Kiwi businesses commit to 'no qualifications required' hiring

konfab said:
I am not too sure about which graduates you are talking about. If you are thinking gender studies or business management, I am 100% in agreement. However your non B.S degrees to teach people more than their coursework in the duration of the courses through projects and such.

The third year electronic design course that I took for example just about removes all the people who cannot do the things that you have mentioned due to its relative difficulty compared to previous courses. If you don't think well, take command, apply logic, make decisions quickly, communicate properly and perform exceptionally, your project will not work and it will fail.

This is a view shared by ABSA Capital.

http://www.engineeringnews.co.za/article/investment-banker-may-hire-engineers-to-strengthen-financial-skills-2008-07-08/rep_id:4136
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It's funny that you keep singling out engineering, because the engineers I know (mechatronics) aren't even working as engineers or other well-paying jobs. There's just a gloomy lack of prospects for them atm.

I studied and witnessed many others studying myself, so I'm afraid you aren't going to convince me that third year or honours imparts the traits I mentioned. Most people pass with very average projects and made use of a lot of help to get there.

It makes sense though that a fat chunk of graduates of extremely challenging degrees are competent in several aspects. It has nothing to do with their course though - they would have been just as competent before embarking on the course. Their competency is inherent to them and not derived from any institution. I have never in my life seen a person transformed by university.
 
konfab said:
The best thing that could happen to the world's education system IMO is to get rid of university degree bundles and replace them with independently verified courses. Then once someone figures out a decentralised way of evaluating whether someone has covered the content of a youtube video or not, I could see undergraduate university courses disappearing for the most part.

The only thing left would be professional organisations and their requirements.
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You really want Jordan Peterson's silly 'university via YouTube' thing to take off, eh? :D
 
erm, NZ, not a good idea, just look how it worked out for us here. we didn't scrap the need, we just falsify the qualification. :D

xero is an online accounting software company it seems. scary thought tbh.

this whole idea makes me feel a bit queasy. like a "no qualifications" person came up with it in the first place.
 
Bryn said:
I think it's pretty stupid the world doesn't work this way already. What is the one reason you'd want to hire someone? It's to do a particular task. Therefore whatever (albeit limited) means you use to try pick the best applicant, it should focus entirely on how well they are able to perform such a task. It might even be a bonus if they lack the qualifications of other applicants, as they'd probably be willing to start out with a lower salary and/or trial period.

I have had countless lecturers with PhD's in my life who are totally useless and gormless. It's folly to think qualifications imbue ability in some or other domain.
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Different qualifications represent groups of people with different ability distributions - it makes sense to filter or prioritize based on this because it does alter the likelihood of the candidates having certain abilities. This should not be the only metric, and it already hardly ever is.
 
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konfab said:
I disagree, all the experience you get from analytical thinking in degrees is from the doing the content in a structured manner. There is no reason why projects and such couldn't form a part of said courses.
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There are perfectly good reasons for it:
- the structure at a university comes from established academic bodies that have done extensive research into optimal curriculums, while projects for course X, most certainly has not
- the education is presented and supervised by experts / qualified researchers in the various fields being taught, for course X this is unlikely to be the case

If you think the above could be achieved in another manner, you're just splitting hairs about the naming an online degree.
 
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SlinkyMike said:
Couldn't agree more. My pet hate is PhDs, I've never seen a more entitled set of cannot do's.
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Yeah, it's crazy how spending several years reading thousands of publications on the state of the art in one's field, and figuring out how to solve something unsolved or to improve on the existing state of the art in significant way really dulls the senses...
 
/packs bags. Rather battle in Kiwi Land than dodge the racist hate and bullets here.
At least they can play rugby.
 
OrbitalDawn said:
You really want Jordan Peterson's silly 'university via YouTube' thing to take off, eh? :D
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I think the current form of tertiary education is ridiculously expensive for what you actually get. Distance education institutions have the right idea but are badly managed for the most part.

South Africa for example suffers from a large skills crisis because the current education system is too expensive for most people and there are too few taxpayers to support it via subsidies. Unisa is therefore left as the only option for some, and what you get is a garbage degree from a university run by administrators who couldn't organise a pissup in a brewery.
 
cguy said:
There are perfectly good reasons for it:
- the structure at a university comes from established academic bodies that have done extensive research into optimal curriculums, while projects for course X, most certainly has not
- the education is presented and supervised by experts / qualified researchers in the various fields being taught, for course X this is unlikely to be the case

If you think the above could be achieved in another manner, you're just splitting hairs about the naming an online degree.
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:crylaugh:
So you have never had a useless lecturer before? Also if you think optimal curriculums are being taught at universities you are delusional. Most lectures I had were being taught from slides that some other lecturer prepared 5 years before, then they give you the same test that they have been using for the last 5 years.

You don't really seem to understand that most people who go into academia view lecturing as a necessary evil that they just have to get out the way so they can focus on their research.
 
konfab said:
and what you get is a garbage degree from a university run by administrators who couldn't organise a pissup in a brewery.
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Haha, garbage degree? Funny, the other universities don't have an issue with accepting science bachelors degrees done at UNISA when you study further?

UNISA admin is crap, but the standards are fine in the science faculities.
 
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Archer said:
And all they need is a few short courses to get them started :p
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Haha yeah I'd love to see some of these guys go to a doctor who's only done a few short courses but has plenty of experience...
 
konfab said:
:crylaugh:
So you have never had a useless lecturer before? Also if you think optimal curriculums are being taught at universities you are delusional. Most lectures I had were being taught from slides that some other lecturer prepared 5 years before, then they give you the same test that they have been using for the last 5 years.

You don't really seem to understand that most people who go into academia view lecturing as a necessary evil that they just have to get out the way so they can focus on their research.
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Knowing the material, and being able to teach it, are two completely different things. Some people suck at teaching, that doesn't mean that they don't know their stuff...
 
konfab said:
:crylaugh:
So you have never had a useless lecturer before? Also if you think optimal curriculums are being taught at universities you are delusional. Most lectures I had were being taught from slides that some other lecturer prepared 5 years before, then they give you the same test that they have been using for the last 5 years.
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Very few useless lecturers actually. I am sorry that you got a crap education, but it is not something you should paint with a single brush. It's also not generally the crap lecturers that set the curriculum, usually it's the more active researchers and lecturers who do that - it's not something that apathetic people tend to do.

konfab said:
You don't really seem to understand that most people who go into academia view lecturing as a necessary evil that they just have to get out the way so they can focus on their research.
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As an ex-university lecturer and researcher, I think that I have a pretty good understanding. It's something that can be annoying, but is still taken extremely seriously.
 
Mike Hoxbig said:
Knowing the material, and being able to teach it, are two completely different things. Some people suck at teaching, that doesn't mean that they don't know their stuff...
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Also a very good point.
 
konfab said:
I think the current form of tertiary education is ridiculously expensive for what you actually get. Distance education institutions have the right idea but are badly managed for the most part.

South Africa for example suffers from a large skills crisis because the current education system is too expensive for most people and there are too few taxpayers to support it via subsidies. Unisa is therefore left as the only option for some, and what you get is a garbage degree from a university run by administrators who couldn't organise a pissup in a brewery.
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Yeah, you're right in a way. I mean, I think your generalisations about universities go a bit far, but 'learning' as a industry and function itself has to also adapt.
 
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