Comment by forkandwait | Hacker News Reader

Comment by forkandwait | Hacker News Reader

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Let's look at this as a logic problem.

You say college has no causal effect, I say college has a causal effect (granting that we aren't talking about credentialing degrees, blah, blah).

The best you have done is destroy my argument in favor of causation; however, this doesn't imply that you are correct for NO causation, just that my argument doesn't work (maybe correct). To prove no causation you would have to evaluate all possible arguments for it, and show them all to be wrong. (good luck)

However, I do have partial evidence for causality based on the association between college and white collar jobs. I am basing this on the "warrant" that P(causation| association) >= P(causation) -- if there is association, the likelihood of causation is higher or the same.

So how about this: neither of us can say for sure whether college helps, but I have a little bit of faulty evidence and you have no evidence whatsoever.

We are in the same situation as most social scientists -- the evidence for anything really sucks, and is nowhere like the evidence for hard science propositions. However, very important policy decisions have to be made based on this faulty evidence. What most people do is pretend be sure and so guarantee they act foolishly.

I think you're going through a lot of trouble to formalize an argument I'm not even contesting. I'm talking about the minimal value of a degree as a credential outside the Professions; you're arguing with a fictitious third party who says they have zero importance anywhere.

>I'm talking about the minimal value of a degree as a credential outside the Professions; you're arguing with a fictitious third party who says they have zero importance anywhere.

Umm, wrong. I am arguing with the "minimal value of a degree as a credential outside the Professions". I have made that clear, by statements to the effect of "granting the professions are a different case."

I am saying -- I have limited evidence for causality in the effect of a degree (outside the professions), and you have no evidence for the absence of causality .

It's all good though...

We're discussing a difference of (small) degree, and your point is that correlation is sometimes causation?

Ok? Stipulated? Now what?

No, I am arguing that my lack of a good argument does not imply that the converse argument is true.

So ... retract your argument that college has no credentialling value in getting a white collar job (outside of the professions) ;) You have no evidence.

(Heuristically, I have evidence, but it is poor. But poor is better than none.)

I gave specific pieces of evidence: sales, technology, trading, marketing. Rebut.

You posited that in "sales, technology, trading, marketing" there is no value to a degree as credentialing, but you didn't offer any evidence that I can find. Please correct me if you cited a study.

My evidence, to be fair, is the graphs I have vaguely seen associating educational outcomes with salary and "higher" job classifications.

How much damage can one bad hire cause?

Not much directly. Even in engineering, entry-level work is usually scutwork, so they probably won't get the chance to break anything important.

But hiring a flake can cause a lot of damage indirectly. If they lose an important document or attach the wrong appendix to the marketing proposal, you could lose a lot of money.

So if you're a big company with complicated procedures and a lot to lose -- what if that lost document is important because of a lawsuit? -- hiring dependable people trumps almost everything else. Bachelor's degrees are a great way to certify that someone can show up on time, follow directions, meet deadlines, and pay attention to one thing for four years at a time.

No it isn't. The diligence bar for obtaining a bachelor's degree is so far below the diligence bar for maintaining a work presence that they almost don't bear comparison.

People make this observation all the time, but I'm guessing that even the most diligent students who make it showed up late to class often enough that they'd have gotten disciplined had class been a real job.

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