Would society be better served if schools taught students how to make money over how to test and get a degree?

Well, the purpose of education is to create well rounded individuals who will contribute to society. That means getting a job of some kind.

This “How to test,” thing is a recent phenomenon, and of course it is self defeating, but it is also out of the teacher’s hands.

When I was in school there was no particular emphasis on getting a college degree. I have one, and it has held me in good stead, just because it looks good on my resume. I’ve only had one job that actually utilized it, though.

Teaching people how to make their own money instead of making money for someone else would cause all sorts of issues.

First off, if every person is their own business then no business would ever get big enough to do a damn thing. You wouldn’t even be able to move large objects from one place to another without some sort of subcontracting agreement. But the instant someone offers someone else payment for their labor (“Hey, could you grab the other end of this?”) or expertise, you wind up with the sort of hierarchical model we have.

Since most companies aside from the very smallest do many things, odds are that they will need more than two people to run the entire thing. That means that the hierarchy will be pyramid-shaped with fewer people at the top than at levels other than Supreme Emperor of the Universe. While it may be possible for a smaller business to have a more egalitarian/communal arrangement, there comes a point where that model no longer works.

Also, since no one person can master every skill, it’s best all around to have specialists. For instance, I know a few things about machining but my knowledge of metallurgy is more limited than the engineers who draw up the prints for the parts I make while their knowledge while their knowledge of G-code programming is likewise limited. Neither one of us could really make anything too complex on our own, but our combined skillsets complement each other to make things happen. That sort of symbiosis is essential for any business bigger than a farmer’s stand.

With the majority of position being below the top, there will be far more demand for those at lower levels than there will be for Chief Executive Overlords, so the majority of people will do best to go for one of those lower positions. But without a well-honed skillset, they won’t add enough value to the company to warrant decent compensation packages. With the high failure rate of startups, those who are more risk-averse have their best shot at money through learning a skill.

Not everyone can learn what it takes to get the big money, while those who can/do learn are still able to do unskilled tasks though. And it’s just as well since demand for labor decreases as the requirements get tougher. It’s probably also for the best that very few people insist on having absolute authority while most are willing to be subservient for compensation.

To give you an idea of what having too many choices as you would if everyone were a CEO, consider this list of defunct US automakers. That is just a list of one single industry that has only been around for a little over a century selling a relatively niche product. How many of those companies had the resources to do revolutionary things like refine the concept of assembly lines like Ford? Well, based on the fact that they are now defunct, I would say, “Not a single one.”. How would the economy do if there were nobody with the resources to manage such a feat because the labor pool required was too busy trying to reinvent the wheel to compete with you to demean themselves by punching a clock for someone else? And what would it mean for the consumer? If you go to an auto parts store, you can easily find parts for the common cars, but it’s harder to find parts for rare cars. But if the entire auto industry had hundred or thousands of makers, every car would be rare, and if the company that made your car went under, your car would be irreparable due to lack of parts. Okay, now expand that to EVERY industry in the entire economy.

TL:DR – Setting aside the educational aspect, just the economic side of that suggestion is utterly impractical.

No. But it would be better served if it taught people something that gets us closer to getting out of our economic delusions faster, hopefully before we destroy so much of the planet that we all die.

@jerv But the instant someone offers someone else payment for their labor (“Hey, could you grab the other end of this?”) or expertise, you wind up with the sort of hierarchical model we have.
There will always be those people who don’t want the headache of running the show themselves, they are content to punch the clock, get their pay and never have to worry about the bottom line, product development, liability, taxes, etc. That would be their choice, but if they were taught how to make money, if ever their job got too janky for them, they would have an option to do something else.

I don’t want to live in that world. I want to live in a world where people are more interesting than just what they do for a living. I want people who find passions for hobbies and learning things unrelated to their income. I want people who have read books on all subjects and have learned things about history and chemistry and art and literature and then go to work and weld shit together and I also want my garbage picked up and I want a vet to bring my pets to and I need someone to take my order at the restaurant. I want fewer politicians that want to be politicians and more politicians who know what the hell drives the economy (hint- it isn’t the rich people).

And there is more to life than making money and I leaned THAT in school.

@Hypocrisy_Central If it were that easy then the entire population would be multi-billionaire entrepreneurs.

Now, if we lived in an ideal world where businesses NEVER failed, or even one were having the vast majority of businesses fail within the first three years had zero detrimental effect on the economy, then I could see your point. But since most businesses of note have had some combination of business loans and/or investments from shareholders in order to get startup capital while companies that go belly-up generally have no way to repay their debts, failure DOES have consequences large enough for a ripple effect.

The insinuation that the only thing that keeps people from being ultra-super-successful are hard work and desire and by extension claiming that over 99% of humanity is lazy and weak-willed is…. offensive doesn’t even come close to describing it. I know you well enough to be fairly confident that you did not do that maliciously though, so I’ll let it slide.

Many companies are run by or dominated by individuals who may not be the smartest or the most capable in whatever the business actually does. This might be because they’re rich and invested in the company, or perhaps started as an equal partner who ended up taking over for a number of possible reasons.

Don’t fall into the trap that a degree of any type equates to being intelligent, or that intelligence equates to making large sums of money. One look at the medical profession is all you need to see this. I’ve met many rich doctors who seem lucky to be able to tie their own shoes or have a conversation that did not go beyond golf. I’ve also met not so well off MDs who are well read both in and out of medicine and are very very sharp in most any subject.

Just remember how badly wrong Edison got it in his quest for DC electricity delivery system. It was the odd chap, Tesla who was right. And he had no head for business.

I don’t get this. You’re a Christian, but you can’t wrap your head around the intrinsic value of education. People will point to many bad things done in the name of the Christian religion, but they ignore the fact that Christians did something so amazingly good that almost everything we love about modern Western Civilization wouldn’t be possible if the Christians in charge of the church didn’t highly value education and knowledge.

After the collapse of the Roman Empire, things gradually began to fall apart for most of Western Europe. almost nobody was educated. Almost nobody could read. Almost nobody knew anything at all about Greek and Roman philosophy, which much later turned out to be the foundation of all modern sciences and philosophies in the Western world.

For whatever reason, people who ran the churches saved up all of these documents that were not part of their religion. Most of them were secular. There were plays and poems and philosophic works either written hundreds of years before Christ or written without acknowledging Christianity at all. For some reason, this stuff was seen as important enough to preserve,protect and educate each other about for a little over a thousand years. If you wanted to know how to read or write or do anything intellectual at all, you had to learn all this stuff from the Church. If it weren’t for the church, we wouldn’t have very much knowledge about ancient life at all. What wasn’t collected by the church was lost in the burning of the Library of Alexandria. Almost all we have left is what the people of the church collected, preserved and educated people about. Thank goodness that they didn’t simply collect and teach stuff that were directly connected to their own religion. Thank goodness they appreciated the value of all this secular stuff.

They didn’t do it for money. Most of them took a vow of poverty. The knowledge wasn’t passed down so that people could learn to make a quick buck with it. It was passed down because for whatever reason, they considered it vitally important to learn and remember. It didn’t just shape the individuals who learned it. It shaped all of Western Civilization as we know it today.

If you think there is no purpose to education than to teach people how to make money, then I don’t know what to tell you. If you see no connection between having knowledge of science, history, art and music—and any possibility of innovation and and improvements to technology and civilization as a whole, then you’re hosed. If most people think like you, then we’re all hosed.

I think another purpose of school is to introduce students to many different disciplines to see if any one particular subjects sparks in a kid. For me, it was science and reading. There probably isn’t much money in scientific research, which I would LOVE to do. There isn’t any money, really, in writing, which is another passion of mine.

@jerv The insinuation that the only thing that keeps people from being ultra-super-successful are hard work and desire and by extension claiming that over 99% of humanity is lazy and weak-willed is…. offensive doesn’t even come close to describing it.
Never said all would ultra-rich, some might, but many might not because they will not have the business that could generate that type of cash. I don’t know where you get the idea I am calling them lazy and shiftless, those who don’t want to run a business just don’t want the headache, that is why people do not own dogs because they don’t want the time commitment, responsibility or hassle. I never said arts, literature, history etc. should be eliminated. I am saying except for a narrow range of fields where OJT would never work, they can be given a well-rounded education and tools to be their own boss. If Betty likes arraigning flowers and growing them, etc. she should be taught how to parlay that into a business, not simply go work in someone else’s floral business. If one creates a job, they will always have a job.

@keobooks I don’t get this. You’re a Christian, but you can’t wrap your head around the intrinsic value of education.
Education and faith are not cleaved at the hip, however, I value education; don’t know where I would be without it. Having a great deal of education, unless a narrow group of study where you can only get it through college, the other stuff people do not for themselves in their business, they do it to look good to someone else’s business.

What is wrong with looking good for someone else’s business, or looking good to a specific market? It’s the “looking good” part that’s gonna make you the money.

And this didn’t even make any sense “Education and faith are not cleaved at the hip…” Um…one has absolutely nothing to do with the other.

@Hypocrisy_Central —I read your reply to me and then I re-read your original post. I think you and I have completely different ideas of what the purpose of education is. And we have a different idea of what wealth represents.

You asked this question because you found out someone you knew had much less money than you imagined. You were surprised because they were so smart. And I guess smart people wouldn’t be poor if education was doing what it was supposed to do.

I’m just curious. Do you think that the amount of money someone earns does or should reflect how smart someone is? Like, Warren Buffet is almost the smartest man in the world, and people on welfare aren’t very smart? I’m not saying that’s how it IS, but maybe that’s how it should be?

And maybe owning a business is a bigger sign of success than most other occupations? People who don’t own businesses would be owners if they were smarter, more driven or better educated?

And you’re saying that except for a few eggheads, everyone else only uses education for getting a job or looking good on a resume? So that’s kind of the primary reason education exists?

I’m not trying to be an ass here. But I want to make sure that I understand. I don’t want to post any more until I am sure that those are really your opinions. Because if I misread something, most of what I want to say to you would be pointless.

@dutchess_iii For much of history, education and religion were almost synonymous. I know they have slowly drifted apart over the last few hundred years. It looks like they’ve drifted so far apart that many Christians are unabashedly anti education, except to learn a trade that earns money. It’s kind of sad, because if I were Christian I’d wear the whole “Church preserved education that helped make all of Western Civilization possible” with a badge of pride.

Those that want to work for themselves often do anyways. Pimps, drug dealers, the punks who do smash-and-grabs on parked cars… they all seem to make better money than a lot of people who work regular jobs, yet they didn’t get any special education.

@keobooks ” Do you think that the amount of money someone earns does or should reflect how smart someone is?”
I’d like that, actually; it’d put me in one of the top brackets.

The churches had the first schools. There is no doubt that the Church played a huge part in jump starting education.

In my experience, those who make the most money have often sacrificed things that I wouldn’t be willing to sacrifice, or they had a back up system, which I never had. For example, I could not land a high powered job because I couldn’t work the overtime required, nor do the traveling because I had no back up system to watch over my children. Even if I did, I’m not sure I’d be willing to trade the time I could spend with them, for travel and overtime to make the money.

@Dutchess_III What is wrong with looking good for someone else’s business, or looking good to a specific market?
There is nothing wrong with it, if you are content and understand that you have less control over your earnings because someone else can and most likely have, put a ceiling over you that you can’t get above. Or that you are at the whim of the employer, if they decide to cut back to help their bottom-line you can be on the chopping block no matter how devoted you were to that business.

@keobooks I’m just curious. Do you think that the amount of money someone earns does or should reflect how smart someone is?
I am going off the rhetoric I have heard since I was a kid, to get good grades so you can get into college. If you have a MA you will make X amount more money yearly than a person with just an AA, and X times more than the person with no degree. Logically the degree says John Q is better educated (aka smarter) than Larry Lunchmeat who barely graduated. This is an important job, not that it was so engaging Larry Lunchmeat could not pick it up, but why do that when there is John Q ready to go. Having the sheepskin makes you look better to the employer than those who have less, or have none.

People who don’t own businesses would be owners if they were smarter, more driven or better educated?
More driven maybe, but better educated, or even being smarter has very little to do in actuality in creating wealth or earning money. People are told that, and that is why they want to go to college. Everyone in their own business is not going to challenge Warren Buffet’s shoelaces. From what I believe, success in one’s own business is vision, adaptability and fortitude. Any education you get should be furthering your ability to expand, sustain, or increase your business.

And you’re saying that except for a few eggheads, everyone else only uses education for getting a job or looking good on a resume? So that’s kind of the primary reason education exists?
Even a lot of eggheads are not wealthy or have their own business, they know the field they are going into most likely will have no vehicle for them to do so. I can’t see a multi-million dollar industry one could make from anthropology unless one could and wanted to sell the artifacts on the open market to the highest bidders. I believe most people fields get a degree because it stands to increase their pay. That is not the reason why education exist, but that is how it is used by some. You are already working as an accountant, been with your firm three years, why go pack to get the BA, couldn’t you learn what you would have in college trying to get the BA through the job? Some people would want to go back and get the BA because their pay will increase X amount once they have the sheepskin in hand.

Just one point left, you addressed it to @Dutchess_III, Believers are not anti-education. I have not heard anyone in any congregation I have attended that did not desire and admonish their kids to do well in school and get educated.

I never said believers were anti-education. They are, however, willing to twist facts and history to suit their make believe stuff. That’s just sad.

Someone told you wrong, @Hypocrisy_Central. That’s not the way it works. You don’t get money based on how many degrees you have or how “big” those degrees are.

Example one: Law librarians have an MLS degree and a law degree. Yet they make a lot less money than most lawyers. Sometimes they earn less than most librarians. By your standard, they should be filthy rich because they have two post graduate degrees.

Example two: In many denominations, ministers go to Seminary and study theology. I think you can get an undergrad degree, but most of the ministers I have known studied at the Masters level. Since they have masters degrees, you’d think they’d have scads of cash, but most of them are fairly poor. At the same time, other denominations have no educational requirements for their pastors. They don’t earn less than the ministers with degrees with a similar position. And if they manage to run a mega church, they can make way more than the minister with the masters degree in the tiny church down the road.

Example three: Mark Zuckerberg dropped out of college and he’s got Scrooge McDuck levels of cash.

Anyway, I have several more points to make, but you’ve been told wrong. More degrees does not mean more money.

The kid from Twitter too! He’s got loads of dosh… no degree. It works both ways. Edison was rich….. Westinghouse ended up rich because he bought Tesla for a penny, almost, but Tesla was the better thinker and we can credit more to him than Edison. Money doesn’t always equal intrinsic value. Twitter is for twits. I can’t stand it.

@keobooks Example one: Law librarians have an MLS degree and a law degree. Yet they make a lot less money than most lawyers. Sometimes they earn less than most librarians. By your standard, they should be filthy rich because they have two post graduate degrees.
I covered that, I said not everyone who goes into business will be wealthy same as there are some degrees one will never get rich at, like anthropology, they can have degrees out the wazoo but it will not create wealth for them, because there is no vehicle that they can use to do it, not like computers or medicine.

Example two: In many denominations, ministers go to Seminary and study theology. I think you can get an undergrad degree, but most of the ministers I have known studied at the Masters level. Since they have masters degrees, you’d think they’d have scads of cash, but most of them are fairly poor.
Churches by nature are not commerce, and those who have a degree have them for the education. Most pastors are in the church body they founded so it is not like they have a product they can franchise or use outside the city or area they are in.

So my examples are exceptions to the rule. I can go all day, giving more and more examples of how what you were taught about higher education is wrong and you can keep excusing all of my examples as being exceptions to the rule. At the same time, I don’t see you offering many or any examples that prove your point.

If you keep allowing for all of these exceptions, eventually you won’t have much left to prove your point. If you have your theory of how things work, and there are many more exceptions than their are examples, then your theory is probably incorrect.

“If you have your theory of how things work, and there are many more exceptions than their are examples, then your theory is probably incorrect.”

Depending on the theory, even a single exception is enough to disprove it, or at least send it back for revision.

Ack.. So. Many. Typos.

I have a love/hate thing going on with the iPad and the five minute editing rule here. Even when I fix a dozen or so autocorrect fails, and key mad hinges (edit: ‘key mad hinges’ was supposed to be keyboard mashes) I will see a dozen more when I’m done editing and then I’ll go back in and fix those. I’ll keep doing that until the editing time limit runs out and I’m stuck with whatever typos I didn’t catch.

Soon, I’ll have more perfecto fishes than everyone else on the site combined.

@keobooks So my examples are exceptions to the rule. I can go all day, giving more and more examples of how what you were taught about higher education is wrong and you can keep excusing all of my examples as being exceptions to the rule. At the same time, I don’t see you offering many or any examples that prove your point.
Allow me then to present some facts. I did not make these facts up, and if they are incorrect I guess all these sources were using the same failed crib notes or there might just be something to it.

@Hypocrisy_Central And tradesmen can earn more than a Bachelor’s degree averages yet without requiring college. I’ve taken kids with nothing but a HS diploma and a desire to learn and trained them well enough in mere months to grab jobs in the $15–18/hr range. Considering that I work in a field that is slightly undermanned and thus generally has many opportunities for OT, it’s pretty easy to pull in decent money with no formal post-secondary education.

Those sources are correct as far as they go, but they don’t tell the whole story. Many people get jobs where their degree doesn’t apply. I’m inclined to believe that those income figures are actually for jobs where that degree is the minimum required to get hired as I’ve seen plenty of people with an AS or BS working Home Depot or McDonalds. However, since they are not unemployed, it’s possible to engage in the fallacy that their degree got them a job. Student loans are no laughing matter, so you bet your ass they have a job!

As always, the devil is in the details.

@jerv And tradesmen can earn more than a Bachelor’s degree averages yet without requiring college.
Correct, oh, it happened again, we agreed on something, better look for the lightning bolt, it doesn’t take the sheepskin to earn a decent living or better if you know how to do it, but it is generally not told. One can be an underwater welder and might do better than a junior accountant with a degree, because not too many people can weld underwater much less do it well. If a person can create the desire for their skills, they don’t have to be super smart or educated. But with charts and statistic batted around like that, students think they will never make the middle class or the upper class on an AA degree or less.

That is part of why tradesmen fare so well though. A lot of kids either don’t think the trades are cool, or they don’t realize the money to be made. Either way, demand outstrips supply by enough for some degree of job security as well as pretty decent incomes.

There are more machinists retiring out the top then there are people coming in at the bottom, but you could come in at the ground floor and work your way up pretty quickly. And it’s not like we’re the only trade that does apprenticeships either. Hell, many employers will take promising apprentices and pay them to get a little schooling; a couple of kids from my old shop got hooked in with AJAC.

But it’s not exactly prestigious. There isn’t much “wow” factor to being an electrician or an HVAC guy, and a lot of people don’t even really know what us machinists do. In fact, there is such a lack of prestige that it’s easy for people to underestimate both the intelligence and the incomes of tradesmen.

@Hypocrisy_Central your statistics don’t mean much to me. That’s one of the results—and it only shows up when you take the stats of a giant population. It does not reflect the experiences of individuals.

Let’s say that you said that the purpose of rain was to fill up a rain gauge. I mentioned all the other reasons that it rains. You tell me that you’re right because every time it rains, your rain gauge fills up. So you’re right. The purpose of rain is to fill up a rain gauge. Right? No!

You’re not taking several things into account. Education is not free. Beyond the bachelors level, the grants almost dry up and there are far less scholarships available. With every degree you get, you rack up more and more debts. Getting more money for each degree is not a guarantee, and even if it was, the difference up in the higher levels, combined with the amount of time it would take to pay off the bills, it’s not much of a payoff after a certain level.

I know many many many people with doctoral degrees. I don’t know a single one who did it for the money. While statistically, it’s possible for them to make more money, that is not why they got the degree in the first place.

Fuck no, people need an actual education. Quite a bit of what the university teaches these days is “training” which is basically just job skills.

@ARE_you_kidding_me In a way, that’s not a bad thing though. As humanity acquires more knowledge, having a deep understanding of each particular field gets harder and harder for one individual. The normal K-12 education system is there to give building blocks.

Granted, I think it foolish that they require English classes every year while cutting back on math, science, and humanities when most people have a workable knowledge of their native language (or at least about as much as they’ll ever get) long before age 18, but the truth is that it’s just there to give the foundations for higher learning while still having enough knowledge to function in society and do jobs that don’t require additional education.

In centuries past, science was primitive enough and had a small enough body of knowledge that a superior intellect could actually become a world-class authority in multiple disciplines; botany, biology, math, physics, and more could all fit inside one head in their entirety and still leave room for artistic endeavors. And average people could function even if they were illiterate and their math skills never got past the “counting on fingers” stage.

That’s no longer the case in today’s modern society. More skills are needed just for day-to-day living, and it takes longer to learn those skills than not to, which is why children get more schooling than they used to. And the education required for the more complex occupations like doctor or banker rises above that provided by K-12. Doctors are a great example of why education is less well-rounded than it used to be too. At one time, most doctors had less knowledge of human anatomy than the average eighth-grader. But as medical science has expanded, our knowledge of the human body has also expanded to where a complete understanding of just one part of the body now takes up more headspace than the entire collective knowledge of medical science prior to 1800, so you wind up with specialists.

College is for those that seek to master a specialty. That’s why there are Majors. If one wants a truly complete and well-rounded education beyond K-12, then they would be in school for the rest of their lives trying to absorb everything…. and probably failing as most people aren’t that intelligent. Since that isn’t feasible, it’s best to just teach them what they need to know for their chosen trade and throw a few humanities classes into the degree requirements. That way, you can have highly educated people leave the learning realm and entire the adult world while they’re still young enough to walk.

Since many never go on to higher learning though, the way to adjust the educational standards in society as a whole are best handled in the one common denominator we all have; K-12. I think that maybe trading out a couple years of English for science and history would be better, but that’s just my opinion.

@jerv I work with tradesmen every day. For the time and money it’s the way to go. My two year technician’s degree cost me around 3K to get and paid for itself in three pay checks back in 2000. An engineering degree has yet to pay for itself after four years. That said, I know a helluva lot more now education wise and I would not trade that for anything.

@ARE_you_kidding_me Yes, trades are the best way to go if you look at it from the payoff ratio. But admit it, your knowledge is a little uneven. I’d wager that you know more about your field than you do about the cardiac system or US history, and that the majority of your post-secondary education was just in that area with a few other requirements tacked on.

What those requirements were is more likely in the field of Humanities in order to balance your academic knowledge out a little, but even US Navy A-schools and many trade schools that pare academic requirements to the bare minimum teach some things not directly related to your chosen field. For instance, even though I went to school to be an electrician, A-school taught me about the steam turbines and diesel engines that turn the electrical generators, and a bit about the boilers (and more than I wanted to know about the reactors) that make the steam to turn the turbine.

Still, the majority of my training was geared towards making me a wire-biter ready to hit the fleet than about making me an overall smarter person. While your formal education is probably more well-rounded than mine, it was still probably more job skills than not. And from the sounds of it, you’re okay with that, so maybe having university/college just training you for a job isn’t a bad thing.

100%, Engineering is “education” in the sense that I understand classical physics and mathematics much more than is needed for standard employment. I took plenty of philosophy as a minor and more literature, history and a few other “humanities” but in the end I can design a microprocessor from scratch but can’t really tell you how to grow grass or write a novel. While it takes intelligence to understand these things learning them will not make you “smarter.” The fallacy, especially among those majoring in something like Physics, engineering or philosophy is that it will—especially philosophy or “critical thinking.” Practically speaking I could do my job with my technical training, not much different than your naval experience really.

Why do you think I have so many hobbies?

Probably the same reason I do

@keobooks You’re not taking several things into account. Education is not free. Beyond the bachelors level, the grants almost dry up and there are far less scholarships available. With every degree you get, you rack up more and more debts.
So, what is the problem? That is what I was saying. To counter that be best thing is to teach people how to make money or acquire wealth than just getting the degree. The charts was to show that it is the prevailing thought that more education is more money, I never said it was right, but you wanted proof that that is what was being floated out there. My whole thiings is to forget about that and work on earning money (for yourself, not others), than simply trying to get a degree which is mostly only good in the eyes of someone whom you want to hire and pay you.