Was This Fair?

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lvl9000_woot

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Oct 30, 2009
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KeyMaster45 said:
As one of my professors once told the class. "Your degree does not prove you are capable of working well in what you studied. It's proof that you know how to study and put up with trivial bullshit."
But why do I have to pay $1,000s to go when I just did that in high school?

OT: Sounds like a waste of time and I'm actually facing this problem myself. I quit going to community college and started working full time. Now I'm needing to go back if I want to get paid more.
 

chainer1216

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Dec 12, 2009
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same thing happened to my father, basically they just need proof that he knows what he's doing. though it is a waste of time and money at that point.
 

TonyVonTonyus

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Dec 4, 2010
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There's a big problem with the work force today. They don't hire based on how cunning the person is or even how smart he is off of paper, if you have good grades or some fancy piece of paper you get a job.
 
Aug 25, 2009
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It may be a waste of time but things have changed. He may do his job entirely adequately but when the time for cuts rolled around he would be less secure in his job without a degree. It's not fair, but then life isn't fair, and the more you try to think of life in terms of unfair and fair the more it seems to crap on you.

Life is a game, with often very clearly defined rules, and while the rules aren't fair, if you play by them you do well. If you don't you do badly. It's why in the end rebels either flame out or turn into the very thing they rebelled against. Because in the end you have to play the game.
 

siddif

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Aug 11, 2009
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In this case it seems relatively unnecessary as he was already with the company a long time and had proven his worth but in general its not a bad thing to have some form of formal education at that level as it not only give you the qualification but build you as a person and shows you can put up with a difficult course and see it through to the end, it shows team work and ability to work on your own too.

Im not normally a grammar/spelling Nazi but it is very hard to take your point against formal education so seriously when you have so many mistakes in your post.
 

nin_ninja

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Nov 12, 2009
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siddif said:
Im not normally a grammar/spelling Nazi but it is very hard to take your point against formal education so seriously when you have so many mistakes in your post.
I'm not against education, just bullshit like my original post. Also, its "I'm" not "Im". I'm just joking around though. I really hate writing because I'm not good at grammar or spelling.
 

siddif

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Aug 11, 2009
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nin_ninja said:
siddif said:
Im not normally a grammar/spelling Nazi but it is very hard to take your point against formal education so seriously when you have so many mistakes in your post.
I'm not against education, just bullshit like my original post. Also, its "I'm" not "Im". I'm just joking around though. I really hate writing because I'm not good at grammar or spelling.
Im far from perfect and also dyslexic - i just use spell check when I'm online (Safari and i think Crome offer this) but like I said seems silly but not entirely unreasonable for your father's friend to complete his degree as a lot can change in 25 years especially in IT (look back even 5 years ago and we can do things that weren't achievable).
 

BE4T

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Jan 8, 2011
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TPiddy said:
Large companies need to boast about things. They need their employees to sound more impressive. It's all about perspective and sales. They wanted him to attain his degree to make him more marketable to their clientele.
This. What does it say about a company if many of their higher ups have no degree at all? If I had to choose between a company that was led by educated men/women over a company led by uneducated folk, it would be most reasonable to pick the former.
 

nin_ninja

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Nov 12, 2009
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siddif said:
nin_ninja said:
siddif said:
Im not normally a grammar/spelling Nazi but it is very hard to take your point against formal education so seriously when you have so many mistakes in your post.
I'm not against education, just bullshit like my original post. Also, its "I'm" not "Im". I'm just joking around though. I really hate writing because I'm not good at grammar or spelling.
Im far from perfect and also dyslexic - i just use spell check when I'm online (Safari and i think Crome offer this) but like I said seems silly but not entirely unreasonable for your father's friend to complete his degree as a lot can change in 25 years especially in IT (look back even 5 years ago and we can do things that weren't achievable).
Oh, I know, I'm not saying this isn't needed in general, but everyone knew that my dad's friend going back to Uni wasn't going to teach him anything new. He already knew his job, and learned everything else over the years through those programs that most employees at large companies go through every year or two.
 

Trivun

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Dec 13, 2008
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I'm in two minds about this. On the one hand, it is a bit of a waste of time, because the guy already has the skills and knowledge necessary for the job. However, I'm inclined to support the decision that the guy should still get this degree, because at the end of the day anyone can lie about stuff like that on their CV (though with a chance of being caught, admittedly), but you can't lie quite as easily about having a degree which proves you have the knowledge and everything. And it'll be much more useful, therefore, for the guy when he tries to get a different job some years down the line and needs to prove to bosses that he has the knowledge and skills necessary. Most bosses nowadays will turn around and want proof that you have the right knowledge before hiring you, and a degree acts as that proof.

And I know what I'm talking about here, because my own father is in the same position. About two-and-a-half years ago, just after I go into university, my dad got laid off from his job as a contracts manager for a building company, where he'd been earning roughly £50K a year. He was on the dole, trying to find a new job, but eventually managed to get a less well-paying job with a much smaller company (though the same job and title, as a contracts manager, which is very high up in the firm). He hates it there and is trying to find a new job all the time, with a better company and higher pay, but for the moment he's stuck. Now, my dad happens to have a massive amount of skill at his job. He started as a carpenter when he finished school (with the most basic qualifications, I might add) and over 25 years has worked his way up through the construction industry. He owned his own small business as a decorator for a short while. He has a string of very high-profile projects to his name (including being contracted to work on the building of the glass roof in the main hall of the British Museum), and he's won tons of awards for his housing sites when at his former employer (both as a Site Manager, for Best Site and Best Site Manager, several years running, and as a Contracts Manager since then). Overall, he knows his way around the job and would be a major catch for any company (he's been headhunted several times from different companies in the past ten years, before he was made redundant).

That being said, he's now found out that despite all this, no major company will hire him without the sort of qualifications colleges and universities in the UK offer for the construction industry. He's had to start going to night classes at a local college and do a set of courses, mainly NVQs and BTECs, to 'learn' all the stuff he's known how to do for years. A lot of the stuff, as well, is stuff that doesn't even apply to his job (like various maths based courses, where he actually asked me for help seeing as I do a Maths BSc), but he still has to do it. All of this so he can get a better job and have a better chance than the wet-behind-the-ears graduates fresh out of university who've probably never held a bricklayer's trowel or a saw in their lives.

So yeah, to answer the OP's question, I reckon it's kind of pointless, but there are benefits too. The sad thing is those benefits shouldn't have to exist, because the experience should be enough in this case to justify the guy being given the job anyway without having to jump through hoops. Unfortunately, that's life, and we just have to learn to deal with it and move on...
 

nin_ninja

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Nov 12, 2009
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Trivun said:
Yeah, I understand what you are saying, and it seems pointless to me that you would judge someone like that on their degree and not their skill or experience. He (your father and my dad's friend) should not need to go back to learn things they already know or things unrelated to their jobs because "Pointless degree is pointless". I know why they did it, it just seems stupid that they had to.

If your father, who sounds very accomplished, is looking for a new job, than they should look at his past work and achievements, not whether he went to Oxford or not.

If your father got that far without a degree, than he obviously doesn't need it. I on the other hand would need an education in programming because I lack the natural affinity for it.
 

RicoADF

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Jun 2, 2009
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nin_ninja said:
So, my dad's friend has worked for the same big finance company in Toronto for almost 25 years now and is the vice president of the IT department. When he (my father's friend) joined in '86 he had dropped out of university because he needed to join the workforce. He quickly rose the company latter because he was intelligent until in early '00-01 his boss told him he was now required to finish University if he was going to climb higher. He finished his last few courses online and got his degree, but to me it seemed unnecessary because as far as I know he learned nothing new or related to his job.

I can understand not wanting to higher someone new who doesn't have a degree, but when someone has worked for a company for a long time and obviously does not now need the degree, it seems silly to send them back.

Should he have needed to have gone back, or was it a waste of time?

EDIT: I'm not against getting an education, in fact I think its one of the best things to do, but I'm against unnecessary bullshit like this.
Its probably a legality thing, if hes the boss of IT and isn't qualified and something goes wrong, they can be in alot of trouble (yer he may know it all, but they need paperwork)
 

smurf_you

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Jun 1, 2010
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HG131 said:
drbarno said:
I find it silly that people cannot trust others unless it has been placed on a piece of paper by someone else saying they could do that thing.
I don't. People lie. People always lie.
People can also falsify documents, they seem superfluous to me... Honestly I think that if you already know the job, then you don't need a piece of paper to prove that you can do that job.
 

Fetzenfisch

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Sep 11, 2009
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Surprise: way more than 70% of the stuff you do in school and university are "wasted time" regarding to their use in your career.
But education is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more than the sum of information you memorize. So yes a completed higher education is important for many qualifications. And not because of the facts you learned.
 

s0denone

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Apr 25, 2008
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HG131 said:
drbarno said:
I find it silly that people cannot trust others unless it has been placed on a piece of paper by someone else saying they could do that thing.
I don't. People lie. People always lie.
Intersting.
Is that a lie?

On topic:
Yes, that is fair.
Stupid, sure, and unnecessary - but fair nonetheless.
 

IzisviAziria

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Nov 9, 2008
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drbarno said:
I find it silly that people cannot trust others unless it has been placed on a piece of paper by someone else saying they could do that thing.
Most estimates say that over 50% of people lie on their resume. With numbers like that, employers want some insurance that they're offering the job to the truly qualified candidate.