Do Degrees make you Smart or Dumb

Do you think Degrees make you have "perceptial bias".

Do they make you smart or dumb.

I always felt, people could go to art school and if you are lucky enough to have teachers who aren't arrogant and who are lovingly supportive that it can be
a great start. But, I believe there are also BRILLIANT people with no degree,
born geniuses that were lucky enough to have loving non-judgemental parents
and all the parental support, encouragement and LOVE. Support is what makes
people brilliant. Ii think degrees can help us to become brilliant but if you have
arrogant instructors, the can hinder your progress in life. instructors are not God.
It just sucks when you "PAY" an instructor who wasn't Mature and they think they
own you. I'd say about 1/3 of my instructors didn't care as much as they should
have.

I was in pre-calc in high school as a junior. Only 6 in the class. This arrogant Teacher had just put me down all the time. Mr. Smith. Ugh. He'd say "anyone else do it differently or get another answer"....and I'd always start with my brain from
Right to left and not left to right like him. And he'd actually "argue" (maturity) with me...he was not like my Algebra class teacher who was also the computer science teacher. We had to listen to Mr. Smith say he was from Cornell and blah blah blah. Jenny and I finally went to our old Algebra teacher who had to do therapy on Mr. Smith. It sucked becausae that was part of my developement. Still I run into these "authoritarian" people. People just need to be "open" to listening. That's all. Mr. Smith lost out on learning a new way. My opinion. I learned an important lesson. I went "around" him. It just sucked because the guy was immature. Work place got to be like that and I left. I was making 98k when I left my last job. I just got tired of the lack of openness. The Enron whistleblowers and FBi women whistleblowers left those companies too because of the lack of "political" support. The "need" to be right and not be "open" can be harmful to ceo's of this day and age.

Well, thanks for listenging. I think degrees can help and I think they can hurt the ego as well....life is not Black and White. It's all the color spectrum.

JesusGirl1 said:

Do you think Degrees make you have "perceptial bias".
Do they make you smart or dumb.

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None of the above. Degrees prove that you are either wealthy or dedicated enough to complete a series of objectives through to the end. I know brain surgeons who lack common sense and street cleaners who could win a Nobel Peace prize, having a degree does not change either potential.

Lost Drifter said:

JesusGirl1 said:

Do you think Degrees make you have "perceptial bias".
Do they make you smart or dumb.

Click to expand...

None of the above. Degrees prove that you are either wealthy or dedicated enough to complete a series of objectives through to the end. I know brain surgeons who lack common sense and street cleaners who could win a Nobel Peace prize, having a degree does not change either potential.

Click to expand...

same.

JesusGirl1 said:

Well, thanks for listenging. I think degrees can help and I think they can hurt the ego as well....life is not Black and White. It's all the color spectrum.

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Just like spelling and grammar(or the lack of thereof), they can demonstrate something about the essential intelligence of the person.

Degrees are important.

Sorry, it's just years of indoctrination from parents who are both aerospace engineers.

As Drifter said, a degree simply shows that you have the ability to perform a task and learn information around a subject with the neccessary dedication.

Having said that, I think practical degrees also really give an insight into your skills as a person.

I mean, at the end of my Chem degree I will presumably be competent in a lab setting and I will have an expansive knowledge of how atomic structure modifies the properties of matter. That's something I would not have without doing the degree.

So to some extent it's a badge of "I'm intelligent and dedicated enough to do X", but it's also symbolic that you may have exceptional or specialist knowledge in a particular field. You're not getting "smarter or dumber", you're simply showing that you have certain things in your memory and experience.

EDIT - Two aerospace engineers AK? That's pretty awesome. I'm the first one in my family to go into Uni, I wish so often that my parents could help me out with the work I do

To be honest, 'intelligence' is a relatively subtle thing.

Mathematical Edification of Students in Japan

Overall, an effective system of providing and acquiring knowledge, as could be seen in the study above, is far more valuable than individual intelligence. Knowledge is valuable, a commodity that is independent of intuitive awareness, and it is an essential component to building greater understanding.

I'm not sure why I am actually responding with any degree of cogency

They amplify what you already are

I have a college degree yet I didn't learn a single thing in college.
It's all just a piece of paper.

ill say a degree is a very USEFUL piece of nothing
u can learn more>>
MUCH more>>
on ur own
BUT
employrs look @ that piece of paper
n that is wut mattrs
so a balance of both learning on ur own AND pursuing the degree r wut will most lead 2 ur success
if u have 2 choose btwn the 2?
(which hopefully u dnt)
choose learning less (no self study) n going 4 a degree
sad choice
but it is wut it is

Ak5 said:

Degrees are important.

Sorry, it's just years of indoctrination from parents who are both aerospace engineers.

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My father has two Masters(Masters of Business Administration and Masters of Chemical Engineering) from Cornell and so shall I. But probably Electrical Engineering instead of CE.

A degree is a piece paper that certifies the holder has accomplished certain tasks and is eligible to work in the flied related to what he/she had finished. In a way, it proves that the holder is a person who has capabilities which can be translated with having the skills or the intellect in a specific field or area. But intelligence, like experience, will always depend on how a person use it, whether to make him/herself better in his field and also as a person, that is his choice. So yes, maybe a degree can prove a person's intelligence on a specific field, but his maturity (which also makes up intelligence) to carry what he knows and what he has can't be measured by a piece of a paper. That's who he is as a person. If he's someone who wants to brag about what he/she had finished and always intentionally carry him/herself in a certain way to make other people feel inferior to him/her, that's something a certificate or a degree can't measure cos employers and the corporate people (whom degrees and certificates are intended for) wouldn't care on how a person would do a certain task as long as he/she is able to do it.

How could it make you dumb?

kamya said:

How could it make you dumb?

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When you are too proud of your degree and what you have attained that you refuse to learn by others you feel who are inferior.

That kind of person was probably already dumb to begin with. =P

A degree is what one has strived hard to achieve in the hope it will go towards getting a better job than one without. You don't have to be smart or gifted to embark on a degree; just that you have to be prepared to work hard.

Mouse said:

A degree is what one has strived hard to achieve in the hope it will go towards getting a better job than one without. You don't have to be smart or gifted to embark on a degree; just that you have to be prepared to work hard.

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+1

I agree with above, really to me a degree shows that you have put in the necessary time and energy to learn something high level enough to get a degree.
Really its proof of your ability to learn new information and understand that information, that you can plan your time and see something through no matter if it is difficult.
So future employers will be happier to employ you knowing that you have managed to do such things.

I was once turned down by a girl because I didn't have a degree. Evidently a 2 year college diploma and roughly 10 years of a la carte education from various institutions wasn't enough. I was curious enough to ask why, and her answer was that we wouldn't have enough to talk about or in common.

Had I stayed with my computer science degree, I don't think we would have had much to talk about with her having her degree in literary classics. Even my electives strayed very very far away from that field. Yet somehow would have been acceptable to her.

That said, it didn't disappoint me too much, as I don't think I'd have wanted to be with a person who thought that way to begin with. But I was surprised to find out that her point of view was actually fairly common with others as well.