[HN Gopher] U.S. Rep. Angie Craig drops college requirement for ...
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U.S. Rep. Angie Craig drops college requirement for staffers
Author : nafnlj
Score : 130 points
Date : 2023-04-28 15:00 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.kare11.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.kare11.com)
| hedora wrote:
| I wish they'd require PhD's (or 10+ years technical industry
| experience) in related fields for science advisors.
| [deleted]
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Instead of better educating our population, the low-tax / anti-
| intellectual / authoritarian-reactionaries have convinced the
| population that they don't need education.
|
| With education, they might aim for socio-economic advancement
| (remember the American Dream?), think for themselves, challenge
| the established order (edit: i.e., they might decide to become
| the powerful and the leaders themselves). Now they know their
| places - don't get an education, and take a job where you won't
| ever need one. Sad to see the American Dream abandoned and people
| just giving up. Of course, the wealthy kids still get the
| education - they are in a different class in our new class-based
| system.
|
| Also, education costs money, and that is the hardline priority
| over everything, including fundamental human welfare such as
| health care and education.
| kaitai wrote:
| I have a friend with no college degree but a number of
| certifications in the insurance industry and most of a master's
| degree in a humanities field. Should said friend be allowed to
| proofread communications going out from Angie Craig's office?
|
| I have a friend with an associate's degree who has great
| customer service skills. Should said friend be allowed to be a
| receptionist for Angie Craig?
|
| I love education, I indulged in several degrees beyond college.
| I use those for highly specialized work now. But my spouse
| works at a hospital that literally can't carry out specialty
| surgeries right now because they can't hire enough low-paid
| staff for overnight support (not medical staff, but the other
| warm bodies who need to be around) and they can't staff the
| phone room for appointments, because they require a college
| degree of the person who calls you to confirm if 8 am will work
| or not. Folks with college degrees want to do something with
| their degree beyond confirming that 8 am is still good -- and
| can get paid more just about anywhere else.
|
| Plenty of my lower-income friends & neighbors would've loved to
| have at least some college. But how do you pay $20k a year
| while also paying $10k for daycare and >$18k for rent when
| you're making $44k a year, the median pay for a high school
| grad in MN right now?
|
| I applaud Angie Craig for opening up opportunities for
| advancement for talented people.
| pc86 wrote:
| I don't think you can have "most of a master's degree" when
| you're missing the obvious pre-requisite of a bachelor's
| degree.
| kaitai wrote:
| Sure you can. All you have to do is get admitted. I have a
| friend with a PhD and no high school or college degree.
| This person is indeed both smart and good at talking their
| way into things.
| sdfghswe wrote:
| > I have a friend with no college degree but a number of
| certifications in the insurance industry and most of a
| master's degree in a humanities field. Should said friend be
| allowed to proofread communications going out from Angie
| Craig's office?
|
| > I have a friend with an associate's degree who has great
| customer service skills. Should said friend be allowed to be
| a receptionist for Angie Craig?
|
| Do you think these two people are representative of the
| uneducated population?
|
| I'm not suggesting that if you don't have an education then
| you can't be smart and competent. I'm suggesting that such
| people are a minority. So having an education is a useful
| signal, if not fullproof.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Is MN State (not just Mankato) really 20k a year? Is CC
| really 20k a year there?
| kaitai wrote:
| Mankato state is $14k a year before books etc. Metro State
| is cheaper, if you pick the right classes. Someplace like
| Concordia is $20k or a bit more; Hamline or Augsburg is up
| to $40k. Sure it's all sticker price. I tried to pick a
| number on the low end for the Twin Cities given the
| location of Craig's office. The 2 year colleges are cheaper
| but the requirement above is specifically for 4 yr degrees.
| majormajor wrote:
| Most college education right now opens up very little in terms
| of "socio-economic advancement" besides being "ticks the right
| box" on an application. Which is basically the opposite of
| "think for themselves, challenge the established order."
|
| The status quo there isn't great; the wealthy were getting very
| different college degrees anyway and going into very different
| jobs.
| gnicholas wrote:
| > _Instead of better educating our population_
|
| We need to do a better job educating our population, for sure.
| Most of the failings are at the K12 level. IMO (as someone who
| works in edtech, in both K12 and higher ed), the primary issue
| with higher education is not that we're not doing a good job of
| educating students, it's that the cost is sky-high and does not
| correlate well to the value provided. So much of the value is
| in signaling and network-building, not in the actual teaching
| itself.
|
| So IMO, this is not a choice between "better educating our
| population" and reducing the reliance on college degrees. The
| percent of the population that gets a college degree has shot
| up in the last 70 years, and it's likely we've overshot the
| sweet spot. The pendulum is starting to swing back a bit, and
| hopefully we'll reach an equilibrium point that makes sense and
| is affordable.
|
| To your point, I even hope that when we reduce our overspending
| at the higher ed level, the government will be able to shift
| those resources to K12, where the bigger failings are
| happening.
| tombert wrote:
| I am pretty much part of the academic system now (part time
| professor, part time PhD student) working in a field that
| generally expects a degree (software engineering). I don't
| think anyone would call me "anti-intellectual", and I live in
| one of the highest-taxed states in the country.
|
| That being said, I really think it's reductive to say that not
| require a college degree on every damn job is "abandoning the
| American Dream". I _don 't_ think college is for everyone, and
| it's certainly not for everyone straight after high school. I
| did really poorly in college the first time around, dropped
| out, and did much better nine years later. I am very grateful
| that I was able to find work decent work without a degree.
| wincy wrote:
| I grew up in a trailer in a poor town. I'm a high school
| dropout, am in my mid thirties and became a software
| engineering team lead last year. I feel lucky that I make a
| great income that I can support my family, and nobody I work
| with cares about my education. They care that I know the field
| and have insights into how to solve the problems we encounter.
|
| I'm doing better than almost every person I went to high school
| with, and my friends with advanced degrees (like philosophy)
| have either become software engineers or are saddled with more
| debt than they'll ever be able to repay. I don't see how that's
| better?
|
| I feel like my choice was the right one. Maybe it's
| survivorship bias, but school was not for me and I'm glad I get
| to do work I'm proud of, and feel that going to college is a
| mistake for a lot of people.
| segasaturn wrote:
| No, people don't believe in "The American Dream" anymore,
| because it is a fiction. It is a load of American
| Exceptionalist bullshit that only serves to make people endure
| economic oppression in the hopes that they may become the next
| Oppressor. It's essentially an agnostic version of Marx's
| "opioid of the masses".
| sparselogic wrote:
| Left unexamined: how long ago and why did employers decide that
| a 4-year degree was the minimum qualification for general
| employment?
|
| And why should someone without a degree be excluded from socio-
| economic advancement, thinking for themselves, or challenging
| the established order? If anything, professional success based
| on work instead of degrees is a challenge to the current
| established order. :)
|
| The American Dream doesn't need to be degree examiners
| gatekeeping it. If you care about socioeconomic advancement,
| don't pull the ladder up by excluding people without degrees:
| instead, make sure you don't require folks to jump through
| hoops before doing work that they already have the skills to
| do.
|
| And to the "authoritarian-reactionaries" dig: note that the
| Congresswoman in this article is pursuing this as a
| progressive. Same with the new governor of Pennsylvania:
| https://www.penncapital-star.com/government-politics/in-his-...
|
| (signed: child of an immigrant with an 8th grade education for
| whom the American Dream is alive and well)
| GartzenDeHaes wrote:
| Her cronies must not have degrees. Nothing to see here.
| babelthuap wrote:
| It's not a requirement to be an elected official. Even President.
| Don't even need to show a birth certificate but it's a good idea
| to have it just in case people start asking for it later.
| [deleted]
| jewayne wrote:
| > Don't even need to show a birth certificate
|
| Fun fact: Trump rode birtherism all the way to the presidency,
| then never showed his own birth certificate.
| kevviiinn wrote:
| That's because a core tenet of US conservatism is blatant
| hypocrisy
|
| Also he isn't black, it's easier to get away with harassing
| the first black president about that sort of thing
| jewayne wrote:
| As they say, the cruelty is the point. :(
| efitz wrote:
| Was there credible doubt that would have been alleviated with
| proof?
| jewayne wrote:
| There of course was never a credible doubt that Barack
| Obama was born in Hawaii, either.
| triceratops wrote:
| It wouldn't have mattered either way because his mother
| was a US citizen, making him a natural-born citizen even
| if he were born in outer space.
| efitz wrote:
| Obama of course was born in Hawaii and of course he was a
| US citizen.
|
| That said, the law at the time was that if your father
| wasn't a citizen, then your mother had to be a citizen
| AND had to have been living in the US for the previous 5
| years.
|
| Dumb law IMO but it was the law and was raised by a lot
| of birthers.
| triceratops wrote:
| It's not possible for Obama's mother to have been living
| outside the US 5 years before his birth. She only met
| Obama Sr 2 years before little Barack was born.
|
| (Not that facts or logic matter to birthers, but anyway)
| HideousKojima wrote:
| >It's not possible for Obama's mother to have been living
| outside the US 5 years before his birth.
|
| I think you misread the law, if she lived outside the
| country for two years then she wouldn't have spent the
| last five years in the US.
| jewayne wrote:
| At the time of Barack's birth, of course, Ann Dunham was
| only 18 years old and had lived her entire life in the
| US.
|
| I think at this point we all have to acknowledge the
| retarded genius of Donald Trump, the way he always got
| people to talk about what he wanted them to talk about.
| Discussions like this legitimize false statements, and
| were part of what legitimized Trump himself.
| efitz wrote:
| I agree; no need to downvote me.
| throw7 wrote:
| Don't forget the funnest fact: His taxes. But he did submit a
| very clean bill of health from his primary physician!
| ubermonkey wrote:
| You're wrong about the Presidency.
|
| The Constitution explicitly states that he or she must be a
| natural-born citizen of the United States; naturalization won't
| do. State election boards generally take the word of the
| political parties, but as has been shown in recent years
| eligibility can be challenged in court -- most often by racist
| shitheels upset about the skin tone of the candidate in
| question.
|
| A qualifying birth certificate is usually the path taken here.
|
| So yeah, you don't have to show it unless challenged, but if
| you can't show it you likely WILL be challenged, and that could
| be a problem.
| cheese_van wrote:
| Curiously, it's not even a requirement to join the US State
| Department's Foreign Service to conduct diplomacy. Just pass
| the test.
|
| Although certain support positions within the Foreign Service
| do require a degree, "core" diplomatic officers do not. Want to
| be a diplomat? Again, just pass the test.
| rcme wrote:
| Apparently you can just lie about it if people ask.
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| You can lie about anything people ask you. That's lying's
| whole thing.
| rcme wrote:
| I was referring to George Santos, who has lied extensively
| about his entire history yet still serves as a sitting
| representative.
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| Good qualifier. Some might have thought you were talking
| about Obama.
| jseliger wrote:
| Good: https://seliger.com/2017/06/16/rare-good-political-news-
| boos....
|
| College requirements have too many false positives and false
| negatives.
| undersuit wrote:
| We should drop staffers; replace them with a number of
| representatives closer to the original 1:30,000 in the
| Constitution.
|
| Any direct report to a Representative should be another elected
| Representative not an employee, if direct reports must exist.
|
| Aspiring politicians should work their way up from the state and
| local level, which has it's own set of problems holding back my
| ideas.
|
| The current system is just a lobbyist recruitment system.
| elil17 wrote:
| I think there's a huge benefit to having politicians work in
| teams because modern laws are so complex that you need some
| specialization of labor to read and write them.
| undersuit wrote:
| Why can't the individuals with specialization of labor be
| elected? You have a pool of 11000+ Representatives with the
| original ratio.
|
| I can even conceive of Representatives running on the basis
| of their knowledge in such a system.
| standardly wrote:
| You thought outside the box, and were downvoted..
|
| Some may not agree with your general idea, but we need more
| of this kind of discourse.
| whydoyoucare wrote:
| University education has a been a "baseline" to determine
| qualified candidates. It also sorta implies broadened horizons,
| overall mature thought process, and several other qualities that
| are desirable the advisors/staffers.
|
| What other alternatives exists to University education that
| impart the same level of knowledge and understanding to an
| individual that can be consistently measured?
|
| If education is expensive, then making it less expensive seems to
| be the natural solution than eliminating its requirement. Seems
| this is another virtue signaling in the name of equity that is
| taking the country back than forward. Reminds me of UCs'
| eliminating SAT in the name of equity, or how Palo Alto and
| Culver City (both in California) eliminated AP (Advanced
| Placement) courses because not everyone can take those.
| gadders wrote:
| There are plenty of other things that could indicate broadened
| horizons - having lived or worked abroad, for instance. And as
| someone that went to university, working for a living and
| responsibilities matures you far faster than uni ever did.
|
| Cheaper education would be great, but we shouldn't let the
| perfect be the enemy of the good.
| greenhearth wrote:
| I like this, and I think you hit the nail on the head with the
| price of education.
|
| An expert curation of thought techniques and their traditions
| that aims to develop a critical insight into a discipline (and
| into reality in general) in a crucial social setting is not
| really attainable anywhere else. Noam Chomsky noticed this in
| his famous essay "The Function of a University..." Obviously
| critical thinking is not a requirement for a government job,
| and maybe even a detriment?
| jcrawfordor wrote:
| Work experience. Even the federal government mostly recognizes
| enough years of work experience as equivalent to an
| undergraduate degree, although the paygrade specs tend to want
| a 2-1 ratio (i.e. 8 years of work experience is considered
| equivalent to an undergraduate degree). It's hard to articulate
| many position-relevant benefits of an undergraduate education
| that people won't also gain from sufficient years working in
| the field.
| whydoyoucare wrote:
| It is rare to gain relevant work experience without having a
| basic framework for the said work, and consistency to measure
| that basic framework from a pool of candidates, both which
| come from college/university education.
|
| Equivalency can be established for senior positions, not
| entry level ones. I assume the staffers do have entry level
| positions. Can a plumber or an electrician claim to possess
| experience to become a staffer? I doubt it.
|
| What is going to happen is most staffing positions will be
| filled by senior work equivalency, while entry level
| positions will be eliminated. Fast forward a few decades, and
| there will be no eligible candidates for staffer positions.
| jcrawfordor wrote:
| Honestly, tradework like plumbing or electrical might be a
| surprisingly good qualification for entry-level
| congressional staff positions. Project management,
| scheduling, finance, and perhaps most importantly dealing
| with (sometimes pissed off) customers/constituents and the
| tradeoffs of what is possible, versus feasible, versus
| affordable.
|
| Realistically a lot of the function of undergraduate
| degrees (in fields without specific technical education
| expectations) is to filter for people who have a basic
| ability to plan and complete work, meet requirements, etc.
| A huge range of entry-level jobs require these same skills.
| Many high-school educated office assistants have delivered
| larger projects under more pressure than a typical college
| graduate, and usually gained more applied knowledge in
| business/public administration while doing so.
|
| The main function that degrees tend to offer here is just
| easy comparability, but I think practical experience hiring
| in many fields shows that college degrees do not actually
| reflect the level of consistency in outcomes that hiring
| managers wish they did. College degrees do have some
| advantage, and not requiring them will probably mean that
| you interview more candidates to find a fit, but I don't
| think either of those effects are as big as you might
| think.
| greenhearth wrote:
| I think this romanticization of plumbers has really
| gotten out of hand.
| jcrawfordor wrote:
| I tend to think that more of the problem here is
| romanticization of congressional staffers. While there
| are positions that rely on more background knowledge like
| policy analysis, a lot of congressional staff members are
| essentially just customer service representatives and
| learn most of what they need to know on the job. Anyone
| who can keep track of a few different things and deal
| with customers should be a good fit.
| jonas21 wrote:
| > _If education is expensive, then making it less expensive
| seems to be the natural solution than eliminating its
| requirement._
|
| One of the reasons college is expensive is that a degree is
| required for most jobs. This creates artificial demand, which
| drives up prices.
|
| Eliminating these requirements where they're not necessary is,
| in fact, a way to make college less expensive.
|
| And I'd argue that any time you see a requirement for a college
| degree that doesn't specify what field the degree is in, it's a
| pretty good sign the degree is unnecessary.
| jltsiren wrote:
| Most college degrees are awarded by state universities. The
| price of typical college education is set by political
| process, not by the market. If college is expensive, it's
| expensive because making it affordable is not a priority for
| those who vote.
| gtop3 wrote:
| A University education is not the only valid signal, but it is
| one of the best signals that is widely accessible. Going
| through public K-12 and then a State University is a very paved
| path.
|
| There's a lot of ways to begin lowering the cost of University
| education. Some of it relays on students being able to make
| good decisions. Students in general have been preferring
| schools with lots of expensive services and facilities, and
| schools have been increasing their tuition to pay for it. Other
| aspects would be to fight administrative overhead creep that is
| well documented.
|
| There's more radical ways of handling it. Price limits tied to
| state/federal funding. Restructuring student loans so that the
| Federal Government is the buyer instead of the student, and
| using larger buyer status to negotiation with schools.
|
| I think the free market will force schools to lower prices, and
| the number of students fall. This fall of students has been
| expected for awhile, and covid seems to have accelerated it.
| troupe wrote:
| Agreed.
|
| > If education is expensive, then making it less expensive
| seems to be the natural solution than eliminating its
| requirement.
|
| Most of the arguments I see saying that college is too
| expensive are kind of like people using Lamborghinis to say
| that cars are too expensive. The fact that you can spend $500k
| on a car does not mean that cars are expensive. The fact that
| you can go $400k into debt for college doesn't mean that
| college is expensive. It just means that you can spend a lot on
| an expensive college if you choose to do so.
|
| If someone takes dual credit courses in high-school, then gets
| a 2 year degree at a local community college, then transfers to
| a state school that offers a good return on investment, and
| does all that while working a part time job, college isn't that
| expensive.
|
| And the more people try to take that path, the more college
| will respond to increasing those types of options.
| hot_gril wrote:
| If you aren't targeting a field that requires a college
| education, even a cheap one is still pretty expensive in
| terms of time and money, and some subjects at some schools
| can be really weak. I can see why some people would opt for
| trade school or just learning on the job.
|
| What annoys me a little is when highly paid software
| engineers around me say college is pointless, when every
| single one of them went to a good college thanks to their
| parents.
| j-bos wrote:
| Chiming in for context (representation?):
|
| I grew up thinking college was a must for making big bucks
| but still didn't think it was worth it. After going to a
| trade school and doing jobs related and unrelated to my
| trade, I ended up needing big bucks and time. So I went to
| a boot camp and am now one of those software engineers. I
| don't think college is pointless, but I am so glad I didn't
| go.
|
| My point being, bringing the hype/price/time down on
| college will likely do good for many smart industrious
| lower-mid class kids.
| hot_gril wrote:
| For software engineering, that makes sense. I think it's
| only worthwhile if some conditions are right (good school
| and covered costs). Which it was for those guys.
| VoodooJuJu wrote:
| College education implies and signals anything people want it
| to. As the value of a college education has approached zero,
| its proponents impose on it unquantifiable and unfalsifiable
| qualities as justifications.
|
| >college = maturity
|
| >college = growth
|
| >college = intelligence
|
| >college = responsbility
|
| >college = you can see a task through
|
| >college = diligence
|
| >college = social skills
|
| >college = well-rounded, interesting
|
| >college = ...
|
| Professors and administrators do it to justify their salaries
| and sell it to prospective customers. Alumni to justify the
| expense. Elites to justify their status, their agendas.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Rule one of politics: Don't train up your own replacements. Make
| sure you are always the most qualified person for everything. A
| good step to that is only hiring people without the
| qualifications they might one day use to replace you. How many
| representatives don't have college degree or at least don't claim
| to have degrees? Several do claim degrees they don't have, but I
| don't know of any that claim to have never attended some sort of
| post-secondary education.
| gnicholas wrote:
| This is really great. I've been talking with friends who have
| high schoolers, and it's clear that the college preparation and
| application process is incredibly stressful, time-consuming, and
| expensive. And that's for the kids who are a reasonably good fit
| for college, and who have supportive parents.
|
| But so much of the market value of a college degree is in the
| signaling (just showing you were smart enough to get in) that it
| doesn't make sense to spend all this time, money, and heartache
| on this process. It's an arms-race dilemma for students and
| families, so it's hard to opt out of. But the more employers that
| move in this direction, the better things will be for lots of
| kids, and families.
| cgearhart wrote:
| On the flip side...
|
| I have two high school seniors. We have the resources and
| support they could need, but they have both opted out of all
| forms of college at this point. (They wouldn't even fill out an
| application when I offered to _pay_ them to apply, and refused
| to take any HS classes that were not graduation requirements as
| seniors.) I have tried to make the point that they owe it to
| their future self to keep their options open, but they just
| don't care.
|
| Now their friends are being accepted to college and starting to
| talk about going away for school...and I'm starting to see the
| first cracks of regret. I wonder if they'll have more stress or
| less in the long run given their choices.
|
| It definitely feels like this generation is skeptical of
| college, but _very_ few are truly opting out.
| gnicholas wrote:
| What do your kids plan to do after HS? If they regret the
| decision after seeing their friends go off to college,
| couldn't they apply next year and say they took a gap year to
| do all the things they missed out on during COVID, or some
| such thing?
| cgearhart wrote:
| They don't really have plans. (This is part of the
| problem.) _My_ plan is to ask them to get jobs & take some
| increased responsibility for their own needs & wants after
| high school. I'm pretty willing to support them if they
| have _some_ kind of plan (start a company? Volunteer
| somewhere? Sure.)
|
| You never know, they might apply to college in a year (or
| later), but they'll still live with choices like not taking
| any advanced/honors or elective classes in high school--and
| just generally not applying themselves while they were
| there. COVID certainly did them no favors, but at some
| point that's not a very good excuse anymore.
| gnicholas wrote:
| What caused them to opt out in this way? I would imagine
| it wasn't driven by developments like the one described
| in the article, since this is pretty uncommon.
|
| If your kids don't end up going to college, wouldn't it
| actually be good if there were more jobs open to them?
| stainablesteel wrote:
| i completely agree, the stress induced from the process of
| prepping for college and jumping through other bureaucratic
| hoops is not worth the cost and the cost is not worth the end
| result
|
| i do pharmaceutical work, and my employer will only hire people
| with bachelors degrees but i swear i could teach this to a
| middle schooler. there's no reason we can't allow people to
| learn from life rather than learn for bureaucratic
| requirements.
| electriclove wrote:
| I totally agree but I don't see how the system will change. I
| certainly can't convince my employer, can you?
| [deleted]
| hangonhn wrote:
| Tangentially related, at my current job we do not filter
| candidates by certain "top schools" and it has lead to the most
| diverse (ethnic, gender, vocational background, social economic,
| nationality, etc.) team of software engineers I've ever worked
| on. This is in sharp contrast to all my previous jobs where they
| consistently filter by a list of schools. Obviously this is not a
| silver bullet but it's quite shocking to realize how many really
| qualified candidates (and now amazing coworkers) are filtered out
| that way. We still have engineers from Berkeley, the Ivies, etc.
| but our most common school is SJSU and this is the best team I've
| ever worked on in terms of talent, cohesiveness, and kindness.
| guynamedloren wrote:
| I'm clearly naive and haven't worked closely enough to
| filtering stage of of the hiring process, but nevertheless..
| I'm shocked to hear that there was a _deliberate_ and explicit
| filtering by a list of "top schools. An implicit look at the
| school and some dose of bias, okay sure, I could see it, but an
| explicit filter? Wow.
| colonCapitalDee wrote:
| I've seen this in the startup ecosystem; it's a prestige
| game. When I was applying to jobs last year I would see
| startups brag on their websites about how many MIT, Harvard,
| Berkeley, etc grads they had. The most egregious was a
| startup that had a "select your school" dropdown that was
| basically the US News top 20 CS schools followed by "other"
| mattmcknight wrote:
| It's a challenge. I get over 1000 applicants for every
| position, I can't read every resume and use a few filters to
| get a subset to read, but it's a disjunction (top 50 school
| OR company advanced in our field OR specific technology
| names).
| justrealist wrote:
| It's really hard to meaningfully evaluate college new grad
| resumes en masse. They all have the same useless class
| projects and an impossible-to-judge GPA.
|
| Unless you spend an hour doing a tech screen for each person,
| they just all look identical. I don't endorse a strict
| filter, but I understand why people do it. Top colleges
| filter for something meaningful for entrance criteria, and
| it's easy to take advantage of their filtering.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| Yup, this 100% existed at FB in the US while I was there from
| 2013 to 2018. I worked in Europe and found it incredibly
| bizarre.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| In some industries that's the norm. I did my MBA at Oxford
| (which, at least at the time, was not well-known for its MBA
| program). A recruiter at an investment bank told me that,
| since Oxford wasn't on their list of target schools for post-
| MBA hiring, they wouldn't even look at my CV until and unless
| they were unable to fill their associate-level positions with
| people from those target schools.
| beezlebroxxxxxx wrote:
| There is a reason why in America there is an incredible focus
| on getting into certain schools, and follow-up obsession
| about what school you went to afterwards. There's a lot of
| 'brand name' focus and historically these schools have
| offered networking opportunities that far outweigh the actual
| academic quality (at the undergrad level). I always found it
| bizarre coming from a country where there isn't some idea of
| an ivy league-set of schools.
| gnicholas wrote:
| This is the norm in law firm hiring. Top firms don't look
| outside of a handful of schools. Good firms consider
| graduates from 1-2 dozen schools. And legal academia is at
| least as elitist -- something like half of all law professors
| graduated from one of four schools. It's great for
| groupthink!
| Eumenes wrote:
| This is standard across the world, in professional and
| engineering jobs. Hiring can be filtered by where you work,
| what your major is, what school you went to. Not all jobs or
| education are made equal. Its not what I'd do, but saying,
| we'll only consider candidates with CS degrees from these top
| 25 schools seem like a valid strategy to recruiting. Esp. if
| you consider their professors can be renowned in certain
| research topics.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| This really doesn't happen in technology outside of the US.
| It seems like way more of a US thing in general, but I
| can't fully speak to that.
| Eumenes wrote:
| That's not true. I worked for a big tech company with a
| large European presence and they 100% heavily factored in
| the prestige of what university you went into for hiring.
| Also, they do this with career fairs/college hiring -
| they aren't sending college recruiters to a community
| college, they're sending them to MIT, Oxford, Stanford,
| Yale, Harvey Mudd, etc.
| squokko wrote:
| As everyone drops every kind of requirement in the name of
| diversity, there is going to be a huge opportunity to set
| objective evaluation bars and get extremely high performers. The
| orgs will be 75% Asian though.
| UhUhUhUh wrote:
| I like money tho....
| tandr wrote:
| Is this a reference to "Idiocracy"?
| 226_ebro_treaty wrote:
| Great, now it will just be a non-written requirement.
| ilamont wrote:
| It's time to recognize that legal or organizational requirements
| for certain professions and government jobs to hold a college
| degree is a burden not only to talented people who are otherwise
| qualified to do the job, but leads to numerous burdens on
| society. These requirements have led to for-profit diploma mills,
| "nonprofit" universities charging $80k per year leading to
| billions in student debt that may never be paid off, and people
| who play the system to pad their salaries for no real benefit to
| the organizations or the people they serve.
|
| For instance, in my state, billions in additional salary and
| pensions have been paid out over the past 50+ years to
| corrections and police officers who get a graduate degree. It's
| part of the "Quinn Bill"
| (https://www.mass.edu/osfa/initiatives/pcipp.asp) which dates to
| the Johnson Administration!
|
| _In 1967, the President's Commission on Law Enforcement and
| Criminal Justice (the Johnson Crime Commission) released a report
| recommending more education for police officers. It said in order
| for the quality and effectiveness of American criminal justice to
| improve, its practitioners needed better training._
|
| A friend who's a cop says the graduate degree programs that have
| sprung up to serve the Quinn Bill market are a complete joke, but
| everyone with a college degree completes them to boost their
| salaries, which carries over to their pensions. Note that police
| already get rigorous training outside of these programs in areas
| such as accident reconstruction, de-escalation techniques,
| forensics, etc.
|
| Moreover, you don't even need a degree to become a police officer
| or corrections officer. In New England states are dropping age
| requirements to 18 or 19, because there is such a big shortage of
| staff: https://www.wbur.org/news/2023/02/27/essex-county-sheriff-
| lo...
| bell-cot wrote:
| I've never heard any justification for having "college education"
| as a job requirement. Or at least no justification that didn't
| amount to "keep out people who aren't like us", or "pretend to be
| competent", or "posture as exclusive".
| efitz wrote:
| A college degree is a signaling mechanism that you are willing
| to stick it out until the end in a large bureaucratic
| environment and not quit.
|
| An Ivy League degree is a signal that "you're one of us".
| TheFreim wrote:
| This is correct. It proves you're willing to jump through
| hoops and not think enough for yourself, since being creative
| often means diverging from the grading criteria.
| [deleted]
| willcipriano wrote:
| Those sound like just the people you want to hire if you want
| to build a lumbering bureaucratic organization.
| gtop3 wrote:
| Do you think U.S. Representative Staffers are not
| interacting with lumbering bureaucratic organizations?
|
| Being able to navigate and succeed in these organizations
| is a skill every organization with employees needs.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Yes, but what if you want to alter, restructure, or
| abolish parts of that bureaucratic apparatus? A lot of US
| officialdom (and business) is operated by unquestioning
| drones.
| tekmate wrote:
| maybe if you went to college you could come up with one
| Analemma_ wrote:
| The reason you haven't heard it is because nobody wants to say
| it out loud and get the resulting blowback: it's because
| college attendance is a proxy for IQ, which is far and away the
| strongest correlating factor with job performance. Since the
| Supreme Court ruled that employers can't use IQ tests in hiring
| decisions, they use the presence of a college degree instead.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| Wouldn't it be easier and cheaper to use SAT scores, or are
| employers prohibited from using these as well?
| polski-g wrote:
| Its all here: https://spectator.org/how-the-supreme-court-
| created-the-stud...
|
| > The solution for businesses post-Griggs was obvious:
| outsource screening to colleges, which are allowed to weed out
| poor candidates based on test scores.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| > The 1971 Supreme Court decision remains largely unknown,
| but no ruling of the past forty-five years (except for Roe v.
| Wade) has done more harm to the American way of life.
|
| _Rolls eyes so hard they nearly come out of skull_
|
| Yeah, it probably had some effect, but I'd say there are a
| _lot_ of reasons, probably starting with the GI Bill. Why
| settle for a high school grad when there 's a glut of
| veteran-college-grads suddenly on the market, all looking for
| jobs? Plus it gives you an excuse for excluding most women,
| who are suddenly in the job market in much greater numbers,
| from higher-paying jobs... oh, and would you look at that,
| black veterans are having trouble actually getting the
| benefits they're owed, so aren't going to college at as high
| a rate as white veterans! How convenient that is.
|
| Clearly, there are a _bunch_ of reasons this would have been
| appealing to employers well before 1971, and once the ball 's
| rolling, it's easy to see how this new situation becomes
| self-perpetuating (good jobs now require degrees, since there
| are plenty of degree-holders around -> kids aspire to college
| at much higher rates -> repeat)
| polski-g wrote:
| > Why settle for a high school grad when there's a glut of
| veteran-college-grads suddenly on the market
|
| You didn't need to "settle" for anything prior to this
| decision. You could simply screen for candidates based on
| innate cognitive ability. Going to college or not does not
| change that attribute.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| Why have we seen a similar rise in crendialism in
| countries without similar rulings or laws? Where's the
| demand for Griggs-compliant intelligence testing? Such a
| thing is permitted! Where is it?
|
| This may be a _small_ --very small--part of the puzzle,
| but I don't see a compelling case that we can point to it
| and say, "yep, that's what did it!" I don't even see
| enough to make it look like that's a valuable direction
| to further examine. The evidence is scant, and behavior
| we see doesn't look like it ought to if that _were_ the
| main cause.
|
| > You could simply screen for candidates based on innate
| cognitive ability.
|
| You could apply racist or sexist requirements laundered
| through "testing". The whole reason the case was brought
| was that _that was actually happening_.
| polski-g wrote:
| > Where's the demand for Griggs-compliant intelligence
| testing? Such a thing is permitted! Where is it?
|
| Right here: https://wonderlic.com/
|
| > Why have we seen a similar rise in crendialism in
| countries without similar rulings or laws?
|
| Because if you are an active participant in a market, you
| want to make it very hard for anyone else to enter it so
| that your own wages are not subject to market supply
| forces. So you lobby the government to restrict supply in
| any way possible (licensing, job requirements, training
| requirements). Its the same reason people are housing
| YIMBYs until about 30minutes after they close on their
| house and become NIMBYs.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| > Right here: https://wonderlic.com/
|
| Cool. So... this and similar things are in wide use, in
| preference of degree requirements, since it's largely
| Griggs-related concerns driving the rise in degree
| requirements, and employers would prefer to just use
| tests like this?
|
| If not, well, guess that's not a major driver of the
| phenomenon.
| logicalmonster wrote:
| My opinion is that the Supreme Court Case Griggs v. Duke Power
| Company helped make college education effectively a job
| requirement for anything other than very simple labor.
|
| Before that, employers for any kind of professional job could
| offer some kind of IQ or other test so they could figure out if
| you had some basic level of competence and were capable of
| being trained to perform whatever task they needed.
|
| Since it's now legally risky to use any kind of filter similar
| to that as a proxy for basic competence and trainability,
| college has become (an extremely expensive and time-consuming)
| proxy for measuring basic competence and ability to learn.
|
| I think this Supreme Court Case had devastating effects on
| society in just some of these ways.
|
| > People lose 4 of their prime income earning years.
|
| > Not only that, but they start out life in mega-debt.
| Achieving something like the American dream gets delayed or put
| totally out of reach for many people.
|
| > The combination of losing 4 years as well as being in debt
| means that many people, particularly society's most
| responsible, are going to be the ones delaying reproduction.
| This is bad news if you want to avoid something like Idiocracy,
| and has many other negative social consequences as well.
|
| It's an all-around waste to incentivize a college degree as the
| standard proxy for demonstrating competence. And truth be told,
| outside of pretty specialized roles, college is completely
| unnecessary for average people. Most normal people have the
| capacity to be trained in a short amount of time for pretty
| much any typical office job.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| The problem with your theory is that the disparate impact
| criteria in _Griggs_ creates exactly the same burden for
| college degree requirements as for IQ tests. (And,
| secondarily, that that burden for IQ tests is low enough that
| if they were as suited for purpose as your argument suggests,
| it would be routinely and easily met.)
|
| That said, I do think that often college degree requirements
| serve the same _purpose_ as the IQ tests in Griggs: a
| conscious and direct choice to achieve racial discrimination
| that isn't calibrated in any way to the actual requirements
| of the specific job but has enough of a superficial veneer of
| neutrality that people aren't likely to challenge it. (Post-
| _Griggs_ , while IQ tests are no more illegal than degree
| requirements, they are more likely to be challenged.)
| logicalmonster wrote:
| > The problem with your theory is that the disparate impact
| criteria in Griggs creates exactly the same burden for
| college degree requirements as for IQ tests. (And,
| secondarily, that that burden for IQ tests is low enough
| that if they were as suited for purpose as your argument
| suggests, it would be routinely and easily met.)
|
| A lot of business activity is guided by risk-management
| decisions that try to minimize the likelihood of dumb and
| costly lawsuits. An example is companies not wanting to
| write down feedback for job applicants that are rejected.
| We all know it's a shitty and dehumanizing practice to not
| give some feedback and encouragement, but companies can't
| be human because that creates a possible risk.
|
| My response to what you said above is that no employer
| would face the risk of a lawsuit for trying to hire college
| graduates, so this system is 100% safe and desirable for
| them. In fact, this college-based system works great for
| employers because their employees are now addled with
| college debt so employees might feel a bit more cautious
| about risking their jobs to stand up and challenge working
| conditions. So I guess most existing employers aren't
| heavily incentivized to change this system too much.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| If you're right then we should expect countries where IQ
| tests are not illegal, to have experienced a slower increase
| in the % of young adults with degrees.
|
| I wonder if you've seen any data like this?
| logicalmonster wrote:
| Anecdotally speaking, all I can remember hearing drilled
| into me in the American school system as the path for life
| success was going to college. The implication was that
| you'd be a loser who worked flipping burgers at McDonalds
| for the rest of your life if you didn't go to college.
|
| As far as the data you ask for, I'm all for doing that kind
| of research, but there's probably many variables that are
| hard to directly even start to compare and interpret.
|
| For instance, consider the impact of countries that are
| overall poorer than the US. It might be the case that this
| incentivizes a lot more people in other countries to go to
| school to try and escape a bad living standard. Or it might
| be the case that they don't have the resources to get to
| school even if they were desperate to educate themselves as
| much as possible. Even if you had this data, interpreting
| it would seem to be really tough.
|
| Or what about countries with more homogenous populations?
| Perhaps IQ tests provide more value to employers in the US
| with a significantly heterogenous population and are far
| less useful in countries where just about everybody has the
| same overall background.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| I agree with the general sentiment that people do degrees
| for bad reasons, that even good reasons at an individual
| level may not be optimal in aggregate etc.
|
| But I'm particularly interested in your hypothesis that
| it's driven mainly or solely by the inability for US
| employers to use IQ tests.
|
| Your first sentences (about college being the
| default/accepted path) is also true in other countries
| that aren't subject to that supreme court case, like the
| UK.
|
| Or like Sweden:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35594618
| logicalmonster wrote:
| The reason for anything large usually has a lot of
| contributing causes, and I don't think I have all of the
| answers here, but a first guess would be to think about
| US Cultural Dominance. If the real world was a game of
| Civilization, the US would be having an overwhelming
| cultural lead after WWII. Basically whatever the
| zeitgeist in the US is ends up spreading through the
| world for many reasons. If it dominated American culture
| 50 years ago that going to college was mandatory, it
| seems likely that this attitude would have spread to a
| lot of other countries too. Is that the right
| explanation? Probably not entirely, but I think that
| attitudes and ideas that dominate the US end up spreading
| a lot because of Hollywood and other cultural reasons.
| jedberg wrote:
| A college degree from an accredited institution shows that you
| can see through a task that takes 4+ years to complete.
|
| There are many other ways to show that, and it's silly to limit
| anything to only people with college degrees, but that's why
| people do it.
| paxys wrote:
| All that it shows is that you had enough money to pay for 4
| years of college. If that were the only criteria then holding
| on to a job for 4+ years should count for 1000x more than a
| college degree, because at least you are accountable for
| results.
| hot_gril wrote:
| Having a previous similar job helps a ton too. I don't know
| if they'd even care about college once you have experience.
| tivert wrote:
| > All that it shows is that you had enough money to pay for
| 4 years of college.
|
| No, it also shows you can show up on time for those years,
| and regularly complete a series of reasonably complicated
| intellectual tasks on a deadline.
|
| > If that were the only criteria then holding on to a job
| for 4+ years should count for 1000x more than a college
| degree, because at least you are accountable for results.
|
| No, college is far more standardized, and the students have
| their performance evaluated throughout, which can then be
| easily provided in a digested form.
|
| The main issue with college is that many people who _could_
| complete the requirements can 't, only because they don't
| have the money.
| juve1996 wrote:
| This just isn't true.
|
| Our public education is very bad now in much of the
| country. The fact is what you get out of high school from a
| huge portion of the population is...not great.
|
| No one is stopping anyone from hiring these people. If
| there is no difference, people will pay less for the
| cheaper labor.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| > I've never heard any justification for having "college
| education" as a job requirement.
|
| Really? Never?
|
| "A degree shows they have learned how to learn."
|
| "A degree shows they can stick with something for 3-4 years."
|
| "A degree shows they have learned how to write."
|
| "A degree is needed because high school education sucks so bad
| now."
| justincredible wrote:
| [dead]
| kcplate wrote:
| Those may be justifications people use, but ironically they
| are all statements that people take as true but in reality
| often are complete bullshit.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| Some are, but many are lazy short cuts But can you honestly
| say you've never heard ANY justification.
| kcplate wrote:
| I have heard a lot of attempts at justification, but
| short of highly specialized STEM oriented careers, there
| is hardly a job out there that _requires_ a degree in my
| opinion.
| csa wrote:
| > I've never heard any justification for having "college
| education" as a job requirement.
|
| In many cases, it's just an easy way to thin the applicant
| pool.
|
| Given EEO requirements (which have their place), having an easy
| way to thin the pool (often by a lot) is seen as convenient.
| bell-cot wrote:
| > In many cases, it's just an easy way to thin the applicant
| pool.
|
| True. Though one might pay less, under-advertise the job
| opening, require N years of experience, or many other means
| to that end.
| baryphonic wrote:
| Many employers once used IQ tests, but the Supreme Court made
| this much costlier for employers under the "disparate impact"
| theory.[0] That is, employers had a burden of showing that
| their tests were sufficiently related to the posted job if the
| test results were _any_ different among different ethnic
| groups, e.g. blacks scored lower than whites. Making a degree a
| literal requirement for the job is a low-cost proxy for IQ (or
| was in the past), and since it is earned, it can be listed as a
| job requirement, unlike IQ.
|
| [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Co.
| metalspot wrote:
| > employers had a burden of showing that their tests were
| sufficiently related to the posted job
|
| so why not just create a test that actually tests for the
| skills needed for the job? that would be the obvious way to
| optimize profit from a business perspective.
|
| the fact that employers don't do that is a pretty clear sign
| that the purpose of degree requirements is explicitly
| discriminatory, the same as "IQ" tests (which are completely
| fraudulent).
| LawTalkingGuy wrote:
| > "IQ" tests (which are completely fraudulent)
|
| No, not really. Up for debate is pretty much only the
| overloading of the word 'intelligence'. But whatever it is,
| it correlates well with job performance and maximum level
| of education attainable.
|
| But they are culturally sensitive, and thus racially
| sensitive, and you need to apply the right test to people,
| for the right goals, to get meaningful results.
|
| If you want to hire only people n-sigma above the norm, in
| an area of rich and well-educated locals, and you apply the
| same test to them as to foreign applicants, you'll likely
| never hire a foreigner - they won't test as well as they
| would on a test in their native tongue/tasks/etc.
|
| But if you try to estimate the level of abilities needed
| and you use the correct test to establish an applicant's
| ability against that metric and hire from anyone qualified,
| then the tests are useful. They're even a way for skilled
| foreigners to test into qualification without having to
| jump through expensive credentialing hoops.
| rayiner wrote:
| Are IQ tests (or any standardized test) "culturally
| sensitive?"
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| Yeah, particularly the language ones. You do have some
| non culturally sensitive ones like Ravens matrices, but
| they're not the default.
| rayiner wrote:
| By "culture" do you mean being able to speak English?
| Because I am at a loss as to what else you think is in
| there.
| bell-cot wrote:
| > so why not just create a test that actually tests for the
| skills needed for the job?
|
| IANAL, but my cynical guess is America's legal system.
| Being ever-so-obviously in the right does not pay your
| attorney's bills for you.
| fourseventy wrote:
| Do you want a Dr operating on you who didn't graduate from
| college or medical school? There is a reason why degrees are
| requirements.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Do you _not_ want an EMT who didn 't go to college keeping
| you alive in the ambulance, until the real doctor at the
| hospital gets to look at you?
|
| You'd rather die? OK, your choice.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Way to change the subject. I thought we were talking about
| cops here.
| gadders wrote:
| A lot of places are dropping all lowering their degree
| requirements as part of a move to increase diversity. McKinsey
| [1] and Harvard Business Review [2] have both written on the
| topic.
|
| [1] https://www.mckinsey.com/about-us/new-at-mckinsey-
| blog/teari...
|
| [2] https://hbr.org/2023/03/the-new-collar-workforce
| BuyMyBitcoins wrote:
| Hiring employees is a risky prospect and firing a bad hire can
| be an expensive and lengthy process, depending on the
| jurisdiction. So naturally employers want to minimize the risk
| of hiring someone incompetent.
|
| Decades ago the use of IQ testing for job applicants was made
| illegal. Requiring a college degree serves as a legal and
| socially acceptable proxy for a level of intelligence.
|
| Whether or not that is actually valid is another matter. From
| an employer's perspective the amount of effort to require a
| college degree is virtually nill and it helps to cut down on
| the sheer number of applicants they have to process.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Highly technical jobs in chemistry, physics, engineering,
| molecular biology require a certain kind of college education
| that involves a lot of hands-on experience in research labs.
| The traditional college coursework is not nearly as important
| as what amounts to vocational training working side-by-side
| with technicians, grad students, postdocs etc. There's no real
| way to acquire the needed experience without getting into a
| four-year research-centric university.
|
| A private company just isn't going to invest the time and
| energy needed to train an apprentice in these fields from
| scratch, and two-year community colleges rarely have access to
| the latest modern technology.
|
| Other than that, your comment seems pretty accurate.
| metalspot wrote:
| > a private company just isn't going to invest the time and
| energy needed to train an apprentice
|
| not as long as they can force people to pay for it themselves
| and have the government and the tax payers subsidize it.
|
| universities were never meant to be vocational schools
| though, and they do a horrible job at it.
|
| to take computer science as an example: a 4 years bachelor
| degree only has about 500 hours of classroom instruction in
| comp sci subjects.
|
| a 9-5 vocational training program can provide 480 hours of
| classroom instruction in 3 months.
|
| the idea that students benefit by going to a university where
| they only spend a few hours a day learning and the rest of
| the time playing games, socializing, drinking and doing
| drugs, is absurd.
|
| put people in a 9-5 40 hour a week program that has the same
| attendance and performance requirements as the job they are
| training for and they can be trained to the level of any
| bachelors degree in 3-6 months.
| ejstronge wrote:
| > to take computer science as an example: a 4 years
| bachelor degree only has about 500 hours of classroom
| instruction in comp sci subjects.
|
| > a 9-5 vocational training program can provide 480 hours
| of classroom instruction in 3 months.
|
| This feels like a disingenuous response - are you
| suggesting that solely 500 hours of a computer science
| degree confers utility to a graduate? Even then, 500 hours
| taken consecutively can hardly be compared to 500 hours
| spent over multiple years, interspersed with hands-on
| projects and internships.
| metalspot wrote:
| > 500 hours taken consecutively can hardly be compared to
| 500 hours spent over multiple years
|
| 500 consecutive hours should be far superior because the
| time is focused and with fewer distractions.
|
| training people in a professional 9-5 corporate
| environment as opposed to the adult daycare resort
| environment of universities would probably lead to better
| outcomes as well.
|
| very little of what you learn in comp sci is relevant to
| your job as a new grad.
|
| for software engineering a comp sci new grad still needs
| years of mentorship, supervision and on the job training
| in order to perform at a senior level in whatever
| specialty they end up working in.
|
| because software engineering is so highly specialized
| pretty much everything you need to know for a particular
| job must be learned on the job.
|
| the only thing a comp sci degree really shows is that a
| person has interest in the field and is capable of
| learning, but there are much better ways to figure that
| out than requiring degrees.
| dsfyu404ed wrote:
| I appreciate the gesture but let's be real here. It's not like
| the requirement ever mattered. Just like a white house
| internship, nobody was getting a job as a congressional staffer
| without a recommendation from someone worth listening to.
| whydoyoucare wrote:
| By eliminating the requirement, the exact thing you lament
| about has been legalized. Now they have taken away whatever
| power we had as citizens to demand changes.
| elil17 wrote:
| I've heard it's actually not that hard to be a congressional
| staffer on the house side, especially if you're willing to work
| for someone unpopular. It is not however, the job that most
| people think it is. You mostly answer calls from constituents.
| dopeboy wrote:
| Former congressional intern and WH intern (and later WH staff)
| here - it's possible to get those internships without a
| recommendation from someone worth listening to. I would go so
| far as to say it's mildly common.
| chaps wrote:
| It's such a silly requirement. One of the few local government
| jobs I tried to applied for denied me immediately because I don't
| have a degree. The requirement is built on top of a decades-long
| lawsuit about political patronage, where agencies are required to
| write very explicit hiring rules. I imagine modifications to the
| hiring rules for college degree requirements would require a
| _lot_ of legal review before they make any changes. It 's
| possible to get exceptions, but they're narrow and wouldn't have
| applied for me.
| the_only_law wrote:
| Personally, I found local government east to get into. When I
| worked for a state government it was easy as hell to get (but
| compensation was abysmal in a rather poor state)
|
| But man federal jobs. I don't think I've ever seen as good an
| example of choosing beggars. There are even jobs I'd be 100%
| willing to take the massive paycut for, but I will never
| qualify because I don't satisfy the bureaucratic box tickers.
| whitemary wrote:
| This is also a silly solution. There is no shortage of people
| with college degrees. The only result will be lower wages.
|
| I am speaking as a SWE who only recently received a degree late
| in life, purely to assist in my next job search, which I don't
| expect to be soon. I am not defending such accreditation
| nonsense.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| There's a story in Obama's bio (I think) where he went down to
| the local Chicago Democratic Party office to volunteer. Someone
| could find the reference if I'm not GPT-3'ing this.
|
| The guy behind the desk said, "Who sent you?" (meaning, "what
| Party official?")
|
| Obama said, "Nobody."
|
| So the guy sent him away, with "We don't want nobody nobody
| sent!"
|
| They didn't ask where he went to school, though.
| troutwine wrote:
| My understanding is this anecdote originates with Abner Mikva.
| It is Chicagoland but from the 1940s.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Thanks. Fortunately I allowed for some uncertainty there.
| version_five wrote:
| Sort of related, ontario is dropping university requirements for
| police: https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/ontario-eliminating-
| edu...
|
| I wonder if it's coincidence or the start of a trend back to
| sanity about job qualifications. Ironically, by becoming almost
| ubiquitous, university education also becomes irrelevant.
| flavius29663 wrote:
| AKA: If everyone is super, then nobody is
| uejfiweun wrote:
| Astounding to me how deep that movie was for a kids movie,
| how DIFFERENT it is from the types of morals and values that
| are pushed in modern films, and how well it holds up today.
| jl6 wrote:
| Ten years later, we learned that if everything is awesome,
| nothing is awesome.
| kevviiinn wrote:
| [flagged]
| coding123 wrote:
| Humanity is obviously a strong-link system.
| augment003 wrote:
| I think the implication is that a college degree no longer
| represents progress.
| leetcrew wrote:
| unironically yes? if a job "requires" a BA/BS, but
| realistically could be done by the median highschool
| graduate, that's four years off the person's life for no
| real reason.
|
| of course, there are other benefits of higher education.
| but credential creep itself is a signal of waste, not
| progress.
| johngladtj wrote:
| When those standards cost resources to acquire and maintain
| without providing a return?
|
| Yes, absolutely that's harmful for humanity in general
| kevviiinn wrote:
| The return is a more educated populace, what's harmful
| for humanity in general is thinking about everything in
| monetary terms
| nawgz wrote:
| I don't think there's anything sane about the Police reducing
| their job requirements when we see how ripe for abuse the
| position is and how unstable it has become in the US based on
| similar reductions.
|
| I also don't really understand how university education is
| "almost ubiquitous"; I see that the prevalence of Bachelor's
| degrees amongst adults is under 40%. Is the claim that the
| demographic of 21-32 would have a percentage like 70% or what?
| coding123 wrote:
| [flagged]
| hnuser0000 wrote:
| "yeah yeah yeah drop the college requirements for
| everyone", who is saying this?
| coding123 wrote:
| It's like most of the comments on the page you're looking
| at.
| ModernMech wrote:
| Neither of those things are being said here. You're just
| amusing yourself.
| augment003 wrote:
| College degrees don't seem to have done anything to make the
| police less abusive. Why waste money on them when we could
| instead give police better _police_ training and resources?
| bfeynman wrote:
| Very idealistic to think that money would be reallocated to
| give police better training and resources, unless you mean
| military grade equipment for responding to domestic
| disputes.
|
| One can dream though...
| coding123 wrote:
| Domestic Disputes in America very often involves guns
| now. So yeah it seems like if you were a copy and you
| were told to handle a bunch of yelling from an apartment
| upstairs in the US, you might want to go with at least a
| vest on, if not helmet.
| redavni wrote:
| Domestic disputes are one of the most likely calls to
| result in an injury to or death of an officer. I sure
| wouldn't want to show up to a couple fighting in a bad
| neighborhood without backup and guns because some
| suburbanite is squeamish about violence. Especially for
| like $50k a year or less.
| smcin wrote:
| > _Domestic disputes are one of the most likely calls to
| result in an injury to or death of an officer._
|
| I don't see that the FBI stats support that claim, and
| even if, the rate is still comparatively low, and skews
| very heavily towards the US South (which is only 38% of
| the population, but has very high gun ownership and gun
| violence rates):
|
| Police officers' risk of on-the-job death in most years
| averages #14 .. #18, behind logging, fishing, farming,
| construction, heavy manufacturing, trucking [0].
|
| From the 2021 data ('FBI LEOKA') [1] for on-the-job
| police officer deaths reported by 7886 LE agencies:
|
| * 73 were Feloniously killed (only 7 total in responding
| to all disorders/disturbances (e.g., disorderly subjects,
| fights, domestic disturbances/violence))
| - 61 of those 73 were killed by firearms - 44 of
| those 73 were in the South
|
| * plus 56 Accidental deaths (32 of which were crashes).
|
| (If we check individual case reports at [2], we can see
| how many of the 7 total responding to
| disorders/disturbances were Domestic.)
|
| * Assaults: [3] 43,649 officers assaulted in 2021
|
| - 28.6% (12,463) occurred while officers responded to
| [all] disturbance calls - 35% sustained injuries - 49.5%
| occurred in the South
|
| And for 2022, FBI releases preliminary LEOKA statistics
| for 2022 to October [4].
|
| The latest years for which I can easily find all the
| detailed LEOKA Tables are 1996..2019 [5] e.g. Table 24:
| "Circumstances encountered by victim officer upon arrival
| at the scene of the incident".
|
| [0]: https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/careers/2018/01
| /09/work...
|
| [1]: https://leb.fbi.gov/bulletin-highlights/additional-
| highlight...
|
| [2]: Comprehensive data tables about these events and
| brief narratives describing the fatal attacks are
| available on the Law Enforcement Officers Killed and
| Assaulted (LEOKA) portion of the FBI's Crime Data
| Explorer at https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov/
|
| [3]: https://leb.fbi.gov/bulletin-highlights/additional-
| highlight...
|
| [4]: https://www.police1.com/officer-safety/articles/fbi-
| releases...
|
| [5]: https://ucr.fbi.gov/leoka/2019/topic-pages/officers-
| feloniou...
| augment003 wrote:
| True, but it's only idealistic because nobody is
| seriously talking about it. The two options seem to
| either be defund or militarize. If more people talk about
| sensible options regularly then they won't seem like pipe
| dreams.
|
| In any case the point here is that college degrees
| clearly don't serve as great police training.
| amalcon wrote:
| There are people seriously talking about it. E.g. the
| current President of the United States has been talking
| about better police training since his campaign, and has
| issued executive orders touching on it. It's just kind of
| boring, so it doesn't end up in the news and doesn't go
| anywhere with the legislature.
|
| (edit: I don't want to litigate whether POTUS's
| preferences for better training would actually improve
| things, I only want to point out he's been talking about
| it).
| augment003 wrote:
| In that case, I guess I'm not being idealistic, just
| reasonable.
| nawgz wrote:
| > College degrees don't seem to have done anything to make
| the police less abusive
|
| Sorry, but can we try to talk in facts?
|
| In Canada, since 2000, there have been 704 police-involved
| deaths [0].
|
| Let's take a conservative population of 30M for Canada
| (which will inflate this stat) - then we get: 704 / 22 /
| 30M => 1 in 1 million Canadians die at the hands of police
| per year
|
| On the other hand, in the US, there were 1022 _police
| shootings_ in 2022 alone [1].
|
| 1022 / 331M => 3 in 1 million Americans are SHOT by police
| per year.
|
| There's already a >3x discrepancy while using only US
| police shootings vs all Canadian police-involved deaths,
| and I'm sure the police killed plenty of people with
| tasers, beatings, and negligence in the US in 2022 too.
|
| So, in general, I disagree with your claim that university
| education hasn't done anything to make Canadian police
| better than US police, and it's unlikely you'll change that
| opinion unless you bring some statistics into this
| conversation.
|
| [0]: https://newsroom.carleton.ca/story/police-involved-
| deaths-ca... [1]:
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/585152/people-shot-to-
| de...
| augment003 wrote:
| Erm, your argument has nothing to do with _college
| degrees_ at all. You're just saying Canadian police shoot
| less people than American police, which nobody is
| disputing.
| nawgz wrote:
| > your argument has nothing to do with college degrees at
| all
|
| What I'm saying is pretty obvious, but I'll spell it out
| for you.
|
| 1. Canadian and American cultures are extremely
| homogenous
|
| 2. Canadian and American police have few differences, but
| a critical one is the Canadian-only requirement of
| university degrees
|
| 3. With no other clearly-defined drivers of police
| culture differentiation across the border, we see that US
| police are probably 4-8x more lethal than Canadian police
| per capita
|
| So, since the police is clearly not about to properly
| train their people, let's not dismiss the value of a
| university degree as a filter, since it appears from a
| high level view that a university degree could serve to
| make a police officer 1/5th as likely to kill a citizen
| compared to a diploma.
|
| Will you propose a different reason why US police are so
| much deadlier, related to crime statistics or otherwise,
| or will you just continue to say "the police should train
| their people", not hold them to account for not training
| their people, and also excuse them for dropping
| educational requirements that served in lieu of that
| training?
| fauxpause_ wrote:
| This butchering of statistical reasoning is so poor I
| have to assume it is a troll
|
| But in case it's genuine, consider vast differences in
| gun ownership, homicide rate, and... honestly so many
| other things it's just annoying to list them.
| nawgz wrote:
| > consider vast differences
|
| I did.
|
| Gun ownership is about 32% of individuals in USA vs 25%
| of individuals in Canada.
|
| Homicide rate is about 2.5x higher in the US, which means
| US cops are outperforming this statistic vs US civilians.
|
| > so many other things
|
| It's not just annoying to list them, it's ridiculous;
| these countries are the exact same place. Across the
| board, everything you can think of has a lot of
| statistical homogeneity between these places. But
| Canadian cops are way better educated, and kill way less.
|
| Around the world, cops that are better educated kill way
| less.
|
| So why exactly are people excusing reductions in
| education requirements for police? It makes no sense.
| There's no supporting evidence that that's a good choice,
| and literal mountains showing that it's a bad one.
|
| This thread is bizarro world.
| [deleted]
| augment003 wrote:
| Have you considered handguns as a factor?
| nawgz wrote:
| Handguns are the most interesting statistic here, with
| the US being a serious outlier (58%! vs 12% in Canada),
| it could be related
|
| I still don't see how you deny that more educated
| officers are less violent when I've made multiple links
| supporting that argument
| augment003 wrote:
| [flagged]
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Will you propose a different reason why US police are
| so much deadlier_
|
| Guns. 1.2 per American, 0.35 per Canadian [1].
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_civ
| ilian_g...
| nawgz wrote:
| That's not a very good argument - those guns are
| concentrated in the hands of about 32% of the US
| population [0], whereas in Canada it's probably closer to
| 25% [1]. [1] says "[t]he overall rate of firearm
| ownership is at least 241 per 1,000 population and is
| comparable to ownership rates in other countries where
| hunting is a significant activity"
|
| [0]: https://news.gallup.com/poll/264932/percentage-
| americans-own... [1]: https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/rp-
| pr/csj-sjc/jsp-sjp/wd98_4-d...
| augment003 wrote:
| Seems like you don't know there's a difference between
| handguns and hunting rifles.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Crime rates, prevalence of firearms, etc _are_ major
| differences which could account for the discrepancy.
| _Many_ police in the US are required to have 60 credits
| minimum in college education (associates degree
| equivalent).
|
| If you want to really look into this, legitimately, the
| best thing to do would be to compare use police to each
| other based on education. This is likely hard to do.
| However, state-level requirements and deaths could be
| compared between states with similar crime/murder rates.
| augment003 wrote:
| So, you are actually claiming that the reason American
| police shoot more people than Canadian police is because
| Canadian police have college degrees and American police
| do not?
|
| Even if your premises were correct, it wouldn't be worth
| trying to debate that further.
|
| Hint: They aren't. Do some research on what percentage of
| US police have college degrees, and what percentage of
| Canadian police have college degrees. It isn't what you
| think.
|
| Also, you might want to look at the demographics of who
| police shoot in the US, and inform yourself of the
| differences between Canadian gun culture and the US.
| nawgz wrote:
| > You might want to look at the demographics of who
| police shoot in the US
|
| Canadian police are also quite racist, but if you're
| arguing that "less educated American cops are more
| racist", that tracks pretty nicely with "please don't
| accept less educated cops"
|
| > you are actually claiming that the reason American
| police shoot more people than Canadian police is because
| Canadian police have college degrees and American police
| do not?
|
| Do you have a different explanation?
|
| > Do some research on what percentage of US police have
| college degrees
|
| According to [0], the breakdown of US officer max
| education of no college/college diploma/undergrad/grad
| is:
|
| * 49/20/25/5
|
| > and what percentage of Canadian police have college
| degrees
|
| And, according to [1], for Canadian officers, it's:
|
| * 19/51/29/1.6
|
| Quite a disparity. Especially when you consider sources
| like [2][3], which argue that:
|
| > "Studies have found that a small proportion of police
| officers - about 5% - produce most citizen complaints,
| and officers with a two-year degree are about half as
| likely to be in the high-rate complaint group"
|
| Overall, I believe there's lots of evidence suggesting
| more educated police are better police and citizens, and
| none suggesting the opposite - that less educated police
| are better.
|
| Across the board, Canadian police are significantly
| better educated, with the exception of less Graduated
| degrees.
|
| Across the board, Canadian police are less deadly to
| their citizens.
|
| Not a coincidence - go ahead and say some more stupid
| shit though.
|
| [0]: https://www.nu.edu/blog/law-enforcement-education
| [1]: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/85-002-x/2015001
| /article... [2]: https://theconversation.com/5-reasons-
| police-officers-should... Source of the quote [3]: https:
| //www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00472...
| Source of the info behind the quote, paywalled
| augment003 wrote:
| [flagged]
| jpadkins wrote:
| Compare Canada to Vermont, NH, Wisconsin, Montana and
| Idaho and see if your difference still holds. USA is a
| big place, with very different cultures and outcomes.
| Once you compare Canada to states that are culturally
| like Canada, your university hypothesis doesn't look to
| be correct.
|
| https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/police-
| kill...
| nawgz wrote:
| Can you provide more sources that show Police education
| by state? While I don't disagree with the premise you are
| suggesting in and of itself, the link you've provided is
| entirely insufficient to make the calculations about
| police education and per capita police violence rate
|
| I found [0], which in Appendix F has a state-by-state
| breakdown for only some states. Cross referencing it with
| your data source is useless, all the top states for per-
| capita police killings have their data omitted from that
| table.
|
| [0]: https://www.policinginstitute.org/wp-
| content/uploads/2017/10...
| metalspot wrote:
| if a job has specific knowledge and skills requirements then it
| needs to have an objective test that people pass to be able to
| do the job.
|
| that is the only way to eliminate the systemic discrimination
| that the university system and degree requirements propagate.
|
| almost all serious jobs already have objective skills tests and
| licensing requirements for employment: doctors, lawyers,
| financial services, heavy equipment operators, etc, etc, etc.
|
| adding degree requirements on top of those licensing
| requirements cannot possibly add any additional benefit but it
| is obviously discriminatory against many marginalized groups.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I'm 100% on-board with requiring an actual med school degree
| for my doctor rather than a skills-based test.
| cjdoc29 wrote:
| Hard agree, I'd rather not leetcode-ify* the health system.
| Nor do I want to see swaths of businesses dedicated to
| cracking the medical leetcode interview.
|
| *because it really feels as if some companies translate
| leetcode skills to actual skills
| kaitai wrote:
| I find this to be a slightly weird argument. Med school
| degrees do have varying levels of quality. Moreover, in the
| US, you cannot be licensed without residency -- residency
| is practicing under supervision, essentially a skills-based
| set of active tests. Then after the residency program many
| physicians go for board certification, which is additional
| study and tests (run by a professional cabal that makes a
| ton of money off of questions about beaver fever, for
| instance).
|
| Well, anyhow, you already do require skills-based
| assessment if you are seeing licensed physicians in the US.
| They don't let ppl practice with only book learning.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| How would a degree be a stronger signal of competency than
| a standardized skills-based test?
| sokoloff wrote:
| GP seemed to be suggesting _replacing_ the degree
| requirement with a skills-based test.
|
| For doctors, I'm perfectly comfortable requiring _both_
| and do not accept the replacement of a degree with a
| skills-based test.
| [deleted]
| photochemsyn wrote:
| I'd prefer police officers with EMT (and preferably paramedic)
| training to those with four-year sociology degrees.
|
| Knowledge of DNA and computer forensic methods and necessities,
| though, would probably improve their chances of getting
| promoted, as would legal training. However, those skills could
| easily be learned at two-year community college progams.
|
| All in all, I think this kind of focus would lead to a more
| professional police force.
| Arainach wrote:
| I disagree. Having done a minor in criminal justice,
| officers, lawmakers, and others involved in the justice
| system could absolutely benefit from exposure to sociology
| and academic CJ. The American "justice" system is a travesty
| and continues following methods that we've known not to work
| for many decades. To fix the system we need the folks inside
| it to understand the system.
|
| Part of that is education. Part of that is hiring officers
| who understand the system and want to improve and protect
| rather than a jobs system for those who want to exercise
| power over others.
| catiopatio wrote:
| Hiring people from a sociology/social justice background
| would just mean the same abuses of power, but different
| targets.
|
| Policing has gone in this direction in the UK, and now you
| have mothers being arrested in front of their children
| after "misgendering" someone online:
| https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/i-stand-with-kate-
| scotto...
|
| > St Albans Magistrates' Court found her guilty, under the
| Communications Act (2003), of using a public communications
| network to "cause annoyance, inconvenience and anxiety".
|
| Fortunately, she eventually won on appeal and her
| conviction was overturned, but the process itself was the
| punishment.
|
| Police need less power, not more sociology degrees.
| jaywalk wrote:
| That sounds more like a problem with the law than with
| the police.
| catiopatio wrote:
| Policing isn't independent of the law or legal culture,
| and police have enormous discretion in how they choose to
| apply the law.
|
| There's also the entire issue of "non-criminal bias
| incidents":
|
| https://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/opinion/columnists/5
| 238...
| woodruffw wrote:
| Americans are normally the ones to myopically reduce the
| world's issues to their own, but sometimes the British
| are not to be bested!
| catiopatio wrote:
| I'm an American aware of how this idea has played out
| elsewhere.
| chongli wrote:
| The US has a fairly large political contingent that
| believes in retributive justice, not rehabilitative or
| restorative justice. In a lot of places the police have a
| culture of the "warrior mentality" and well-meaning new
| officers are either brought in line or driven out of the
| profession. This is compounded by the huge numbers of
| private and illegal/black market firearms on the street
| which make policing extremely dangerous. The combination
| reinforces the warrior and the retributive justice cultures
| alike.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> To fix the system we need the folks inside it to
| understand the system.
|
| Nope. The American justice system does not control itself.
| It is bound by laws and codes of practice dictated to it by
| outsiders, those good-idea people who's entire
| understanding of law comes from a highschool history or
| civics class they barely remember. It is as bad as it is
| because the general public honestly want it that way. Rough
| and violent justice is baked into American culture as much
| as guns and alcohol.
|
| >>Part of that is education.
|
| I agree, but it isn't the people in the system that need an
| education. It is the voting public outside who need the
| better understanding.
| txru wrote:
| I think a few things happened in 2020 that show that at
| least some of the general public are unhappy and want
| changes...
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _those good-idea people who 's entire understanding of
| law comes from a highschool history or civics class they
| barely remember_
|
| Who are you referring to?
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Every community meeting, every political rally, where
| crime is used as a wedge. Every pundit who says that
| person X is "soft" on crime and person Y is "hard" as if
| that makes any difference. Every idiot out there who
| wants drug dealers locked up for life yet is unable to
| address their own addition to prescriptions. Every
| armchair lawyer who will spend hours outlining how judges
| should rule on hypothetical cases, but has never spent a
| day inside an actual courtroom. Every idiot who thinks
| his speeding ticket as important as a murder trial. And
| every one of the to-be sovereign citizens at YouTube
| university. After than, then we go after the flat
| earthers.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _community meeting, every political rally, where crime
| is used as a wedge_
|
| Have you been to these? I have, in states red and blue.
| It's rarely a rah rah. Instead, people have complaints
| about _specific_ categories of crimes, usually ones
| relevant to the community. The question is less locking
| people up than catching them. Policing. Sentencing is a
| separate system from policing.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> Sentencing is a separate system from policing.
|
| Again, not in reality. Absent unlimited resources,
| street-level police determine which crimes are "policed"
| based on the severity of associated punishments. Change
| the punishment for drug dealing from a prison sentence to
| a minor fine and police will all but stop hunting drug
| dealers. Start sentencing jaywalkers to prison time and
| you will see cops at every pedestrian crossing.
| Sentencing is the guide by which police determine which
| laws the public most wants to see enforced.
| gregraygun wrote:
| I honestly believe 90% of our police in the U.S. could not
| pass an EMT course.
| fooker wrote:
| Are you perhaps assuming that such a sociology curriculum
| will always be a modern woke one you agree with?
|
| What happens when bigots get that curriculum changed to suit
| their agenda?
|
| What happens in countries where the current social norm is
| "gay people don't exist" ?
| alistairSH wrote:
| Mixed feelings... police in the US are woefully/tragically
| undertrained relative to police in Europe. 3-4 months is
| typical for a police academy in the US. Plus 6 months or so
| with a field training officer for basic on-job training.
|
| Compared to 2.5 years of the same in Germany.
|
| College may not be the right answer, but the current system
| of very little training isn't working.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| If they could put the money and time they spent on college
| into actual on-the-job training/academy maybe it would.
| State law enforcement academies are really only using
| college degrees as a filter that the person is capable of
| attending class, learning, and passing exams. That's what
| graduating high school used to show. But now nobody doesn't
| graduate high school, unless they drop out.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| Being a cop in Germany is much easier and less risky job
| than in US, because they have 50% more cops per capita
| while having something like 15% the crime rate of US. This
| means that, as a very rough estimate, there is something
| like 16 times more crimes per cop in US than in Germany.
| This is made even worse by things like US criminal being
| much more insane and erratic than German ones (Germany has
| a more collectivist, order-oriented culture, and will
| institutionalize miscreants much faster and for much less
| serious offenses than US will), and case overload forcing
| US cops to focus on the worst cases and worst offenders
| first.
|
| For this reason, more people in Germany will put up with
| strict credential requirements and low pay than in US. To
| make police force more professional in the US, we first
| need to stop most crime, and for that, we need to hire _a
| lot_ of police (to bring the crimes-per-cop ratio closer to
| low crime countries), and massively increase incarceration
| of repeat offenders, who are responsible for the bulk of
| the crime. It will be extremely hard to both hire more
| police and also to make standards higher: you'll end up
| with highly professional cops who are too busy to help you
| unless you're being actively murdered.
| Retric wrote:
| It's very difficult to compare numbers between countries
| like this because of different definitions. In the US are
| INS or FBI agents cops, what about secret service agents
| dealing with counterfeiters or protecting the president?
| How about detectives, dispatchers, part timers, managers
| etc. This is why you will see wildly different number of
| how many cops there are in the US generally it's between
| 600k and 1 million but there's many different counts.
|
| When comparing things to Germany simply don't see a 1:1
| fit for what's a US law enforcement officer.
| itqwertz wrote:
| There is an active political element in the U.S. that
| believes that "defunding" police is the answer. While
| they may have some valid arguments, they don't see things
| from your perspective at all.
|
| We had city-burning protests for months for a career
| criminal high on illegal drugs committing crime. In a few
| days after, there were worldwide protests and political
| statements (GF portraits on the Berlin Wall?!?). Those
| that support this obvious push towards more chaos and
| police oversight have deep pockets and international
| reach.
|
| Real change in the US comes from tragedy and money.
| gloryjulio wrote:
| I agree with ur first paragraph. But u intentionally skip
| the getting killed by the police without due process
| part. And the killing by the police and abuse of the
| power never stopped for one seconds.
|
| U r just biased like the ones u criticized isn't it
| itqwertz wrote:
| Due process started with the liquor store rightly calling
| the police about receiving a counterfeit bill from an
| intoxicated individual and the police questioning the
| suspect. When your culture tells you to resist, and you
| do, you have given up due process.
| gloryjulio wrote:
| So u r saying he deserves to be dead? And by culture u
| mean u r a racist right? Btw do u know white ppl r killed
| too?
|
| Thanks for saying the quiet part loud, that's all we need
| to see ;).
| nooron wrote:
| the society you get by deciding that tired jocks with
| guns and a 2-4x of baseline rate of domestic violence and
| an unstoppable union should get to decide what due
| process is bad. law enforcers should have to follow the
| law. also I am willing to bet you don't know much about
| due process because there is no way you're an attorney
| but I'll eat my shoe if you show me where you're licensed
| to practice law.
| slg wrote:
| Wild to suggest that the US's issue is not incarcerating
| enough people considering we are near the top of the
| global leaderboards on that front. Specifically in
| comparison to Germany, the incarceration rate is almost
| 8x higher in the US.
|
| You are also ignoring how the unprofessional nature of
| police contribute to the problem. Their behavior creates
| an adversarial relationship with the public. This has all
| sorts of negative repercussions. It helps escalate crime
| because cops are now more dangerous and less predictable,
| so people will go to greater lengths to avoid arrest or
| interaction with police. It also makes the cops' jobs
| more difficult as the community becomes less likely to
| cooperate in stopping or preventing crime. Hiring more
| cops can make matters worse because it can necessitate
| lowering the bar to find enough people to hire leading to
| even less professional behavior. It also creates more
| interactions between police and the community which as I
| mentioned, is often an adversarial interaction due to
| this unprofessional behavior.
|
| Simply hiring more cops and throwing more people in jail
| isn't going to fix things. That should be obvious because
| that is all we ever seem to attempt in the US and the
| situation isn't getting better.
| wombatpm wrote:
| It was a popular counter culture bumber sticker back in
| the 60's:
|
| The Police are armed and dangerous.
|
| Not much has changed.
| ryan93 wrote:
| [flagged]
| htek wrote:
| Also, tragically, people go to college wanting to get into
| law enforcement are working at cross purposes to what
| police departments want to hire: less intelligent cops.
| https://www.cbsnews.com/news/too-smart-to-be-a-cop/
| taylodl wrote:
| Soooo...education beyond the 3rd grade is irrelevant?
|
| I know I'm being snarky, but c'mon man! It wasn't _that_ long
| ago the same could be said (and was said) for education past
| the 3rd grade, then the discussion moved to education past the
| 8th grade, and now it 's moved to education past the 12th
| grade. It's just a rehash of the same, tired argument
| justifying a poorly-educated populace which makes for a poorly-
| educated electorate, which tends to be more susceptible to
| populism.
| catiopatio wrote:
| This is a false equivalency.
|
| The demand for higher education has outstripped the supply of
| students capable of making real use of it, and so standards
| have been lowered. The value of the education provided -- and
| the value of the degree received -- has dropped
| precipitously.
|
| Up until the 50s/60s, education past the 12 grade was the
| exception, not the rule. A degree was valuable because not
| everyone had the capacity to attain it.
| ok123456 wrote:
| It's Goodhart's law in action.
|
| If having a four year degree becomes just a checkbox, there
| will be easier and easier ways of getting that checkbox. There
| will be rent-seeking entities that will facilitate this like
| degree mills and dubious online programs. It no longer becomes
| a qualification that the person has gained any skills, but only
| that they were able to finance paying tens of thousands of
| dollars to participate in a few discussion threads.
|
| It was only a matter of time for people to realise that
| requiring degrees for jobs that don't really need them is just
| cargo-culting.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| It's not just degree mills. It's mainstream colleges and
| universities. They are all staring a demographic "enrollment
| cliff" in the face and are having to drop admissions
| standards to keep their enrollment numbers up. Academic
| requirements are going by the wayside; if you can't complete
| an assignment, you'll be given more time, or an alternative.
| Nobody fails anymore unless they just absolutely don't show
| up, schools can't afford to lose students.
| chongli wrote:
| Not all. I definitely believe large numbers of liberal arts
| schools are having problems. But my school (University of
| Waterloo) has only seen dramatic surges in enrolment over
| the past 5 years. They're putting up new buildings like
| crazy just to accommodate all of them! And we're not
| talking sports centres or rec complexes, we're talking
| about big lecture halls and buildings full of classrooms
| and study spaces!
| version_five wrote:
| I don't know Waterloo's situation but I know that money
| for new buildings is largely decoupled from need for
| capacity and is mainly tied to government make-work
| projects. I remember during the 2008 "economic action
| plan" universities got all kinds of buildings. It was
| entirely because the government was giving free money
| away to stimulate growth.
| chaostheory wrote:
| This phenomena doesn't apply to elite institutions.
| mortenjorck wrote:
| I'm not sure a drop in admissions standards to address
| the enrollment cliff and a surge in admissions are
| necessarily mutually exclusive.
| Taikonerd wrote:
| I'm worried that the same logic might cut the other way: "the
| easier it is to get that piece of paper, the worse you look
| for not getting it."
| [deleted]
| PakG1 wrote:
| I don't need police to be highly educated necessarily. I do
| need police to be psychologically balanced and show calm
| restraint. Is there a way we can put that in the job
| requirements and use it as hiring criteria?
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| I don't need police to have a 4-year degree (or a 2-year
| degree), but I would like them to be highly educated and
| trained.
| version_five wrote:
| I'd say that's part initial screening, part training, and
| part willingness to fire people that turn out to be
| unsuitable. All of that is helped by having access to a
| broader candidate pool, such as by not imposing arbitrary
| education requirements.
|
| Something related that's often discussed in law enforcement
| and military is the idea of being able to hire directly into
| some upper specialist positions without the person having to
| rise through the ranks. This is sort of the opposite,
| admitting that some senior positions do not need an arbitrary
| field experience requirement. In both cases, it's about
| better matching the requirements and subsequent training and
| career progression to what's actually needed for the job.
| This kind of rationalization is the upside of a tight labor
| market.
| ngngngng wrote:
| Have you ever had interactions with police? Did you find them
| psychologically balanced?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| The answer to this may vary heavily by country, local
| jurisdiction, and certain demographic characteristics of
| the person interacting with police.
| mkoubaa wrote:
| Systematically, I think the answer is no. Whether or not this
| is a encouraging or discouraging answer depends on the extent
| to which you expect systems to solve human problems.
| kevviiinn wrote:
| Police should definitely be more highly educated, we see the
| result of them not being so in the US
| version_five wrote:
| It's not clear to me that a bunch of psychology grads would
| naturally be better cops. If anything, police forces would be
| better investing in more internal training and apprenticeship
| that's actually related to policing.
| kevviiinn wrote:
| Nobody said anything about what kind of degree let alone
| psychology
|
| Not only does a criminal justice degree already exist but
| we could even introduce a new BA degree in policing with
| the kind of training that would result in an improved
| police force
| dsfyu404ed wrote:
| Education won't fix broken incentives namely a lack of
| consequences for bad behavior. If anything shrinking the pool
| will only worsen it.
| VirusNewbie wrote:
| what does education have to do with schooling?
| ryan93 wrote:
| the solution is just to fire bad cops. The future bad cops
| will get the picture. no way to really pre screen cops other
| than keeping out known criminals.
| KMag wrote:
| I strongly suspect the issues you're referring to are much
| more an issue with attitude and mindset, rather than directly
| with education. I think there are probably much more
| efficient ways to adjust attitude and mindset than broad-
| based college education.
|
| I'm glad I got a broad-based education. It was definitely the
| right thing for me, but I think it's a hammer being applied
| to too many problems that aren't roughly nail-shaped.
| gtop3 wrote:
| I think a college education is a great screening tool for
| determining levels of conscientiousness, ability to
| communicate, and ability to follow directions. All great
| things. My worst interactions with police officers all
| involved individuals that were low on these skills.
| giantg2 wrote:
| A lot of that can go out the window when they are placed
| in the position of power (rather than the professor) and
| are surrounded by existing officers. If I remember right,
| there are some studies about police group dynamics as a
| factor in the type and severity of force used (group size
| was positively correlated with level of force).
| Eumenes wrote:
| Getting some 4 year degree does not equate to 'highly
| educated'. College is an extension of high school for most
| americans, who didn't learn much there either.
| gwbrooks wrote:
| Police need to be more highly _trained_ -- I wouldn 't equate
| that 1:1 with holding a degree.
|
| U.S. training requirements for police are state-level matters
| sometimes augmented by local requirements; none of the state
| requirements, as I recall, are comparable to the more
| stringent standards required in many western European
| nations.
| rayiner wrote:
| So police have college degrees in other developed countries?
| comte7092 wrote:
| People with university educations can very much abuse their
| power. Thinking otherwise is a liberal fantasy, much like the
| formerly popular meme that China would magically liberalize
| its political system because of globalization.
| hindsightbias wrote:
| TIL Kissinger and Nixon were liberal fantisists.
| comte7092 wrote:
| Yes? Political liberalism goes well beyond the narrow
| understanding that exists within the US, wherein the
| label has grown to be largely incoherent/redefined to
| mean whatever is mainstream within the Democratic Party.
| hindsightbias wrote:
| TIL Kissinger and Nixon were Demorats. Along with
| apparently Reagan, Bush Sr, W. Who knew.
| comte7092 wrote:
| Hilarious
| [deleted]
| geodel wrote:
| More educated : Yes.
|
| Have a second-rate college degree to fulfill arbitrary
| qualification requirement: No.
| mkoubaa wrote:
| Only if you think educated is a useful proxy for thoughtful,
| mature, and wise. I think it is categorically not.
| whitemary wrote:
| It's a trend towards lower wages. That's all.
| mkoubaa wrote:
| Lower wages without crippling student loans is a net positive
| for most people
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