If you allowed me 1000s of trials and I could wager on each of them, I'd wager that the SAT scores of those who started were higher than the SAT scores of those who never started. In that regard, being accepted to and starting college is a positive signal.
At the same time, someone who started and dropped out might be seen as a signal that they could not conform to and complete a structured program. Or maybe they couldn't hack the collegiate level work after coasting through primary and secondary education. In that regard, someone who never attended college but taught themself programming (at least enough to pass the tech screen on 'all else equal' footing with degreed candidates) might be a better bet than someone who dropped out after two years in a comp sci program and screened the same.
If theory behind your wagers was correct, and if you're optimizing for SAT scores.
* "optimizing for" meaning "I'd prefer a higher score over a lower one, all else equal".
I've met people with really high IQ that were unable to do 1st year university math, and after a number of years dropped out of engineering.
And yet their IQ tests were amazing…
This didn’t lead me to fully dropping out of school. I pivoted over to CIS, graduated, and worked my way up to a principal software engineer.
Did these people you’re talking about totally quit, or did they find a solution to the problem? Employers are going to tend to like those who find alternative solutions.
IQ isn’t useless, it’s just not the only measure that matters. Conscientiousness, for example, probably played a role in those who quit or not.
Or maybe at 20 years old they didn't yet know what they wanted to do with the rest of their life but had been pushed into college anyway by overzealous parents and teachers.
If an infallible oracle told you that was the case and you had two candidates who interviewed otherwise equally in every regard, would you hire the college graduate or the candidate who got railroaded into attending a bit of college and then dropped out?
I think the tie goes to the college graduate for over half of the hiring managers, and I don't think that's crazy at all.
That's different from the original quote, which was simply:
> If there are two candidates — one with a degree, one without, “to many hiring managers, it will feel risky,” he said.
But your question is interesting. Have you considered that if it's possible for a dropout to performally equally to a degree holder in every perceivable respect, it raises doubts about the value of a degree?
Suppose that you had two candidates who interviewed otherwise equally in every regard and also both had degrees, indeed from the same institution. Then how would you choose? By height? Age? Gender? Physical attractiveness?
Agreed.
Now explain how having completed a degree is a "relevant dimension", unlike height, age, etc. You ignored my first question: "Have you considered that if it's possible for a dropout to performally equally to a degree holder in every perceivable respect, it raises doubts about the value of a degree?" My second question was actually intended to highlight the issue.
What you appear to be doing with "I have evidence that the person with a degree can follow rules/policies and track towards a long-term goal with success" is reaching for one arbitrary personal characteristic and inventing an idiosyncratic, non-scientific psychological theory in order to justify discrimination. Others do the same thing with age and gender, for example (younger people and men are just better at programming, they say). You don't know the life story of these people, and there are any number of reasons for someone not completing a degree: monetary problems, family problems, a major illness or injury, natural disaster, etc. Moreover, if you select just based on degree completion, you give job candidates no opportunity to show evidence that they "can follow rules/policies and track towards a long-term goal with success" in ways other than competing a degree. It's simply a bias toward degree holders. By your own admission, you're not using the degree as evidence of job-relevant skills but rather as a psychological, "life story" factor.
> Now explain how having completed a degree is a "relevant dimension", unlike height, age, etc.
As a population, I believe that college graduates almost certainly score higher on measures of intelligence and conscientiousness than non-grads. I believe that's both true and valid for use in selecting employees for roles where intelligence and conscientiousness are useful qualities.
> Have you considered that if it's possible for a dropout to [perform] equally to a degree holder in every perceivable respect, it raises doubts about the value of a degree?
Of course it's possible for a non-degree holder to outperform a degree holder, or for a Mech E or English major to outperform a Comp Sci grad. That doesn’t mean I think a Comp Sci degree has no relevance or value to an SWE job.
You seem to be imagining some boogeyman where “has degree” is treated as the high-order bit rather than what I’ve been consistently saying (and what I think is relevant to the article under discussion): that it’s closer to a tie-breaker (or low-order bit) and a sensible one in many regards.
If someone out-interviews another for a role and clears the bar, you hire the out-performer. When you otherwise can’t tell which candidate is stronger and get down to the area where coin flips become a sensible selection mechanism, I think it's wise to choose the degree holder over using the coin. Other people might rely on height or appearance; I can't control what they do.
1) You can believe whatever you want to believe, but that doesn't necessarily make it true.
2) If you're looking for IQ, then why don't you administer IQ tests to job candidates rather than looking at an extremely unreliable proxy for it?
3) You're admitting to using population statistics to evaluate individual job candidates. Do you even realize what you're saying here? That's literally prejudice. By the exact same reasoning, you could discriminate based on race, for example, e.g., Asian vs. white vs. black. The only difference between racial discimination and degree discrimination in this respect is the legality of it. Even if I granted for the sake of argument that your empirical speculation about scores and measures were true, you're just talking about averages, and many individual members of every population will be above average or below average.
> You seem to be imagining some boogeyman where “has degree” is treated as the high-order bit rather than what I’ve been consistently saying (and what I think is relevant to the article under discussion): that it’s closer to a tie-breaker (or low-order bit) and a sensible one in many regards.
It is often used as the "high-order bit". Like I already said a few comments ago, the quote from the article was different from your quote.
But I don't think it's a sensible tie-breaker. You're taking a degree as a "life story" factor, but that's an arbitrary, singular choice of many possible life story factors.
Also, you seemed to change your story a bit in the last comment, talking specifically about a comp sci degree rather than a degree in general, but there's nothing unique about comp sci vs. other degrees to indicate "can follow rules/policies and track towards a long-term goal with success" or to indicate "IQ".
I am, in effect, using the membership among the population of college degree holders as a tie-breaker.
If you choose to judge that as indistinguishable from, or equivalent to, discrimination based on race, we have a point of disagreement that isn't likely to be resolved.
Seems like this wouldn’t need to be said on a tech board.
This is generally only something a person can have certainty about in hindsight.
That seems overly simplistic.
Everyone doesn’t complete somethings because they don’t like it. Decisions and life is far more muddy and complicated than that.
But what do I know I’m a college grad who barely gets any interviews for anything.
The problem is, everyone who drops out due to inability presents themselves as having dropped out to work on their startup or suchlike.
So it's something of a market for lemons.
Where I'm from, if you're bombing out of classes you'll be excluded from university. Takes about two years if you're terrible and incapable of getting the message. But it's something I would like to know because it is a signal.