Cool!Chuck(G) wrote:Yes, you certainly can-can
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Michael Keller SOB BATP TADD UMSW
Cool!Chuck(G) wrote:Yes, you certainly can-can
No, it's what I referred to in my original post at the head of this topic.Yorkbrunner wrote:I find it interesting that the very people who are being the most negatively vocal about this topic are the very ones who lack any letters after their names at all...
As someone with more than 25 years of working experience (mainly in IT management) who is currently pursuing a Ph.D. (in business), I feel somewhat qualified to weigh in on this. What Bloke says may be true in many fields, but it is definitely NOT true in business, science, or engineering. The vast majority of what we study, and what I studied while working on my earlier degrees, were researched and written by people with Ph.Ds.bloke wrote:Possibly the job of a person pursuing a Ph.d is to study the works, discoveries, accomplishments, and inventions of those many to whom it never occurred to stop and acquire a Ph.d...
...Funny:
The only thing thing that really matters in regards to participating in the world of academia is a terminal degree.
My statement had to do with whether people working on Ph.D.s are primarily studying works of those without such "letters," as you implied in your post. In the subject areas in whcih I have my degrees, the answer is the majority of the work studied is that of people with PhDs. Most of the PHD seminar time in business school is spent reviewing academic papers published by people with PhDs, primarily professors in other institutions. Masters programs are different. MBA programs don't spend almost any time on theory, they're all about "how" to do things, not about the "whys," which are the primarly focus of doctoral programs.bloke wrote:I fairly consistently read how business, research, and design corporations are getting a lot smarter about this and are doing a lot more testing and evaluation of what their potential highly-paid young employees can actually do, rather than where they studied and for how long. Again, my middle-aged friend who is a power plant superintendant (formerly a non-degreed professional trombonist - true!it is definitely NOT true in business, science, or engineering) continues to be offered positions over those young applicants with very impressive degrees because of his proven profound knowledge, abilities, and extremely responsible record of behavior.
My grandfather was afforded no baccalaureate liberal arts degree whatsoever, but was extraordinarily well-versed in literature, the arts, sciences, mathematics, speech, and composition.
I have run into many instances in the hundreds of positions I have hired for over the years where 2 people were close enough as to be equivalent, and one of the deciding factors was education.bloke wrote:In business though, having a degree differentiates candidates when coming in the door of a company. I have done a lot of hiring, including with companies that have used multiple levels of behavioral interviews, and case studies and other tests. There is only so much that you can learn during an interview, no matter how long or comprehensive. If 2 people come in and appear to have equivalent skills, but one has a degree and the other doesn't, you know who will get the job.
I would think it would be highly unlikely that two applicants for any job would have equivalent skills. Whatever has happened in the American business world in the last few decades apparently hasn't been completely satisfactory to top level management, as many businesses are trying to determine as many ways as possible to have as much work as possible done outside the States.
You are correct that there is not necessarily a causal relationship when there is a correlation. Those with degrees could earn more because they were more dedicated, or have greater perseverence, and the degree is the thing that demonstrates that. There could be any number of reasons why people with college degrees earn more over their lifetimes. The fact that they do makes me want to have the degree, just in case there is a causal relationship. Who knows, I might learn something along the way.bloke wrote:but might any statistics that point to this be sort of like some statistics that would point to the fact that those who make more money seem to live longer? The two statistics tend to go up together, but are not at all causal.Of course there are exceptions of people who have been extremely successful without degrees, but on average having a degree does make a difference.
You are correct, my wording was sloppy. What I meant to convey was that because fewer people had degrees, not having a degree didn't put one at as much of a disadvantage. Those with degrees had more of an advantage than they do today. A degree is a prerequisite for many more positions today than it used to be.bloke wrote:This has changed over the past 100 years. College used to be a very different animal than it is now. A college degree used to be something only a very few people got, so it didn't make as much of a difference.
That's curious. I would find quite the opposite to be true. My Dad's biz admin degree from the U of Iowa caught the eye of the up-and-coming Sears, Roebuck, and Co. (though the country was in the middle of the Great Depression) and they immediately began grooming him for a "really big" job in Chicago. (However, when the "big" offer came to move to the Chicago headquarters in his first upper-management job, he turned it down![]()
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bloke "who was just put on the payroll of a very large university...once again"
Well, that is something quite seperate from being educated (or not). It's called being an *sshole and *ssholes come in all shapes, sizes, and degrees of edu-ma-cation. But I would agree...that particular rectal manifestation is most annoying!Chuck(G) wrote:I'm not arguing against folks going out and getting and education, accompanied by bits of paper or not. I do, howver, find it maddening when someone uses his degree as a way of squelching debate or putting on an air of superiority.
Here's another one: in our four-horn section in one of two community orchestras in town, two of us are female electrical engineers. I don't know if the statistical likelihoods are the same, but it seems in the same ballpark. We don't seem to have as much in common as you Fud Fysicists though...she likes beer and horse racing, and I like carrot juice and meditation.ScottKoranda wrote: P.S. So after not playing for 10 years I get back into playing and join the local community band. There is one other tuba player. We hit it off and only discover a few months later that we are both Ph.D. physicists. What are the odds? How many Ph.D. physicists play the tuba? "Probably too many" Chuck and Bloke are thinking...
I thought that your argument was that education doesn't matter, but in this case the point is that the people I am hiring in India can compete because they have at least the equivalent education of the people I would be hiring here. This is an example where education does matter.bloke wrote:The education system in India in many ways is stronger than ours, so the programmers I have been hiring there typically have stronger academic backgrounds than many of the US based people. Some of them don't have as much experience, but I find that they pick up things very quickly and have been delivering high quality work.
whoops! I'm not sure, but on this one point you may have accidentally stepped into my argument...' just a bit more than "pure economics".
And you always have the worry of the "Intellectual property laws? We don't need no stinking intellectual property laws!" problem.LV wrote:A third of the productivity if you're lucky. Then you have to pay someone on this side to sort though the mess they've created (been there, done that...). Some automotive engineering firms have now decided that it costs the same or MORE to send work to India as to have it done here, but they loose tax benifits if they don't.
But you're really spending $100/hr or more toemploy that person in the States. His pay check might say $80/hr, then add what you spend on benifits and employment taxes (FICA, unemployment)Lew wrote:I can hire an Indian programmer in Chennai to do for $20/hr, what I have to pay a US based person $80/hr to do.
I can show you a lot of U.S. based "programmers" that you would have the same problems with. There are good and bad people all over the world. The trick is finding the good ones wherever yopu are looking.LV wrote:A third of the productivity if you're lucky. Then you have to pay someone on this side to sort though the mess they've created (been there, done that...).
Some automotive engineering firms have now decided that it costs the same or MORE to send work to India as to have it done here, but they loose tax benifits if they don't.
The only jobs left will be at Wal-Mart. I call dibs on the greeter gig...
A similar argument applies to foreign jobs. If a lower cost way exists, it will be used by a business if they wish to stay in business. If it's not less expensive, then it won't be used. In many cases, experiment with forigne employment have not been cheaper, and thus are no longer used. Like customer support call centers. The loss of business due to poor support is bringing the call centers back o the States.Thomas Sowell wrote:Immigration has joined the long list of subjects on which it is taboo to talk sense in plain English. At the heart of much confusion about immigration is the notion that we ’need’ immigrants—legal or illegal—to do work that Americans won’t do. What we ’need’ depends on what it costs and what we are willing to pay. If I were a billionaire, I might ’need’ my own private jet. But I can remember a time when my family didn’t even ’need’ electricity. Leaving prices out of the picture is probably the source of more fallacies in economics than any other single misconception. At current wages for lowlevel jobs and current levels of welfare, there are indeed many jobs that Americans will not take. The fact that immigrants—and especially illegal immigrants—will take those
jobs is the very reason the wage levels will not rise enough to attract Americans. This is
not rocket science. It is elementary supply and demand. Yet we continue to hear about
the ’need’ for immigrants to do jobs that Americans will not do—even though these
are all jobs that Americans have done for generations before mass illegal immigration
became a way of life.
Until Mubai catches up with Duluth. It will take a long time becaues of the population density, but in 75-100 years I expect India, Taiwan, and S. Korea to have about the same real wages as the U.S. Technology makes it easier for employies to be located in seprate locations. Now that is little difference in me working with someone in CA, NH, London, or India. The only issue is time differentials. Those can be worked around.Chuck(G) wrote:(climbing on soapbox)Which points up why the basic premise behind globalization (that all units of labor are interchangeable and that the global economy will result in some sort of equilibrium that we'll all be thankful for) is full of cheese. Because of climate, terrain, population distribution, infrastructure etc. it will never be as cheap to live in Duluth as in Mumbai. Do away with all social spending, slash the armed forces and do away with all subsidies, cut taxes to near zero, and it will still cost substantially more to live in Duluth.
(climbing off of soapbox)
Didn't they try this in the UK once before? (sun never sets and all that rot... )Chuck(G) wrote:I've heard that some UK call centers offer some of their domestic employees a salary reduction (by about half) to move to Bangalore and take supervisory posts. If you don't mind living in a different culture, with different weather, population density and social customs, you can actually live quite nicely on half a typical UK salary.
...and let's see--if someone in Duluth is paid exactly as much as the same person in Mumbai, who's going to have a higher standard of living?ThomasDodd wrote:Until Mubai catches up with Duluth. It will take a long time becaues of the population density, but in 75-100 years I expect India, Taiwan, and S. Korea to have about the same real wages as the U.S. Technology makes it easier for employies to be located in seprate locations. Now that is little difference in me working with someone in CA, NH, London, or India. The only issue is time differentials. Those can be worked around.