College Produces Dilberts

Off Topic
21

[quote]john2009 wrote:
I agree with you there is an entitlement attitude with many college graduates. I did graduate many moons ago and have a professional position with a multinational company. We typically hire people with several years work experience now instead of recent grads. When we do hire recent grads, 90%+ of them have spent time as an intern with our company so we can see their abilities before we sink much money into them.[/quote]

Sure, some people come out of college with a chip on their shoulder. That has more to do with them buying into the hype about their college or degree and less to do with what their college teacher them. However, as has been mentioned, some degrees (mostly hard sciences) do provide a student with a skill set hat is in high demand, and that is why they are able to ask higher starting salaries - because they’ll get them.

Conan, it seems the applicants just weren’t right for your company, though they may have been just what another company was looking for. John, I can’t tell what you do, so I can’t comment on the people you’re hiring, though your post doesn’t explain at all why you think college produces an entitlement mentality.

I can say this: I graduated with a degree in political science(worthless, I know) and didn’t expect shit. On a whim I applied for a job that had nothing to do with my major and got it. Everything else was between 20k - 30k, and I expected no better. People put their own notions/expectations of worth into their degrees.

22

I’m on the finishing stretch of grad school, so I’m basically a pro student by now. I fully understand what you’re saying. The skills that I’ve developed the most are:

  1. picking out from the lectures what the professor thinks is important, and more importantly picking out the stuff that’s NOT going to be on the test
  2. studying so that I have the maximum amount of information in my head for one day
  3. getting the most points on tests with the knowledge I have

The third point involves making educated guesses, making up bullshit if I don’t know a part of a question that’s a prerequisite for another part.

Let’s face it, it’s not the knowledge being tested, it’s the ability to take tests. Some of the knowledge ends up sticking, but if somebody relies completely on the lectures they’re not going to know a whole lot when they get out.

23

Conan, I think your post is right on the money in some parts, and completely ridiculous in others. First off, to lump all professors in as people who can’t hack it in the real world is just plain dumb. There are many professors out there who are earning well over 100K, and others who have built successful business, become millionaires, and decided they enjoyed teaching. Sure there are hacks out there, but there are many good ones as well.
That said, there are many very intelligent hard working individuals, who busted their asses to get their degrees as well. I will be the first to admit that I probably could not sell a glass of ice water to someone in hell, and no marketing degree is going to change that. I think sales takes hard work, a thick skin, and a certain amount of intelligence, knowledge of the market and product, and charisma.
I just got a masters degree in accounting, so I may be somewhat biased. I think that a more relevant question to ask applicants is how they got their degree. If someone put themselves through college, and held down a full time job, for the most part I think you will get a quality employee. Of course, you are getting someone with some real world experience also.
I also agree with you about younger folks and their sense of entitlement, and I don’t think this has anything to do with their higher education. Hard workers are going to come from uneducated backgrounds, and educated ones, period. Just as important as getting an education for my children is to instill a work ethic in them.

24

[quote]ConanSpeaks wrote:
In fact, you owe me for the opportunity to succeed because I have to take my time to train your dumb ass and undo all of the stupid shit your professors taught you. Professors, who by the way teach because they can’t hack it in the real world. Why sit in a classroom, get a mediocre wage, and worry about tenure when you could own your own business and write your own ticket. Think about it.
[/quote]

That’s a bit narrowminded don’t you think? Perhaps some professors like having the freedom to pursue their own research…or perhaps some people like to teach? Just like college isn’t for everybody…everybody who chooses the ivory tower path is not an idiot.

25

[quote]ConanSpeaks wrote:

The rational side of this argument is that there is value in college. If you want to be my doctor or my lawyer or the engineer who designs the brakes on my car I want you to have a good education.

[/quote]

Funny you mention this. I have a theory that the financial advantage of a college is gradually vanishing to those outside the fields of medicine, law, and engineering. That is, outside of these fields, a person would make more money over their lifetime by entering the workforce to earn a “low wage” and real world skills, rather than accumulating debt and irrelevant skills over a 4-6 year college “career.”

Of course there is more to life than just making money, but I’m sick of hearing university marketing propaganda advertising what a great investment college is.

26

With the internet now, it’s way too easy to cut-and-paste your way through college. I remember actually going to the library to research papers. Wrote all my papers on a typewriter.

College is not a guarantee of anything. Getting a job is all about the interview.

27

Sorry for calling you a clown. I was just on a rant. There are various economic factors that come into play and one of them is the pool of available workers. I am positioned in a blue collar town and I own a white collar business. For that reason I don’t run across a great deal of good applicants for sales, college educated or not. But I do expect better of a college graduates. I firmly believe that the higher education system exploits young people, leaves them disillusioned, and does not provide them value for the dollars they spend on their education.

Again, to put my rant in context. I am not talking about my doctor or lawyer. I want them to go to school. However, I think we could all agree that the time and money spent on bullshit electives could be better spent on teaching skills that would allow these kids to survive in the business world. Further, the way we fundamentally teach is wrong. We absorb information and regurgitate it. True wisdom comes from applying knowledge. Learning as we go.

If you compared college to this web site it would be like reading the site for 4 years and then expecting to go out and whip your ass into shape in a few months. By the time you got started you would have forgotten most of what you learned. Worse yet you would lack wisdom to properly apply that knowledge. I’m not saying to do away with education, but how about changing the structure so the students benefit and not the university system?

28

[quote]ConanSpeaks wrote:
BabyBuster wrote:
Don’t blame the schools… it’s got nothing to do with the colleges at all.

If it were just one idiot I would write it off to the volume of people I interview. The fact of the matter is young people in general think the world owes them a living.

Here is an example of an interview with a database manager for my IT department.

Applicant “My salary requirement is $60K.”

Me “I see. Well since you have no work experience what experience do you have in building and querying databases?”

Applicant “In one lab I built a table with the name and address of everyone in the class and ran several queries on it.”

Me “How many people were in your class?”

Applicant “35”

Me “I see. And how would you propose to be able to handle the responsibilities of this position. My main database is comprised of 120 million records and over 4,000 data points. In all I have 10 Terabytes of data comprised of over 500 million records, spread across 150 relational tables.”

Applicant “Wow.”

Welcome to the big leagues kid.

P.S. By the time you graduated from college what you learned was obsolete. I guess I’ll be hiring that kid from the 18 month program at the local tech school. He’ll start for $30K and his course of study is more current. Guess what he even knows open source. Which is great for me because it saves me from paying Oracle or Microsoft $250K per year in licensing.[/quote]

Conan, I agree with a lot of what you said in your first post, especially regarding positions in sales. As far as I’ve seen, being a good salesman takes a talent, you’ve either got it or you don’t. I don’t. I do, however, have a degree in Computer Science and can talk to that.

First, why were you interviewing a person with zero work experience for a DB manager position? And why are you looking to pay someone $30k for the same position. It seems to me like you’re looking to pay someone below entry level wages for a position requiring at least a few years experience. Just an observation based on what was in your post, I don’t know the specific position description or all the details so maybe I’m off.

Regarding your comments about the 18 month tech school. No, most of what people who graduate from universities with CS or CE degrees learn is not obsolete by the time they graduate. Many of the basic fundamentals of programming are based on theories and mathematics dating back as far as the early 20th century. True, many CS grads did much of the school work in C/C++ or java instead of the newest, hottest web technologies like ruby on rails or Ajax. I know, I did. But knowing the fundamentals and foundations of computer science make it far, far, FAR easier to learn new technologies quickly. Think of it like this, if you know how to think, does it matter what language you say something in? Those tech school programs often times teach students how to program in a specific language/IDE (.NET/Visual Studio comes to mind). They don’t generally teach the basic foundations of computer science though. Most the students who graduate from programs like that will be great coders in the language they learned in college but never do much else.

And as far as knowing open source goes. I’ve been using linux since my freshman year in college. In the past two years since I graduated college I’ve worked with apache tomcat, axis, struts, tapestry, hibernate, torque, spring, velocity, ruby on rails, mysql, postgresql, several different linux distros, and contributed documentation and/or code to several open source projects. So yeah, I’d say I have a fair amount of knowledge about open source projects.

Oh, and btw, I just interviewed for a new job as a java developer, oddly enough, I asked for just over $60k. They wouldn’t have spoken to me without a degree most likely.

Cheers,
Jay

P.S. big leagues eh? try working with the US military and national weather service global meteorological and oceanographic databases.

P.P.S. My data set is bigger than your data set (sorry, just realized how ridiculous this post was getting)

29

[quote]nephorm wrote:

You make fun, but 60K isn’t too far off the mark, depending on the degree… decent starting salaries.[/quote]

I’m not knocking the starting salary. I hired the head of my IT dept. for much more than that. But he is sharp and on the ball.

My point is the applicant had nothing really to offer and he was looking for a starting salary that is pretty high for our area. No doubt because counselor at the local college probably told him he was worth $60K.

The guy gave me his salary requirement right after “hello”. The school gave him the degree, the starting salary, but how about the skills to negotiate a successful interview? It is because of this I think the school failed this kid. Sure he’ll have other opportunities but how many other interviews will this kid botch before he figures out hot to play the game? I think the art of negotiation should be fundamental to the curriculum of any business degree program.

30

[quote]ConanSpeaks wrote:
nephorm wrote:

You make fun, but 60K isn’t too far off the mark, depending on the degree… decent starting salaries.

I’m not knocking the starting salary. I hired the head of my IT dept. for much more than that. But he is sharp and on the ball.

My point is the applicant had nothing really to offer and he was looking for a starting salary that is pretty high for our area. No doubt because counselor at the local college probably told him he was worth $60K.

The guy gave me his salary requirement right after “hello”. The school gave him the degree, the starting salary, but how about the skills to negotiate a successful interview? It is because of this I think the school failed this kid. Sure he’ll have other opportunities but how many other interviews will this kid botch before he figures out hot to play the game? I think the art of negotiation should be fundamental to the curriculum of any business degree program.

[/quote]

It’s a touchy topic. If a candidate does his research, he will find that it is inappropriate to throw out salary requirements on the initial interview. However, a recruiter/interviewer should be required to throw out a ballpark figure of a salary range so that the candidate has some idea of what he’s getting in to.

Nothing sucks more than busting your ass to get an interview, researching the company and really putting your heart into getting the job and then finding out after the job is officially offered to you that the company is only willing to offer tens of thousands of dollars less than what you are willing to work for.

Nobody straight out of college should be demanding $60K, no matter what a counselor says.

31

[quote]ConanSpeaks wrote:
nephorm wrote:

You make fun, but 60K isn’t too far off the mark, depending on the degree… decent starting salaries.

I’m not knocking the starting salary. I hired the head of my IT dept. for much more than that. But he is sharp and on the ball.

My point is the applicant had nothing really to offer and he was looking for a starting salary that is pretty high for our area. No doubt because counselor at the local college probably told him he was worth $60K.

The guy gave me his salary requirement right after “hello”. The school gave him the degree, the starting salary, but how about the skills to negotiate a successful interview? It is because of this I think the school failed this kid. Sure he’ll have other opportunities but how many other interviews will this kid botch before he figures out hot to play the game? I think the art of negotiation should be fundamental to the curriculum of any business degree program.

[/quote]

The art of negotiation and interviewing is not part of any required college curriculum, but almost any school will have free workshops and classes to teach these. Its up to the students to make an effort to attend and learn. College is what you make it, and many of the kids are unprepared for college or life when they graduate high school.

just wait until you have one of those helicopter parents show up at the interview with one of those kids. A university can only offer tools and an education, its not their job to hold the kids hands all the way though, students have to be pro active, put in some effort, and use the tools they have available.

32

[quote]PGJ wrote:
With the internet now, it’s way too easy to cut-and-paste your way through college. I remember actually going to the library to research papers. Wrote all my papers on a typewriter.

[/quote]

That is the downside of the internet in college, the upside is that there is a wealth of information more readily available for motivated and intelligent students (read, the ones who genuinely want to learn). You tell me who is going to go further. Its funny, an education is the only thing in this country that people are willing to pay for and not receive.

33

I teach at a Big Ten University as I finish writing my dissertation.

There’s so much in this thread that just misrepresents how teaching is handled in a college classroom. We don’t tell students how much money they’re worth or that they’re worth any money; no one talks about that. In fact, the biggest problem is that so many students come into class and onto campus thinking about money first. I can see on a lot of faces what that guy said in the interview: 60K a year and a three car garage are all that’s on their mind. Because of that, we have to spend a lot of the classroom time just fighting to get them to think about the subject we’re trying to teach.

So many people teach at Universities because we love the thing we teach and would rather do that than have a lot of material things. Much of the time the predetermined expectations of our students are the biggest obstacles to doing that.

34

[quote]Kayrob wrote:
Conan, I think your post is right on the money in some parts, and completely ridiculous in others. First off, to lump all professors in as people who can’t hack it in the real world is just plain dumb.[/quote]

In all fairness, good or bad, the professors are part of the machine. I do however do stand by the crux of my argument which is, schools disillusion kids into thinking a college degree is the be all end all. When there is so much more that goes into getting a good job and earning a good living.

I think it’s safe to say that most people go to college to “learn more” in order to “earn more”. The focus should be more on that task at hand which is preparing the student for the job ahead, not wasting their valuable time and money on gym credits and art history courses. Because when it comes down to it being able to recognize the symbolism of a particular painting doesn’t have much to do with putting a roof over your head or food on your families table.

35

[quote]Captain Glanton wrote:
I teach at a Big Ten University as I finish writing my dissertation.
quote]

Illinois or Northworstern?

36

[quote]ConanSpeaks wrote:
Kayrob wrote:
Conan, I think your post is right on the money in some parts, and completely ridiculous in others. First off, to lump all professors in as people who can’t hack it in the real world is just plain dumb.

In all fairness, good or bad, the professors are part of the machine. I do however do stand by the crux of my argument which is, schools disillusion kids into thinking a college degree is the be all end all. When there is so much more that goes into getting a good job and earning a good living.

I think it’s safe to say that most people go to college to “learn more” in order to “earn more”. The focus should be more on that task at hand which is preparing the student for the job ahead, not wasting their valuable time and money on gym credits and art history courses. Because when it comes down to it being able to recognize the symbolism of a particular painting doesn’t have much to do with putting a roof over your head or food on your families table.[/quote]

I respectfully disagree here. Who says that learning art history is a waste of time? Although it does not interest me, it may others. Being educated is about learning, weather it be business, art, science, philosophy, or whatever. In my opinion, this is something that should be life long. Think about it, if a kid thinks that he should not put any kind of effort in to a class he deems as worthless, or a waste of time, because its not preparing him for the “real world” is more likely to be one of the guys you are talking about.
I think we agree on what happens, but not on how or why.
By the way, congrats on having a successful business, thats no small feet by any means.

37

[quote]ConanSpeaks wrote:
I’m not knocking the starting salary. I hired the head of my IT dept. for much more than that. But he is sharp and on the ball.

My point is the applicant had nothing really to offer and he was looking for a starting salary that is pretty high for our area. No doubt because counselor at the local college probably told him he was worth $60K.

The guy gave me his salary requirement right after “hello”. The school gave him the degree, the starting salary, but how about the skills to negotiate a successful interview?[/quote]

Conan,

I agree that people come out of school, or college, lacking in a lot of ways, but I don’t think it is fair to blame the colleges.

Colleges are not always very concerned with real world work-force issues. That’s not their job. Their job is to teach people to think about certain types of issues.

The guy you are describing is a clueless deluded twit who applied for a senior position when he had absolutely no experience.

What he may have been told was that it would be a good idea to get the resume out and get some experience in the interview process.

Alternately, your ad may have left itself open to interpretation such that unqualified applicants applied.

Hell, why even waste time interviewing the fool, as there would have been no relevant experience detailed on the resume either.

To put it in sales-speak, qualify your leads better…

38

[quote]ConanSpeaks wrote:
I think it’s safe to say that most people go to college to “learn more” in order to “earn more”. The focus should be more on that task at hand which is preparing the student for the job ahead, not wasting their valuable time and money on gym credits and art history courses. Because when it comes down to it being able to recognize the symbolism of a particular painting doesn’t have much to do with putting a roof over your head or food on your families table.[/quote]

I saw this was already tackled by another, but what the heck.

If someone wants to go to college to “learn more” to “earn more” then they should make sure that they learn what they need to learn.

However, once again, I don’t think a college is trying to fill the role that you think it is. They allow people to pick up expertise in some subject matter.

Whether or not that subject matter is relevant to the business world is really under the control of the student, when they can choose the type of courses they take or the types of projects they focus on.

For example, hopefully the people who are putting a lot of time into learning about paintings are somewhat interested in the art world, and will want to find jobs in that area.

Personally, I get a bit concerned that people lose sight of “life” and instead focus on nothing other than “the almighty dollar”. Hey, I’ve got nothing against earning money, but there is in fact a lot more to life than that.

Not everybody is going to college and using a calculator to determine the future value of every course they take. And, you can blame society, because everyone grows up hearing how you have to get an education to get a good job.

Colleges prepare you to be entry level drones for large corporations. They have the time and the resources to bring in a ton of employees, slowly get them into the way the real world works, and then start incentivizing the ones that are productive.

If your business isn’t huge, then you are probably looking for people that already have experience, but not wanting to pay the extra wage that such people know they are worth.

Get losers at entry level wages or pay higher wages for success and experience. The schools aren’t really involved at all… except that you wish they could give you the same qualities that experienced people have without the additional costs.

Yeah, I’m long winded, but you just don’t like the nature of the market you are dealing with. It’s extremely hard to find people that are competent if they don’t already have suitable on-the-job experience.

39

[quote]ConanSpeaks wrote:
Kayrob wrote:
Conan, I think your post is right on the money in some parts, and completely ridiculous in others. First off, to lump all professors in as people who can’t hack it in the real world is just plain dumb.

In all fairness, good or bad, the professors are part of the machine. I do however do stand by the crux of my argument which is, schools disillusion kids into thinking a college degree is the be all end all. When there is so much more that goes into getting a good job and earning a good living.

I think it’s safe to say that most people go to college to “learn more” in order to “earn more”. The focus should be more on that task at hand which is preparing the student for the job ahead, not wasting their valuable time and money on gym credits and art history courses. Because when it comes down to it being able to recognize the symbolism of a particular painting doesn’t have much to do with putting a roof over your head or food on your families table.[/quote]

I agree. I think the college classes that are required fuel the entitlement attitude that my generation has. Why should my degree be worth anything, when you look and see that 20 of the 126 credits (nearly 16%) was spent taking dumb electives. Since I was in the business program, I was forbidden from taking business classes as my electives. I would have loved to take a sales class, a real estate class, maybe a finance class, but it was not allowed. Instead of taking another science class, or math class, I chose some health classes and a few team sports. What a waste that was.

But I see the entitlement attitude here at work. When I hired in at my job, it was for 29 (which was below industry wages). I had another offer for 36, and my boss decided to match it. So I stayed. My recently graduated counterpart also got this raise. He has since gone on to bad mouth the company and the boss for not paying us what we are worth. He wants a double digit bonus (at least 15%), and he wants his base pay to be at least 45. For what? We have done what was asked of us and have done a good job, but to think that we need a nearly 10k increase in pay and double digit bonuses is a little excessive.

I am glad that my parents screwed my head on tight growing up. I seen my dad take a huge pay cut to put himself through an apprenticeship while my mother was taking care of myself and my sisters. Ive seen my parents work hard to allow our family to have things and to pay for each of their kids education. Instead of getting the entitlement attitude, I want to do the same for my children, and hopefully instill some good values along the way, much like my parents did for me.

In fact, I think that what Conan is seeing starts far before college. A lot of kids feel entitled to things before they do anything. A lot of my sisters freshman friends are like that. That said, college is terribly inadequate. My friends and I have not used much that we learned in college. Most of our learning has been on the job, and we could have done that right out of high school. I wish college had classes on how to deal with people, how to manage your time, how to manage your money, the important stuff. In fact, I think that stuff should be taught in high school. I won’t get started on education, because I think it is lacking in this country.

End rant.

40

[quote]vroom wrote:

Colleges are not always very concerned with real world work-force issues. That’s not their job. Their job is to teach people to think about certain types of issues.

[/quote]

Colleges exist to make money. That’s it. The military academies are the exception (I can’t think of another school where EVERY student addends for free).

Why are football (sometimes basketball) coaches the highest paid employees of almost all colleges? Football (or basketball) brings in more money for the school than any thing else, especially at the Div I schools. Good football program equals big bucks

It’s a business. On paper, universities claim to be all about education and all sorts of lofty ambitions of character, integrity, leadership, blah, blah, blah…it’s about money.