You don't get wisdom with a college degree.

[upaloopa]

So I'm forced to sit in this meeting were a person is describing her plan to make sure that motor pool charges get to the correct department's income and expense statements.

She has involved numerous motor pool employees and department managers in her discussions to help formulate her plan.

Someone asked her how much money are we talking about and the answer was about $300.

If you add up the salary and benefit cost of all our time spent in this meeting and the salary and benefits of the time the people she involved in the discussions spent it would come out well over $300. And the plan is not complete yet.

The one who called the meeting has a MBA and the one with the motor pool plan has a PhD. Both are just a few years out of school.

[YellowRubberDuckie]

1. The only thing college gets you is a piece of paper.

It gets you no special knowledge unless you go into a science or accounting or something. And you should probably be certified to be a teacher. Otherwise, a college degree is a scam.

[a la izquierda]

4. Ahh, yeah, so please enlighten me about the history of...

Latin America since 3114 bc. Since my three degrees on the matter are a scam.
Actually, make that circa 7500 bce.

[YellowRubberDuckie]

6. Point me to a book to read...

...and I'll tell you. The only thing that makes you know more about it on the subject is that you have read more books about it. If I were to read up on it as much as you have the only thing that would make your knowledge different is that you spent THOUSANDS to get a piece of paper to say you have that knowledge.

[REP]

10. College is a bit more than reading a book or two and a piece of paper

[a la izquierda]

22. No, it's more than a book or books, and a piece of paper.

You reading information and spitting it back to me is not knowledge.
Colleges have existed for more than a thousand years. You think that's just about a piece of paper and some books?
No, it's about much more than that. And mind you, my husband never went to college, so I do not care whether one has a degree or not- that does not make one intelligent, I'll give you that.
Knowledge-and college- is about the interplay of debate and discussion between people of different opinions. It's learning how to express one's ideas in a convincing manner, and to learn how to think critically about a variety of sources. Some people can do this inherently. But most cannot (and I can attest to this from the students who walk into my classroom).
I do not care whether my students remember the dictators of Latin America and presidents of Mexico. I DO care that they can link global themes together that create crises and uncover how similar processes affect nations over time.
The same processes that create turmoil in today's world caused chaos 2000 years ago. College teaches students how to prepare for a variety of experiences, not the very specific nature of your office that YOUR experience in 7 years taught you.

You want some books? Here, try these (in no particular order):
Evans, Susan Toby. Ancient Mexico & Central America: Archaeology & Culture History
Lockhart, James. The Nahuas after the Conquest
Soustelle, Jacques. The Olmecs: the Oldest Civilization in Mexico
Nash, June. We Eat the Mines and the Mines Eat Us.
MacCormack, Sabine. On the Wings of Time: Rome, the Incas, Spain, and Peru
Pagden, Anthony. Lords of All the World
Mann, Charles. 1491 and 1493

Some of these books are intensely academic, others are not. I would assign every one of them to my first year students (though not all in one semester).

[Taylor Smite]

17. One of the native nations

had an interesting socio-religious program (for lack of a better word). Cant remember the group. Maybe you can help me out.


So a young adult male in the villiage was chosen to be the vessel or embodiment of a particular god. For a whole year this fellow could do whatever he wanted and he was treated like a king. However once the year ended he was brutally sacrificed. What group did something like this and could you explain it a little better than I did here?

I always thought it was supposed to represent the human experience. That we all lust for more/greater things but in the end we all die. Or that being driven purely by worldly desires is a way to ensure death and suffering.

[a la izquierda]

20. This is a Mexica (Aztec) ceremony...

in which a young war captive impersonates the god Tezcatlipoca, who was a dual natured god. The name of the ceremony was the feast of Toxcatl. During the conquest of Mexico, Spanish chroniclers actually witnessed the ceremony and commented on it, so there is some documentary evidence of it-skewed as it might be.

Similar ceremonies existed among the Maya, and they seemed to symbolize rebirth and possibly the celebration of the new year.

[cherokeeprogressive]

5. Some seem to think earning a degree in one place creates a job in another.

That's what bothers me.

I have a degree.

There should now be a job for me.

That's not how it works, mate.

[YellowRubberDuckie]

7. What bugs the HELL out of me...

...is that a guy comes in with an MBA into the mortgage company where I work and I have to freaking TRAIN him to do the job. He can do nothing better that I can in 7 years experience there at that company with that MBA.

[RagAss]

14. Don't hate him....

hate the scum that told you to train him.

[sweetapogee]

25. I guess it all depends on

what your degree is in. Some majors don't have much in the way of marketable skills. And, not saying this is your situation, but I know a guy that has an MBA and cannot get a good job because he was arrested a few times and cannot pass a background check.

Keep searching!

[mythology]

28. Statistically speaking having a college degree makes you

significantly more likely to be employed, especially in the current economy, as well as having far higher career earnings totals. It obviously doesn't apply in every individual instance, but I'm certain having a Master's degree helped me get my current job and it indirectly led to my previous job and directly led to the job before that. Oddly not one of these jobs has been in field of study at either the undergrad or grad school level.

[REP]

9. Those grapes look pretty sour, too

[1StrongBlackMan]

2. But ... But ...

They read somewhere that great leaders act collaboratively after seeking stakeholder/opinion leader input.

It was right there on page 223 of the How to be a Great Leader Textbook for Mgt 621(evening).

[pipoman]

3. This has been an eye opening experience..

After being self employed for 20+ years, my wife and I went into the health care industry. We were surprised at how true 'good help is hard to find' really is. I often add up estimated incomes during longer meetings. I thought I was alone intil last month when I went to a meeting about meetings. We were to go to one side if we like meetings, the other if we don't. Several of us on the 'don't' side, add up incomes while at meetings.

[Lint Head]

8. I worked for a major corporation nd this kind of thing happened all the time.

I retired because our federal contract was bought out but I was on the verge of quitting because management was filled with inept idiots that thought they crapped gold because they had a college diploma. Even the ones with a 2 year degree thought they were God's gift. Not all acted this way but the majority did. They constantly torpedoed people who had worked there for as much as 40 years just because they thought they had the best idea and approach to everything. It became a metaphorical insane asylum. It was odd because this only started manifesting approximately 10 years ago. I don't know what happened with higher education but the idiots they were churning out were a dime a dozen. All can think of is that they were mostly from well off families that made sure Buffy or Bret went to the university because that's just what the family did.

[Egalitarian Thug]

12. It became more prevalent as DeVry, Phoenix, ITT, etc., managed to buy accreditation

and started calling themselves "colleges and universities". One of the unintended consequences of giving these diploma mills equal standing with actual colleges and universities was that it brought pressure on the real schools to match the results. When I was in college, an 'A' was really hard to get and a 4.0 was rare, now all these people have to do is show up and turn in some work. That used to be a 'C' at best.

[Egalitarian Thug]

11. No, no you don't. And since we've completely abandoned the idea that an education

is the purpose of post secondary schooling and replaced it with vocational training, we're going to get more and more complete idiots sporting a degree.

[Taitertots]

13. I'm sure somehow accountants were involved

Matching revenue with expenses is just something that absolutely has to be done. Having the costs properly assigned is worth more than the $300 and all your salaries for the day.

Did you go to college? If you did I'm willing to guess that you never took accounting classes.

[jp11]

15. Correct but it is an easy way to raise the bar for people to withhold jobs and privilege

from them if they don't have one.

Then you have the people who went through the process of getting a degree and it becomes "I had to get a degree to work here, so should anyone I hire" and they get promoted and so on it goes. The people who own the business can put in some smart person with a degree in charge of the company and let them decide to not promote the people who've been there decades longer than they have because they don't have a degree.

What should matter is ability and no one can measure that until they hire you but they can make assumptions sometime correct sometimes not based on the fact that you have a degree.

[FarCenter]

16. Just wait until they outsource the motor pool

Then you will have executives from both companies negotiating the broad terms, people from purchasing outlining the contracts, legal staff drawing up and finalizing the contracts, payables and receivables making out bills and paying them, payables billing back to the departments, auditors auditing the bill and billbacks, etc., etc.

That is if all goes well and their aren't any disputes to argue over, be mediated, and to sue over.

The horizontal restructuring of business and the resulting transactional friction has been a major creator of jobs in this country.

[riderinthestorm]

18. This is standard corporate meeting stuff. Are you new to the corporate scene? Do you read Dilbert?

Dilbert is a comic strip that mocks this type of bullshit daily. I highly recommend you become addicted asap since it will help you assuage your feelings of despair over corporate meeting stupidity.

I was once a bystander to an HR meeting with an employee who clocked out at 7:00 pm but didn't set the office alarm code til 7:09. I kid you not. HR was going after her for staying TOO long (for free!) She was getting a warning. So the HR rep was there, her boss, and the assistant supervisor. They spent an hour going over "clocking out" protocol for this poor employee's first offense - a 9 minute gap!

The salary dollars wasted on simply making this point was breathtaking.

But that's corporate culture. This has nothing to do with college degrees at all.

[dmallind]

19. Or they could just ignore Sarbanes Oxley and GAAP to spare your time.

Maybe it's not about the $300...

[HiPointDem]

21. I must be dumb. Seems like it's not just about $300, it's about getting costs correctly assigned.

And that if it costs $300 to do that the first year, it's paid for itself in the first year & saving $300 in the second year.

I don't see the big deal.

[KansDem]

23. It's all about perception.

Having worked several jobs, including my present one, where I am/was constantly amazed at the vacuous character of the "higher ups," I know now it's the perception that we're doing something, not that we really are.

I've attended meetings and heard plans that were outright asinine and wondered how they could be uttered with a straight face. But it was the perception that we were planning, and a "straight face" is mandatory in order to advance that perception.

I seen edicts come down "from on high" that only highlights how out-of-touch the muckety-mucks really are. But then, it's the perception that they're handing down edicts that's important, not that they're really full of shit.

And the whole operation continues to run on inertia alone.

In short, it's not about "what we do," but "how we do it," and I just count the days until 1) retirement; 2) new job; 3) lottery win; 4) death.

And "education" really begins after college...

[quaker bill]

24. my dad complained about the same thing

40 years ago

[JoePhilly]

26. Let the GOP bash higher education.

Sounds like you were in what you felt was an unproductive, wasteful meeting. Any person who has ever had a job with any meaningful level of responsibility has been in more than one.

As I read your story, I wonder if other costs are not getting charged correctly in other parts of this business. It is possible that this instance of misaligned charges is a symptom of a larger more systemic issue. An issue that is costing the company much more money because if they can't account for their expenses, they can't obtain tax write offs that they should be able to claim.

And a counter story for you to consider ...

I got my PhD back in 1989. My first job in 1990 was with a software team in which I was going to be driving the design. The other 5 developers had each been with the company 20 years. They told me on no uncertain terms that given their 100+ years of experience, they were not going to do anything I wanted them to do unless I was able to convince them it absolutely had to be done. They were the ones with "real experience".

Their existing product was junk. It was failing in the market. Their VP brought me in. My PhD (Experimental Psych) allowed me to quickly determine that there team was totally dysfunctional. Their lead architect was a bully. Their most creative guy was quiet and easily pushed around. The other three simply wanted to write code, they wanted to be told what to do. Within 6 months, I redesigned the product and took on the bully, and then helped him channel his focus into the subsystem of the product, a highly technical area where he thrived, and in which there was no need for him to bully anyone. The next version of the product did great in the market and won industry awards. In large part thanks to "the college puke" that the VP brought in. I got a rather larger bonus as a result.

The point I guess is that neither a degree, or experience, is a silver bullet.

So let the GOP bash higher education.

[tammywammy]

27. Good post. nt