No college degree? More employers than ever just don't care(cnn.com)
cnn.com
No college degree? More employers than ever just don't care
https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/11/success/jobs-apprenticeships-college-degrees-feseries/index.html
10 comments
First of all not all kinds of discrimination are bad. What about small vs. large schools (cultural exposure/social skills)? What about exceptional programs/colleges that are relevant to a given job posting? They’re not the rule, but these are examples of factors that could be relevant to a given position.
I’ve also never heard of anyone living in a really nice house or neighborhood for free because they’re a great neighbor, but I’ve definitely heard of, and met, students from very challenging backgrounds who were granted the opportunity to go to school for free and subsequently reaped the benefits of using it for self-promotion on their resume during their job search. Maybe if potential employers were running around asking, “How much of your own money/your family’s money did you use to pay for college?”, I think you could have a point here but otherwise I’m not seeing it.
I’ve also never heard of anyone living in a really nice house or neighborhood for free because they’re a great neighbor, but I’ve definitely heard of, and met, students from very challenging backgrounds who were granted the opportunity to go to school for free and subsequently reaped the benefits of using it for self-promotion on their resume during their job search. Maybe if potential employers were running around asking, “How much of your own money/your family’s money did you use to pay for college?”, I think you could have a point here but otherwise I’m not seeing it.
I could see, "what proportion of your own money/your family's money" might work, but only with some cap on that money. I'm fairly sure I spent a larger proportion of my own & my family's money than any of George W. Bush, Chelsea Clinton, or Jared Kushner.
Being granted the opportunity to go to school for free used to be called a scholarship, I think.
Being granted the opportunity to go to school for free used to be called a scholarship, I think.
It should not be the 'names' of the institutions that are relevant to the job posting, it should be the skills.
In other words employers should not looking for 'how you a acquired skills', but instead for 'what skills you have'.
---
Same as when you publish scientific paper (or a Talmudic treaties, for that matter) before it gets accepted....
It should not be relevant the name of your scientific advisor, institution, or whether you grandparent a famous Rabbi (if we are going with theological texts..)
---
Yes, by eliminating the names of your school from the hiring process you are also eliminating that little detail that the cost of attendance for 1 year undergraduate at , say, Vanderbilt University -- is 80,000 USD [1], and that you could afford it...
But the approach I am suggesting does more than that -- it incentivizes employers to consider skills of the hires, and not the 'image' of the schools they came from.
Which, in turn, will incentive the schools to prioritize education quality over hyper-marketing.
Certainly I am not advocating to hide personal achievements (eg participation in relevant open source projects, STEM olympiad's, or other relevant endeavors that build not just technical skills, but also a good character).
[1] https://admissions.vanderbilt.edu/affordability/
In other words employers should not looking for 'how you a acquired skills', but instead for 'what skills you have'.
---
Same as when you publish scientific paper (or a Talmudic treaties, for that matter) before it gets accepted....
It should not be relevant the name of your scientific advisor, institution, or whether you grandparent a famous Rabbi (if we are going with theological texts..)
---
Yes, by eliminating the names of your school from the hiring process you are also eliminating that little detail that the cost of attendance for 1 year undergraduate at , say, Vanderbilt University -- is 80,000 USD [1], and that you could afford it...
But the approach I am suggesting does more than that -- it incentivizes employers to consider skills of the hires, and not the 'image' of the schools they came from.
Which, in turn, will incentive the schools to prioritize education quality over hyper-marketing.
Certainly I am not advocating to hide personal achievements (eg participation in relevant open source projects, STEM olympiad's, or other relevant endeavors that build not just technical skills, but also a good character).
[1] https://admissions.vanderbilt.edu/affordability/
I am not sure that you completely understand how higher education works in the US. This is understandable because it can be confusing.
Sticker price doesn't really matter, because those who cannot afford it are usually given financial aid and/or scholarships. At some places, the percentage of people receiving financial aid is over 50%.
The rhetoric that college is worthless and is solely an indication of "privilege" is harmful, especially to those who are lower income. College is still one of the best ways to acquire skills and an education, and is still one of, if not the biggest, ways for people to climb themselves and their families out of poverty.
Most students work their asses off to get into a good college, even the wealthy ones, and I think you underestimate their efforts and how hard it is to buy your way into a top school.
Also, there is definitely a significant difference, on average, between the type of student that MIT/UChicago/Stanford/etc might admit, compared to the students you might find at a top 100 college. I don't think that hiring should ever come down to where someone went to college like this (I'm sure that very rarely happens), but it does make sense most times for stretched recruiters to take into account where someone was trained because it does make a difference.
Sticker price doesn't really matter, because those who cannot afford it are usually given financial aid and/or scholarships. At some places, the percentage of people receiving financial aid is over 50%.
The rhetoric that college is worthless and is solely an indication of "privilege" is harmful, especially to those who are lower income. College is still one of the best ways to acquire skills and an education, and is still one of, if not the biggest, ways for people to climb themselves and their families out of poverty.
Most students work their asses off to get into a good college, even the wealthy ones, and I think you underestimate their efforts and how hard it is to buy your way into a top school.
Also, there is definitely a significant difference, on average, between the type of student that MIT/UChicago/Stanford/etc might admit, compared to the students you might find at a top 100 college. I don't think that hiring should ever come down to where someone went to college like this (I'm sure that very rarely happens), but it does make sense most times for stretched recruiters to take into account where someone was trained because it does make a difference.
> how hard it is to buy your way into a top school.
Just to add dimension here, I think this is a pretty hard claim to prove. I think it would be safer to say that these types of situations are most likely the exception and not the rule. Even if that's not true, we should address that rather than cutting off our nose to spite our face. Otherwise, I think you make a lot of great, succinct points and I agree with everything you said here.
Just to add dimension here, I think this is a pretty hard claim to prove. I think it would be safer to say that these types of situations are most likely the exception and not the rule. Even if that's not true, we should address that rather than cutting off our nose to spite our face. Otherwise, I think you make a lot of great, succinct points and I agree with everything you said here.
Curriculum isn’t standardized, and while a noisy signal, difficultly of admission to a school can be valuable in lieu of other signals, or otherwise knowing the details of a particular school’s curriculum — top 50 vs. top 500.
Interview 1000 people uniformly sampled from the population of software engineers and get back to me if you disagree.
Interview 1000 people uniformly sampled from the population of software engineers and get back to me if you disagree.
Ok, I think we will agree to disagree.
I interviewed 1000s (low 1000s) of people through out my career.
I made mistakes -- but majority of them were on soft-skills sides of the problem.
The university names mattered little, and in many cases effected person's self-promotion efforts/abilities. That has some value, but not when it is 'instead of' high ethics and technical skills.
I made mistakes -- but majority of them were on soft-skills sides of the problem.
The university names mattered little, and in many cases effected person's self-promotion efforts/abilities. That has some value, but not when it is 'instead of' high ethics and technical skills.
I at least partially agree with you. I wouldn’t suggest that a university name or even the presence of a degree should ever occupy the crux of a decision to proceed with or reject a candidate. I guess you could say I think of it as primarily additive value. The bone I have to pick is simply that I think more, rather than less, information is generally better in this case because it makes it possible to determine how additive it truly is.
I feel that you’ve glossed over my example about institutional size. I don’t mean to harp, but it’s a pretty good example of something a hiring manager can use to make positive inferences about a candidate. If hiding names and cost are really that important, perhaps we could list “institutional attributes” on resumes instead, but I’m not sure how well that would work either. It’d be hard to standardize, and there are too many things that could be missed. Unfortunately, plenty of good candidates are bad at laying out their skills and achievements. Where relevant and where it doesn’t lead to flagrantly unfair and biased treatment, resumes should have more information, not less. I say this as someone who is deeply concerned about equal and just treatment and who has recently been evaluating candidates.
> Which, in turn, will incentive the schools to prioritize education quality over hyper-marketing.
Believe me, I’m game for anything that makes that happen but I don’t think this is going to do it. But for the sake of discussion, removing this information from a resume could make identifying candidates who have gone through precisely these kinds of schools more difficult to identify. Accreditation is sadly not a catch-all. Plenty of schools have had their accreditation suspended multiple times or have various other statistics/metrics e.g. marketing/promotional spend, available which one could use to evaluate education quality, but only if you have a name to start your search with.
> Which, in turn, will incentive the schools to prioritize education quality over hyper-marketing.
Believe me, I’m game for anything that makes that happen but I don’t think this is going to do it. But for the sake of discussion, removing this information from a resume could make identifying candidates who have gone through precisely these kinds of schools more difficult to identify. Accreditation is sadly not a catch-all. Plenty of schools have had their accreditation suspended multiple times or have various other statistics/metrics e.g. marketing/promotional spend, available which one could use to evaluate education quality, but only if you have a name to start your search with.
It adds to discrimination and unequal treatment.
Asking if you a have a degree form an accredited university is OK.
But which one of the universities -- is like asking how much are you paying for your rent/house, and what type of neighborhood you are living in (and so asking for address has to be prohibited too)