<p>Really? SAT scores? Please, no. There was a HUGE disparity between my SAT and ACT score. And neither of them come close to my “IQ” range. </p>
<p>navy, I would be very sad in your ideal world. Only the people with above-average intelligence should be allowed to pursue knowledge? IQ tells you NOTHING. Someone with an IQ of 100 and a love for knowledge is going to do MUCH better than someone with an IQ of 130 and a lazy attitude. </p>
<p>You can’t judge everything off of test scores and IQ points. They are fatally flawed tests that don’t judge accurately.</p>
<p>@cluelessdad. I also love the Harvey Mudd model. I think techies would do well to get a good grounding in the arts and humanities. On the other hand, I’m not alone in hoping English majors would go out of their way to learn some basic statistics and to take some courses that require lab time.</p>
<p>You won’t believe the type of BS you can take to get away with the math and science requirements. For me, any science class that doesn’t provide some serious insight into how basic, modern research is conducted is useless.</p>
<p>I would have been pretty scary in a science lab, but agree it probably would have been good for me to have the experience (or maybe it was just traumatic and I have blocked it out, I’m getting older than I like to admit).</p>
<p>No arguments either on stats, there is a whole lot of bs data being dished out and we are MUCH better off with a population able to sift through that.</p>
In this case, I think an accountant would have been more useful.</p>
<p>Anyway, if you do some research on the Enron scandal you’ll find that Ken Lay and the Board of Directors failed to do their job and understand exactly what it was that their underlings did to report profits.</p>
<p>If anything, this is an indictment of B-school management mentality. But perhaps that’s another thread…</p>
<p>shadstatic: Yes. But I think we were never talking about those schools in the first place. Williams, or Swarthmore or the Ivy liberal arts degrees aren’t going to disappear anytime soon. We’re wondering whether folklore and mythology and Latin can or even should survive at a run-of-the-mill school.</p>
<p>Companies are prevented from testing for IQ (for discrimination reasons) - which is stupid. Instead they just go to other proxies like university, GPA, or college major.</p>
<p>cluelessdad, how are we being elitist? 4th and 5th tier schools are NOT good investments, espcially if you decide to study a liberal arts major at one. The hard truth is that pure liberal arts majors (especially at lesser colleges) are becoming less and less relevant to today’s world and today’s jobs. </p>
<p>Notice how it is harder and harder to find work in our society. Long time ago, you needed zero education. Then you had to get grade school education, then high school education, and by the 1970s and 1980s a BS degree was pretty much required for 99.9999% of company jobs. Now as the world becomes more competitive and jobs are becoming even more knowledge-based, we are on the cusp of the undergrad degree becoming less useful. What I mean is, a bachelor degree is very outstanding IF it is done in a useful and practical major. Back then when all you really needed was a bachelors degree, they didn’t care what it was in. Now as jobs are becoming more knowledge intensive, the pool of relevant BS majors are becoming smaller and smaller. A history major in 1970 was much more useful than a history major in 2010. On the other hand, non-liberal arts majors’ usefulness has only grown. The article of the OP is common sense and shouldn’t be taken by surprise.</p>
<p>To say that liberal arts majors are becoming less relevant is not elitist: it is a fact that society needs to get used to. When employers want more and more specific skill sets, how is that being elitist? Society has grown to become very knowledge-intensive.</p>
<p>Actually… no. IQ tests are falling out of favor with psychologists and sociologists. Mostly because they realize it’s crap and that it is not an accurate measurement of most people because of outside influences.</p>
<p>Too funny. Carry on, you wild and crazy CCers</p>
<p>BTW: re: Enron, I looked up Ken Lay – Econ Phd. It was an interesting mere failure of oversight when he personally guided financial analysts through a mocked up trading floor, complete with employees pretending to trade a la The Sting</p>
<p>I’ve been a part of many online forums, and not just this one and I’ve come to understand that, well, a response as if your just trying to shrug off the truth in a clever or nonchalant way is one of the ways I know they got nothing more to say. </p>
<p>To say that the worst colleges out there are not good investments is not derision or insult or elitism. Its the truth. There are a lot of for-profit and generally low quality places where the piece of paper they give you at the end is meaningless. Elitism would be if someone said that only the top tier colleges are legit, everyone else sucks, etc. I don’t really see that in this thread.</p>
<p>Deride employers for their “elitism”. Employers today want and need specific skills from people. Looking at one’s place of education helps them do that (for entry level jobs - less relevant for those with experience). Its a reflection of how the general job requirements in our society has changed.</p>
I think techies would do well to get a good grounding in the arts and humanities. On the other hand, I’m not alone in hoping English majors would go out of their way to learn some basic statistics and to take some courses that require lab time.</p>