Worthless Degrees Are Creating an Unemployable Generation in India - Slashdot

Worthless Degrees Are Creating an Unemployable Generation in India

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• Drop the degree requirement (since you can't trust the paper they carry to represent actual skill) and go instead to a skill-based interview process.

  I got my current job without a degree, as I absolutely wrecked my degreed competition at the interview since they didn't know jack and were unable to BS the technical panel at the interview. My knowledge and experience in the area completely carried me.

  And I'm thankful that this place had just recently changed their interview process. They used to be entirely evaluated by HR alone, who can be pretty easy to con in a technical area. But this department had been burned THREE times in a row by HR hiring "well-educated morons." So they said that's it, we're sending our people in to participate in the interviews from now on, company policy be damned. And now this department has staff that are all competent.

  • Chicken and egg problem. To conduct skill based interviews, you need skill to start with.

    Particularly since a lot of the India tech industry is about outsourcing, there's little hope the interested parties can gauge for themselves.

  • There is a big misunderstanding on what college offers. The quality of Education from a college degree, varies from student to student. An Idiot can pass college and actually get a decent GPA was well. One just needs to know how the Education System works, and do the steps to get the grade. While other students who actually got a degree in a topic they cared about, may actually have a lower GPA, however leave college with a wealth of more information.

    I have college Multiple Degrees, I got the degrees because I actually cared for the topic, and didn't just try to get a piece of paper to show during a Job interview. At the time those degrees were worth the cost (I got my degrees when College costs were much lower) and working with folks, like v1, who didn't get a degree. I have found they are capable at their jobs, often much more so, than others with a degree, however often run into odd gaps in their knowledge and skills.
    Things that often missed, is while they are expert of a syntax of a programming language, where they can exceed myself, or others. They often introduce interesting bugs, because they may use a floating point data type, with an if precise equals, compared to giving a range within precision, only to have the code work most of the time however make an odd bug that is difficult to find later. While a floating point is often used to represent numbers between the integers, the way it is handled, is via scientific notation, which can bring in inaccuracies. While other data types (depending on the language) may handle Decimal differently, either via string manipulation, or fixed point integer math.
    An other common thing I have found is the idea that Less lines of code, means faster execution. I find this in SQL development, where the developer will nest Selects into their code, only to have it perform like crap, where either a more complex join, or breaking it out into a cursor, and iterating the data, may make it run multiple times faster. Sometimes I do "Black SQL Magic" where I just change the order of joins listed in the SQL to have massive improvements.
    Now I didn't have a class in SQL at college, however I did have a lot of classes focusing on how algorithms work, as I was interested in these classes, I went into the classes to learn the material, over just passing the class. So I came out with a better understanding on how things worked behind language, which allowed me to do things to make it better.

    With all that being said. I believe a lot of these jobs should demand additional education, but not necessarily a college degree. I didn't need to waste time reading and analyzing every paragraph in "Tess of the d'Urbervilles" and many of the other Required classes, that I remember taking, but that is about it, for a lot of jobs today, if we expand trade schools to cover them, I feel we would have a much better supply of folks. Leave College, for the academic, and for people who want to study the topic. And have Trade Schools, for those who really just want to get into the business world and work a successful and interesting career.

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      College taught me little about programming, but it taught me how my programs fit inside a business. That was what going to college made it worthwhile for me. What programming skills I would probably develop anyway, but understanding how business works and how my programs could effect the operation I likely would not learn on my own.

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      A degree tells an employer you are at least capable of finishing a project and can complete assignments by a pre-set deadline. The spaced out barista at starbucks you have to repeat 3 times "I want a tall coffee", because she is so baked out of her mind, at 8am, on weed, does not make for a great employee when clients need their projects completed.

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        Then again, she might have a degree in something that's useless. I worked in the college environment, and yes there are useless degrees, and yes, a pretty good number of students are often very baked.

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          Im not against the decriminalization of weed, but there needs to be better tests so they can fucking fire people showing up to work stoned. If you show up with alcohol on your breath they can do a breathalyzer and fire you for drinking on the job. I really dont know of a test that can show distinctly you are high now, and its not just in your system from the night before. When the service industry is packed with employees so stoned they cant figure out how to do their retail job, and stink like a mixture of

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            Ugh - I have been lucky in that I'm seldom around stoned people, and I'll bet I'd have the same reaction I do around people who have been drinking. They are so damned annoying until I've had at least one. But I don't drink very much anyhow.

            And I sure AF wouldn't want to smell weed stink in the morning.

            I always wondered about that concentration thing. Seems like the basic "guy's competition" where we turn everything into a contest. Very hard to imagine needing that high a concentration.

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          This is the college-as-an-extension-of-high-school problem. Many go to college after graduating high school, not because they want a degree, but because it is just what's next -it is just what you do after high school. They have not yet thought about a career. Until after graduation, with a degree in something no employer cares about...

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      I can't do that. If I don't understand the material I don't retain it, and I can't "do the steps" to get "the grade", as they involve taking tests. Does that make me stupid? I can understand many things that leave most people scratching their heads, so I would argue not, but I suppose there's an element of perspective.

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        Test taking is a separate skill. So you can be stupid at test taking, and super smart at .

        And, the corollary is also true - you can be incredible at test taking, and super stupid at .

        I've always found "smart, gets things done" a good target to aim at for hiring (https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/10/25/the-guerrilla-guide-to-interviewing-version-30/)

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    I got my first full time programming job by bring in a listing of the program I wrote (privately) for an insurance division. The interviewers spent more time looking and analyzing my program than asking me about my college education. Later in another computer business myself and another tech were included in the interviews, We had people get up and leave when they found us asking 'REAL' questions about how they would solve problems. Note: not the answer to the problem, just how they would go about solving t

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  Nonsense. Have the actual experts (i.e. most definitely _not_ HR but the IT people) look at the degrees and sort the dross out.

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  While trade schools certainly have their place college degrees will always be more valuable. The extra time spent getting one is spent getting a well rounded education rather than one focused solely on one subject and the vast majority of professions out there benefit from having more well rounded people in them. I know I can often tell tech types who never took a college level English class from those who have for instance.

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    I'm going to disagree and say this statement is actually backwards. Trade schools tend to focus on more marketable skills, where college degrees not as much. Trade schools also usually have better job placement assistance than do colleges. Most people that enter in a college assume there will be a well paying job once they dedicate 4, 8, or even 10 years. This is often not the case.

    I always recommend going to a trade school and getting a skill set that you can fall back. Something that you can pa

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    You sound like you'd hire a Gender studies major over a master machinist to do Machine work. After all, her degree is more valuable.

    Always, just as you wrote.

    We have reached a point where people who shouldn't even be in college have degrees that qualify them for the same jobs that a kid who quit high school is qualified for.

    But they all have your mantra that a college degree makes a person more valuable always.

    And the colleges were most pleased, hiring more and more middle levels of management as

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      I think the best way I can think to put it is, "the best degree is the one that pays the bills." An not all degrees will do that.

      The old joke goes, "what is the most common question asked by a philosopher major at work? Would you like fries with that?" It maybe a joke but is often true.

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    I don't think what you get in college courses is going to make a person terribly well rounded. Not much has changed and students these days take the same generals that we all did and frankly there isn't anything I learned in those classes that couldn't be gained from watching YouTube videos on the subject matter. The only difference is that the sociology course I took had a multiple choice bubble sheet exam three times during the semester. If you went to class and and our the smallest amount of attention yo

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  I have a standard interview question that isn't typical and would apply to ANY field.

  "What is the last thing you learned"

  The responses are as individual as the applicants, and often (not always) gives insight into how rounded a person can be. People who struggle with the question need additional inspection.

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    That's easy. It was the first thing I forgot!

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    I don't think you'd believe me.

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    Most of the time, the last thing I learned has little or nothing to do with my current job.
    It would still help you understand what kind of person I am, but not strictly related to the job I applied for.