education-portal.com
By John Lawrence
It used to be accepted without question that a college degree was necessary to get a good job, and over the course of a lifetime, you would make more money with a college degree than without one. But not so fast. Despite the propaganda put out by colleges who hope to profit off your matriculation, it turns out that the latest thing in hiring practices is to disregard the college degree altogether.
Companies like Xerox are hiring not based on your resume, which includes your degrees and work experience, but on a test they’ve devised which they claim is a better predictor of job performance. Xerox runs 175 call centers around the world. In all, the centers employ more than 50,000 customer service agents who deal with questions about everything from cellphone bills to health insurance.
Xerox was having a problem hiring the right people for the jobs and reducing turnover. So they hired a company to help them do a better job of finding the right people. This company studied the characteristics of those people already at Xerox who were successful at their jobs and came up with a test whose aim was to find new applicants with exactly those same characteristics.
The company, whose name is Evolv, tested prospective employees based on the data collected from employees already on the job and doing well. With these new techniques, Xerox says it has been able to improve its hiring and significantly reduce turnover at its call centers.
Other companies that parse employee data say that the conventional wisdom about the desirability of college graduates as employees is flat out wrong. Michael Rosenbaum of Pegged Software said the following: “We find zero statistically significant correlation between a college degree or a master’s degree and success as a software developer.”
Really?! This is not what the for profit colleges or even the traditional colleges want you to hear. They profit from loading you up with a huge load of student loan debt. Why would you acquire a prodigious amount of student loan debt only to find out that your degree was practically worthless in the job market?
On the Evolv website they say they are the recognized leader in Big Data workforce optimization. The idea is that they collect a lot of data on what makes for a successful employee, and then assist companies in finding those individuals whose characteristics correlate with that data. This does not mean that they look for people with college degrees. The whole degree process is effectively bypassed and invalidated by means of Big Data.
Here’s the skinny on Evolv, chosen by Fast Company as one of the top ten most innovative companies in Big Data:
[They mine] employee performance to help stanch turnover and upend HR. Big data is also changing the way companies hire and manage their workforces. Like other HR software, Evolv helps employers better understand employees and job candidates by comparing their skills, work experience, and personalities. But Evolv takes it to a deeper level, crunching more than 500 million data points on gas prices, unemployment rates, and social media usage to help clients like Xerox—who has cut attrition by 20 percent—predict, for example, when an employee is most likely to leave his job.
Other insights Evolv’s data scientists have uncovered: People with two social media accounts perform much higher than those with more or less, and in many careers, such as call-center work, employees with criminal backgrounds perform better than those with squeaky-clean records. Evolv’s sales grew a whopping 150% from Q3 2012 to Q3 2013.
Hey, this is great news for criminals who finally will be able to compete for jobs on a level playing field with college graduates! So let’s get real. A college diploma is nothing more than a piece of paper. It shows that you were able and willing to be bored to death and sit through 16 years of classes while being a pretty good test taker. It’s the Good Housekeeping seal of approval. It commends you as a docile and compliant employee, one who will not make waves, one who will submit to a boring job in order to pay off all those student loans.
Here’s an example of the counter-intuitive wisdom that Evolv purports to have discovered: Workers who use Chrome or Firefox—instead of Internet Explorer—stay at their jobs longer, miss 15 percent fewer work days, and deliver higher customer satisfaction. Who would have known?
So all you job applicants out there – make sure you are using the correct browser if you want to get hired! Some of this stuff is downright silly. Here’s another bon mot: Job performance is higher among employees who use three to four social networks compared to those who are less involved with social networks (sort of contradicts the blurb above on Fast Company).
We are entering an era of hyper-meritocracy where everyone applying for a job will be given a rating by Big Data. Finally, Huxley’s Brave New World is being realized. You might be rated as an alpha or a beta – if you’re talented – or a gamma, delta or epsilon if you’re not. Your job rating complemented by your credit score will be determining factors in predicting your success or lack thereof throughout life. As long as you tow the line, you’ll be OK. Having fun, yet?
So who needs college? Apparently most billionaires don’t. Many of those at the top of Forbes list of the 
400 richest Americans are college dropouts including #1 (Bill Gates) and #3 (Larry Ellison). Charles and David Koch, tied for #4, are graduates of MIT. Most of the the Walton family (#s 6, 7, 8 and 9) have college degrees which had nothing to do with their inherited billions. Sheldon Adelson (#11) is a college dropout, but he’s calling the shots in the political arena. Robert Reich has this to say about dropout Sheldon:
At this very moment, Casino magnate Sheldon Adelson (worth an estimated $37.9 billion) is busy interviewing potential Republican candidates whom he might fund, in what’s being called the “Sheldon Primary.”
“Certainly the ‘Sheldon Primary’ is an important primary for any Republican running for president,” says Ari Fleischer, former White House press secretary under President George W. Bush. “It goes without saying that anybody running for the Republican nomination would want to have Sheldon at his side.”
Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, (#12), graduated from Princeton. Larry Page and Sergey Brin, (#s 13 and 14), founders of Google, are college graduates although they dropped out of Stanford before getting their PhDs. Mark Zuckerberg, (#20), founder of Facebook, is a college dropout. Michael Dell of Dell Computer (#25) is a college dropout. Paul Allen, (#26), cofounder of Microsoft, is a college dropout and current owner of the Seattle Seahawks.
Lorene Jobs, widow of Steve Jobs founder of Apple Computer who was a college dropout, is #35. Local billionaire Irwin Jacobs, founder of Qualcomm, has a PhD from MIT and is tied for #342 with seven other guys. He has something in common with the Koch brothers although not their political philosophy.
Most of these guys came from humble backgrounds and achieved success by dint of being extraordinarily talented and obsessively hard working. They are the meritocrats of the new meritocracy. Put another way they are the upper 1% intellectually who became the upper 1% financially.
They are not only meritocrats; they are plutocrats as detailed in Chrystia Freeland’s book, Plutocrats. This is what is driving income inequality in the US and the world: the phenomenal success of extremely gifted people helped along with a multiplier effect that capitalism and in particular the stock market via Initial Public Offerings provides.
As Chrystia Freeman states in her book:
Forbes classifies 840 of the 1226 people on its 2012 billionaire ranking as self-made. It’s true that few of today’s plutocrats were born into the sort of abject poverty that can close off opportunity altogether…but the bulk of their wealth is generally the fruit of hustle, intelligence, and a lot of luck. They are not aristocrats, by and large, but rather economic meritocrats, preoccupied with not only consuming wealth but also with creating it.
The concentration of income and wealth at the top comes about as a result of meritocracy more than anything else. Income and wealth inequality represent the dark side of meritocracy. There is a disconnect between the values that got the plutocrats to where they are (intelligence and hard work) and the results which have been produced (erosion of the middle class due to income and wealth inequality).
Incidentally, Bill Gates does not even have a job, having retired from Microsoft, but still made a substantial sum last year. As of March 2014, Gates is worth $76 billion, according to Forbes’ annual list of billionaires. That’s $9 billion more than a year ago and $4 billion more than six months ago. Even though he’s given $38 billion to his charitable foundation, he still keeps getting richer year after year. There are no such similar gains, however, for 99% of US citizens whose wages have been stagnant for years.
John Lawrence
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This article is a couple weeks old.
http://money.msn.com/top-stocks/post–the-us-is-running-out-of-welders
Along with plumbers, pipe fitters, electricians, carpenters, and many others (air traffic controllers). I wish high schools would go back to having these programs as an option, and also encourage women to consider this. The simple fact is, despite all the doom and gloom in the media, there ARE as you have pointed out many times professions that don’t need a degree and can in fact allow a comfortable standard of living. Also, one can get into one of these trades and if they really want to go to college someday this may be a good way to save up, not to mention the option of taking courses at night if work hours allow.
Thanks, Goatskull, for the link on welders. I think everyone should have some sort of trade and then pursue whatever other educational goals they might have on the side. This also allows for one to work one’s way through college if that is in fact a goal without taking on student loan debt.
This is from an article in Huffington Post about how vocational education is on the upswing in CA:
“Recent arguments in favor of skipping college have focused on billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates, who both famously dropped out of their universities to launch successful companies.
“But now with student debt growing and a mismatch between unemployed Americans’ skills and the required expertise for available jobs, vocational education could be gaining steam, and high schools are rethinking whether they should usher students toward something other than traditional colleges.
“Occupations like brickmasonary, construction, pipelaying and plumbing are all projected to be among the 10 fastest-growing occupations over the next decade, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics — and none of them require a bachelor’s degree.
“California is among the regions that is experiencing a resurgence in vocational education. The youth at La Habra High School in California can choose from several career- or college prep-focused pathways, the Orange County Register reports, with a goal of getting into fields like agriculture or working as an emergency responder. Students at Analy High School in Sebastopol, Calif., recently converted an old shop class building into a fabrication workshop, where students learn techniques from bicycle repair to screen-printing.”
Any Big Data company called “Evolv” is automatically suspect for lacking that final “e.”
Hiring such an outfit to get a cradle-to-grave call-center workforce may be worthwhile for Xerox, but it has nothing to do with whether a college education provides a lifetime of personal meaning and intellectual enrichment — which is its highest purpose.
Any college student who is bored by ace-ing tests is wasting her time and money and should rethink her program. But practically speaking, there are few jobs of any kind out there these days and college keeps kids out of the work force while learning interesting things. Also, the diploma can be a legitimate emblem of discipline and perseverance for the graduate as well as a potential employer, even if not immediate entree to some dream job.
One certainly can be a plumber or a welder and earn a reasonable wage and achieve an independent life without a college degree, but longevity in such labor is limited by the physical stamina required — and what about the life of that plumber or welder’s mind?
Why should formal learning stop at Grade 12? It needn’t, but it often does.
No one should go to university or college while amassing huge personal debt or in the expectation of particular work. These days even graduate school doesn’t guarantee employment. At its best, college is for becoming broadly educated — about oneself, one’s peers and the world. In general, college grads earn more money over a lifetime than folks without college; they feel better about their place in society; and they have a greater capacity to enjoy life in the world and contribute to community because of what they’ve learned.
Fran, as a college graduate yourself, you must know that the only way you really learn something is not to have it spoonfed to you in a college course, but to take it on as a personal venture to find out everything about the subject yourself. More knowledge is gained by a person determined to learn everything about a subject that by listening to a professor in a college classroom. There are all kinds of resources available to someone who really wants to master a subject like the full course load at MIT, Khan Academy and other online and library resources. People don’t need formal education to become educated! Reading a book a month will result in gaining more knowledge than attending college for four years. You’d be surprised at how many tradesmen are also scholars, artists, musicians and connoisseurs of erudite knowledge.
Back when Gen X was finding college to be an obligatory purgatory on the way to riches I’d get an almost murderous feeling when people would say things like, “History? That won’t get you a job. What’s that good for?” Now that I hear smart people ask — “Why would you acquire a prodigious amount of student loan debt only to find out that your degree was practically worthless in the job market?” — I can see there’s room to agree with them.
My difficulty now lies in understanding why people argue that the universities are worthless in a corporate economy. The only reason that they’re saying that is a belief that education should make you prosperous. I’m not here to tell John Lawrence he’s abandoned the idea that the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake is a good one, I happen to know he practices the art of living. But I sure as hell wish, John, that you could argue the universities should get back to the idea that knowledge is a good thing for its own sake.
I still believe that people who go to universities for the right reasons– and therein learn what others have before them about how to live a rewarding life –will live longer and more rewarding lives than our moneygrubbers and their victims.
It’s strange that we only read one side of the higher education story from so many who who’ve gained so much from it.
I never said that the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake is not a good thing. But I would argue against the proposition that the only way to do that is by attending college or university. The biggest lesson one can learn is that you can pursue knowledge and an intellectually satisfying life without attending a college or university where for the most part you’re under pressure to learn a lot of stuff you may not be interested in learning just to pass exams and maintain a respectable grade point average. And all the time, today at least, you’re piling on student loan debt. Believe me pursuing a trade does not mean that you’re automatically incapable of pursuing intellectual knowledge or that you won’t become a millionaire. There are many millionaire plumbers in San Diego – Bill Howe and Walter Anderson, for example.
Today, U.S. youth unemployment is around 16% vs. 7.7% in Germany and varying up to 23% in some other Eurozone countries. Germany’s classroom and learn-on-the job apprenticeship scheme is its secret economic weapon. It comes from the Middle Ages but is thriving today in a modern Germany with its highly successful export-oriented economy flowing with high quality products and services.
Germany has long realized that everyone will not benefit from a college education but people can still be successful and contribute to society if they are matched with the right vocation. Very importantly, trade specialities and training are NOT considered as a second class job choice for those who can’t handle an academic career. Skilled trades are not dead-end low paying jobs and are not just for people who can’t succeed in college. Germany promotes respect for non-academic roles in society where trades are not looked down upon … but are viewed as a real substantial career, also for smart hardworking self-starters.
Once qualified as skilled auto mechanics, machinists, electricians, plumbers, pipefitters, aeronautical or engine mechanics, computer repairs, hvac techs, etc., people are fed into robust manufacturing, repair and maintenance, technical product service industries that serve world markets. Little wonder Germany’s unemployment is less than 6% today and, because of very low population growth, Germany still has over 25,000 apprenticeship placements unfilled.
Germany’s apprenticeship scheme is a “dual system” in a partnership of employers and unions with government that insures the right job matching and training takes place. The “dual system” comprises training in-house at a company and partly at local vocational schools. On-the-job time is split between (1) learning in workshops and classrooms at vocational schools 1 to 2 days a week where students study theory and practice as well as basic economics, social studies, even languages, and other general subjects, and (2) learning by doing in a 2 to 3 year apprenticeship within a company actually working on real equipment at a training salary (or allowance) of about $1,000 a month throughout the training period — about one-third the salary of a recently trained skilled worker. The apprentices are paid by the companies. They don’t pay anything.
About 52% of German high school graduates select the vocational-apprenticeship path rather than an academic education. Over 1.5 million people are trained annually and 90% successfully complete the training. Many who participate in higher level apprenticeships may eventually go on to take a university degree linked to their apprenticeship. Germany provides a college education at no cost for all students. In contrast, the Pell Grant Program costs U.S. taxpayers up to $34 billion. Yet many of those receiving a Pell Grant never graduate. They drop out; they wander in lost directions; they become unfulfilled; they become statistics; they become debt slaves.
Germany’s apprenticeship system, covering a broad range of trade specialities, has enabled the country to maintain and intensify its manufacturing base and related extraordinary technical knowhow, accounting for 24% of all employment. This compares to less than 7% employed in U.S.’s largely outsourced manufacturing today. As earlier noted, a very significant feature of the German “dual system” is that it’s based on a cooperation between employers and trade unions … also something unimaginable in the U.S.
The irony is that much of the above information has been very well-known in most U.S. circles for quite some time, but like in health care and climate change, we seem frozen in an incapacity to learn a thing from other countries … who certainly don’t hesitate to cherry-pick our best ideas!
Having lived and worked in Europe for 34 years now, I should add that making “Big Bucks” is not the main driver of European societal goals. Becoming a millionaire is not considered bad. It is simply not the value really driving social-economic or personal progress here. Well certified work qualifications, equitable income/wealth distribution, job stability, and harmonious progress for all are as important values, if not more important, as individual wealth accumulation. That is why the average European CEO salary is still less than 50 times the average worker salary today — or same as it was for both Europe and U.S. in late 1970s — compared to an average American CEO salary of 250-300 times an average worker salary today.
Unlike America, equalitarian principles and respect are alive for Germans pursuing a quality non-academic vocational training and education leading to well-paying, productive employment. Vocational skills are also constantly upgraded along with the social competence to communicate trade skills effectively. What matters is that critical vocational and professional skills financially secure a decent living standard for workers and a positive contribution to the public welfare in an extremely competitive global world. Still, Germany is also aware of the potential of a middle-class race to the bottom similar to what has happened in America.
America’s post WWII societal values of a fair playing field and equal opportunties through the mid-1970s degenerated into a get rich, survival-of-the-fittest share-holders first employees last paradigm. Consequently, outsourced, robotisized, redundant, computerized, downsized jobs have been descending to ‘skilless’ Walmart level jobs at obscenely low hourly wage rates. And a strong manufacturing prowess has vanished … although is showing small signs of revival despite a huge skilled labor shortfall.
When will we learn from Germany?
The only college course which was valuable was two semesters of Humanities….art, philosophy, music, literature…….I felt I had become an educated person and that was priceless. Now it is not required at the U of Arizona……the entire emphasis on tecnospecialities {new word} {I just invented} has made college graduates narrow minded, isolated in their professions, and basically uneducated. Was not the idea of college the to expand the mind and heart of the, student so they would have a more fulfilling, knowledgeable and wise life, make better decisions, understand their culture and there own values and where they came from? a college degree in my mind MUST create a more highly evolved individual if not, why bother? gracie
Gracie, the part of your college education that you valued so highly can also be pursued outside of college in an autodidactical sort of way if one is inclined to do so. I never took an art class in college, but I took a correspondence course from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I’ve also read some of the best art connoisseur’s books on art as well as biographies of Van Gogh and Pissaro. Having attended most of the great art museums in Europe and New York City doesn’t make me an expert, but I probably have as much knowledge and appreciation as most of those who were exposed to art in college.
Between this article and the one on wealth vs. income, I’m down-right depressed! Both my kids are in hock up to their eyeballs getting college degrees, and I’m still struggling to find a path to retirement, and it’s not in sight yet. Where did I go wrong?
Frank, yours is next!
Paul, hang in there. It’s never too late to rethink life strategies and regroup.