Are all people with degrees closed minded?

[Staples]

Originally posted by: aswedc
I don't think having a college degree has anything to do with intelligence. However, if you don't have one, I'll certainly question your judgement. There better be a damn good reason you decided to limit your career and earning potential so severely. Numerous studies have shown a college education to be an investment with fantastic returns.

Exactly. I think this is the only logical argument against my case or any other college dropout. I don't have a good excuse but I'd love to hear this argument from people rather than I have a degree and I am better than you.

Edit: And it depends what your degree is in. If it is liberal arts, you don't learn anything useful in college as opposed to engineering or medical student.

 

[veggz]

Originally posted by: MichaelD

Originally posted by: veggz

Originally posted by: Koing
They are just being idiots.

It doesn't mean jack sh!t if you have a degree. It just meant you studied/ crammed for your exams and learnt 'stuff'.

People from lesser Uni's are sometimes impressed if you went to a higher end Uni though. Well I have found this to be true of a lot of friends of friends I have met. To me they are all just Uni's.

Koing

I disagree; if having a degree means "jack sh!t" then why would so many work so hard pursuing one? I think that college is a huge factor in shaping the person you turn out to be, even if all you did was studied (in which case you will have wasted your college experience, IMO).

Also, all universities ARE NOT the same. You will receive a better education if you study economics at UofC or Harvard than you will at, say, Wyoming State, or even most other colleges in the country. To me a college degree and where it is from are preliminary indications of a person's intellectual curiosity.

What does where my degree is from have to do with my ability to do the job? Any job?

Some people squeaked by/cheated their way thru college.

I go by the following rating system when rating a potential addition to my department (Network/Server Admin):

1. Real world experience, proven by a hands-on test that I give you. Let's see if you can walk the walk and not just talk the talk.

2. Communication skills. You may be able to debug a 4GB dump file, but can you SPEAK? How are you in group settings? Can you communicate w/your coworkers and not just the console?

3. Work experience. How long have you been doing this? References? VERIFIABLE references?

4. College degree in whatever.

All a degree does is get your foot in the door for more jobs. In my case, I'm 30 credits away from a BS in Management. I need the degree b/c a few years from now, I want to be the IT Head. The CIO...or the CIO in Training. To do that, you need the degree.

I can manage servers. I can manage people. I want more money. Ergo the degree. But the degree is not necessary to do my current job; SKILLS are.

Where your degree is from does not necessarily corrolate to your job ability. However, there is a reason why many top firms recruit exclusively at a small core of top schools. Where you went to college is a PRELIMINARY (and I stress this, since it is undeniably superficial) indicator of your intelligence, since it shows the caliber of students you have been interacting with for the past four or so years. As I said in a previous post, all of my coworkers are from either Wharton, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Northwestern, or Stanford. After this initial stint work experience and communications ability will matter infinitely more, but what do these things matter if you can't even get your foot in the door? Then again, in most industries the university you matriculated at could not matter less, and studies have shown that your major often matters more than your college. However what I am saying is that in some ultra-competetive industries where you got your degree is often a deciding factor.

 

[IronWing]

Originally posted by: Staples
I told them I don't have one.

Are you going stand there and whine or move your butt and carry my bags? They're the ones with the alumni stickers.

 

[secretanchitman]

einstein apparently didnt go to college.

/thread.

but yes, i do hate those kinds of people. not having a degree doesnt make you "less smarter" than others that have a degree.

 

[Koing]

Originally posted by: MichaelD

Originally posted by: veggz

Originally posted by: Koing
They are just being idiots.

It doesn't mean jack sh!t if you have a degree. It just meant you studied/ crammed for your exams and learnt 'stuff'.

People from lesser Uni's are sometimes impressed if you went to a higher end Uni though. Well I have found this to be true of a lot of friends of friends I have met. To me they are all just Uni's.

Koing

I disagree; if having a degree means "jack sh!t" then why would so many work so hard pursuing one? I think that college is a huge factor in shaping the person you turn out to be, even if all you did was studied (in which case you will have wasted your college experience, IMO).

Also, all universities ARE NOT the same. You will receive a better education if you study economics at UofC or Harvard than you will at, say, Wyoming State, or even most other colleges in the country. To me a college degree and where it is from are preliminary indications of a person's intellectual curiosity.

What does where my degree is from have to do with my ability to do the job? Any job?

Some people squeaked by/cheated their way thru college.

I go by the following rating system when rating a potential addition to my department (Network/Server Admin):

1. Real world experience, proven by a hands-on test that I give you. Let's see if you can walk the walk and not just talk the talk.

2. Communication skills. You may be able to debug a 4GB dump file, but can you SPEAK? How are you in group settings? Can you communicate w/your coworkers and not just the console?

3. Work experience. How long have you been doing this? References? VERIFIABLE references?

4. College degree in whatever.

All a degree does is get your foot in the door for more jobs. In my case, I'm 30 credits away from a BS in Management. I need the degree b/c a few years from now, I want to be the IT Head. The CIO...or the CIO in Training. To do that, you need the degree.

I can manage servers. I can manage people. I want more money. Ergo the degree. But the degree is not necessary to do my current job; SKILLS are.

Well said.

My comment about a degree being jack sh!t is overboard . But it isn't everything.

You can learn most things you learnt at Uni and others by self study also.

Koing

 

[veggz]

Originally posted by: Staples

Originally posted by: aswedc
I don't think having a college degree has anything to do with intelligence. However, if you don't have one, I'll certainly question your judgement. There better be a damn good reason you decided to limit your career and earning potential so severely. Numerous studies have shown a college education to be an investment with fantastic returns.

Exactly. I think this is the only logical argument against my case or any other college dropout. I don't have a good excuse but I'd love to hear this argument from people rather than I have a degree and I am better than you.

Edit: And it depends what your degree is in. If it is liberal arts, you don't learn anything useful in college as opposed to engineering or medical student.

I think several of the arguments made in this thread are valid, not just that one. People don't get a degree simply for the sake of getting a degree and opening doors, though that is certainly a nice perk. For example I went to college because I love school and wanted to learn everything I could about my chosen field of study, something I'm sure I could not possibly have done on my own. Regardless of what you may think dropping out of college is an indication that you did not wish to continue studying, and that says something (I'm not saying this is true, but it is how it appears).

With regard to your second point, that is complete nonsense, and what I was referring to in a previous post. College is not all about reading books and taking tests- a common saying is that "classes get in the way of learning." I learned a HUGE deal just from interacting with my classmates, and it is offensive to say that a liberal arts degree is "useless." It also depends on your definition of usefulness, especially since I use nothing that I learned in college in my present occupation. However there are countless intangible things that I apply every day from my college experience that I would never have learned otherwise. I would say that my useless degree in liberal arts (economics and math with a minor in English literature/composition) is my greatest asset and if given the choice I would do the exact same thing over again.

 

[o9z]

I was just offered an IT position at the 4th largest company in the nation(in their respective field). I have not yet accepted, but will be doing so by Tuesday. I do not have a college degree. My freshman year, I thought it was more important to drink beer and score with the ladies than go to class. I think I carried a 0.48 GPA my first year. My 2nd year at a different college I received a 3.8 GPA. I didn't live on campus and had to go. Money was tight and I decided to hit the job market with lower level jobs, doing tech support. After about 3 years in Tech Support, I hit my first MIS position, doing VB Programming and Database work. Since then I move on to being a jack of all trades with my latest company. DBA/Programmer/Network Admin.

I might have lucked out, but my lack of a college degree hasn't been too hard to work around. Work experience > what you can learn in a classroom.

 

[Koing]

Originally posted by: veggz

Originally posted by: MichaelD

Originally posted by: veggz

Originally posted by: Koing
They are just being idiots.

It doesn't mean jack sh!t if you have a degree. It just meant you studied/ crammed for your exams and learnt 'stuff'.

People from lesser Uni's are sometimes impressed if you went to a higher end Uni though. Well I have found this to be true of a lot of friends of friends I have met. To me they are all just Uni's.

Koing

I disagree; if having a degree means "jack sh!t" then why would so many work so hard pursuing one? I think that college is a huge factor in shaping the person you turn out to be, even if all you did was studied (in which case you will have wasted your college experience, IMO).

Also, all universities ARE NOT the same. You will receive a better education if you study economics at UofC or Harvard than you will at, say, Wyoming State, or even most other colleges in the country. To me a college degree and where it is from are preliminary indications of a person's intellectual curiosity.

What does where my degree is from have to do with my ability to do the job? Any job?

Some people squeaked by/cheated their way thru college.

I go by the following rating system when rating a potential addition to my department (Network/Server Admin):

1. Real world experience, proven by a hands-on test that I give you. Let's see if you can walk the walk and not just talk the talk.

2. Communication skills. You may be able to debug a 4GB dump file, but can you SPEAK? How are you in group settings? Can you communicate w/your coworkers and not just the console?

3. Work experience. How long have you been doing this? References? VERIFIABLE references?

4. College degree in whatever.

All a degree does is get your foot in the door for more jobs. In my case, I'm 30 credits away from a BS in Management. I need the degree b/c a few years from now, I want to be the IT Head. The CIO...or the CIO in Training. To do that, you need the degree.

I can manage servers. I can manage people. I want more money. Ergo the degree. But the degree is not necessary to do my current job; SKILLS are.

Where your degree is from does not necessarily corrolate to your job ability. However, there is a reason why many top firms recruit exclusively at a small core of top schools. Where you went to college is a PRELIMINARY (and I stress this, since it is undeniably superficial) indicator of your intelligence, since it shows the caliber of students you have been interacting with for the past four or so years. As I said in a previous post, all of my coworkers are from either Wharton, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Northwestern, or Stanford. After this initial stint work experience and communications ability will matter infinitely more, but what do these things matter if you can't even get your foot in the door? Then again, in most industries the university you matriculated at could not matter less, and studies have shown that your major often matters more than your college. However what I am saying is that in some ultra-competetive industries where you got your degree is often a deciding factor.

In England it is more what degree class did you receive and how you fill in the job application form, online tests and the group tests and interviews. If you have a foreign language you are WELL AHEAD of other guys.

Koing

 

[veggz]

Originally posted by: Koing

Originally posted by: veggz

Originally posted by: MichaelD

Originally posted by: veggz

Originally posted by: Koing
They are just being idiots.

It doesn't mean jack sh!t if you have a degree. It just meant you studied/ crammed for your exams and learnt 'stuff'.

People from lesser Uni's are sometimes impressed if you went to a higher end Uni though. Well I have found this to be true of a lot of friends of friends I have met. To me they are all just Uni's.

Koing

I disagree; if having a degree means "jack sh!t" then why would so many work so hard pursuing one? I think that college is a huge factor in shaping the person you turn out to be, even if all you did was studied (in which case you will have wasted your college experience, IMO).

Also, all universities ARE NOT the same. You will receive a better education if you study economics at UofC or Harvard than you will at, say, Wyoming State, or even most other colleges in the country. To me a college degree and where it is from are preliminary indications of a person's intellectual curiosity.

What does where my degree is from have to do with my ability to do the job? Any job?

Some people squeaked by/cheated their way thru college.

I go by the following rating system when rating a potential addition to my department (Network/Server Admin):

1. Real world experience, proven by a hands-on test that I give you. Let's see if you can walk the walk and not just talk the talk.

2. Communication skills. You may be able to debug a 4GB dump file, but can you SPEAK? How are you in group settings? Can you communicate w/your coworkers and not just the console?

3. Work experience. How long have you been doing this? References? VERIFIABLE references?

4. College degree in whatever.

All a degree does is get your foot in the door for more jobs. In my case, I'm 30 credits away from a BS in Management. I need the degree b/c a few years from now, I want to be the IT Head. The CIO...or the CIO in Training. To do that, you need the degree.

I can manage servers. I can manage people. I want more money. Ergo the degree. But the degree is not necessary to do my current job; SKILLS are.

Where your degree is from does not necessarily corrolate to your job ability. However, there is a reason why many top firms recruit exclusively at a small core of top schools. Where you went to college is a PRELIMINARY (and I stress this, since it is undeniably superficial) indicator of your intelligence, since it shows the caliber of students you have been interacting with for the past four or so years. As I said in a previous post, all of my coworkers are from either Wharton, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Northwestern, or Stanford. After this initial stint work experience and communications ability will matter infinitely more, but what do these things matter if you can't even get your foot in the door? Then again, in most industries the university you matriculated at could not matter less, and studies have shown that your major often matters more than your college. However what I am saying is that in some ultra-competetive industries where you got your degree is often a deciding factor.

In England it is more what degree class did you receive and how you fill in the job application form, online tests and the group tests and interviews. If you have a foreign language you are WELL AHEAD of other guys.

Koing

It is also that way in the States, but would you honestly say that strong students from Oxford/Cambridge have no advantage over strong students from other universities?

 

[Descartes]

.

 

[will889]

To me a college degree and where it is from are preliminary indications of a person's intellectual curiosity.

To me, how bright a person is to begin with regardless of college is the best indicator of success. Also street business savvy (college education aside) means far more than where your degree came from imo unless you're talking law firms and such where the Ivy league still dominates in the corporate pool.

 

[veggz]

Originally posted by: will889

To me a college degree and where it is from are preliminary indications of a person's intellectual curiosity.

To me, how bright a person is to begin with regardless of college is the best indicator of success. Also street business savvy (college education aside) means far more than where your degree came from imo unless you're talking law firms and such where the Ivy league still dominates in the corporate pool.

I won't argue with that, all I am saying is that where you got your degree is one among many factors in determining intelligence.

Also there are several industries that are dominated by elite college grads, not just in law (i.e. investment banks, hedge funds, PE, management consulting, professors, etc.).

 

[L1FE]

Honestly, I don't care what college you're from as long as you can do your work well. I know plenty of stupid people who came out of my school (Carnegie Mellon) and plenty of smart people who came out of "lesser" colleges. At the same time, though, I will have to admit that some of the most hardcore, technically brilliant people that I know are from CMU and that the name of my college gets me into doors faster than any community college ever could. While it isn't fair to assume that someone who went to a good college is smarter than someone who didn't, most companies don't have the time or resources to delve into exactly how smart a person is...so they use the college as a good filter.

 

[Rainsford]

People who think that not going to college makes you stupid are idiots.

People who think that a college degree does not have any intrinsic value are also idiots.

Smart people are smart and stupid people are stupid, attending college or not attending college isn't going to fundamentally change that. But for all you sour grapes folks who figure you're smart enough to get by without a degree, keep in mind that college DOES help smart people do better in most fields, and not just because they have a piece of paper to hang on their wall.

 

[everman]

Many people feel like they must be "better" than others in some way in order to feel happy. And so we compare each other in various ways, no different really from who's bodily apendages are larger than the next person. If you are bigger than them, then you can be happy. If you're smaller, find someone else to compare yourself to. Then of course people tend to believe that this is what happiness must be, no different than primitive tribesmen comparing the size of their penis gord.

/xen master

 

[91TTZ]

Originally posted by: veggz

Where your degree is from does not necessarily corrolate to your job ability.

It is spelled "correlate". I learned this on my own, but you can learn it in college.

Also, you're trying way too hard to sound intelligent. While you may think that you're impressing people, those more intelligent than you can see right through it.

 

[Reckoner]

Degree = Expensive Resume Filler

 

[imported_Imp]

Originally posted by: veggz
Not to hijack, but at least at my school there was also this sort of discrimination between persons of different majors, i.e. engineers would often talk down to, say, English majors, which I always found completely absurd.

Regardless, after an entry level job your degree should not matter as much (in most professions, that is).

So true. Engineers at my college always make fun of people in the Arts and Science Faculty, while ArtSci people do the same to Engineers ("build a bridge and jump off of it." After just coming back from two weeks of Survey Camp (8am to 10pm work days 13 days straight hauling equipment everywhere, working with flashlights to finish assignments), I can definately see why. This and two 6 course terms in a year.

Regardless, this college social status thing is bull, especially if the "upper" person has some degree that does nothing (I'll let you choose as to not offend anyone). I know a lot of people from work who went through 4 years of college and came out to a part-time job that requires nothing past Grade 12 (or less). Now, they're back in school part-time doing something entirely different. Also, day in day out all I hear is how this person is smart, how this guy/gal won all these math contests, is the top student, bla bla bla. I remember lots of these people back in high school who were snotty as*wipes. Personally, I don't care how smart/dumb you are as long as you aren't an as*hole.

 

[91TTZ]

Originally posted by: veggz
I would say that my useless degree in liberal arts (economics and math with a minor in English literature/composition) is my greatest asset and if given the choice I would do the exact same thing over again.

Oh boy.

We have someone with a liberal arts degree preaching the importance of a college degree and claiming that it shows direction in life.

Get a medical degree if you want to be a doctor.

Get an engineering degree if you want to be an engineer.

But with a liberal arts degree, you'll have a hard time distinguishing yourself from the average hippy working at Starbucks.

 

[judasmachine]

the truth is that there are idiots with Ph. D.s and losers with genious IQs. And of coarse, vice versa.

from what I've seen the middle of the bell curve people (read: average) are the ones with degrees.

 

[bleeb]

I got a degree in mathematics and getting a dental degree.... and one thing that I've figured out is all that I really know, is nothing.

 

[shadow9d9]

How do you delete a post?

 

[RadiclDreamer]

I have a degree and couldnt care less if others have them, stupid is stupid. There is a dif between stupid and just uneducated

 

[Reckoner]

College was good for the life experience, but as far as subject matter goes, I really didn't take all that much with me.

 

[Rainsford]

Originally posted by: judasmachine
the truth is that there are idiots with Ph. D.s and losers with genious IQs. And of coarse, vice versa.

from what I've seen the middle of the bell curve people (read: average) are the ones with degrees.

So the people at the "smart" end of the curve tend not to have degrees? No offense, but that's pretty silly.