What a College Degree Means
Dick Adams
> Herman Rubin wrote:
>> It is not so much required courses, but required knowledge. Most good
>> schools allow course credit by examination, and will even ignore the
>> presence of a course provided that the material can be demonstrated,
>> often by taking a higher-level course. What should a certificate be,
>> but a testimonial to knowledge and ability?
Bob LeChevalier (loj...@access.digex.net) responds:
> If you are talking about industry, all the certificate usually means is
> that you have had the wherewithall to survive 4 years of college level
> work in some approximately relevant subject matter. In most fields, the
> college itself doesn't matter - though they usually want a college that
> is accredited, they probably don't often check ones that they haven't
> heard of. A prestige college is only useful for very competitive
> fields, i.e. in deciding ties, and grades are totally irrelevant after
> the first position.
There is a significant difference between the use of a college degree as
a condition of employment and the effect of a college education on one's
production function. I think you have the two confused. You also appear
to lack experience with the Human Resource functions of hierarchial
organizations. There are books which indicate accreditation and the cost
of a transcript ranges between free and $10. One of the conditions for
which HR is audited is the verification of academic crendentials. You
are correct that "grades are totally irrelevant after the first position."
That is because grades are the performance measurement of education. Once
on the job, different performance measurements are used - they measure
how well your education shaped your production. For those who perceive a
degree to mean "you have had the wherewithall to survive 4 years of college",
this will be a rude awakening.
> If this weren't true, then why would there have sprung up so many
> programs offering night school BAs and MBAs, whose requirements and
> teaching styles are totally different from those of standard academia.
> And why aren't there more programs like SUNY's (I think it is them)
> where you can take the GRE Achievement Test in your field and if you
> pass some level you get sufficient credits in to graduate in that major.
> (Even there I think you have to take additional coursework to equal the
> non-major portion of the 4-year college curriculum, or pass GRE tests in
> multiple fields.
Well:
1) It's not true.
2) I'd like to see your statistics in support of the statement "there
have sprung up so many programs offering night school BAs and MBAs".
3) I'd like to see your evidence that requirements vary based on the
time of day in which classes are offered.
4) Your reference to SUNY (actually it's the University of the State of
New York at Albany (aka Regents College) - not the same as SUNY) is
interesting since it contradicts your argument. I am a graduate of
the Regents program (1987) and a member of the Alumni Association.
The reason more such programs don't exist is that the market won't
support them. The market is those people who have developed their
production functions beyond the undergraduate level and desire
documentation of the progress. As my colleague Dr. Rubin has noted
the degree is an acknowledgement of knowledge and ability.
When people pay for education, they want education, i.e., the acquisition
of knowledge and ability. Once having acquired that they want documentation.
> Unless you are going for a position in academia, measurements of
> 'knowledge and ability' have nothing to do with college degrees.
This is a statement totally in conflict with the evidence.
> (Also, for the most part, university prestige is determined mostly by
> research and graduate programs and NOT by how well they teach
> undergraduates. That is the biggest lie in American education today.
Ah, we have finally arrived at another correct statement. However,only
the first sentence is correct. The biggest lie in American education is:
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| "If you are talking about industry, all the certificate usually means is |
| that you have had the wherewithall to survive 4 years of college level |
| work in some approximately relevant subject matter." |
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dick
Herman Rubin
>
>> Herman Rubin wrote:
>>> It is not so much required courses, but required knowledge. Most good
>>> schools allow course credit by examination, and will even ignore the
>>> presence of a course provided that the material can be demonstrated,
>>> often by taking a higher-level course. What should a certificate be,
>>> but a testimonial to knowledge and ability?
>
>Bob LeChevalier (loj...@access.digex.net) responds:
>> If you are talking about industry, all the certificate usually means is
>> that you have had the wherewithall to survive 4 years of college level
>> work in some approximately relevant subject matter. In most fields, the
>> college itself doesn't matter - though they usually want a college that
>> is accredited, they probably don't often check ones that they haven't
>> heard of. A prestige college is only useful for very competitive
>> fields, i.e. in deciding ties, and grades are totally irrelevant after
>> the first position.
..........................
>When people pay for education, they want education, i.e., the acquisition
>of knowledge and ability. Once having acquired that they want documentation.
On the contrary, they do not want the education. As my recently retired
colleague William Fuller puts it,
Education is one thing people will pay for, and they try
hard not to get their money's worth.
>> Unless you are going for a position in academia, measurements of
>> 'knowledge and ability' have nothing to do with college degrees.
>This is a statement totally in conflict with the evidence.
>> (Also, for the most part, university prestige is determined mostly by
>> research and graduate programs and NOT by how well they teach
>> undergraduates. That is the biggest lie in American education today.
>Ah, we have finally arrived at another correct statement. However,only
>the first sentence is correct. The biggest lie in American education is:
>
>----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>| "If you are talking about industry, all the certificate usually means is |
>| that you have had the wherewithall to survive 4 years of college level |
>| work in some approximately relevant subject matter." |
>----------------------------------------------------------------------------
I happen to agree with your assessment of the results. I do not approve of it.
As for the emphasis on research, in the face of increasing knowledge, any
school which does not have its teaching revised frequently by scholars
will end up doing a weak job. The universities would rapidly decline
in quality were it not for scholarship, and we do not have the quality
strictly undergraduate schools we had before 1960. Any school forced
to present a degree program at the level of whomsoever happens to be in
the classrooms cannot do this. The universities reached a peak in the
undergraduate teaching in the 1950s; as long as they reject the standards,
they cannot do a good job. But the standards have been almost completey
destroyed.
--
Herman Rubin, Dept. of Statistics, Purdue Univ., West Lafayette IN47907-1399
Phone: (317)494-6054
hru...@stat.purdue.edu (Internet, bitnet)
{purdue,pur-ee}!snap.stat!hrubin(UUCP)