Students going to school to check a box and nobody learning for free

[Ideas]

This article is mostly about how there is "massive credential inflation" meaning employees need more and more education. But I found this interesting:

If you flunk a class, plenty of employers will trash your application. But if you pass that same class, then forget everything you learned, employers will shrug.

And this, because I like the idea of sitting in on free Ivy League classes. I know it can be done online, but this guy suggests it can be done in person:

Almost everyone pays lip service to the glories of education, but actions speak louder than words. Ponder this: If a student wants to study at Princeton, he doesn't really need to apply or pay tuition. He can simply show up and start taking classes. As a professor, I assure you that we make near-zero effort to stop unofficial education; indeed, the rare, earnestly curious student touches our hearts. At the end of four years at Princeton, though, the guerrilla student would lack one precious thing: a diploma. The fact that almost no one tries this route — saving hundreds of thousands of dollars along the way — is a strong sign that students understand the value of certification over actual learning.

[eriehiker]

Well, they might not be sitting in on HIS class, but I think many people attend non-credit seminars and speeches.

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And there are certainly people who take all the free online MIT courses.

[cookderosa]

I have shared this story before, but I taught a course called Culinary Math at my community college for a long time- I think around 50-60 sections over about 15 years. My classes had as few as a dozen or as many as two dozen students, so figure roughly 1000 students in all. Anyway, I had a work packet that I used to assign to every class. One day in my last year or so, a student questioned one of the problems, and I found an error in the calculation. A problem that had been marked wrong for potentially 1000 students in 15 years. I had *one* student ask me to explain the error - or demonstrate a correction. One. What's one question out of 20? Still an A. Move on. Don't make waves. Keep your head down and get the credit. It made me a little sad, but that's my problem, not the student's reality. I was a student, I know better.

To say that students, in general, want to learn is true- most do want to learn, but let's not let it get in the way of why they are paying $, and that is for the credential. Cooks and chefs (my industry) need the piece of paper- not because it's teaching them how to be great cooks or chefs, that comes from work and experience- it's because EVERYONE ELSE has pieces of paper, and you're not going to land a position without one. I've spent my adult life teaching culinary arts- my husband does as well. He's at a 4 year university helping hopeful culinary students find 120 credits of something that looks like a culinary education so these students can go out and argue that they are better than minimum wage or should be hired as a sous chef. Most of them have never even washed dishes for a restaurant yet.

The article says it all "While the education workers need to do a job is quite stable, the education they need to get a job has skyrocketed since the 1940s. Sure, the average job is more intellectually demanding than it once was, but researchers find that only explains 20% of the workforce's rising education. What explains the remaining 80%? Employers' expectations have risen across the board. Waiter, bartender, cashier, security guard: These are now common jobs for those with bachelor's degrees..... Yet why would profit-seeking employers base their decisions on mere credentials instead of potential to perform well on the job?
To start, employers can't readily judge your job performance until they actually hire you — and they can only hire a tiny fraction of their applicants. If they ignore less-credentialed prospects, they may lose a few good workers but they save tons of precious time.
And once they hire, it usually makes sense to stand pat. Suppose a well-credentialed worker turns out to be mildly disappointing. Summarily firing him would be bad business, because replacement takes time, and time is money. A subpar worker may therefore profit from his credentials for years. Indeed, because few firms are run by unfeeling robots, even incompetent workers often enjoy handsome educational payoffs because their employers are too squeamish to dismiss them."

Of course, that's true. I realize the previous thread about diploma mills and credential seeking didn't address the romantic infatuation we have with education in this country, but it's a two-way street. We want to learn as long as it doesn't get in the way of earning an "A" and employers minimize risk by choosing to hire credentialed employees. I think this board / forum is different because we say it out loud. We acknowledge that people need to check the box, and strategize how to do it as efficiently and cost-effectively as possible. In my opinion, the industriousness and resourcefulness of members here who have earned their degree on their own terms represent the creativity and industry to make big contributions to the workplace.

[cardiacclep]

People pay a premium for the aggregate of courses, AKA the degree. Individual courses return on investment is mostly nill. Sitting in on four years of courses is worthless as anyone can say they did this as verification is not an option. Education can be found everywhere through self-study, MOOCs and experience. The real elephant in the room is at what dollar sign does a college education become a losing bet? This assumes we exclude people who want to be professional engineers, doctors or lawyers etc.

[High_Order1]

We want to learn as long as it doesn't get in the way of earning an "A"

mmm

For me, personally, I'm going to say it doesn't apply. Honestly, historically I've always had poor grades. Doesn't mean I didn't want to learn - I've invested thousands of hours of my personal and leisure time becoming knowledgeable on hundreds of topics.

When it comes to grades though... Grades are for A are for a diploma/certification/credential and I do whatever the rules allow to generate that A. My grades are not a reflection of my ability to demonstrate or master a skill or topic. They are like targets at the county fair to knock down in order to get the stuffed bear or the bird-shaped water filled bird whistle. I'll lean over the table until I get called out.

In the job market, I have watched standards erode from hiring superskilled craftsmen that could not write to hiring anybody with a certain piece of paper, that create more waste than finished product. The job people author these standards, they have set this stage; let them reap the whirlwind.