Degrees

Sporadically over the past several weeks, James and I have been discussing the relative merits of various degrees - specifically, trying to rationalize why the hell we were expending all this time, money, and sweat doing what we do.

Then I came to thinking... what's the real point of university? My discipline is a bit more "vocational" in nature, in so far as the material I learn in class is actually useful towards the professional credentializing process (though how much this knowledge is applied in practice is up for debate - I'm beginning to think that the SOA exams serve primarily as a barrier to entry - a system set up by smart, disciplined people for other smart, disciplined people like themselves to justify their bloated salaries.) But what about all the other majors kids go to post-secondary school to study these days?

Once upon a time, a university degree was valued because very few got it, and the ones that did were distinguished by virtue of their brains, effort, discipline etc. But the bachelor's degree is the new high school diploma, its value saturated because there are very many 20-somethings today getting worthless pieces of paper from bottom-feeder universities - the ones that advertise on buses - and the merit of a college degree has devalued commensurately.

The Waterloo's Math and Engineering faculties are one of the few exceptions in this regard, because not everyone can hack math, and that people who are left-brained/math-oriented have an innate geekish predilection (the more left-brained you are the more geeky you become.) So standards remain high. Also, given the influx of Visa students to the Math faculty these past few years, the Math program has likely become harder.

Kids today are conditioned to think that going to university is the be all and end all, and that not doing so going means uniformed servility and dying alone. But really, what we we'll all turn out to be are corporate drones, with a few thousand dollars of debt to boot. And there's no security in white-collar employment in this day of downsizing, offshoring, and outsourcing. In many ways, the blue-collar union guy is better off. Whatever social status he loses, he more than accrues in relative monetary comfort and can sleep assured that he'll still have a job tomorrow.

But our society values book learning, and there's a strong positive correlation between the degree of prestige of an occupation and the amount of book learning required for it. Doctors and lawyers are high prestige professions, not surprisingly because both require graduate school, professional exams, and a rigorous accreditation process.

Societies value different things, and I believe in ours one of the traits most valued is intelligence. As a result, those in blue collar are stigmatized because we believe these people don't have the mental faculties to pursue college. I read somewhere that the primary social cleavage in society is between degree-holders and those who don't hold degrees and, increasingly, I am beginning to think that in many ways a university degree functions as but little more than a status symbol. Really, what does the degree prove? That you had the discipline to sit on your ass for a few years to read, recite, regurgitate (and promptly forget) some nonsense - 90% of which you will have no practical application for whatsoever.