Worthless Degrees Are Creating an Unemployable Generation in India (bloomberg.com) 150
Business is booming in India's $117 billion education industry and new colleges are popping up at breakneck speed. Yet thousands of young Indians are finding themselves graduating with limited or no skills, undercutting the economy at a pivotal moment of growth. From a report: Desperate to get ahead, some of these young people are paying for two or three degrees in the hopes of finally landing a job. They are drawn to colleges popping up inside small apartment buildings or inside shops in marketplaces. Highways are lined with billboards for institutions promising job placements. It's a strange paradox. India's top institutes of technology and management have churned out global business chiefs like Alphabet's Sundar Pichai and Microsoft's Satya Nadella. But at the other end of the spectrum are thousands of small private colleges that don't have regular classes, employ teachers with little training, use outdated curriculums, and offer no practical experience or job placements, according to more than two dozen students and experts who were interviewed by Bloomberg.
Around the world, students are increasingly pondering the returns on a degree versus the cost. Higher education has often sparked controversy globally, including in the US, where for-profit institutions have faced government investigations. Yet the complexities of education are acutely on show in India. It has the world's largest population by some estimates, and the government regularly highlights the benefits of having more young people than any other country. Yet half of all graduates in India are unemployable in the future due to problems in the education system, according to a study by talent assessment firm Wheebox. Many businesses say they struggle to hire because of the mixed quality of education. That's kept unemployment stubbornly high at more than 7% even though India is the world's fastest growing major economy. Education is also becoming an outsized problem for Prime Minister Narendra Modi as he attempts to draw foreign manufacturers and investors from China. Modi had vowed to create millions of jobs in his campaign speeches, and the issue is likely to be hotly debated in the run up to national elections in 2024.
Around the world, students are increasingly pondering the returns on a degree versus the cost. Higher education has often sparked controversy globally, including in the US, where for-profit institutions have faced government investigations. Yet the complexities of education are acutely on show in India. It has the world's largest population by some estimates, and the government regularly highlights the benefits of having more young people than any other country. Yet half of all graduates in India are unemployable in the future due to problems in the education system, according to a study by talent assessment firm Wheebox. Many businesses say they struggle to hire because of the mixed quality of education. That's kept unemployment stubbornly high at more than 7% even though India is the world's fastest growing major economy. Education is also becoming an outsized problem for Prime Minister Narendra Modi as he attempts to draw foreign manufacturers and investors from China. Modi had vowed to create millions of jobs in his campaign speeches, and the issue is likely to be hotly debated in the run up to national elections in 2024.
Time for HR to drop need degree & have trades (Score:4, Insightful)
Time for HR to drop need degree & have more trades schools that don't need to be as long as 2-4+ years as colleges are.
Re:Time for HR to drop need degree & have trad (Score:5, Interesting)
Drop the degree requirement (since you can't trust the paper they carry to represent actual skill) and go instead to a skill-based interview process.
I got my current job without a degree, as I absolutely wrecked my degreed competition at the interview since they didn't know jack and were unable to BS the technical panel at the interview. My knowledge and experience in the area completely carried me.
And I'm thankful that this place had just recently changed their interview process. They used to be entirely evaluated by HR alone, who can be pretty easy to con in a technical area. But this department had been burned THREE times in a row by HR hiring "well-educated morons." So they said that's it, we're sending our people in to participate in the interviews from now on, company policy be damned. And now this department has staff that are all competent.
Re: Time for HR to drop need degree & have tra (Score:4, Insightful)
Chicken and egg problem. To conduct skill based interviews, you need skill to start with.
Particularly since a lot of the India tech industry is about outsourcing, there's little hope the interested parties can gauge for themselves.
Re: Time for HR to drop need degree & have tr (Score:2)
This should simply lead to what SHOULD be the basics of an MBA: confidence modeling. You don't spend all your money on something you don't understand. Move slow, measure results, and build the institutional knowledge over time.
Start with your CTO. If they're not delivering good results, fire them. And maybe fire everyone they hired.
Re:Time for HR to drop need degree & have trad (Score:5, Insightful)
There is a big misunderstanding on what college offers. The quality of Education from a college degree, varies from student to student. An Idiot can pass college and actually get a decent GPA was well. One just needs to know how the Education System works, and do the steps to get the grade. While other students who actually got a degree in a topic they cared about, may actually have a lower GPA, however leave college with a wealth of more information.
I have college Multiple Degrees, I got the degrees because I actually cared for the topic, and didn't just try to get a piece of paper to show during a Job interview. At the time those degrees were worth the cost (I got my degrees when College costs were much lower) and working with folks, like v1, who didn't get a degree. I have found they are capable at their jobs, often much more so, than others with a degree, however often run into odd gaps in their knowledge and skills.
Things that often missed, is while they are expert of a syntax of a programming language, where they can exceed myself, or others. They often introduce interesting bugs, because they may use a floating point data type, with an if precise equals, compared to giving a range within precision, only to have the code work most of the time however make an odd bug that is difficult to find later. While a floating point is often used to represent numbers between the integers, the way it is handled, is via scientific notation, which can bring in inaccuracies. While other data types (depending on the language) may handle Decimal differently, either via string manipulation, or fixed point integer math.
An other common thing I have found is the idea that Less lines of code, means faster execution. I find this in SQL development, where the developer will nest Selects into their code, only to have it perform like crap, where either a more complex join, or breaking it out into a cursor, and iterating the data, may make it run multiple times faster. Sometimes I do "Black SQL Magic" where I just change the order of joins listed in the SQL to have massive improvements.
Now I didn't have a class in SQL at college, however I did have a lot of classes focusing on how algorithms work, as I was interested in these classes, I went into the classes to learn the material, over just passing the class. So I came out with a better understanding on how things worked behind language, which allowed me to do things to make it better.
With all that being said. I believe a lot of these jobs should demand additional education, but not necessarily a college degree. I didn't need to waste time reading and analyzing every paragraph in "Tess of the d'Urbervilles" and many of the other Required classes, that I remember taking, but that is about it, for a lot of jobs today, if we expand trade schools to cover them, I feel we would have a much better supply of folks. Leave College, for the academic, and for people who want to study the topic. And have Trade Schools, for those who really just want to get into the business world and work a successful and interesting career.
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Re:Time for HR to drop need degree & have trad (Score:4, Insightful)
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A degree tells an employer you are at least capable of finishing a project and can complete assignments by a pre-set deadline. The spaced out barista at starbucks you have to repeat 3 times "I want a tall coffee", because she is so baked out of her mind, at 8am, on weed, does not make for a great employee when clients need their projects completed.
Then again, she might have a degree in something that's useless. I worked in the college environment, and yes there are useless degrees, and yes, a pretty good number of students are often very baked.
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Im not against the decriminalization of weed, but there needs to be better tests so they can fucking fire people showing up to work stoned. If you show up with alcohol on your breath they can do a breathalyzer and fire you for drinking on the job. I really dont know of a test that can show distinctly you are high now, and its not just in your system from the night before. When the service industry is packed with employees so stoned they cant figure out how to do their retail job, and stink like a mixture of skunk and cat piss, its gotten nuts. I also think they need to cap concentrations. Breeding 30% thc weed only makes sense if the user grabs a 1-hitter and does a quick 1-and-done. But too many people are "I always roll a fattie and smoke the whole thing". Those people need to stick to 10% shit TBH. Downing 1.5grams of 30% right before work is just a moron decision :-)
Ugh - I have been lucky in that I'm seldom around stoned people, and I'll bet I'd have the same reaction I do around people who have been drinking. They are so damned annoying until I've had at least one. But I don't drink very much anyhow.
And I sure AF wouldn't want to smell weed stink in the morning.
I always wondered about that concentration thing. Seems like the basic "guy's competition" where we turn everything into a contest. Very hard to imagine needing that high a concentration.
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Then again, she might have a degree in something that's useless. I worked in the college environment, and yes there are useless degrees, and yes, a pretty good number of students are often very baked.
This is the college-as-an-extension-of-high-school problem. Many go to college after graduating high school, not because they want a degree, but because it is just what's next -it is just what you do after high school. They have not yet thought about a career. Until after graduation, with a degree in something no employer cares about...
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Then again, she might have a degree in something that's useless. I worked in the college environment, and yes there are useless degrees, and yes, a pretty good number of students are often very baked.
This is the college-as-an-extension-of-high-school problem.
Yup, I call it grades 13 through 16.
Many go to college after graduating high school, not because they want a degree, but because it is just what's next -it is just what you do after high school. They have not yet thought about a career. Until after graduation, with a degree in something no employer cares about...
Ah yes, the college experience. Where you go to abuse your liver and subsist on Ramen noodles.
And while it was quite some time since I was there, some things haven't changed. The people in the degree programs that were well paid - which meant they had a degree of difficulty - were in the libraries and labs while the rest of them were busy getting drunk.
Meanwhile, a lot of trades go wanting.
There's even a meme about how much money that degree is going to get you. Y
Re: Time for HR to drop need degree & have tra (Score:2)
You get to assess and correct her work in real time which is a lot better than the non-baked admin staff who you only find out after months of paying their salaries are morons who cannot follow instructions .
lol troll (Score:2)
I talked about my personal experience, and that's apparently trolling.
WTF is this, Wikipedia?
I'm gonna have to install handrails and seatbelts on my dick.
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Nonsense. Have the actual experts (i.e. most definitely _not_ HR but the IT people) look at the degrees and sort the dross out.
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While trade schools certainly have their place college degrees will always be more valuable. The extra time spent getting one is spent getting a well rounded education rather than one focused solely on one subject and the vast majority of professions out there benefit from having more well rounded people in them. I know I can often tell tech types who never took a college level English class from those who have for instance.
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While trade schools certainly have their place college degrees will always be more valuable.
I'm going to disagree and say this statement is actually backwards. Trade schools tend to focus on more marketable skills, where college degrees not as much. Trade schools also usually have better job placement assistance than do colleges. Most people that enter in a college assume there will be a well paying job once they dedicate 4, 8, or even 10 years. This is often not the case.
I always recommend going to a trade school and getting a skill set that you can fall back. Something that you can pa
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Honestly, in my experience you get what you pay for. A hyper focused degree that is cheap is all well and good but when the emails you write to your boss are written like a child your chances of career advancement begin to dwindle and they continue to dwindle as pretty much all jobs require more worldly skills and knowledge beyond simplified descriptions like "programmer" or "engineer".
Then once you secure a good job then look at what you want to do for college.
Ha, school was hard enough working 30 hours a week at a thoughtless job I didnt care about. Most people arent going to be w
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We have reached a point where people who shouldn't even be in college have degrees
I think the best way I can think to put it is, "the best degree is the one that pays the bills." An not all degrees will do that.
The old joke goes, "what is the most common question asked by a philosopher major at work? Would you like fries with that?" It maybe a joke but is often true.
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We have reached a point where people who shouldn't even be in college have degrees
I think the best way I can think to put it is, "the best degree is the one that pays the bills." An not all degrees will do that.
The old joke goes, "what is the most common question asked by a philosopher major at work? Would you like fries with that?" It maybe a joke but is often true.
Certain degrees are for people who are already self supporting, or so prodigiously smart in a field they can hope to replace the professor teaching the class.
Philosophy, Gender studies, English, History, All are valid, but the person wishing to enter that realm must be prepared for limited job prospects.
The ease of getting loans, and the willingness of universities to take the money just made for a glut of people graduating in those majors.
I recall some of the required courses related to those fields.
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You sound like you'd hire a Gender studies major over a master machinist to do Machine work. After all, her degree is more valuable.
That's funny because you sound like someone who will make anything they damn well please up about a person just so they can make the point they want. You then go on to put even more words in my mouth.
Honestly I dont even know how to approach your post because all it is is you creating a fiction an then refuting it so I'll just leave off with you're an idiot.
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You sound like you'd hire a Gender studies major over a master machinist to do Machine work. After all, her degree is more valuable.
That's funny because you sound like someone who will make anything they damn well please up about a person just so they can make the point they want. You then go on to put even more words in my mouth.
Honestly I dont even know how to approach your post because all it is is you creating a fiction an then refuting it so I'll just leave off with you're an idiot.
If I might note - you made an absolute statement.Here's what you wrote
While trade schools certainly have their place college degrees will always be more valuable.
A very straightforward statement, which is College degrees, not specified will always be more valuable.
More valuable than what? You were replying to OP who wrote: "Time for HR to drop need degree & have more trades schools that don't need to be as long as 2-4+ years as colleges are.
It is difficult no not infer with a high degree
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That's an interesting post but it doesnt refute my own experience of often being able to tell if someone is college educated or not just by working with them long enough. From a lack of proper English skills to shockingly ignorant outlooks on the world to social skills that might have developed better had they been part of a classroom environment for several years as an adult. Not always of course, some people do a good job of educating themselves outside of school and good for them. Never the less I would
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I have a standard interview question that isn't typical and would apply to ANY field.
"What is the last thing you learned"
That's easy. It was the first thing I forgot!
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I have a standard interview question that isn't typical and would apply to ANY field.
"What is the last thing you learned"
The responses are as individual as the applicants, and often (not always) gives insight into how rounded a person can be. People who struggle with the question need additional inspection.
I don't think you'd believe me.
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Most of the time, the last thing I learned has little or nothing to do with my current job.
It would still help you understand what kind of person I am, but not strictly related to the job I applied for.
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The last thing I learned was today, when making some, that the dough for the shell of an egg roll dries better if poured into an already hot pan instead of heating the pan with the dough inside.
How that relates to the offered job as a security analyst is beyond me, though.
It's not just India (Score:2, Insightful)
time to cap student loans / have bankruptcy. (Score:2)
time to cap student loans / have bankruptcy.
If the schools and banks had to take some risk then they will be forced to lower costs / make there classes have real skills.
Now what is bad about an income based plan that has.
NO tax bomb if you don't hit the level of income needed to pay it off in time (say it's gone after 15-20 years of being in the program)
Low capped interest rate so that people can pay down the loan if there income is over the no pay level but not really that high
Has some cost control at the
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Unfortunately, congress made the US taxpayer liable for student loan debt and was changed to make access to loans easier and to cover the collective asses of the loan companies. Instead of making it easier on the loan recipient say with lower interest rates, we created a new loan shark situation. Congress needs to fix this so that 1) Students pay back their debt with more reasonable terms. 2) The Taxpayer never gets into the loan guarantee business again. This includes the housing markets except for VA bene
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That's literally their only job; to determine who is and is not competent enough in the material to graduate and be awarded the degree. At least at any reputable college; diploma mills are, and have always been, pay to play ( UoP ).
That said, I fear you share a perspective with formerly reputable colleges/universities. Why? Well, to "collect fees" as it were. The government is offering a rather large amount of money to anyone willing to play along, heaping the debt on kids who should have been taught be
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That is not "literally their only job." It is certainly one of their jobs to determine who is and is not competent enough, but it is also their job to provide the education that makes one competent. That is clearly two separate jobs.
It think it is problematic that one business performs both jobs, as it creates a clear conflict of interest. They have a direct financial incentive to give degrees to people who are not competent, as they otherwise don't get the money from the not-so-competent students, AND t
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A fair point; it's their job to create that competency AS WELL as evaluate it.
Regardless, my overall point remains unchanged.
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I sympathize and I think the situation is doubly-lamentable because if black students are having their grades inflated due to their race, then that means they are also getting a worse education because of it. The students, and their parents, and being mis-informed about the students level of competence in any subject. Put simply, they will think they understand it a lot better than they do.
This harms the very students it seeks to help, because it ushers them into adulthood without having taught them the l
Re: It's not just India (Score:2)
I wouldn't want to be black either.
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Its not their job to determine who is competent or not. Their job is to provide an academic experience and environment. Its up to the students to decide what to do with it.
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If only that were true. Some schools are complete crap, and you can't get nourishment from cooking a stone, even for hours.
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it's the student's responsibility to do the work to gain the knowledge, and nobody else can do that work for him.
It's the school's responsibility to only hand out diplomas to students who did the work and gained the knowledge.
Indian degrees are also otherwise a question (Score:5, Insightful)
I have seen many people with Indian IT degrees and most seem to have received quite questionable education.
A lot of them have not even learned the basics and a large number of those who have learned well, seem to have learned well despite their degree and not because of it.
I have talked to many people from different parts of the world about their education and in general for Indians the education has been more of the same "sit in classroom and listen to the teacher drone on" from high school, not the exploration of knowledge that a higher degree should be.
I cannot say that it is like that everywhere but that seemed to be the norm among the couple of dozen of people with degrees from there that I have talked to.
what about japan is college all about the test? (Score:2)
what about japan is college all about pass the test to get in?
and then after that it is not really that much class work vs HS?
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It depends. I hat two IIT BA students as exchange students. They were both reasonably good. But even IIT is apparently worthless above BA and any other institution offering a BA, MA or PhD in the IT area in India seems to be completely worthless.
Reasoning (Score:5, Insightful)
The other issue, I think, is students working on degrees in a particular field because they want a job, not because they are interested in the topic. I saw this on college first hand when I worked in a computer lab. I'd get post-grad computer science students asking how to format a floppy disk. If you were in to computers, you'd already know this. These students weren't into computers, they were into getting a job in computers.
This goes both ways, of course. I know someone who spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in getting a degree in jewelry design from a major university. They really like designing jewelry, but I don't think that was the best use of their time and money right out of high school. They came out with a solid degree in jewelry design they never used professionally and hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. They currently work as a billing clerk in a hospital, a job they could have got with an associate's degree from a community college for a tenth of the price and half the time.
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hell most university hospitals dont even require a degree for medical coding jobs and they pay $18/hr starting out. Its not a particular exciting job, neither is surgery scheduling. But its a start.
This. A start. It seems so many young people today were told they would start at the top of their profession, or get to the top within a year.
In fact, the reality has not changed. You start, and if you do well on your grind, you move up. But you do it by job hopping for maybe the first 5-10 years of post education life. Then you try to find the best work environment to settle into, and really get on your grind.
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They came out with a solid degree in jewelry design they never used professionally and hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. They currently work as a billing clerk in a hospital, a job they could have got with an associate's degree from a community college for a tenth of the price and half the time.
Maybe their four year degree was what got them the job, by separating them from the people who only went to community college. More and more jobs are outright demanding higher and higher level degrees now. On average, over 100 people apply for every job in America (putting the lie to the advertised unemployment rate.) For a good job with low requirements, that number can be in the multiple hundreds. Someone trying to decide who's getting an interview in that situation has to filter applicants somehow.
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Inflated degree requirements for jobs that don't need them are another load of complete crap. If HR is valuing a four year degree more than two year degrees the
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They came out with a solid degree in jewelry design they never used professionally and hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. They currently work as a billing clerk in a hospital, a job they could have got with an associate's degree from a community college for a tenth of the price and half the time.
Maybe their four year degree was what got them the job, by separating them from the people who only went to community college. More and more jobs are outright demanding higher and higher level degrees now.
It might get them that first job. What they do from there is up to them. I've worked with quite a few C-level top notch people who went to some pretty obscure colleges.
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Most people applying for new jobs are not unemployed. Many are not even interested in changing jobs -they are "just looking".
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Ah, but how would a poster on Slashdot know a woman?
OnlyFans, probably.
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Uh.... Amiga means girlfriend in Spanish, right?
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I remember an article from a few years back. I doubt I will find the exact source without spending too much time on it, but it went something like this https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
Basically, students in India expect to be able to cheat. They have paid good money for this right. It's the same as any other aspect of public life in India, a great self-perpetuating wheel of incompetence, bribes and corruption. Go through the motions, grab the papers and find some idiot to hire you based on them. Well some
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This is definitely a cultural problem giving exactly the results that are expected. I think ultimately the caste system is to blame, or at least the attempts to subvert it. State colleges have quotas and must accept a certain percentage of lower-caste students. The demand for proper education remains unmet for people who think they "deserve" degrees based on their status.
Meanwhile, a 15-year old Dalit student is forced to strip [scroll.in] because the teacher suspected she was cheating.
This is about enforcing people
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It's a cultural problem, definitely, but I'm not sure I'm getting the same reading as you.
It seems to me that this is foremost about people trying to change their place in society. I mean, yes, the Dalit girl gets abused because she is a Dalit. She probably had no money to buy her right to cheat, and maybe even was so rude as to actually study, which would expose the hypocrisy and definitely draw the holy rage of everyone.
But other than that, and now also based somewhat on my experience of being again in th
Did you even verify their degree? (Score:2)
I have seen many people with Indian IT degrees and most seem to have received quite questionable education.
When I worked for a large bank 20 years ago, we'd regularly get applicants from India who outright lied about their degree. Not the old "oh, my school?..you've never heard of them?...well, they're they MIT/Harvard of India...did you know it's harder to get into my school than Harvard?" (I've heard that bullshit line 100s of times). I've seen people say they have a Masters Degree from IIT, yet can produce no evidence of it nor can we find any...we fired the recruiting firm for not checking before the perso
Two points. (Score:3, Insightful)
Second, is what you get when you have for-profit education and try to scrap public education or try to force countries that have public education to adopt for-profit education.
Some of the ivy league schools have skill gaps for (Score:2)
Some of the ivy league schools have skill gaps for real work but seem to be good for things like being an PHB / CEO / leader ship / etc.
Conversely (Score:2)
It's in the university's interest to keep tuition as high as possible. If the federal government is giving away money to make tuition more "affordable" then the university can respond by jacking up tuition rates. You think they are going to let the students keep that extra money in their pocket?
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Because the government is the single customer for an education. And, barring corruption*, they can keep a more experienced eye on the suppliers.
Now, graduate, step into a full time job or start your own business and get told that you may only sell your goods/services to the government. No, you cannot innovate. You also cannot seek out new markets for your product. Now, how do you like them apples?
*Which is why corruption ends up being the only way to get ahead.
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Keep in mind that not everything the US tries to shove down other countries' throats is good for them.
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psst: the US has public universities too. And economically disadvantaged students who maintained somewhat decent grades in high school can attend these universities either at extremely low cost or often free. Not everything you read about Capitalist USA on the internet is true.
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Because the government is the single customer for an education. And, barring corruption*, they can keep a more experienced eye on the suppliers.
Like GP, I too live in a third world shithole called the People's Republic of California, a place where the masses want the government to control everything. And it really doesn't do a good job of that. But I'm honestly not sure whether to call it corruption or just incompetence.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf... [sfchronicle.com]
Yeah, you read that right: The state issued a grant of 1.7 million dollars to build...a bathroom...in San Francisco. Forget that the state has absurdly high taxes and a hideously systemically decrepi
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I live in a third world shithole, but here we have public universities and they are in general better than the private universities. Your costs here as a student are more finding a place to live and food. It's just that the idea of free, quality education seems to be "too communist" for some idiots like the ones who childishly tagged me as a "troll".
All of this pretty well describes most universities in the US. They're quite affordable too. However, the mass media, and indeed many idiots right here on slashdot, insist that if you're not going to some kind of well known university and spending a ton of money that you don't even have, then your education and job prospects will be poor. It's a pretty absurd notion that Ivy League type schools pretty much count on the public believing in. You really don't need to go into debt to get a decent education. In
Ironically They Need A Degree For Customer Support (Score:2)
Can you hold, please?
Effective Accreditation System Needed for India (Score:3)
Come to Canada for your worthlessness degree! (Score:2)
Then get a real degree (Score:5, Insightful)
Worthless degrees become blatantly obvious after a short time. Of course, the same is true for non-worthless degrees and there are plenty of those. It is just that not everybody can get them. A typical characteristic of worthless degrees is that anybody with the money can get them, regardless of talent, potential and dedication. I will refrain from calling people "worthless", but a worthless degree is the hallmark of a certain kind of person you really do not want to work for you.
Re:Then get a real degree (Score:5, Insightful)
I will refrain from calling people "worthless", but a worthless degree is the hallmark of a certain kind of person you really do not want to work for you.
I see it as an inevitable result of overpopulation. There are only so many high-paying jobs available in the world, but many, many times that many people trying to land those jobs. Since it's obvious that not everyone can get one of those jobs, competition is the natural result. And since those jobs will disappear fast, shortcuts will be sought. Those who do not get those high paying jobs will live an impoverished life. In a society where money equates to opportunity, impoverishment equates to misery.
With a reduced population, there will be fewer people competing for the same jobs, and the quality of applicants will improve since there will be more time for them to improve their education.
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No. First there are not a lot of talented people and even with a large population there are not enough. Second, significant education is needed to make that talent effective and many of the few talented cannot actually get one. This reduces the effect of a larger population even more.
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...wouldn't supply and demand kick in, and lower those high salaries?
Given that economic theory is correct (and sometimes it isn't), that's what would be expected. However, we have seen many times over that the culture of cheating in India (which is arguably worse than anywhere else) produces an abnormally large number of subpar graduates, making their degrees worth far less than those given elsewhere.
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You are not wrong. And there is a rather bad side effect: You get more and more incompetents in critical positions because they managed to trick their way into them.
The fact of the matter is that the larger the number of people, the more complex things get. And complexity kills everything, in particular efficiency and effectiveness. While we may be able to feed more people, we cannot anymore arrange for a meaningful existence for a lot of them already and that number gets higher every day.
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It's greed that kills everything. Complexity only offers more opportunities to hide graft (or outright grift.) You can't have nice things without complexity.
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I do not agree. Sure, as long as things still work somewhat, greed is the big killer. But if complexity continues to increase, at some point nothing works anymore at all.
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Complexity continuing to increase is literally the goal. It just has to be designed on sound principles instead of knocked together. The good news is that it's possible to iterate. The bad news is that we're headed in the wrong direction.
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if you need any proof of your theory, the pre and post populations centering in Europe during the Plague supports your theory. The printing press did not get invented until we no longer had a ridiculous abundance of scribes to hand copy shit. With a lack of scribes making bible scrolls, the printing press was invented along with the codex, or book, as its commonly known. The proliferation of winemaking came about due to land resources being freed up with less population to feed. This population problem you observe is going to be brutal. If mother nature doesnt wipe out about 1/3rd of people, then lots of people with no work are going to be a huge problem, even if you roll out UBI. Idle hands will get bored and do horrific things.
That's not really proof of the theory.
What happened with the plague is you had generations of a high population to generate a lot of wealth (and wealth accumulation), then 1/3rd of the work force died.
You suddenly had a lot of economic demand for higher productivity and a huge incentive to innovate that hadn't existed before, hence technological breakthrough.
Sure, it demonstrates that killing 1/3rd of the population probably increases per capita income.... but I don't think that's a model countries want to
Re: Then get a real degree (Score:2)
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I see it as an inevitable result of overpopulation. There are only so many high-paying jobs available in the world, but many, many times that many people trying to land those jobs. Since it's obvious that not everyone can get one of those jobs, competition is the natural result. And since those jobs will disappear fast, shortcuts will be sought. Those who do not get those high paying jobs will live an impoverished life. In a society where money equates to opportunity, impoverishment equates to misery.
With a reduced population, there will be fewer people competing for the same jobs, and the quality of applicants will improve since there will be more time for them to improve their education.
I think that theory is based on very flimsy economic foundations.
High paying jobs come from labour specialization, and labour specialization requires two things. First a market for the specialized labour, and second, the economic infrastructure to support the specialization.
That's why people always move to cities even though prices are higher there, because wages are higher as well.
The lack of high paying jobs in India isn't a result of a too-high population, it's the result of an underdeveloped economy. Yo
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You can only export so much technical labour, and internally you need a market for advanced skills.
While I acknowledge that economies are complex, it seems to me like you have confirmed my suppositions: too many people chasing too few jobs.
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You can only export so much technical labour, and internally you need a market for advanced skills.
While I acknowledge that economies are complex, it seems to me like you have confirmed my suppositions: too many people chasing too few jobs.
Too many people chasing high skilled jobs.
But the solution for that isn't more people, it's giving the current people time to develop their economy.
Sounds like the US (Score:2)
Sounds like the US - where you get the best degree your money can buy.
Expected consequences... (Score:5, Insightful)
India's tech industry began as basically a whole lot of grifting. Convince a lot of companies around the world to outsource to you for cost savings. Part of that formula is that they needed diploma mills, to provide 'credible' evidence of their value to the naive, and plausible deniability to business leaders that know very much the deal, but have to pay lip service to caring about their companies tech abilities. This isn't just India, any hotspot geography for 'outsourcing' turns on the diploma mills.
Of course, there's two problems there. One is limited upside. When your whole business proposition is 'save money compared to doing it a more confidently competent way', then you are capped at being the 'budget' provider at steep discounts. So they want their tech industry to grow up for real to compete for more substantial money, but they are stuck in circumstances deliberately engineered to make assessment of candidates difficult.
The other problem is that this only works for so long before it tanks your reputation. Not only poisoning the well for more sincere tech industry reputation, but also removing any veneer of competency that was being given by the diplomas, removing your appeal as an outsourcing destination.
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My personal experience is that they know damn well it gives them no assurance of quality, but just gives them something to point to to say "Not my fault, I specifically indicated degrees, how was I supposed to know the degrees didn't mean anything?" Generally prepping for a graceful exit during the high of reduced expense before the consequences of not actually having tech capability hit.
Not just a problem in India (Score:4, Insightful)
The US educational system is in the same state, they just cost more.
Part of why employers look for "elite" schools (Score:2)
Its very time consuming for an employer to investigate the schools listed on what may be hundreds of resumes submitted to a job opening.
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Actually it does back up reality.
If you want a "woke" marketing VP, you hire from Harvard. If you hire from a second-tier uni you may or may not get a "woke" marketing VP.
The executives at BUD knew exactly what they were doing. Just because you disagree with the direction doesn't mean the marketing VP was a hiring mistake.
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The inept CEO's follow-up was about as big of a disaster. Both of them need to be gone immediately and replaced with competent professionals.
Known solution for an old problem. (Score:4, Insightful)
Seems to me much of the world has already faced this problem - heck, we still have degree mills in the US happy to take way too much money for a piece of paper you could print yourself..
We solved it - it's called university accreditation, which establishes whether or not a university meets minimum standards of educational quality. Which allows students to determine up front whether they'll be paying for an education, or just a piece of paper. And employers to determine whether that degree is indicating that you have a baseline education on the topic, or that you're either a sucker or a fraudster.
It's a cultural thing (Score:3)
It's a cultural thing, a life style, a mentality created and groomed from the cradle.
As an Indian, you compete with almost a billion and a half other Indians from the moment you are pushed into the world. You compete for attention, food, life itself in many sad cases. How would one expect such a person to grow up as? An honest one? Straight as an arrow? The others would eat that person alive.
You have to cheat, lie and play dirty, and you grow up like that, and can't stop, because the moment you stop, you're left behind.
This way of being is so deeply ingrained into them, that even after they manage to get out of that terrible competition, they can't shed it, save very, very rare exceptions. They are exceptional at excuses and BS, though.
I work with lots of Indians, some who live in the USA, some who live in Western Europe, some who live in India. It's very difficult to tell one from the other. Those who moved, brought their culture and mentality with them:
1. Better to make up excuses than own your mistake or admit the truth.
2. Say yes to everything, even if you can't do it. If/when caught, goto 1.
3. Pretend to already know something, rather than learn it. If when caught, goto 1.
4. When cornered, stop talking or answering (to e-mails, even on the phone). Just keep quiet and hope the other party gives up.
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My situation was similar to yours, and I have to agree with you. I would only add that what those private universities teach exceptionally well is arrogance and condescension. Perhaps those traits were defense mechanisms, perhaps a relic of the caste system. I'd have to say my working relationship with the Indians I dealt with is best summed up by the old expression, "If they're not at your feet, they're at your throat".
Corporatist media are very hostile to education. (Score:2)
Every time I read Bloomberg, I feel like I have to wash my eyeballs.
Maslow (Score:2)
Degrees are DISCONNECTED to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
"Never confuse education with intelligence, you can have a PhD and still be an idiot" --Feynman (b. 1918)
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Their top 1% in IQ is 140 million people, almost half the entire population of the US.
Well - I think it's safe to day you're not in the top 1% of IQ's... 1% of 1.4 billion is 14 million.
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They have 1.4 billion people so of course you'll be able to find a handful of successful examples. Their top 1% in IQ is 140 million people, almost half the entire population of the US.
You have to either add a zero, or remove a zero to be correct. It's up to you.
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HR. They all get jobs in HR.
I don't know why you're getting mod-bombed on this, because you're right. HR is one of those places that have become a dumping ground for the dimmer bulbs and worst degrees amongst college graduates.
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HR. They all get jobs in HR.
I don't know why you're getting mod-bombed on this, because you're right. HR is one of those places that have become a dumping ground for the dimmer bulbs and worst degrees amongst college graduates.
It is pretty full now though, as HR is pretty darn full. Too many opinion degrees, too few HR positions.