{"id":5559,"date":"2019-03-16T01:05:50","date_gmt":"2019-03-16T05:05:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pappp.net\/?guid=24a6a2f4563106a520bab8a0db2ed5fb"},"modified":"2019-03-16T01:05:50","modified_gmt":"2019-03-16T05:05:50","slug":"school-is-all-about-signaling-not-skill-building","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pappp.net\/?p=5559","title":{"rendered":"School is all about signaling, not skill-building"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"syndicated-attribution\">Source: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/opinion\/op-ed\/la-oe-caplan-education-credentials-20180211-story.html\">Hacker News<\/a><\/p>\n<div style=\"background-color : #fff7d5;\n\t\t\tborder-width : 1px; padding : 5px; border-style : dashed; border-color : #e7d796;margin-bottom : 1em; color : #9a8c59;\">Article note: The author (an economist) oversells their case a little, but I don't fully disagree.  My bad attitude about credentialism is both the source of most of my problems in academia, and the reason why I find teaching so compelling.  I don't generally expect a lot of correlation between credentials and competence (Too many dumbasses with degrees and highly competent people with no formal credentials in my areas), BUT that isn't because of a _fundamental_ problem with college. \r\n\r\nAlso helpful teaching at a school I have degrees from, it keeps me in the \"If I let dumbshits through, it devalues all the other degrees from this program\" mindset. \r\n  \r\nA worthwhile college education is teaching you: \r\n- Intellectual and practical fundamentals in a field (underlying principles, terminology, etc.) \r\n- How to learn in a field (ties to the first) \r\n- Exposure to a field (what parts do you like working with.  Enough of the other parts so you can work adjacent to them without being a menace. Etc.) \r\n- Buying you time when you can focus on self-development. \r\n- One last attempt to impose some general educational grounding to give you enough context to not be a goddamn idiot. \r\n- Demonstrating a minimum level of drive, follow-through, and social competence. \r\n\r\nOften, programs fall short, and higher ed as it currently exists deserves to die when it really does only serve as status signaling.<\/div><a href=\"https:\/\/news.ycombinator.com\/item?id=19406432\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" >Comments<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Comments<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/pappp.net\/?p=5559\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[226],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5559","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pappp.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5559","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pappp.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pappp.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pappp.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pappp.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5559"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pappp.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5559\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pappp.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pappp.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pappp.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}