48 minutes ago, Reader said:

The wisest teacher I ever had said that the main purpose of education was to learn how to learn.

How true!  Life is decades long learning experience and the better you know how to learn the more valuable you become as the years and decades pass.

And it should start in the home at a very young age.

My family couldn't afford an automobile but as far back as I can remember we had a set of the Children's Encyclopedia and by the time I got to high school a complete set of the Britannica.  "Look it up," seemed to be the most used phrase in the house when my brother and I were growing up.

"Why do I have to learn this, I'll never use it?"  Just learning it sharpens your learning tool even if you never use it.  Just like the Latin I took in high school.

Noel  

4 hours ago, birdguy said:

But if you demonstrate your abilities and make yourself noticed you can climb up the ladder reserved for those who have degrees.

Well, I must chime in as it's no coincidence you brought this up after my most recent debate with you-know-who.

First of all, I wasn't bragging when I disclosed my education and experience.  I worked with a lot of folks who had Masters degrees and PhDs, so my education was poor compared to them.  Someone challenged me because I challenged them, so I obliged.  Talking about something as if one is an authority on it but without any formal education, training, or experience dealing with the subject matter is just begging for a challenge.

College degrees are usually overrated IMO.  I've met many people over the years with degrees and some of them weren't really "smart", and some couldn't write a well-composed, grammatically correct letter or spell correctly.

However, it also matters what kind of degree it is.  Degrees such as those in business management or liberal arts or social science type degrees are not nearly as difficult to obtain as a degree in engineering or the sciences. Just look at a list of required courses for various degrees and you'll quickly see how much more difficult some degree programs are than others.

Having a degree is important to "get in the door" as you said.  I've found that experience, intelligence, initiative, and a good work ethic are far more valuable.

Dave

1 hour ago, dave2013 said:

Talking about something as if one is an authority on it but without any formal education, training, or experience dealing with the subject matter is just begging for a challenge.

I would hope that, if a layman talks as if he or she is an authority on a subject, it would be on the basis of having widely read articles published by those who do have formal education, training and experience dealing with the subject matter, in which case a constructive challenge might be to ask for some specific references.

1 hour ago, dave2013 said:

Talking about something as if one is an authority on it but without any formal education, training, or experience dealing with the subject matter is just begging for a challenge.

Making assumptions about people you've never met or have no personal experience with is always a mistake.  Many people are self taught.  If you know how to read you can teach yourself almost anything if you have an interest in the subject.

Arguing theory is fun until it gets out of hand.  Questioning somebody's expertise when you have little to knowledge about them is dangerous.

Most of the time when it gets to that point agreeing to disagree is the best course to take.  Trying to corner  a person or challenge them usually leads to an escalating argument and closing of the thread by a moderator.

Noel

 

39 minutes ago, birdguy said:

Trying to corner  a person or challenge them usually leads to an escalating argument and closing of the thread by a moderator.

Amen! I say again, Amen!

Quote

At 211 degrees, water is hot. At 212 degrees, it boils. And with boiling water, comes steam. And steam can power a locomotive. Raising the temperature of water by one extra degree means the difference between something that is simply hot and something that generates enough force to move a powerful train. If the water was kept at 211 degrees, there would be no steam generated to propel the massive engine down the track. Is your train stalled on the railroad track because the hot water needs to be heated just one more degree to boiling? Or is it powering down the track with full force? Let the number 212 serve as your constant reminder that adding one degree more can make a tremendous difference.

Depends how you define degree

 

Edited July 30, 20223 yr by psolk

In my state, with no degree you have to have 12 years of supervised experience and pass the FE and PE exams to be an engineer.   I think most folks take the FE at the end of college while it's still fresh.

 

Here, CPA requires a degree.

 

Of course it is possible to work in a firm without license under appropriate supervision.

 

scott s.

.

 

 

60 minutes?  3600 seconds?

Depends if its Centigrade, Fahrenheit or degrees Twaddle !

Mechanical Engineer, graduated in Colombia. I came to Argentina, and in 9 years no single one has ever asked me for my degree (or its recognition by Argentina).

5 hours ago, birdguy said:

Making assumptions about people you've never met or have no personal experience with is always a mistake.  Many people are self taught.

No, I think there is a difference between someone who has actually done real research and has real education and experience in a field, and someone who reads some articles and suddenly thinks they're an expert.

It's like a couple guys I was acquainted with in high school.  These dudes were always reading Hot Rod and other car magazines and talking big about what engine mods they'd like to do and trying to show off.  One of them actually had a souped up older car, a Chevelle if I recall correctly.  Anyway, I found out later from a buddy of theirs that neither one of them knew squat about actually repairing or working on a car and they were all talk.

Dave

Many of our fathers from the 1940's and 50's were lucky just to get a HS diploma:  But back then they could buy a house, own a car or two, take occasional vacations.  And to top it off, many could also save enough for their children's collage education.

Try to do all that today even with a college degree...

 

  

There's also something called intuitive knowledge Dave.  People who have a born instinct for something.

I'm a published writer and I never took a class in English Composition after I left high school.  It's just something I was born knowing how to do.  A couple of years ago I was posting one of my boyhood stories here every week.  I've got over 20 of them I wrote for my grandkids to read.

Likewise photography.   I never took a course or studied photography but I'm quite a good wildlife and bird photographer.  Likewise a couple of years I was posting one of my bird pictures here once a week.

Some people have an instinct for certain subjects and skills.  If you don't know the person you can't say he doesn't know what he's talking about just because you disagree with them when you are communicating on something like a forum.

Dave, there's an old Johnny Cash song that goes, 'Ya gotta know when to hold em, know when to fold em..." You're carrying this too far.  Time to fold em.   That's what I'm doing right now.

Noel

 

Edited July 31, 20223 yr by birdguy

'What is in a degree'

A very apt question. It is quite obvious that if you are in certain fields you have to kowtow to certain narratives lest your career is over. And I am not talking about engineering and maths, but about those 'the science is settled' fields where you simply can not ask questions that can be even remotely construed as critical (or even inquisitive) to said narrative without getting the usual invective bleating from the worshippers of 'the science' or other miscellaneous narrative officers.

Let us all also not forget the (ongoing and probably growing due to, among many other things, the publish-or-perish phenomenon) replication crisis in many fields. The inherent flaw of peer review research (all those seminal studies have gone through said process yet many of them fail to replicate half of the time or even way worse actually making the coin toss a better predictive tool). The degrees behind all those studies are responsible for this and yet we see with stunning regularity pompous individuals defer to the 'experts say' or 'experts agree' or 'the science is settled' arguments as if they actually know anything; I find the 'my view coincides with the experts' argument particularly amusing. 

Lab coat worship has morphed to be the religion of the 21st century, there can be little doubt about that. When politics mixes with said 'science' this is a recipe for disaster. 

What do you say to someone with a liberal arts degree? 

Can I have fries with that please...

Some years ago, my ex-missus and I were talking about degrees and it turned out that between us, we had both written the final degree dissertations for six people we had known over the years as favours, in order to help them to get their degrees. Yeah I know, you're not supposed to do this, but whatever, sue me. This means technically we've got a ton of additional degrees each over and above the ones we've actually got for ourselves which we went to college for, in subjects we did literally no study for whatsoever.

It used to amuse me when these people would be freaking out about having to write ten thousand words on the subject for their final dissertation, when I had a job as a writer, where somneone would ask me to write 2,000 words on some subject I didn't know at all and give me about two oir three hours to do so. So you can imagine my thoughts when someone would be freaking out about having to write ten thousand words on a subject they'd allegedly been studying FOR THREE YEARS and would get me to do it for them!

Seriously, if someone can't knock it out of the park when asked to write what is basically the equivalent of four pages of a tabloid newspaper, on a subject they've been studying for three years, what the hell were they doing in all that time?!

What also used to amuse me was when a student would say they will take a year out from their studies. Seriously, take a year off from doing what exactly? They've done next to sod all! It's not hard work; try working a twelve hour shift in a coal mine or some such, that's what actual hard work is like, where you will genuinely need some time off from doing it.

So yeah, having a degree might impress some people and might be a box tick for some jobs, but I know lots of people with academic qualifications that I wouldn't send up the road to buy me a Mars Bar without strongly suspecting they'd mess it up, so I prefer to judge people on what they are actually like and what they are demonstrably capable of.

Edited July 31, 20223 yr by Chock