-
Be sure to read this post! Beware of scammers. https://www.indianagunowners.com/threads/classifieds-new-online-payment-guidelines-rules-paypal-venmo-zelle-etc.511734/
College education doesn't always mean you're smarter
- Thread starter Rookie
- Start date
The #1 community for Gun Owners in Indiana
Member Benefits:
Fewer Ads! Discuss all aspects of firearm ownership Discuss anti-gun legislation Buy, sell, and trade in the classified section Chat with Local gun shops, ranges, trainers & other businesses Discover free outdoor shooting areas View up to date on firearm-related events Share photos & video with other members ...and so much more!
Member Benefits:
To All,
I have been going part time to college for several years now. I finally (yay!) qualify for my degree but won't walk the walk until later this spring.
I have been studying business with a focus on human resources. In our classes we have discussed the overemphasis on requiring college degrees. A job description should include a list of skills required to perform the job, and possibly certifications that go along with specialized knowledge. If necessary it should include a specific degree, but only to the extent that the degree is axiomatic to the performance of the job.
I believe too many jobs "require" a degree for two (2) overriding reasons. Reason #1 = laziness! If I require a bachelors degree I have just eliminated about 2/3's of the American population. Wow. A lot less resumes to go through, and they will have someone who they believe is good for the job just because they have a degree.
Reason #2 (personal opinion here) = too many people don't want to believe THEY wasted money on a degree, so by heaven if you are going to work for them you need one too. Lord forbid that someone without a degree could do the job better than them. Pure ego here. They got one, so they feel special. Ergo, if you are going to do the same job they just got promoted out of you need one too. This is pure horse
but it runs deep.
Granted, there are some jobs with extremely specialized needs, vocabulary, and training that probably should require some form of formalized education. Neurosurgeon comes to mind. However, there are some jobs that may not require a degree that do so anyway. Lawyer comes to mind. President Abraham Lincoln never went to law school. He barely had any formal education. Yet, he passed the bar, was employed as a lawyer by the railroads, and if Wikipedia is to be believed, was very successful. Link: Abraham Lincoln - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia How many lawyers, if asked, will say that they left law school fully prepared to practice law in a court? Or, is it arguable, that law school gave them a solid foundation of knowledge that allowed them to begin to learn the intricacies of the legal field and once they got into a firm they really started to understand the law? Have the methods and procedures of criminal or civil court changed so radically since Abraham Lincoln's time that special schooling is now required? I doubt it. There are different precedents that have been set. There are different procedures that must be followed. There are new rules to evidence, but I would argue they are only "different" and not so complex as to require formal learning.
Well, the lawyers may argue, "We require schooling because that guarantees a good representation for the client." So? Clarence Darrow seems to have done pretty good FOR NEVER HAVING GRADUATED FROM LAW SCHOOL! He attended, but did not graduate. Yet, he was able to pass the bar and defended his clients as well as any college educated lawyer. By the way he practiced law from 1894 through at least the early 1930's.
While it may be thought that I am against college I am far from it. College is a way to learn thoughts, concepts, and ideas in a box of great diversity! Abraham Lincoln may have studied law on his own and practiced well, but how much better could he have been with formal schooling? Perhaps in some of his cases he could have been better prepared for his opponents maneuvers and/or arguments had he taken the time for formal training. Who knows?
I also think how the college itself looks at its position will affect the quality of preparation that it gives its students. I was well into my schooling when I learned that Ivy Tech (at least in Fort Wayne) requires every professor who teaches business to have a minimum of ten (10) years of practical experience in the real world! (I may be off a little on the years.) This allows them to teach from the book but oftentimes say, "The book is utopian. Once you get into a real job your employer will probably..." This is different from IPFW right across the street. There you will enter the ivory towers of academia where the professor teaching business may have a doctorate but wasn't required to spend a single day in the real world.
The requirement for college in many cases is nonsense. Yet, we must understand the terrain in which we find ourselves operating. Like it or not, until our culture goes through a major paradigm shift we will continue down a road of requiring more and more education for jobs that just don't need it.
Regards,
Doug
I have been going part time to college for several years now. I finally (yay!) qualify for my degree but won't walk the walk until later this spring.
I have been studying business with a focus on human resources. In our classes we have discussed the overemphasis on requiring college degrees. A job description should include a list of skills required to perform the job, and possibly certifications that go along with specialized knowledge. If necessary it should include a specific degree, but only to the extent that the degree is axiomatic to the performance of the job.
I believe too many jobs "require" a degree for two (2) overriding reasons. Reason #1 = laziness! If I require a bachelors degree I have just eliminated about 2/3's of the American population. Wow. A lot less resumes to go through, and they will have someone who they believe is good for the job just because they have a degree.
Reason #2 (personal opinion here) = too many people don't want to believe THEY wasted money on a degree, so by heaven if you are going to work for them you need one too. Lord forbid that someone without a degree could do the job better than them. Pure ego here. They got one, so they feel special. Ergo, if you are going to do the same job they just got promoted out of you need one too. This is pure horse
but it runs deep.Granted, there are some jobs with extremely specialized needs, vocabulary, and training that probably should require some form of formalized education. Neurosurgeon comes to mind. However, there are some jobs that may not require a degree that do so anyway. Lawyer comes to mind. President Abraham Lincoln never went to law school. He barely had any formal education. Yet, he passed the bar, was employed as a lawyer by the railroads, and if Wikipedia is to be believed, was very successful. Link: Abraham Lincoln - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia How many lawyers, if asked, will say that they left law school fully prepared to practice law in a court? Or, is it arguable, that law school gave them a solid foundation of knowledge that allowed them to begin to learn the intricacies of the legal field and once they got into a firm they really started to understand the law? Have the methods and procedures of criminal or civil court changed so radically since Abraham Lincoln's time that special schooling is now required? I doubt it. There are different precedents that have been set. There are different procedures that must be followed. There are new rules to evidence, but I would argue they are only "different" and not so complex as to require formal learning.
Well, the lawyers may argue, "We require schooling because that guarantees a good representation for the client." So? Clarence Darrow seems to have done pretty good FOR NEVER HAVING GRADUATED FROM LAW SCHOOL! He attended, but did not graduate. Yet, he was able to pass the bar and defended his clients as well as any college educated lawyer. By the way he practiced law from 1894 through at least the early 1930's.
While it may be thought that I am against college I am far from it. College is a way to learn thoughts, concepts, and ideas in a box of great diversity! Abraham Lincoln may have studied law on his own and practiced well, but how much better could he have been with formal schooling? Perhaps in some of his cases he could have been better prepared for his opponents maneuvers and/or arguments had he taken the time for formal training. Who knows?
I also think how the college itself looks at its position will affect the quality of preparation that it gives its students. I was well into my schooling when I learned that Ivy Tech (at least in Fort Wayne) requires every professor who teaches business to have a minimum of ten (10) years of practical experience in the real world! (I may be off a little on the years.) This allows them to teach from the book but oftentimes say, "The book is utopian. Once you get into a real job your employer will probably..." This is different from IPFW right across the street. There you will enter the ivory towers of academia where the professor teaching business may have a doctorate but wasn't required to spend a single day in the real world.
The requirement for college in many cases is nonsense. Yet, we must understand the terrain in which we find ourselves operating. Like it or not, until our culture goes through a major paradigm shift we will continue down a road of requiring more and more education for jobs that just don't need it.
Regards,
Doug
Unfortunately, some just don't have the wherewithal to get what they need without someone spoonfeeding it to them. How are you to find the rare gems that learn their stuff for the love of it rather than for the degree? The ones who know what they know because they want to know it, not because they have to? So, it's easier to just qualify them by the degree.
I am a software engineer currently, and formerly I was an EE. So my work experience is mostly with engineering types. I wouldn't characterize a college education as spoonfeeding. A good college program should be very hard. It should challenge students such that if you're not passionate about the field, you'll want to drop out. Not all programs are like that. But after working with other engineers for 30 years, I can tell the difference.
It is hard to find the rare gems that learn things for the love of it, and I've worked with both kinds of engineers, those with degrees and those without. And you'll find some of both varieties that truly love what they do. Of course I've worked with some with degrees who might as well be door knobs. But it's been my experience that the passionate engineers who've been through the toughest degree programs have an advantage over the non-degreed engineers. They tend to know things that the non-degreed engineers won't know until they've learned it through experience. But the non-degreed engineers tend to be more practical. And that is often a great advantage.
Point is, it's good to have a degree, but not always necessary, depending on the job. Both kinds of workers can be very good at their jobs. But for some jobs, the education is a must. I wouldn't hire a lawyer without a JD. I wouldn't have a dentist drilling on my teeth without at least a DDS behind their nameplate. Same with physicians. MD or DO.
olhorseman
Sharpshooter
CathyInBlue
Grandmaster
Last night in CNC Machining class, I was sent for a bucket of water to fill out a coolant reservoir. I found a 5 gallon bucket that formerly held WS8800 coolant. The lid was still firmly seated, but it had a spout that was capped. At first, I thought to just remove the lid to fill it with water from the sink in the corner of the machine shop. No-go. Then, I tried to pull the cap off the spout by its loop handles. Also no-go. Finally, I took it to the instructor, who runs a large area machine shop in his day job and told him I couldn't get it open.
He grabs the cap on the spout and twists it right off.
I was never more aware of how little I really knew than at that moment. I expect many more in the decades to come.
He grabs the cap on the spout and twists it right off.
I was never more aware of how little I really knew than at that moment. I expect many more in the decades to come.
As to the whole- no degree lawyer thing, that used to be the norm and may still be possible in other states. In Indiana, as with almost all states, you have to go to an ABA accredited law school....and all ABA accredited law schools in the U.S. are postgraduate, so in order to get in, you need at least a bachelor degree.
Me? I have the least useful undergrad degree known to man: B.A. in Prelaw with a History minor. The J.D., on the other hand, has come in handy.
I will readily agree that one could become a fantastic lawyer without law school, it of course, happened in the past. However, that is not to say that law school is useless. In my case, it was not. There are many ways to get through law school and as with most things, you get out what you put in. For instance, many students I knew did little of the reading and bought or otherwise obtained outlines of the classes so they could cut down on what they deemed the extraneous information so they could focus on what they believed (actually, someone else believed) to be the basics of the course. I did this in one class, Business Associations, and got a grade I was not happy with.
In every other class, I did all reading, took notes and meticulously made my own outlines. Crazy thing- once I made the outlines, I barely had to look at the material again. Funny how that works. One very useful thing that law school taught me was how to analyze problems, spot the legal issues in them, and a framework for discovering how I can find an argument to advance my cause. A lot of people think: "I think this should be the law" and don't care about federal versus state powers, or separation of powers, or fundamental rights, or procedure, or anything else beyond what they, shooting from the hip, think should be. That is not the way the world works and may make an spirited internet argument, but it does not accomplish anything. You have to know how the law works to advise and to get the result a client wants.
Now, that education used to take place outside the law school, but don't think it was just a guy with a book hanging out a shingle whenever he wanted. Usually, a lawyer would take on a clerk, an intern (of sorts) and that guy would spend years copying papers for the lawyer, finding the books for the lawyer, following the lawyer around, doing the no-fun, unglamorous, "scut" work, for little (if any) pay. It was an apprenticeship like others, but with no guarantee of being able to join the profession. This is because after years, the lawyer may decide you don't have "it". He would have to put his reputation behind you and "sponsor" you to take the bar exam. His reputation was on the line. If he didn't think you would be a good lawyer, he could refuse to sponsor you, but hopefully, he chose his clerk well. Then, you take the bar exam which was (and is) designed, not to see if you know all the laws, but to see if you can spot issues enough and demonstrate and ability to pull out what needs to be done enough such that you will not be "dangerous" to unleash on the public.
Essentially, the education was the same ten as now, in many ways, but the difference was a group setting versus a one-on-one setting. As it stands now, your first few years of practice are still an internship of sorts. If you are blessed, you will work with more experienced attorneys who will show you how the practice works outside of the academic side. Law schools are trying to add more "real world" experience. I clerked for an attorney for 2 years and did an internship for the Porter County Prosecutor's office while in school, then after graduation, the real education started.
Anyhoo, there were many spectacular lawyers who never had a degree, but most, if not all had the equivalent of a "formal" education as it was carried out in the past.
Me? I have the least useful undergrad degree known to man: B.A. in Prelaw with a History minor. The J.D., on the other hand, has come in handy.
I will readily agree that one could become a fantastic lawyer without law school, it of course, happened in the past. However, that is not to say that law school is useless. In my case, it was not. There are many ways to get through law school and as with most things, you get out what you put in. For instance, many students I knew did little of the reading and bought or otherwise obtained outlines of the classes so they could cut down on what they deemed the extraneous information so they could focus on what they believed (actually, someone else believed) to be the basics of the course. I did this in one class, Business Associations, and got a grade I was not happy with.
In every other class, I did all reading, took notes and meticulously made my own outlines. Crazy thing- once I made the outlines, I barely had to look at the material again. Funny how that works. One very useful thing that law school taught me was how to analyze problems, spot the legal issues in them, and a framework for discovering how I can find an argument to advance my cause. A lot of people think: "I think this should be the law" and don't care about federal versus state powers, or separation of powers, or fundamental rights, or procedure, or anything else beyond what they, shooting from the hip, think should be. That is not the way the world works and may make an spirited internet argument, but it does not accomplish anything. You have to know how the law works to advise and to get the result a client wants.
Now, that education used to take place outside the law school, but don't think it was just a guy with a book hanging out a shingle whenever he wanted. Usually, a lawyer would take on a clerk, an intern (of sorts) and that guy would spend years copying papers for the lawyer, finding the books for the lawyer, following the lawyer around, doing the no-fun, unglamorous, "scut" work, for little (if any) pay. It was an apprenticeship like others, but with no guarantee of being able to join the profession. This is because after years, the lawyer may decide you don't have "it". He would have to put his reputation behind you and "sponsor" you to take the bar exam. His reputation was on the line. If he didn't think you would be a good lawyer, he could refuse to sponsor you, but hopefully, he chose his clerk well. Then, you take the bar exam which was (and is) designed, not to see if you know all the laws, but to see if you can spot issues enough and demonstrate and ability to pull out what needs to be done enough such that you will not be "dangerous" to unleash on the public.
Essentially, the education was the same ten as now, in many ways, but the difference was a group setting versus a one-on-one setting. As it stands now, your first few years of practice are still an internship of sorts. If you are blessed, you will work with more experienced attorneys who will show you how the practice works outside of the academic side. Law schools are trying to add more "real world" experience. I clerked for an attorney for 2 years and did an internship for the Porter County Prosecutor's office while in school, then after graduation, the real education started.
Anyhoo, there were many spectacular lawyers who never had a degree, but most, if not all had the equivalent of a "formal" education as it was carried out in the past.
I will not deny that college is very important in some fields. Where I work, it's absolutely worthless. We have a supervisor with a degree in meteorology that has been here fifteen years and still doesn't have a clue. Our best supervisors were people that were hired straight off the floor, some of them didn't finish high school, but they knew everything they needed to know about what is actually needed to do our job. Sadly, they're all retired and we're left with supervisors with Master's degrees in basket weaving.
Left handed "Huey" wrench and an 8 Lb. bucket of steam.
Never failed with those.
indiucky
Grandmaster
With the exception of Abraham Lincoln of course....Whoops...I just realized I may have riled the Ingo-Confederacy...Sorry...
With the exception of Abraham Lincoln of course....Whoops...I just realized I may have riled the Ingo-Confederacy...Sorry...
When I saw the Lincoln comparison...I feared that as well.
...and I meant to limit my statement to any current lawyers who never went to college- I could have been more clear.
hornadylnl
Shooter
- Nov 19, 2008
- 21,505
- 63
Current lawyers who never went to college? The rent seekers shut them out.
Exactly. There are none, not in Indiana anyway.....my half joke failed miserably.
Having failed to clearly make my rather unimportant point, an extra "s" is the least of my worries, but good catch.....I guess.
I'm sure not saying "all", but some of these knobs need everything served up on a silver platter, and won't benefit from any education they are given. They wind up with a useless degree in a useless subject, and have to pay for it for decades. They'd be far far ahead not to even bother, but they have that piece of paper, so they know, right? Then there are the ones that can blow your mind with what they know, but have no degree to tell you they know it, so they's jes dumb or somethin', right? What do you call the guy that graduated last in his class in medical school? Yeah, for some things a degree is absolutely required, but I tell you what, I've done a thing or two better than my DVM on my cats.
Site Supporter
Members online
- Magyars
- jgill
- Joniki
- Mounty09
- GLC3
- 357 Terms
- DoggyDaddy
- ComeJesuscome
- KJQ6945
- Mas86
- 63PGP
- wahlspyder
- partyboy6686
- Hoosierdood
- TheSpookyCat
- BeDome
- Firehawk
- Brandon
- SouthernStar25
- Cavman
- simpleman44
- opus1776
- Mackeryd
- Knight Rider
- Nemo3000
- 22LRFan
- jedi
- 223 Gunner
- mcapo
- tv1217
- led4thehed2
- Jndturner317
- bigz82
- oze
- indyartisan
- AndyF
- Talkinghalls
- KG1
- BrentTheBoat
- DDadams
- abraham743
- slims2002
- LokhXIV
- Midwestjimbo
- BigJDC04
- joncon
- MarylandTacomaRider
- jcj54
- Mgderf
- GUNS&MOPAR