“Yes, back in the day when only TRULY intelligent people went to college, those that went on to get advanced degrees were the cream that rose to the cream of the crop. And that “Cream of the Cream” commanded handsome salaries. But now, 50 years later, where everybody, including the stupid or just plain average, rushes off to get degrees the historical relationship between income and education will no longer hold. Worse, MBA and especially now law programs, are particular attractive post-undergrad options to the particularly stupid. Majoring in completely worthless and unemployable subjects, but still too lazy to try hard at something like engineering, the trades or programming, millions of sheep view an MBA or law school as a way to extend their adolescence… errr…avoid work…errr…”really get into the labor force.” Ergo, no longer do MBA or law programs hold the Perry Masons and Jack Welches of the world, but talentless labor market rejects.”
I’m not surprised about the MBAs. My last department head at the place where I used to teach got one by correspondence, even though he never had a bachelor’s degree.
I read an article once which claimed that 90% of the jobs in America could be learned in 2-3 weeks of training. Surely, that is a bit of an oversimplification … but it knocked my own college degree down a peg (to use an aphorism of our former President) when I read it. It reminded me to “shut-up”, put my head-down, and get my damn job done. It reminded me that I wasn’t really all that much smarter, better, or even more “intelligent” than my HS graduate counterparts. It put my own 4.5 years of college in sharp focus … that those years of self-imposed poverty spent eating Top-Ramen, and drinking Lucky Lager beer (by the 24-pack) did not automatically inoculate me from being “stupid” at times … despite attending one of the TOP public Universities in America.
Perhaps this is one of the reasons I just smirk in quiet mockery, when I hear the PROG’s claim to be “smarter” than conservatives … because they are statistically “higher educated” with more college degrees. Yeah … that and a $ 3.75 (inflation) will get you a cup of coffee.
I’ve held the view for quite some time, that the intelligence level of the average PHD, is no higher than the average of the general population. Obviously, while the highly intelligent are still there, there’s been an explosion of more and more doctorates in ever narrower and less intellectual subjects.
I made the point recently to my daughter who has a Masters degree in a medical field and she conceded I may be right.
Anecdotal, I know and I don’t have even a Bachelors so I realize that YMMV.
” too lazy to try hard at something like engineering”
Hate to tell you, but from (admittedly, a small personal sample size), grade inflation has reached even engineering. As with the military, you can’t have mandatory classes in The Feelz AND learn your craft as well as you used to.
I wouldn’t trust most young engineers enough to work on their own to build me a small Lego tower.
I’ve held the view for quite some time, that the intelligence level of the average PHD, is no higher than the average of the general population.
After having gone through the Ph. D. circus myself, I can confirm that statement. Unfortunately, it seems that getting a doctorate is more about politics than actual talent, intelligence, and hard work.
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extreme irony alert…
“Ryerson University has canceled a panel discussion
called ‘The Stifling of Free Speech on University
Campuses‘.”
lavrenti pavlovich beria would be proud.
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And intelligence (i.e., being an expert in one subject) doesn’t mean someone is actually smart in anything else.
I helped a colleague on his Ph.D. work, and he is an absolute loon when it comes to conspiracy theories, especially 9/11.
Yup. I’ve been a member of Mensa for over 20 years and I’ve met some people in that organization who had a few screws loose. (Not quite as many as me, though. I could probably keep Rona well-supplied for a while….)
I have a Niece who is a Mensa member and possesses an off-the-charts IQ … but her life has been a trainwreck. Anorexia, Bulemia, drugs, alcoholism … an absolute HORROR for her parents. Her FIRST job out of college, working for a homeless non-profit … The first week in … she sat-down with all her superiors and supervisors and told them ALL of what they were doing WRONG. Yep, she was “let go” … immediately. For all her innate intelligence (I actually LOVE having conversations with her) … she lacks access to the part of her brain that regulates interpersonal relationships. It is really sad … because if you spend 5-minutes with her, and you immediately recognize how bloody smart she is.
Her parents have had to create a “special needs trust” for her. A rough thing to have to confront.
I’d agree with the comment about PhDs. Whereas at one time there may have been a need for real inspiration to get one, the criteria for success in one seems to have morphed into simply choosing a sufficiently arcane line of investigation within a particular field and plugging away at it in a windowless basement lab somewhere. In my younger day I dated a couple of girls with PhDs — no spark of brilliance that I could fathom. As for the high IQ crowd at the Mensa gatherings, I’ve always maintained that real intelligence required an ability to ground one’s theories in reality. It’s all well and good to go banging on about “further dimensions of thought blah blah blah etc” but if it can’t be referenced to the real world, it’s simply creative fantasy. Real geniuses seem to be able to simplify the apparently complex, not vice versa.
I think it’s partly the result of the same sort of mentality that drives the ‘minimum wage increase’ idiocy. People that don’t understand the difference between actual wealth and fiat currency are too dense and/or miseducated to understand that giving people more dollars isn’t going to make them wealthier. See: Zimbabwe.
In a similar vein, the assumption among liberals in education seems to be that an MBA (or similar degree) means wealth, and withholding such a degree from anyone – regardless of their qualifications – means withholding wealth. Of course, this utterly ignores the fact that such a degree is only of value when those without sufficient talent, intelligence, and/or drive have been filtered out.
Obviously, a good share of it is just the vampires in the higher education system looking to pilfer as much money from the general populace as possible, and who cares if that piece of paper you give them has any actual value? You’ve already gotten their money.
Have to (respectfully) completely disagree, taught me a completely new way of thinking and analyzing opportunities, introduced a brand new and valuable personal network and introduced skills that have kept me gainfully and happily employed for more than 15 years. What else should advanced degrees do?
the criteria for success in one seems to have morphed into simply choosing a sufficiently arcane line of investigation within a particular field and plugging away at it in a windowless basement lab somewhere.
Not just that, but it has to be one that’s well-funded.
In addition, there doesn’t seem to be much originality any more, assuming there was any in the first place. Because of the way funding is allocated, the number of topics has been reduced so it seems that everybody is investigating the same field as everyone else.
Since I paid for most of my doctoral work myself, I headed off in my own direction. Since my research was in a relative obscure area, I could do pretty much whatever I wanted as there was little chance of being scooped.
It was interesting to see which members of my committee actually read my thesis based on the questions I was asked. I must have satisfied them as I passed.
Real geniuses seem to be able to simplify the apparently complex, not vice versa.
That’s because they have a good understanding of it and know how to make it comprehensible.
Often, though, that understanding comes from pursuing a lot of dead ends and figuring out from that what doesn’t work or doesn’t explain what’s happening. That simplification comes from a lot of trial and error.
I quite agree with you on that point. Through my graduate work I gained knowledge and experience that I might not have acquired otherwise.
Unfortunately, a lot of people think that just because one isn’t working at a job which requires such an education, one has failed. They overlook the fact that one’s studies are a period for learning.
“back in the day when only TRULY intelligent people went to college, those that went on to get advanced degrees were the cream that rose to the cream of the crop”.
Stop right there Captain Crapitalism. That has never been true. When I was in university (think the 70s), most of us got out with a 3 or 4 year degree. Only the idiots who couldn’t get a job stayed on to get an MSc and only the true idiots toughed out a PhD. And when these turds graduated guess who they went begging for jobs to. The 3rd and 4th year guys (and gals) who were out there making things happen.
Education has always served as a great baby sitter. The trick is in knowing that you don’t know everything despite your amazing diploma.
Only the idiots who couldn’t get a job stayed on to get an MSc and only the true idiots toughed out a PhD.
That certainly wasn’t what happened when I finished my B. Sc. 40 years ago. Several of my undergrad classmates stayed on for grad studies. One went for an MBA. The other two continued for their M. Sc.s and ended up working for the same oil company. One of them eventually became a vice-president. Both of those chaps had impressive GPAs and one of them won a prestigious award for it.
Back then, jobs were plentiful. Anybody who wanted one could get one because of the boom in the oil and gas industry at the time. Several of us had more than one offer.
I deliberately stayed out and went into industry for 2 years because I wanted enough experience to become registered. After 16 years of schooling, I needed to blow some cobwebs out of my mind, so to speak.
As for the rest of my classmates, I heard that one of them got either an MBA or a commerce degree several years later. He had also one of the highest GPAs in the class. Another decided to go into law after a few years. The only one of my undergrad class to go all the way to a doctorate, besides me, eventually became dean of engineering at a certain university. He, too, had a high GPA.
I wanted to go as far as possible with my education. That was my plan all along. It just took me a lot longer than I had originally anticipated, though that extra time certainly wasn’t a loss. I became a P. Eng. in 2 other provinces and I gained experience in a variety of fields which proved to be useful when I was finishing my Ph. D. thesis.
By the way, I barely finished in the top third of my class. (I found out many years later just how clever I apparently am when I wrote my exams for Mensa.)
Education a babysitter? Not for me, it wasn’t and it certainly wasn’t for those undergrad classmates I mentioned.
If you work in oil fields then you are familiar with the annual surveys that compare salary to education and that show (every year for decades) that the more education you have the lower the salary you earn (in the oil industry). I believe that “Geophysics” and/or the SEG is responsible for this info. I used to be a member before I have up on groups. If you look to the oil industry you won’t typically find PhD at the cutting edge.
The inventor of fracking, for example, Phd or Bsc? Or over to you with an example of a PhD who changed your oil industry.
Mensa…… the EGO club you can join if you are an idiot with an IQ of 130……
I would prefer the “Densa” club, one that was started because some mensa members were sick and tired of some mensa members elitist attitude
I haven’t worked in the oil industry for more than 30 years.
On the other hand, who invented the electronics industry? I think if you look into the history of that business you’ll find a lot of people with doctorates, people such as William Shockley, Walter Bratten, John Bardeen, and Robert Noyce. (Jack Kilby, who, with Noyce, is credited with developing the first integrated circuit had only a master’s degree.)
How about the laser? Look up who Gordon Gould, Theodore Maiman, Charles Townes, and Arthur Schalow were.
Robert Lucky was a director of Bell Labs, the same place where the laser and the transistor were invented and which developed Unix and C++, as well as the first telecommunications satellite.
I’m sure you can think of instances where lasers, microelectronics, computers, and satellites are used in the oil industry. Also, someone who influenced the field of geophysics was John Tuzo Wilson.
Some of the people I mentioned won Nobel Prizes. Hardly a bunch of idiots and losers.
Mensa…… the EGO club you can join if you are an idiot with an IQ of 130……
So are you saying that people like Dr. Isaac Asimov and Hollywood actress Geena Davis are idiots?
While I was working for other people, I used to worry about how much I was getting paid compared with someone else. Then I realized that it didn’t matter how much I earned but how much of that I got to keep and what I did with it.
Now, after many years of carefully saving and investing my money, I’m now worth more than I might be had I continued working.
You left the oil industry very quickly. So let’s look at the electronics industry.
Shockley (PhD – 1936) can be credited with the invention of the integrated circuit. He formed Fairchild Semiconductor. Noyce and Moore both PhDs left Shockley to form Intel in 1968. PhDs looking pretty good. Then came Steve Jobs (high school), Ron Wayne (draftsman) and Steve Wozniak (Bsc) forming Apple. Bill Gates (Harvard drop out) also had success in this industry (aka world’s richest man). Then Mark Zuckerberg (Harvard drop out?), Jeff Bezos (Bsc, aka world’s second richest man) and Elon Musk (Bsc). In the past 50 years has any Phd graduate led the world in any discipline? I’m not sure. But looking at the world’s 100 richest people I don’t see any Phds.
Jobs, et. al., didn’t do anything ground-breaking. They simply used existing technology and methods in a different way and marketed what they built.
Gates was a poor little rich kid and he filched other people’s ideas. Musk made his money from PayPal and Bezos is really a bookseller. Their real talent lay in selling their ideas and one doesn’t need much formal education to do that.
As far as people with doctorates leading a discipline, I’m sure one can easily find any number of them in a variety of scientific fields. It often takes many years of education and associated training to do the type of research required in those areas as the problems being investigated are often complex. It may also take a comparable amount of time, as well as a lot of funding, before their investigations actually yield valuable results, let alone something tangible.
The names of the people doing that work are often unrecognized by the general public. Their success is measured not in personal net worth but in their achievement and what influence it has.
I didn’t think so.
I have an MBA (1986) earned in an intensive 2 year program at UWO. That was the hardest I have ever worked and the most challenged I have been. And it enabled me to adapt from the scientific to the business world. So don’t condemn what you do not understand. Have a nice day!
it takes a considerable amount of education to reduce a formerly intelligent individual to the level of a complete moron.