Does A College Degree Make You Clueless

[rsmith6621]

To me it seems so....

Many of those regular employees who have 4 year degrees and all of management seem to be when you try and make creative constructive solutions to make the operation run effectively and efficient......they sit there and let their collective mouths run with crap that has nothing to do with what you are talking about or talk about policy's that have been expunged from the manuals for several years...

Are the in denial or are they just clueless.

[cobalt1999]

1. No, but company policies, procedures, and paperwork will grind you down.

Some companies make it so difficult to change, that even good ideas are easier squashed than to implement.

[HarukaTheTrophyWife]

2. .

:popcorn:

I think people who make sweeping generalizations are clueless.

[DrDan]

13. well said - I wanted to post something similar - but your posts says it all

[FiveGoodMen]

22. "I think people who make sweeping generalizations are clueless"

All of them? ;-)

[JDPriestly]

3. Education is irrelevant to creativity. Some people with PhDs are

creative and open to learning. Others aren't. Education has nothing to do with being curious and willing to think out of the box.

[Amonester]

4. They got their grades by...

cut'n 'n pasting from the wwweb.

[Lance_Boyle]

5. This thread needs valium, and punctuation lessons. n/t

[Warpy]

6. They're terrified of being shown up by a working stiff

would be my guess. Seriously, the dumbest people in the world are the ones with a 4 year degree who haven't opened a book since they graduated.

Unfortunately, that covers a lot of middle management.

[Donnachaidh]

17. covers at least one ex-president too. n/t

[NightWatcher]

7. MBA's are useless (with few exceptions) and prove that you can stay awake

I know so many people that have them and only ONE who needs it and uses it properly

No offense if you have one too, but I know of a lot of people who lean hard on their MBA and have nothing behind it to hold themselves up

[Hello_Kitty]

14. You beat me to it.

I know many people with MBAs and some of them are pretty sharp but there are others who make GWB (MBA Harvard) look like a mental giant. I'm convinced the whole point of most MBA programs is to teach people to catapault RW propaganda. It's funny how the people who are constantly on the lookout for the slightest whiff of "liberal bias" in academia have no problem with the obvious conservative and corporate bias of most business schools.

[Raineyb]

39. A former coworker was working on her MBA and had a lot of online stuff

she'd do so I'd look over her shoulder. I couldn't believe the amount of worthless nonsense that passed for classwork. It looked like they spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to manipulate the workers. Not so much about how to actually run anything. What was worse was when she told me about some imbecile who thought that doing away with the minimum wage was a good idea because it was too generous. Clearly his parents never made him live on what other students tried to get by on with minimum wage.

MBAs must be the most pointless degree ever invented. And they don't have a goddamn clue how the fuck anything gets done either.

Regards

[beac]

40. The MBA was invented to give universities another product to sell.

The people that spend two years "learning" to how to sell crap to others are, in fact, the biggest marketing victims of all time.

[leftofthedial]

8. apparently only if you study business, law, politics or economics

at Harvard, Yale, Stanford or the U of Chicago. Then it's a slam dunk you will emerge an idiot.

[Lex]

16. Like President Obama

for instance? :shrug:

[leftofthedial]

28. well, you're the one who said it,

not me...

[Lex]

30. just an example of how a broad brush statement works

nt

[leftofthedial]

38. seriously, look at the culprits behind the relentless destruction of the US since 1963

overwhelmingly, they fit the description in my "broad brush"

[jody]

9. It's more likely when those with college degrees get elected or appointed to government office. n/t

[Individualist]

10. In some cases, yes

A college graduate is someone who had the opportunity to get an education. Whether the individual takes advantage of that opportunity is up to him/her. The Chimp is a classic example of what I'm talking about.

[leftstreet]

11. what, this thread has no wrecks yet?

:popcorn:

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

12. Have you considered the possibility that it's not them?

[Jackpine Radical]

15. I haven't a clue.

[johnfunk]

18. If it's from Liberty University or Regent U, that's a big "Yes!"

'Nuff said...

[laconicsax]

19. Try this:

Does a College Degree Make You Clueless?

To me, it seems so.

Many of those regular employees who have 4-year degrees and all of management seem to be <clueless> when you try and make creative, constructive solutions to make the operation run effectively and efficient. They sit there and let their collective mouths run with crap that has nothing to do with what you are talking about or talk about policies that have been expunged from the manuals for several years.

Are they in denial or are they just clueless?

:hi:

[Gidney N Cloyd]

20. I was on the 4 & 1/2 year plan so I guess I'm OK.

Turns out they pass out the clues in the 9th semester.

[W_HAMILTON]

21. I always joked about how...

...you don't need to go to college for four years, then attend a highly-respected MBA program to lay people off. Anyone can do that.

But now that I've been back in college, yes, they do teach you stupid things. I figured that the courses I would be taking would encourage you to find ways to increase profits through increasing revenue, rather than simply cutting expenses. But, no. The same crap you hear on TV each day, is the same crap they are teaching.

It's just teaching stupidity, which results in incompetence in the real world.

At my work, we spend a day's worth of pay for an employee, simply to pay for taxis when our shuttle is not running. We could use that extra help, not only to drive the shuttle, but to complete other tasks. But do we hire someone else? No. We keep paying the taxi. Why? "Because it's in the transportation budget." It's just stupidity to me. Who cares whether it's in the goddamn budget? The money that we are "saving" by not hiring an extra employee could just as easily be saved from the transportation budget. But does that change anything? No.

We've cut back on expenses a lot lately, thinking we were going to be slow, but we had an increase in business, so we were making more money than expected. Did we pocket that money to save as a "profit" in case we have slower times, so that we won't have to rush to cut hours again? Of course not. They run out an buy an unnecessary new copier (that had to cost well over a thousand dollars). Why waste money? "Because we had it in the budget, and we better spend it than lose it to corporate." It's just a crock of shit.

Something needs to be done to completely revamp this obviously flawed system. I thought colleges would be teaching things differently, but they are just echoing the same bullshit that you hear from these scumbag exec's.

[Skittles]

23. I know exactly what you mean

[Javaman]

24. where am I?

[EFerrari]

25. No but corporate culture can eat your brain.

:scared:

[Buck Laser]

26. I was clueless BEFORE I went to college... NT

[Lydia Leftcoast]

27. It's not so much college degrees as business majors

They learn formulas and jargon and a lot of conservative economics and not much in the way of common sense.

[jody]

31. What degree emphasizes "common sense"? n/t

[Lydia Leftcoast]

33. You can't learn common sense in school, but

business courses teach you to override your common sense and focus exclusively on the bottom line, even when common sense would dictate that you focus more on product quality or customer service or keeping your employees happy. These courses also teach bogus mathematical formulas (which most successful business people throughout history have done without) as if they have any relevance to real world situations.

[jody]

34. Sounds like you would eliminate most courses taught in colleges. What would you keep? n/t

[Lydia Leftcoast]

35. No, just the business courses

Business majors, especially MBAs, with their single-minded pursuit of the bottom line and their indoctrination in conservative economics, are responsible for the mess we're in.

Can't think of an English major who's done that much harm.

[BlooInBloo]

36. Lotta truth to that. That's why their graduate aptitude test is by far the dumbest, for example.

[Lyric]

29. It depends on what you got your degree in.

And also what your purpose is when you go to college. I think that too many people focus their education too narrowly these days. They're driven to get a job in a specific, narrow field after graduation, never bothering to concern themselves with the fact that there are few, if any, job sectors that will ALWAYS be hiring.

IMHO, it's better to get a broad education with a degree in humanities, social sciences, math, and hard sciences. You can do ten thousand jobs with a degree in English, Poli-Sci, Sociology, Biology, Mathematics, Economics, and Chemistry. Those are all degrees that require a broad education, which you can apply to damned near anything. Sure, you won't be a gajillionaire, and you probably won't be famous, but you WILL at least have a better chance of always being able to find a job. The same cannot be said for some of the narrow, focused degrees that people are getting these days. When those job sectors shrink, there are going to be a LOT of college-educated burger flippers in America.

[Mike 03]

32. Naw, it's systemic and has nothing to do with education.

I hate to see ignorance glamorized. We've had enough of that over the past eight years.

[sohndrsmith]

37. You're missing the point. The people to which you refer are EMPLOYED. Whether a

degree makes one "clueless" or not, it's more often than not a requirement for most jobs - especially if you don't want your resume never read and immediately trashed.

What is the complaint again...?

(I don't ask because I'm clueless - I only went to college for 3.5 years). : )

[catnhatnh]

41. In '72 when I entered the army the people I trained with...

either were already pretty clueless but trainable, clueless and hopeless, or had skills already...

By this I mean that at 18 and 19 a few of us had basic life skills tangental to but valuable to basic training. We lucky ones already knew things that most others would struggle with that struck us as amazingly simple and as a result had a huge headstart...we already knew how to wash and iron. How to make a bed. How to scrub a floor or sew. In short we could already deal with life because we already had.

It sounds so small but it was major. Everybody was about to be stressed to learn new skills but a shitload had no idea of the skills the Army ASSUMED. And while a sergeant would gladly demonstrate 5 times how to strip and clean an M-16 a dummy who couldn't iron a dress blouse was fucked.

Additionally as basic involved small unit tactics and barracks living, interpersonal skills were taught. That's getting along with each other and empathy. It's recognizing and working with the abilities of others.This weeded out some who could easily pass through a four year school.

That is what I see from many college graduates. Like the service I assume most are clueless but trainable. And that's the problem...college was designed to lay information over life skills-it was never MEANT to teach those. People with skills become graduates you can respect and the untrainables drop out. But the clueless but trainables are never actually trained-the army has sergeants and demands and colleges have only instructors and tests. They have the "knowledge" but never gained a working base.

At the end of basic your new knowledge and necessary life skills were integrated. At the end of college you get a paper.