kelley wrote:
> o
> >hey, don't knock academia. it is about the only remaining place
> >where that college degree will do you some good!
> >
> >ac
> >
I missed this the first time. Apparently AC is unaware that the demand for a degree has *never* been based on the assumption that the degree reflects mastery of a usable skill. Corporations will continue to demand degrees for the same reason that 70 years ago a high school diploma was a prerequisite for the job of elevator operator. And about 40 years ago Andre Gorz described a visit he paid to an elite tech school in France. What do you teach here, he asked, that couldn't be learned on the job. After some thought, his interlocutor replied, Calculus. Next question: would the graduates need calculus in the positions they would hold? No.
A.C. has a naive view of the purposes of formal education in the past, and hence has an absolutely idiotic idea of what its purposes will be in the future. About (say) a minimum of 2/3rds of engineers or more do not need most of the math that they must take to get the degree. And in the past large numbers of engineers received their training "on the job." It was only in the late '50s that a law degree became necessary in order to be admitted to the bar in many states.
The chair of the Department of English at Harvard in the 1920s had only an M.A.
Degrees are a mere convenience to the personnel departments of corporations. They don't want skilled programmers half as much as they don't want to be bothered by working too hard to make their appointments. So they need an automatic screening device provided by someone else.
Carrol