A 1924 magazine article called “ Why I Never Hire Brilliant Men” contains this:
Every year I picked up a half-dozen live young fellows who seemed to have a capacity for hard work, and shoved them in at the bottom of the pile, letting them make their way up to the better air and sunlight at the top — if they had it in them to do it. For a time I tried picking these youngsters out of the colleges. But my experience with college men was not fortunate. If I selected good students, I found too often that their leadership had been won by doing very well what their teachers had laid out for them. They had developed a fine capacity for taking orders, but not much initiative.
The notion of not hiring college grads now seems absurd, perhaps because the fraction of people who go to college has gone way up. But it’s hard to believe that the selection pressures operating within colleges have changed. College professors are still a tiny fraction of the population.
I came across this magazine article randomly browsing but this quote is another way of saying what two of my recent posts — my student’s term project about overcoming stage fright, and about jobbook.org – were about. If most people must spend four years in a place (college) where those in charge (professors) value only a small fraction of their abilities, a lot is lost.
This is really quite interesting; actually I think it was this type of mindset that caused a number of my family members to be quite opposed to me spending money on a college education, particularly one in music. Whereas most of my peers in the music school couldn’t fathom their parents not having supported them the entire way through their musical upbringing.
My family is mostly comprised of self-made men who never got college educations; a local politician, a self-taught plumber, and a military senior-master sergeant. It sounded absurd to them for me to invest in a college career, which would have caused me to go against everything I had learned in high school about having a career.
It is curious to me why a college degree is so important now as opposed to then. I couldn’t have gotten this cushy English teaching job if I hadn’t had one because what are you if you haven’t got a paper to prove you’re something?
Of course the tragic thing is that classical music has gone so downhill in America, that most of my generation are chasing a hell of a lot of pipe dreams. The only way to get a job now is to be willing to move anywhere in the world, preferably Europe where musicians are government-paid and receive great benefits.
I wish I hadn’t gone to college & grad school.
A B.A. in the 1920s would be equivalent to an advanced degree today – at least in terms of status. I’m sure you can imagine someone preferring to hire B.A.s/B.Sc.s rather than grad students. They may or may not be brighter than the grad student, but they’ve opted to join the workforce earlier rather than later, which may suggest something about their character.
A fair number of very bright, original thinkers don’t have university degrees: think Robert Fulford and, oh yes, Jane Jacobs. That’s going back a bit, mind you. I wonder if, nowadays, Jacobs could make a career with just a highschool diploma. Maybe: she worked her way up as a freelance journalist, and in journalism, as in sales, you’re judged on what you produce, not on what your credentials say you ought to be able to produce. (J-schools have corrupted high-end journalism to some degree, especially in your country, I’m afraid.)
“Fortunately my high school marks had been so bad that Barnard [College] decided I could not belong to it and I was therefore allowed to continue getting an education.”
That last paragraph was an irresistible quote from Jacobs.
In response to the final line of this blog entry: “If most people must spend four years in a place (college) where those in charge (professors) value only a small fraction of their abilities, a lot is lost.”
It just strikes me odd that the writer thinks that professors are in charge. If I had believed that, college would have been hideous. As it was, I thought the whole thing was fun. Especially amusing: assignments. You can learn without being obedient.
Silly rabbit.
If professors are not in charge, who are you proposing is in charge?