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I am always amused at the "devaluing my degree" crowd.
After your first or second job your degree doesn't matter, it is the experience and skills you learned while working that matter. Furthermore the elitist attitude of requiring a degree was the major driver in dumbing down education. Employers wanted workers with college educations, as the job market grew either that requirement had to go or the supply of degreed job seekers had to rise. The education industry responded and loosened quality controls.
If you want intelligent workers give them an IQ test, if you want capable workers require experience or provide training. But assuming that just because someone has a degree is worth a fuck, is well, fucking dumb.
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In the first place, I was in no way denigrating the young man, I even said so, so don't put words in my mouth. We have a special needs person working in our sister lab that has a gift for filing things, which is kind of important. They caught up 3 years of histology cataloguing in a matter of days.
In the second place, my concern was more about degrees. We actually use what we acquire in our college courses in my field (or used to) They've dumbed it down so much, and replaced science degrees with humanities (which has nothing to do with anything in this field) the recent grads have no background in which to build on. You can't tell if an organism is resistant to a certain antibody if you do not know there are different mechanisms of resistance, and which ones are important. A basic knowledge of organic chemistry is pretty useful here. Even past humanity courses, like history and english has been replaced by courses in gibberish. I don't even know what you would call them, they don't seem to serve a purpose except to fill course hours requirements without actually doing anything or learning anything of any use whatsoever.
You can't make a 70% solution of something if you don't know what percent means. This is so easy it boggles the mind that a college grad can't do it.
We have current grads making such errors as setting up a culture on a specimen preserved in formalin. Incorrectly reporting out gram stain results because they don't know what the principle is behind a gram stain. Not being able to print and check off a log because they cannot grasp the logic behind the reason we do these things. Not being able to grasp a reason for certain things and tasks we do is pretty common.
I could go on and on but you get the picture. There is a world of difference between current grads and recent grads and their ability to grasp certain concepts. You might be able to learn everything in your job by OTJT but in mine and others you need a background on which to build. Our degree (and others) IS worth a fuck. We spend a lot of time teaching things to people that they should have already gotten in college. THAT'S THE POINT OF TAKING THOSE COURSES TO BEGIN WITH!!!! There are a few that are so dumb, they honestly aren't teachable. And this should have been made obvious when they started with that major in college.
What earthy purpose do some of these humanity courses even serve?!? Have you ever seen the curriculum? I have. Have you ever read an assignment and looked at what constitutes and A? I have. Even the expectations of what a term paper should consist of has been dumbed down.
Do you think the dumbing down is limited to liberal arts degrees? Do you think this isn't creeping into engineering or the medical field? Do you think the current infatuation with global warming and other pseudo sciences would be as popular if students in current science fields actually used the scientific method instead of whatever it is they teach these days?
Now that I've written this I've decided that the "special needs" degree might be more relevant then whatever it is they pass out these days. Maybe the non-special needs degrees should follow suit.