From Seth Godin in his though-provoking blog, asking how we define the value of education. His thoughts below, and more here:
While a high-status college admission confers a measure of status, it doesnt automatically grant a great education.
Sometimes, a student gets both, but not always. Because learning is taken as much as given.
Along the way, many of us have conflated the status with the learning.
Were also confused about the correlation between big college sports and the expected outputs of a university.
One symptom: We often say good college when we mean famous college.
And so, the college one goes to doesnt tell us very much at all about what someone learned, or even about who they are. It merely demonstrates that when they were 18 years old, a combination of luck and signaling led to them being chosen (or not).
Its not personal. And its not predictive. Unless we allow it to be.
One Comment
Hemendra posted on August 1, 2019 at 12:29 pm
It is a sad reality of our times that people value the name of the college in your cv than what you have learnt. I think this is the direct result of our consumeristic mindset that we have grown in past centuries. One automatically assumes that a better college means better education and a better candidate.