high school:

1) do what the boss says
2) don't get in fights on school (work) property
3) timeliness and neatness count
4) dress appropriately and speak with deference to your supposed "superiors"
5) etc, etc, etc.

i'd think that these are some of the Industrial Revolution-era skills that the guy in the cartoon was talking about (also responding to bells). And some white collar workplaces probably still operate in that way, but a lot of them have changed.

I guess at least to answer the question above, I don't think you actually get a significantly better legal education at a "top" law school than at some mid-range law school, like, IDK, Michigan as opposed to Rutgers. With the caveat that at a top law school you may find your fellow students tougher to compete with (after all, they competed harder than everyone else to get the top grades and LSAT scores that got them there in the first place) and there may be a certain professional advantage to being forged in that kind of fire. Neither reall train you to practice but i don't see how they could