The Wall Street Journal recently opined that For Most People, College is a Waste of Time. Actually, Charles Murray did the pontificating, under the Journal’s masthead. I digress.
Here’s a nutshell:
Outside a handful of majors — engineering and some of the sciences — a bachelor’s degree tells an employer nothing except that the applicant has a certain amount of intellectual ability and perseverance. Even a degree in a vocational major like business administration can mean anything from a solid base of knowledge to four years of barely remembered gut courses.
The solution is not better degrees, but no degrees. Young people entering the job market should have a known, trusted measure of their qualifications they can carry into job interviews. That measure should express what they know, not where they learned it or how long it took them. They need a certification, not a degree.
In information technology, certifications are important. Five years ago, you were nothing without an MCSE (Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer). Now it seems those are a dime a dozen. Which leads me to an opinion from fellow transhumanist Aschwin de Wolf at Depressed Metabolism.
Charles Murray is on the right track when he draws attention to the poor value of most college degrees for predicting performance in the work place. His solution is questionable, however. Certification can become just as meaningless as BA degrees if the prevailing egalitarian mindset in society persists. Furthermore, as a libertarian, Murray must be aware of the artificial barriers certification can raise to competition. One only needs to look at the requirements to obtain Certified Financial Planner (CFP) certification to realize how certification can create formidable obstacles for entering a field of business.
Although there is a place for certification for certain professions, more important than substituting certification for college degrees is to create better mechanisms to recognize and differentiate between the ability to acquire, process, and apply skills and knowledge versus sterile and unimaginative testing of textbook knowledge.
I don’t really give a rat’s ass whether I have a degree or certification. Given the chance, I can sell myself to anyone. If you don’t want to give me the chance, someone else will.
I am working on a master’s in computer information management from Bellevue University. I suppose I could get analytical and worry about whether or not I’ve made a good decision. I prefer to focus on the learning process itself and see where that takes me. When MCSEs were the new hotness I didn’t have one. Now that they are passe, I still don’t have one. I survived.
It isn’t the degree or certification that matters in life (although they do help). The learning is important. Knowing which lessons matter and remembering those is critical. You will always benefit more from political knowledge and skills than you will from a degree or a certification.
I’m not giving up on education but the degree is secondary. Learning is what matters. Like the universe, if you are not growing, you are shrinking. Stasis is not an option.