I disagree. If you can pass precalc and calc 1 you have to at least know how to add, subtract, multiple, and divide.
The calculators and computers save time. Who would want to do these things by hand? Ok I can compress the shape by manipulating these sets of variables. That should make sense visually. I do not want to do x, y, and z graphs by hand plotting each point and then trying to apply a theorem and see what happens? That would be silly and I do not have the time. Calculus is all about theory and understanding tricks and applying theorems to think outside the box. A calculator wont help you no matter how good it is if you do not understand these concepts as you wont know what to do.
I think elementary school kids do not need calculators and I agree on that. But I do not buy that engineering majors can't do high math. You would flunk out very quickly if you could not.
I worked for a shop a month ago that infected customer pcs with the autorun virus STILL.
We install WIndowsXP and unfortunately our flashdrives got infected with every pc we used including my laptop. The good news is that my Windows Vista on my laptop was not compatible with the virus. It is amazing how things just do not go away for IE 6,5 users with AVG anti virus.
The link was about the fallacies of using gold as a standard. I do not understand the hoopla of conservatives of screaming gold. The price is very volatile and I do not like that.
The 401Ks and economy that would fizzle would be bets to enslave the world in unsustainable debt. The derivatives market is higher than ever with people betting with everyone else s money. Prices of oil, homes, and even college education are all tied to banks trying to raise and manipulate prices. Eventually people will have no money to spend left which is where we are now because we have to pay back.
Critics of the government claim money can't be created out of thin air, yet the banks are trying to do just that. Most college students today pay $1,000 or more a month in loans making them poorer than working at a Mcdonalds. Houses too are insane and the price correction is badly needed.
The stimulus really did not create jobs at all. The census workers did more help than the bailout. I think a correction is needed because everyone who is retiring has unrealistic views of how this magical wealth got created (it never did). We need more regulations and offering credit to businesses would make sure they would hire again. As long as higher returns can be obtained shorting Greek treasury bonds and betting a few trillion more on pyramid scheme derivatives rather than giving lines of credit the recovery will never happen.
"It does make a difference that in some cases things are paid for through the government, and not only because I can't opt out. In some cases the government takes my money to teach others that I am evil for earning a good living, and to teach them how to injure me and steal from me. In all cases where a method not involving force or the threat of force to reach a good goal is possible, it is superior."
Care to enlighten me on what you are talking about? I am not arguing and I am trying to figure out what the threat of force to reach a goal is about?
The cost you pay for civilization is done through the private sector. How much you are willing to pay for food helps the burger flippers and farmers. How much people demand your services at work determine your wage. Taxes really do not redistribute wealth at all. They do the opposite as they distort the free market of supply and demand.
If the tax rate were only 15% or 20% I would agree with you. We need teachers, roads, police, etc. But at 40% that is insane! It does not even cover the duplicate work of the states which provide the majority of money for helping the poor. The tax rate for them is much less.
We are paying too much for retired government workers who get up to 120k for sitting on their butts and not even for people who are working. In California half the education budget goes to retired teachers who work for just 20+ years and take 100k a year for life. Anyway this was just one example of waste.
It takes away the incentive to work hard and distorts the supply and demand curves in economics. When that happens you have less production of goods and services for a higher price and people not willing to take the risks to start a business or advance their degrees or work extra hours at the office?
If you can make a ton more money starting a business then I will want to make a ton of money even if others make it for me. Why would I bother taking the financial risk of having the bank take everything from me to start it otherwise? If people feel they are being treated unfair with their wages then they will go to school to learn a new skill, start a business, or do something else until the wages go up again. Problem solves itself best when left alone.
I want more money too just like everyone else. I am smart enough to realize people do not want to pay me and prefer to look after themselves. This is why i am planning to start my own business. Distribution of wealth works best through economics and work rather than socialism for this reason.
"The public expectations of software are not particularly rigorous -- it shouldn't crash too often, it should look moderately pretty, and it should get them on the web. Done, done, and done. Can we go back to arguing and tribalism now?"
Which is why I no longer run Ubuntu. I found it terrible and the least stable Linux Distro. I am shocked people stand by it as it makes Windows look far supperior. My wife wont touch it anymore with a ten foot pull and was happy to return to Vista. Tribalism and inertia really put most of the Linux users with Ubuntu and its hard to convince them of anything else.
We still got burned and crushed. Wall Street is not an ER patient more than they are the criminals who started this.
All the bailout did was put money for them more to gamble and create another derivative bubble and bet on Greek treasury bonds losing value. I need a job and do not care about what they do.
Banks need to be illegally prohibited from moving money into the stock market. Glass-steagall needs to come back at all costs and I would love to see these guys fall as it would help the economy overall. The depression would not be that bad as FDIC insurers no runs on the bank like in the 1930s. Debt would be forgiven on many $400k loans for $200k houses and the market could return to normal supply and demand curves not distorted by artificial manipulated debt.
"Except that without the bailout you'd probably be out of the job, without unemployment benefits and in the middle of The Greatest Depression Ever. And I'm not exaggerating a bit. Without the bailout money the banking system would have collapsed.
Some economists from MIT state that FDR extended the great depression by using our current monetary policy of bailouts and socialism to hire people where the private did not.
The bailout money did not go to me. It did not go to majority of home owners under preditary lending terms. It did not go to students with loans either.
Let the bastards and their $200 trillion dollar phony derivative pyramid scheme go down in smoke! The plan was passed in a panic without thinking. Here is what I would have done: 1. Use the $700 billion as lines of credits for businesses instead of banks (let them fail) 2. Use what Eisenhower did when he authorized the highway act. Every penny invested returned more in private sector dollars. It enhanced commerce. Obama's plan does the opposite.
Businesses still can't get lines of credit to hire or expand because the banks still are betting derivatives on a 200 trillion dollar scheme and buying gold. All the bailout did was postpone the inevitable and charge our own government interest from the big banks who loaned it back. People are too much in debt and letting the banks which hold the debt collapse would be beautiful leaving the small credit unions left and businesses could still borrow.
This is not a recession. Its a whole depression. Look at the economic news today? Chicago and Atlanta are going back into recession and during the 1930s the stock market and GDP went up and down many times before it finally ended. It will be 2016 or later before people are hired again. So yes I am not a right wing nut but I agree with the tea baggers on this. Wall street distorts the market rather than strengthens it.
I obtained my degree last August in Business Administration with a 3.4 GPA.
I can't find any work besides working as a substitute teacher. My MCSE and A+ is getting a little old but I can not find any work over 10/hr. With my student loans I simply can not afford to work that low.
I think too many people are going to college and I agree and think it is ridiculous. It taught me great knowledge in business but at a very high cost that I could have obtained over a few decades at work.
In economics this is called bargaining power. Right now the employers have the power and the programmers are willing to work for less at the will of the CEO. In 1999 it was the other way around when not enough qualified workers were found. India soon solved this problem.
It is not fair but shows the best thing you can do is start your own business and be the new master so you do not have to put up with this stuff.
Basically it doesn't matter how much you bring in. As long as someone is willing to accept the pay and can do the job then that is your market rate you must accept. Excess employees are really great unfortunately for your boss for this reason.
I do admit I want a Cadillac SUV and a nice 2400 square foot house. Why not want these? Thats what the commercials do and what I see other people driving.
Have you lived a life of poverty? Try living under $20,000 a year and living without luxury items like soda. Try affording a $250,000 home when you make less than $1600 a month? try working 70 hours a week to prevent starvation. This is what people working these jobs live under and I would not want it on my worst enemy.
A decade or two ago these jobs paid more if you had a skill and no degree. Homes were much cheaper and so were cars compared with inflation. The fact is life is getting harder and harder on the lower class and yes it is a sentence of a life of gloom and missery without that magical piece of paper. Immigration and globalization has really hurt the lower classes more than the upper classes.
Employers simply demand more like another poster mentioned a masters degree is required to run a large farm today.
While many tout globalization as good lets think about it?
I personally know many family members who made a good living doing construction who can't find work. They charged $30/hr for specializing tiling when houses were $125,000 for a 2,000 sq foot home 15 years ago. Fast forward today and immigrants come in for $10/hr for the same work and each house is now worth $325,000 and the price of food and gas has doubled!
This is a 1/3 paycut and with a double of the cost of living this turns into a 1/6th paycut. OUCH.
These same people are now applying for jobs that used to pay more. Accounts receivable clerk used to pay $20/hr 15 years ago now requires a college degree and pays $12. UPS package handler used to make $16/hr and now pays $8/hr. Cost of living doubles too. The reason why is because of globalization and immigration force everyone to grind and work more for less and get more education and pray for a job.
My small examples are just from what illegal immigration has done in Southern California. Now lets talk about white collar jobs. Cost of living doubles and I.T. professionals salaries are still cut in half from 2000. Globalization is forcing many to go to college because there is no work left. Work that is left here has the wages cut in half from what it once was. The wealthy are the ones who are making out like barons and causing the problem. Deflation is going to be a serious problem and even with interest rates near 0 inflation is still not kicking in.
If unemployment is high then employers simply demand a degree as many who are out of work are happy just to have a job and this is true with a degree or not. It is a very bad time to be a graduate indeed. If protectionism is put back in you can bet the wages would go back up and people would find work again very very fast. I know I may sound extremist here but its simple supply and demand. People just can't compete and live the same lifestyle.
You can specialize too but still not find jobs because you do not have experience.
It seems you are screwed either way unless you have experience BEFORE getting your degree. If you have that then you can move up to management and HR can use that magical checklist of a degree to show you are qualified.
Well if HR didn't require that magical piece of paper we would not have so many kids willing to go in massive debt to obtain these degrees. It is a liability to hire someone without a degree and it is a filtering tool for the recession to weed people out are making the issue much worse.
If you do not have that magical piece of paper you are pretty much doomed. 10 years ago you could work your way to be a manager at a payless shoe store, do pc work, or sales. Now you need the degree AND the experience to be a secretary.
Infact, there are degree programs for secretaries errr administrative assistants. It is just insane. What is next? A degree on how to properly put pickles on and properly flip a burger? Only 60k for a 2 year program with up to 9/hr earning potential!... ends rant
The skills you gain are non transferable as HR does not actually think this is experience.
It only has to be done at work and verified by a reference to count as actual experience. Accounting on the other hand is a great example of learning a trade in school. Intense work but there is no way in hell I could learn that on my own. Even at work my knowledge would have been specialized for only accounts receivable or accounts payable while I learned.
Would you want me running your books at your company? Probably not but you can bet I would perform well doing accounts receivable and data entry for your CPA's out of school from what I have been taught.
"If employers keep asking for ever-increasing qualifications, isn't that an indication that universities aren't providing the right education?
HR needs to filter out a hundred applicants per opening in this horrible depression/recession. It has nothing to do with quality of education or skills.
To be a manager at Payless you need a 4 year degree + 3-5 years experience for $12/hr! I have seen ads where manufacturers not only demand a masters in industrial engineering and +10 years experience, but their applicants must have chocolate experience all for an operator job at a factory. It is ridiculous.
I do have to agree that Computer Science does not teach any valuable skills applicable to working a call center or configuring routers but that is a whole other debate. These are why certifications are on the rise too. But every profession is doing this including accountants, teachers, salesmen, and even manufacturers. Employers have the ball right now in the bargaining power in terms of hiring so why not ask for more?
Managers want their cake and eat it too and people with an insane amount of experience and certifications are driven and you can bet they will give high performance. Why not require it if there is a recession?
It makes me want to run from Perl like the plague. The new bash shell and command line utilities can do most of perl much easier and there are languages that are strict such as python that are readable by mere regular humans. The powershell and.NET makes it a powerful replacement as well. The fact is you do not need piping text around everywhere and using sed and regex if objects are used instead. I do admit it makes the system administrator more of a.NET programmer than a unix one but Perl is no longer used for CGI scripts for good reason. I had a whole college level book on Perl programming and the first chapter showed there were "3" different ways of printing "hello world" and they all vary on context??
I know its probably your favorite language and I do not mean to bash it. But Perl is not very useful if a team uses it because no one can read each others code as it can very so widely. It was all the rage as was Java a decade ago. Java seems to be living on in its niche of complex serverlet apps.
I want to elaborate for the people reading your post about the dangers of student loans. They are not simply online schools anymore and 80% of the private colleges are sharks.
Students with real degrees from good private institutions are being screwed over as well. My wife and I being victims of this. The school told her +6 months could make her a teacher after her 4 year degree. Citi bank promised her it would be cheap and easy and within a year be done. Only 2% interest Meanwhile after a year the school kept changing the requirements to be highly qualified. It took 3+ years and the costs kept going up each year and interest is double digit.
It took 8 years and $200,000 for her masters and credential after playing this silly game and after the school districts kept upping the standards to be rehired each year.
It left us with $2,400 a month in student loans and only $700 left for food and rent. We plan to lose our kids and send them off to their father to pay off the d*mn loans. Pardon my language but this angers me to no end as the financial laws that the banks wrote...err lobbied for make it illegal to declare bankruptcy on a student loan. This was not Harvard but rather just a private college that charged my wife a fortune. She was told 6 months to 1 year while the school was planning on adding 2 -3 years and Citigroup planned to up the interest rate.
Unless you own a home you have no collateral to turn them into a 30 year with a more reasonable monthly fee. Our lives are going to be very horrible for the next 10 years. I take responsibility for this for not doing more research and I hope my post is a warning for all slashdotters who are college students. The private college is in the market to charge you money and not get you out of school quickly or cheaply.
Unless you are going to get a ton of money do not bother with online courses.
Part of this movement is a big scam to get people like yourself in debt that you can't bankrupt yourself out of and can't scale back. CNN reported alot of these phony online courses simply put you debt that you have to pay up to $600 - $2,000 a month and do not get you the dream job to pay for the degree.
I may sound cynical but my wife and I are about to go broke and go hungry because of our $2,300 a month in student loans that we can't get out of unlike other loans. We made more money at minimum wage because 70% of her income did not have to go to her masters degree.
Go to a real university but watch your back as you make sure the degree you obtain gets a job that can pay for it.. Part of the reason for going to college is to gain network connections that can help you land a job out of college. There are a lot of sharks in the university market and it is looking similar to the housing craze of 5 years ago. Online learning tops it as they mostly charge you but offer little benefit in return. The people at HR really do not care if you have an online degree or not. They care about experience. My wife got a real degree too and it only caused us misery. Online programs are costly too and offer an inferior education in return. If you put in the money make sure you get the right results and connections.
Not in my experience. I have 2 year old hardware so that may make a difference. Ubuntu has been a terrible nightmare for me while Fedora works flawlessly on the same hardware.
Everyone's experience is different but Ubuntu is very cutting edge and I would rate it almost alpha quality. Windows may not be perfect but it works with the hardware and is well tested before it is released.
Most of the pretty UI of Ubuntu is from FreeDesktop.org and Gnome. They are in other distros now. RPM is no longer the bile that it once was and with yum works better if not the same as apt-get.
Ubuntu can give Linux a very bad name if it does not work well and users do not want it.
The United States spends more money per student than any other country and have the worse results! At $10,000 per head we need to provide a better value with our tax dollars. The testing forces teachers to not slack off and reach certain goals by certain times. In most states there are 2 tests so schools can find out where they are lacking most and what areas the teachers need to focus on before the school year ends.
If you are not going to use standardized tests then how are you going to gauge performance? Other countries use tests and some even dictate pacing such as France. Every page must be taught at the same time throughout the country.
Teachers hate tests (my wife is a teacher), but I realize every profession has crap including quotas, returns on investments, customer service ratings, etc. People are angry and my wife wonders why 4.5 students pay her salary and the rest goes to...? That is a very good question?
Thanks to standardize testing kids are doing work 2 years ahead of what was taught at that grade 10 years ago. My kid just finished 6th grade and can already accomplish Algebra, find slopes, and even factor binomials. I did not do these things until I was in 8th grade. Now its standard in no child left behind and is pushing Americans 2 grade levels ahead across the board. Now we are finally starting to catch up with the rest of the world.
All the other countries do it and employers and universities demand it as they need to know which country or state to invest in. Guess which ones have the first dibbs? It is not the US anymore and labor costs are only part of the picture.
Where is the tax payer and parent return on investment?
"it is highly unlikely that quantum spin characteristics met the burden of having to be identical in the controls of chemical experiment"
Funny you picked quantum mechanics. Many scientist reject the theories because they can not be proven and it took decades before anyone took it seriously. Most scientists are hypocrites in this area as a result.
Statistical variation from randomization does not equal changing the experiments variables (not statistical). Variations that are accepted statistically in a scientific method are only considered if the conditions are identical. Have you written any papers at a masters or PHD level before?
I had a friend who compared writing his dissertation to proving there is not an invisible pink bunny rabbit skewing results of his data.
How can you prove that an airplane created precipitation of the clouds, atmospheric conditions, and humidity are different? You can't.
Slashdot Mirror
I disagree. If you can pass precalc and calc 1 you have to at least know how to add, subtract, multiple, and divide.
The calculators and computers save time. Who would want to do these things by hand? Ok I can compress the shape by manipulating these sets of variables. That should make sense visually. I do not want to do x, y, and z graphs by hand plotting each point and then trying to apply a theorem and see what happens? That would be silly and I do not have the time. Calculus is all about theory and understanding tricks and applying theorems to think outside the box. A calculator wont help you no matter how good it is if you do not understand these concepts as you wont know what to do.
I think elementary school kids do not need calculators and I agree on that. But I do not buy that engineering majors can't do high math. You would flunk out very quickly if you could not.
I worked for a shop a month ago that infected customer pcs with the autorun virus STILL.
We install WIndowsXP and unfortunately our flashdrives got infected with every pc we used including my laptop. The good news is that my Windows Vista on my laptop was not compatible with the virus. It is amazing how things just do not go away for IE 6,5 users with AVG anti virus.
The link was about the fallacies of using gold as a standard. I do not understand the hoopla of conservatives of screaming gold. The price is very volatile and I do not like that.
The 401Ks and economy that would fizzle would be bets to enslave the world in unsustainable debt. The derivatives market is higher than ever with people betting with everyone else s money. Prices of oil, homes, and even college education are all tied to banks trying to raise and manipulate prices. Eventually people will have no money to spend left which is where we are now because we have to pay back.
Critics of the government claim money can't be created out of thin air, yet the banks are trying to do just that. Most college students today pay $1,000 or more a month in loans making them poorer than working at a Mcdonalds. Houses too are insane and the price correction is badly needed.
The stimulus really did not create jobs at all. The census workers did more help than the bailout. I think a correction is needed because everyone who is retiring has unrealistic views of how this magical wealth got created (it never did). We need more regulations and offering credit to businesses would make sure they would hire again. As long as higher returns can be obtained shorting Greek treasury bonds and betting a few trillion more on pyramid scheme derivatives rather than giving lines of credit the recovery will never happen.
"It does make a difference that in some cases things are paid for through the government, and not only because I can't opt out. In some cases the government takes my money to teach others that I am evil for earning a good living, and to teach them how to injure me and steal from me. In all cases where a method not involving force or the threat of force to reach a good goal is possible, it is superior."
Care to enlighten me on what you are talking about? I am not arguing and I am trying to figure out what the threat of force to reach a goal is about?
The cost you pay for civilization is done through the private sector. How much you are willing to pay for food helps the burger flippers and farmers. How much people demand your services at work determine your wage. Taxes really do not redistribute wealth at all. They do the opposite as they distort the free market of supply and demand.
If the tax rate were only 15% or 20% I would agree with you. We need teachers, roads, police, etc. But at 40% that is insane! It does not even cover the duplicate work of the states which provide the majority of money for helping the poor. The tax rate for them is much less.
We are paying too much for retired government workers who get up to 120k for sitting on their butts and not even for people who are working. In California half the education budget goes to retired teachers who work for just 20+ years and take 100k a year for life. Anyway this was just one example of waste.
Here is the problem with that theory.
It takes away the incentive to work hard and distorts the supply and demand curves in economics. When that happens you have less production of goods and services for a higher price and people not willing to take the risks to start a business or advance their degrees or work extra hours at the office?
If you can make a ton more money starting a business then I will want to make a ton of money even if others make it for me. Why would I bother taking the financial risk of having the bank take everything from me to start it otherwise? If people feel they are being treated unfair with their wages then they will go to school to learn a new skill, start a business, or do something else until the wages go up again. Problem solves itself best when left alone.
I want more money too just like everyone else. I am smart enough to realize people do not want to pay me and prefer to look after themselves. This is why i am planning to start my own business. Distribution of wealth works best through economics and work rather than socialism for this reason.
"The public expectations of software are not particularly rigorous -- it shouldn't crash too often, it should look moderately pretty, and it should get them on the web. Done, done, and done. Can we go back to arguing and tribalism now?"
Which is why I no longer run Ubuntu. I found it terrible and the least stable Linux Distro. I am shocked people stand by it as it makes Windows look far supperior. My wife wont touch it anymore with a ten foot pull and was happy to return to Vista. Tribalism and inertia really put most of the Linux users with Ubuntu and its hard to convince them of anything else.
We still got burned and crushed. Wall Street is not an ER patient more than they are the criminals who started this.
All the bailout did was put money for them more to gamble and create another derivative bubble and bet on Greek treasury bonds losing value. I need a job and do not care about what they do.
Banks need to be illegally prohibited from moving money into the stock market. Glass-steagall needs to come back at all costs and I would love to see these guys fall as it would help the economy overall. The depression would not be that bad as FDIC insurers no runs on the bank like in the 1930s. Debt would be forgiven on many $400k loans for $200k houses and the market could return to normal supply and demand curves not distorted by artificial manipulated debt.
"Except that without the bailout you'd probably be out of the job, without unemployment benefits and in the middle of The Greatest Depression Ever. And I'm not exaggerating a bit. Without the bailout money the banking system would have collapsed.
Some economists from MIT state that FDR extended the great depression by using our current monetary policy of bailouts and socialism to hire people where the private did not.
The bailout money did not go to me. It did not go to majority of home owners under preditary lending terms. It did not go to students with loans either.
Let the bastards and their $200 trillion dollar phony derivative pyramid scheme go down in smoke! The plan was passed in a panic without thinking. Here is what I would have done:
1. Use the $700 billion as lines of credits for businesses instead of banks (let them fail)
2. Use what Eisenhower did when he authorized the highway act. Every penny invested returned more in private sector dollars. It enhanced commerce. Obama's plan does the opposite.
Businesses still can't get lines of credit to hire or expand because the banks still are betting derivatives on a 200 trillion dollar scheme and buying gold. All the bailout did was postpone the inevitable and charge our own government interest from the big banks who loaned it back. People are too much in debt and letting the banks which hold the debt collapse would be beautiful leaving the small credit unions left and businesses could still borrow.
This is not a recession. Its a whole depression. Look at the economic news today? Chicago and Atlanta are going back into recession and during the 1930s the stock market and GDP went up and down many times before it finally ended. It will be 2016 or later before people are hired again. So yes I am not a right wing nut but I agree with the tea baggers on this. Wall street distorts the market rather than strengthens it.
So next time you go to the hospital you can pay for someone else who choices not to pay for insurance. Nice ...
FYI I absolutely opposed the new health care plans. Just want to show a different side.
I obtained my degree last August in Business Administration with a 3.4 GPA.
I can't find any work besides working as a substitute teacher. My MCSE and A+ is getting a little old but I can not find any work over 10/hr. With my student loans I simply can not afford to work that low.
I think too many people are going to college and I agree and think it is ridiculous. It taught me great knowledge in business but at a very high cost that I could have obtained over a few decades at work.
In economics this is called bargaining power. Right now the employers have the power and the programmers are willing to work for less at the will of the CEO. In 1999 it was the other way around when not enough qualified workers were found. India soon solved this problem.
It is not fair but shows the best thing you can do is start your own business and be the new master so you do not have to put up with this stuff.
Basically it doesn't matter how much you bring in. As long as someone is willing to accept the pay and can do the job then that is your market rate you must accept. Excess employees are really great unfortunately for your boss for this reason.
I do admit I want a Cadillac SUV and a nice 2400 square foot house. Why not want these? Thats what the commercials do and what I see other people driving.
Have you lived a life of poverty? Try living under $20,000 a year and living without luxury items like soda. Try affording a $250,000 home when you make less than $1600 a month? try working 70 hours a week to prevent starvation. This is what people working these jobs live under and I would not want it on my worst enemy.
A decade or two ago these jobs paid more if you had a skill and no degree. Homes were much cheaper and so were cars compared with inflation. The fact is life is getting harder and harder on the lower class and yes it is a sentence of a life of gloom and missery without that magical piece of paper. Immigration and globalization has really hurt the lower classes more than the upper classes.
Employers simply demand more like another poster mentioned a masters degree is required to run a large farm today.
No one is buying because of globalization is taking jobs away.
While many tout globalization as good lets think about it?
I personally know many family members who made a good living doing construction who can't find work. They charged $30/hr for specializing tiling when houses were $125,000 for a 2,000 sq foot home 15 years ago. Fast forward today and immigrants come in for $10/hr for the same work and each house is now worth $325,000 and the price of food and gas has doubled!
This is a 1/3 paycut and with a double of the cost of living this turns into a 1/6th paycut. OUCH.
These same people are now applying for jobs that used to pay more. Accounts receivable clerk used to pay $20/hr 15 years ago now requires a college degree and pays $12. UPS package handler used to make $16/hr and now pays $8/hr. Cost of living doubles too. The reason why is because of globalization and immigration force everyone to grind and work more for less and get more education and pray for a job.
My small examples are just from what illegal immigration has done in Southern California. Now lets talk about white collar jobs. Cost of living doubles and I.T. professionals salaries are still cut in half from 2000. Globalization is forcing many to go to college because there is no work left. Work that is left here has the wages cut in half from what it once was. The wealthy are the ones who are making out like barons and causing the problem. Deflation is going to be a serious problem and even with interest rates near 0 inflation is still not kicking in.
If unemployment is high then employers simply demand a degree as many who are out of work are happy just to have a job and this is true with a degree or not. It is a very bad time to be a graduate indeed. If protectionism is put back in you can bet the wages would go back up and people would find work again very very fast. I know I may sound extremist here but its simple supply and demand. People just can't compete and live the same lifestyle.
You can specialize too but still not find jobs because you do not have experience.
It seems you are screwed either way unless you have experience BEFORE getting your degree. If you have that then you can move up to management and HR can use that magical checklist of a degree to show you are qualified.
Well if HR didn't require that magical piece of paper we would not have so many kids willing to go in massive debt to obtain these degrees. It is a liability to hire someone without a degree and it is a filtering tool for the recession to weed people out are making the issue much worse.
If you do not have that magical piece of paper you are pretty much doomed. 10 years ago you could work your way to be a manager at a payless shoe store, do pc work, or sales. Now you need the degree AND the experience to be a secretary.
Infact, there are degree programs for secretaries errr administrative assistants. It is just insane. What is next? A degree on how to properly put pickles on and properly flip a burger? Only 60k for a 2 year program with up to 9/hr earning potential! ... ends rant
The skills you gain are non transferable as HR does not actually think this is experience.
It only has to be done at work and verified by a reference to count as actual experience. Accounting on the other hand is a great example of learning a trade in school. Intense work but there is no way in hell I could learn that on my own. Even at work my knowledge would have been specialized for only accounts receivable or accounts payable while I learned.
Would you want me running your books at your company? Probably not but you can bet I would perform well doing accounts receivable and data entry for your CPA's out of school from what I have been taught.
"If employers keep asking for ever-increasing qualifications, isn't that an indication that universities aren't providing the right education?
HR needs to filter out a hundred applicants per opening in this horrible depression/recession. It has nothing to do with quality of education or skills.
To be a manager at Payless you need a 4 year degree + 3-5 years experience for $12/hr! I have seen ads where manufacturers not only demand a masters in industrial engineering and +10 years experience, but their applicants must have chocolate experience all for an operator job at a factory. It is ridiculous.
I do have to agree that Computer Science does not teach any valuable skills applicable to working a call center or configuring routers but that is a whole other debate. These are why certifications are on the rise too. But every profession is doing this including accountants, teachers, salesmen, and even manufacturers. Employers have the ball right now in the bargaining power in terms of hiring so why not ask for more?
Managers want their cake and eat it too and people with an insane amount of experience and certifications are driven and you can bet they will give high performance. Why not require it if there is a recession?
Ease of use?
Look at your sig?
It makes me want to run from Perl like the plague. The new bash shell and command line utilities can do most of perl much easier and there are languages that are strict such as python that are readable by mere regular humans. The powershell and .NET makes it a powerful replacement as well. The fact is you do not need piping text around everywhere and using sed and regex if objects are used instead. I do admit it makes the system administrator more of a .NET programmer than a unix one but Perl is no longer used for CGI scripts for good reason. I had a whole college level book on Perl programming and the first chapter showed there were "3" different ways of printing "hello world" and they all vary on context??
I know its probably your favorite language and I do not mean to bash it. But Perl is not very useful if a team uses it because no one can read each others code as it can very so widely. It was all the rage as was Java a decade ago. Java seems to be living on in its niche of complex serverlet apps.
I want to elaborate for the people reading your post about the dangers of student loans. They are not simply online schools anymore and 80% of the private colleges are sharks.
Students with real degrees from good private institutions are being screwed over as well. My wife and I being victims of this. The school told her +6 months could make her a teacher after her 4 year degree. Citi bank promised her it would be cheap and easy and within a year be done. Only 2% interest Meanwhile after a year the school kept changing the requirements to be highly qualified. It took 3+ years and the costs kept going up each year and interest is double digit.
It took 8 years and $200,000 for her masters and credential after playing this silly game and after the school districts kept upping the standards to be rehired each year.
It left us with $2,400 a month in student loans and only $700 left for food and rent. We plan to lose our kids and send them off to their father to pay off the d*mn loans. Pardon my language but this angers me to no end as the financial laws that the banks wrote ...err lobbied for make it illegal to declare bankruptcy on a student loan. This was not Harvard but rather just a private college that charged my wife a fortune. She was told 6 months to 1 year while the school was planning on adding 2 -3 years and Citigroup planned to up the interest rate.
Unless you own a home you have no collateral to turn them into a 30 year with a more reasonable monthly fee. Our lives are going to be very horrible for the next 10 years. I take responsibility for this for not doing more research and I hope my post is a warning for all slashdotters who are college students. The private college is in the market to charge you money and not get you out of school quickly or cheaply.
Unless you are going to get a ton of money do not bother with online courses.
Part of this movement is a big scam to get people like yourself in debt that you can't bankrupt yourself out of and can't scale back. CNN reported alot of these phony online courses simply put you debt that you have to pay up to $600 - $2,000 a month and do not get you the dream job to pay for the degree.
I may sound cynical but my wife and I are about to go broke and go hungry because of our $2,300 a month in student loans that we can't get out of unlike other loans. We made more money at minimum wage because 70% of her income did not have to go to her masters degree.
Go to a real university but watch your back as you make sure the degree you obtain gets a job that can pay for it.. Part of the reason for going to college is to gain network connections that can help you land a job out of college. There are a lot of sharks in the university market and it is looking similar to the housing craze of 5 years ago. Online learning tops it as they mostly charge you but offer little benefit in return. The people at HR really do not care if you have an online degree or not. They care about experience. My wife got a real degree too and it only caused us misery. Online programs are costly too and offer an inferior education in return. If you put in the money make sure you get the right results and connections.
"Everything on Ubuntu just works"
Not in my experience. I have 2 year old hardware so that may make a difference. Ubuntu has been a terrible nightmare for me while Fedora works flawlessly on the same hardware.
Everyone's experience is different but Ubuntu is very cutting edge and I would rate it almost alpha quality. Windows may not be perfect but it works with the hardware and is well tested before it is released.
Most of the pretty UI of Ubuntu is from FreeDesktop.org and Gnome. They are in other distros now. RPM is no longer the bile that it once was and with yum works better if not the same as apt-get.
Ubuntu can give Linux a very bad name if it does not work well and users do not want it.
The United States spends more money per student than any other country and have the worse results! At $10,000 per head we need to provide a better value with our tax dollars. The testing forces teachers to not slack off and reach certain goals by certain times. In most states there are 2 tests so schools can find out where they are lacking most and what areas the teachers need to focus on before the school year ends.
If you are not going to use standardized tests then how are you going to gauge performance? Other countries use tests and some even dictate pacing such as France. Every page must be taught at the same time throughout the country.
Teachers hate tests (my wife is a teacher), but I realize every profession has crap including quotas, returns on investments, customer service ratings, etc. People are angry and my wife wonders why 4.5 students pay her salary and the rest goes to ...? That is a very good question?
Thanks to standardize testing kids are doing work 2 years ahead of what was taught at that grade 10 years ago. My kid just finished 6th grade and can already accomplish Algebra, find slopes, and even factor binomials. I did not do these things until I was in 8th grade. Now its standard in no child left behind and is pushing Americans 2 grade levels ahead across the board. Now we are finally starting to catch up with the rest of the world.
All the other countries do it and employers and universities demand it as they need to know which country or state to invest in. Guess which ones have the first dibbs? It is not the US anymore and labor costs are only part of the picture.
Where is the tax payer and parent return on investment?
"it is highly unlikely that quantum spin characteristics met the burden of having to be identical in the controls of chemical experiment"
Funny you picked quantum mechanics. Many scientist reject the theories because they can not be proven and it took decades before anyone took it seriously. Most scientists are hypocrites in this area as a result.
Statistical variation from randomization does not equal changing the experiments variables (not statistical). Variations that are accepted statistically in a scientific method are only considered if the conditions are identical. Have you written any papers at a masters or PHD level before?
I had a friend who compared writing his dissertation to proving there is not an invisible pink bunny rabbit skewing results of his data.
How can you prove that an airplane created precipitation of the clouds, atmospheric conditions, and humidity are different? You can't.