A couple of recent news stories have shed some light on the value of formal education.
Peter Jennings is dead, having held one of the most important journalism jobs in North America. He was a high-school dropout and never attended college.
Microsoft, one of the world’s most valuable ($293 billion) and cash-rich ($38 billion) companies, was out shopping for a chief operating officer (COO), i.e., a manager. With the ability to hire anyone in the world, whom did Microsoft choose? Kevin Turner, age 40, the Chief Information Officer (CIO) of Wal-Mart. Mr. Tuner was responsible for all the information technology at a company that is famous for its advanced use of IT. What illustrious schools and brilliant professors prepared him for these challenges? Mr. Turner got a bachelor’s degree in business from East Central University in Ada, Oklahoma. He never obtained an MBA. He never studied computer science or MIS at a college.
Why don’t you have a ‘mail this article to my favorite academic worker’ option on your web page? Maybe that would be too specific. Seriously, though, this observation is very suggestive. Don’t you think mentioning Steve Jobs would have strengthened the case?
Jorma Ollila, CEO and chairman of Nokia for about 15 years, becomes chairman of Shell next year, has a master’s degree in economics (London school of Economics), an MSc in tech.physics (Helsinki Univ. of Technology) and a master’s degree in social sciences (Univ. of Helsinki) (and I’m omitting the honorary degrees).
While formal education does certainly not guarantee that someone is smart, my experienes in software engineering have pretty much convinced me that formal education at least guarantees some level of skill (maybe this is also a cultural difference? here, education is probably more valued than in the US)
When I applied for an MBA program, and had to write my introspective “what I want to do” essay, I noticed that all of the people that I admired career-wise (entrepreneurs) didn’t have much in the way of formal education. As I talked more to these people about an MBA, they told me it was great if you wanted to be a company man, but not so much use for starting of running companies.
What is it about computer scientists with PhDs from MIT that makes them so prone to confusing “anecdotes” and “data”?
Other scientists don’t have this weakness, I think.
Besides just being provocative, I think this fits nicely with what I believe is the key concept: It’s not strictly the education that gets someone in the door, it’s having a record of success. In the absense of a history of success, a recognized education is a indicator or signal of future potential. It doesn’t guarantee success. But, in the absence of education or past experience, how else can an individuals potential be judged? Hiring someone is a investment. What indicators can I use to insure my investment? When you have to justify your selection to others, a candidate with a list of credentials or well-known success is much easier to support.
Being a succesfull manager is all about your ability to manipulate people. They don’t teach that in graduate school.
And of course there’s Bill Gates – a college, albeit Harvard, dropout and Oprah – a graduate of Tennessee State University, a Historically Black Institution. But I guess we should really look at Dubya – he holds the highest position in the nation and a graduate degree from an Ivy League school. Though I’m sure he got where he is primarily through his keen intellect, don’t you think ?
As a highly educated poor person, I concede Phil’s point. Education did not make me rich (so far!). I think there’s a big issue, though, that our society is organized to waste the efforts of smart and highly educated people. There is a morbid fascination with hierarchies. People get to the top by being hierarchical, by bullying those below and groveling to those above. See http://www.fbi.gov/short/sacrstate.htm . See also http://onlineethics.org/essays/shuttle/telecon.html . On the “telecon” page, the moment of decision comes about 2/3 of the way down, after Figure 10. Only Scott Adams, with his Dilbert comic strip is allowed to speak up. I am really thinking of the earliest Dilbert strips which focused on the stupidity of the boss. In one strip the boss says “Tell me, what do I produce?” and the answer is “You make carbon dioxide, which our plants would need, if they weren’t plastic.” America’s antidote is startup companies, which are great, but why does nobody read The Peter Principle?
I have degrees and MIT and Berkeley. These schools did not teach me what COO means or does. So obviously I don’t qualify for the job. What does the COO do? Is he the guy who writes all the code and fixes all the bugs? Or does he just get paid more?
My own experience with seven years of “higher education” convinced me that purpose of a university isn’t to provide the qualifications for “leadership” or even to impart specific knowledge. Rather, it’s to prepare students to become corporate drones upon graduation. That means training them to sacrifice themselves and subordinate everything they’re interested in to long hours spent on short-deadline arbitrary assignments that are invariably uninteresting drudgery, whose relevance is not even remotely apparent, and that become completely irrelevant and utterly forgotten the moment they’re complete.
A student who spends four years doing that, and who proves his or her ability by getting excellent grades, is then well-qualified as a corporate employee. Said employee will spend a lifetime sacrificing his or her life working long hours at arbitrary and utterly uninteresting assignments from bosses who themselves aren’t even certain of the relevance. But those assignments are momentarily vital to react properly to an immediate crisis (or perhaps to an impending status report), that becomes completely irrelevant and forgotten when the next crisis emerges.
That’s what higher education is for– to prepare students to be the most productive workers in the world (at least according to official metrics) who are always eager to sacrifice themselves to the arbitrary whims of bosses who themselves have no idea what they’re doing. The people you mention (and others) learned their necessary skills elsewhere; they possibly would be far less successful had they completed their “education.”
I have seen MBAs from Columbia and elsewhere wreak havoc up close and personal, so am biased. I made fun in her presense of the typical MBA attitude of “it doesn’t matter what it is, we can manage it” and got a blank look that showed that was exactly what was believed. So Phil, you are probably being modeled as a painting robot or an extruder machine by some MBA looking for efficiencies in higher education …
Joel went to Yale. Hence the jealousy.
This is anecdotic evidence. You are an example of the opposite, highly educated, well-off and ,I will venture to say, a strong believer in education
Nothing ruins a mind like a higher education.
Off topic, I know, but it looks as if one of your predictions is coming to pass. Wonder when they will start shipping them over.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/09/automobiles/09mini.html
Folks: Some of you are taking my entry a little too seriously. Dreary federal government statistics show that education, on average, yields a pretty good return on investment, especially medical school. This is beyond dispute. But for those of us who live in a “company town” where the product is higher ed it is kind of funny to be reminded of folks who succeed without availing themselves of our product.
Gun Net: It does look as though http://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2003/06/20#a463 is on track. I gave the Chinese 10-20 years to build something about like a current Honda Accord and do it for $3000 or less. It has been a little more than one year since my posting and they are down to $5000 for what sounds like a fairly reasonable little minivan (if you added frills, shipping to the U.S., etc., it would probably sell for closer to $7000 on our shores).
You write provocative entries with bogus implications, people point this out, and then you get to say “Some of you are taking my entry a little too seriously. [The suggestion that dropping out leads to success was just a joke]”. Isn’t it great when you don’t have to retract anything you explicitly said; you can just say we misinterpreted the tone?
I think it’s irresponsible to imply that your anecdotes have something serious to say about “the value of formal education”. I doubt many of your readers are too confused about what you mean, and many of us probably found the observation ‘funny’ in the same way you did. But dumb people can hear you, too. Maybe they won’t find your entry, but they’ll read similar ones. Or write similar ones, copying the attitude of that smart Greenspun fellow.
I’m not saying you shouldn’t make these points, or that the topic is too controversial for a blog, or that I don’t like sarcastic writing. I do think that the integrity of the post might improve if your 2005/8/10 comment were included in it.
I guess the “Gun Nut” posting says it all on this topic. Success doesn’t necessarily correlate with competence – as the guy who spearheaded the development of the $5000 van lost his job.
<br/>”Mr. Murtaugh was able to create in China the kind of innovative environment that G.M. has struggled for decades to achieve in its American operations.”
<br/>His reward… unemployment.
On a side note, I freaking hate Manila’s commenting system. Why don’t they put at the top how exactly to add a line break?!!
Guess I’m off-topic on this Chinese mini-van, but: I wonder how well it would be received in the US. I’m thinking sort of like Yugo? I found some specs at http://www.wuling.com.cn/doce/doce/product/bottom.asp?auto_id=127
I suspect it doesn’t have air bags and a catalytic converter, so wouldn’t be legal here without adding those $$$. And it seems to have a payload of 500kg – wouldn’t that only be about five obese americans?
Oh, and manual transmission, don’t think soccer mom will go for that. Hard to shift and hold the cellphone.
I derailed the discussion into bureaucracy and waste of talent, but was not frank about my own experience. I had a degree in engineering and an MS in physics when I became interested in lighting. My interest now is lighting and color, just a little different. Anyway, I was Mr. Humility. Instead of just sounding off on color and lighting, I went and got a Ph.D. in vision. Very few people are interested in lighting as a truly scientific subject, but I am qualified to be one of them. Against the odds, I did get a job in a bureaucracy to do lighting research for a few years. The main function of the bureaucracy is to manage research. They can’t picture what a radical discovery would look like, but they know how to manage mediocre efforts. They thrive on mediocrity, as described in The Peter Principle. Now in the present day, I am publishing important discoveries, building on important work from the 20th century. I do this by being retired, unemployed. The prior work was done by me and other outsiders, as you can read on my web site. (Click my name.) I used to think that lighting was mired in bureaucracy, but the applied color people were smarter. Now it seems like the applied color people are making hidden assumptions also. But when I was paid to do “research,” they were authoritarian and guided by their prior assumptions. By being outside of any bureaucracy, I am making real progress. We are of course talking “refereed publications,” though that is not a guarantee of truth. The prior work was done by smart cookies with PhDs, no crackpot stuff. If you have a PhD in good fundamental stuff, don’t let mere managers stop you.
Don’t confuse the poor lad Phil. You’re rich and well educated. It’s up to the individual. Anthony Robbins is another great example. Persistence and a plan are omnipotent.
After mastering a technical profession, the best thing to do is to master politics.
I mean everything else is under the hood to politics.
When learing of Jenning’s death and his lack of formal education a different connection came to mind. He died of smoking induced lung cancer. There is a definite correlation between education level and smoking. Perhaps if Peter had gotten his HS diploma and a college ed. he might be still with us.
Sad but true.
Btw, those $5000 chinese mini-vans can only be assumed to be miles apart from the US emission standards and safety standards. What would they really cost in the US?
Consensus opinion still puts them at least ten years out from exporting to the US.
“…I looked around the room and there was a Harvard man, a few fellas from Yale, a guy from Cornell. The guy at the head of the table had a degree from the Missouri State Teacher’s Collage.”
– President Lyndon Johnson
[Quote not word for word exact, anybody have the original?]
Wikipedia gives President Johnson’s education as having taking place at Southwest Texas State Teachers’ College. Despite that correction, I can’t find this quote anywhere. Here are some quotes:
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/l/lyndon_b_johnson.html
Here is one that is similar in tone:
“I don’t believe I’ll ever get credit for anything I do in foreign affairs, no matter how successful it is, because I didn’t go to Harvard. ”
A few more doosies:
“I don’t know what it will take out there – 500 casualties maybe, maybe 500,000. It’s the aughts that scare me.”
“Curtis Le May wants to bomb Hanoi and Haiphong. You know how he likes to go around bombing.”
I work with a couple of friends who took the Univeristy of Texas at Austin “executive MBA”, whereas I have a very humble MS from Houston Baptist University, taught by part time riff-raff, obtained at night while I was in the military.
I don’t think they actually know anything useful that I don’t know, but they sure got to know a lot of important people and they are tied into a very strong alumni network. Their MBAs cost about double what mine did, but I’d say they got their money’s worth.
Your earlier posting “Harvard-educated woman arguing that an Al Qaeda nuclear bomb destroying Manhattan would be really good for the world because it would mean the end of American hegemony” offers a fascinating insight into the value of formal education. In this case, an expensive education has resulted in ignorance and arrogance.