<story><title>Modern universities are an exercise in insanity (2018)</title><url>http://scholars-stage.blogspot.com/2018/01/modern-universities-are-exercise-in.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>zamalek</author><text>The reason college is a requirement is because everyone who is in charge went to one, and believes it is necessary.&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s a double-edged statement. On one hand, college is correlated with success (but that may be because college peddles networking). On the other hand, they are senselessly perpetuating a perceived important of college - which may not exist (at least for disciplines outside of medicine and so forth). There is no justification for the cost, it&amp;#x27;s a very expensive printing press.&lt;p&gt;While I can understand both points of view, after my complete and utter cash grab &amp;quot;degree&amp;quot; where I learned nothing beyond what I already knew, I perceive it as a scam.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>KingOfCoders</author><text>I have studied computer science as master in Germany (Diplom) with the best possible final exam score (1,0) in databases, distributed systems, etc. That didn&amp;#x27;t help me very much with my career. I&amp;#x27;ve worked on the side in startups. That experience helped me found my first VC funded startup and helped my career later on as CTO in several companies. I&amp;#x27;m now working as a CTO coach and looking back, my university days didn&amp;#x27;t have much impact, if any at all.&lt;p&gt;Have I&amp;#x27;ve learned anything useful? Yes. Was the outcome worth 6 years? No. I would have learned the same things watching excellent Youtube (Standford, MIT, ...) videos for one year.&lt;p&gt;EY [1] has shown several years ago that university had no impact on the career of their employees and dropped that requirement.&lt;p&gt;As someone who hired and managed many people I never looked at university degrees. And I never saw a difference.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.theguardian.com&amp;#x2F;books&amp;#x2F;2016&amp;#x2F;jan&amp;#x2F;18&amp;#x2F;penguin-ditches-the-need-for-job-seekers-to-have-university-degrees&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.theguardian.com&amp;#x2F;books&amp;#x2F;2016&amp;#x2F;jan&amp;#x2F;18&amp;#x2F;penguin-ditche...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Modern universities are an exercise in insanity (2018)</title><url>http://scholars-stage.blogspot.com/2018/01/modern-universities-are-exercise-in.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>zamalek</author><text>The reason college is a requirement is because everyone who is in charge went to one, and believes it is necessary.&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s a double-edged statement. On one hand, college is correlated with success (but that may be because college peddles networking). On the other hand, they are senselessly perpetuating a perceived important of college - which may not exist (at least for disciplines outside of medicine and so forth). There is no justification for the cost, it&amp;#x27;s a very expensive printing press.&lt;p&gt;While I can understand both points of view, after my complete and utter cash grab &amp;quot;degree&amp;quot; where I learned nothing beyond what I already knew, I perceive it as a scam.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>kgin</author><text>In many industries, a college degree (especially from a &amp;quot;name&amp;quot; school) is essentially used as an outsourced HR screening. It&amp;#x27;s not about specific knowledge, but being able to start the process knowing that this person has certain attributes that impressed the admissions department of a selective school enough to let them in. Therefore, the HR department of company X can start with a base level of vetting already done.</text></comment>