More than a thousand Harvard students walked out of their commencement ceremony yesterday to support 13 undergraduates who were barred from graduating after they participated in the Gaza solidarity encampment in Harvard Yard.
Asmer Safi, one of the 13 pro-Palestinian student protesters barred from graduating, says that while his future has been thrown into uncertainty while he is on probation, he has no regrets about standing up for Palestinian rights.
If we do not stand together then we’ll fall alone.
If we don’t stand together, we fall apart.
Pithy and multi-faceted. (Also not mine.)
In looking to credit this, I can’t find anything, but apparently Franklin said “we must all hang together or we will hang separately”, which is 100% the same vibe.
We hang together, or we hang separately.
Meanwhile, this is Harvard University senior Shruthi Kumar, who went off script as she gave the English commencement address, slamming Harvard for denying the degrees. She read from notes that she pulled out of her graduation gown.
This should get air time. While the others walked out in solidarity together, she’s putting herself on the line individually. It gives administration a name to the crowd.
There is a video in the article where her speech is aired. Her speech went so hard the word “slammed” might be justified for once.
This goes so hard
Damn that crowd went so wild if they cheered any longer Harvard would call the police to tear gas them.
where’s the piped bot when you need it?
Especially since the posters marked it “for kids” for some dumb reason, so you can’t save it for later.
Wow, how incredibly brave.
Damn, Gen Z is killing it
Asmer Safi, one of the 13 pro-Palestinian student protesters barred from graduating, says that while his future has been thrown into uncertainty while he is on probation, he has no regrets about standing up for Palestinian rights.
I guarantee this person that half a dozen institutions around the world will issue them a degree with full credits already earned just for their standing up for Palestine.
Are those institutions worth as much as Harvard on your resume?
At this point it looks like they are worth more… so…
As someone who has a great deal of respect for academia, my opinions on the administrations of many average and top universities has declined significantly. In the last month or so.
Sadly, probably not in practical terms.
Even if someone is angered by their actions, the employers are unlikely to hold it against those holding degrees, it isn’t their fault.
Meanwhile the jobs that only would accept Harvard or similar ivy League won’t care about why they didn’t actually get the degree, they just see that a degree was not from their precious “Harvard”. This may be a hard requirement or just a massive advantage branding wise for your university.
If this weren’t the case, Harvard couldn’t charge so much to attend, no one would pay.
So maybe if withholding the degree came with a big refund for all the money spent for the diploma they refuse to give, but as it stands…
Sure, but let’s say that, for example, La Sorbonne says they have credits earned for a degree instead.
There are many prestigious institutions in other countries that might offer them a degree.
I’ve never heard of La Sorbonne. Which is likely because I’m an ignorant American, but so are many of the people usefully swayed by the “Harvard graduate” title in professional life.
Why do you think that many of the people usefully swayed by Harvard wouldn’t be usefully swayed by La Sorbonne just because you’ve never heard of it?
Simple, because I could be in a position to hire someone and wouldn’t notice “La Sorbonne” as anything noteworthy when flipping through resumes. And it’s not just hiring where prestige can be useful, it’s business pitches, op-eds, political speaking. These aren’t things universally judged by HR managers who, making the assumption they’re even good at their job, might recognize elite foreign institutions, they’re judged by everyday people who might not even be able to name the full top 10 US-based universities, but know the name “Harvard”.
I’ve met plenty of Harvard undergrads so they don’t hold a mystique, but the paper they get from the institution is nevertheless a valuable asset.
I’d rather doubt it. They worked really hard to get into and graduate from Harvard, there’s a reason they got into that school. There’s a reason they got a degree there. It was probably their dream. It was an accomplishment they could be proud of, and one they knew that would help further their dreams in the future. To suggest they could just get one anywhere else is dickish.
And after this fiasco I’d wager their feelings have changed.
Of course they are, because now you have this whole affair to write about. You were good enough to graduate from Harvard, so good that you got famous because of your just actions, and then you got a degree from somewhere else.
If you want to work at some unethical company, they might not take you, but if if it’s a place that has some semblance of integrity, then your resume is rock solid.
Very possibly depending on the institution.
Of course not but you will get downvoted anyway cause this is Lemmy
Who the fuck cares
Probably those students who paid for the classes and work so hard to graduate at Harvard I would imagine. Probably matters a lot to them. I think maybe suggesting that it’s no big deal they had their degrees stripped from them unjustly Because they can just get one from somewhere else is kind of asinine to say.
That’s not the point I’m making.
You get why this tracks with Lemmy though right?
Attending a graduation ceremony is a different thing than being able to graduate. I think I read earlier that they were banned from the former, but I had not seen where they would literally be denied their actual degree.
As this article points out they’re barred from graduation itself.
Thank you for the correction. Yes with all the talk of the commencement I wondered… but this article updates & confirms it.
which essentially means that I am a student not in good standing and will not be allowed to get my degree
Your info is out of date. The university has since stated that the 13 students are on academic probation for a year, and will be ineligible for graduation. In short, they’re being held back for at least a full year.
And realistically, the uni is likely waiting for the fervor to die down, before they find some bogus reason to kick all 13 out entirely. But they know they can’t do that while the spotlight is on them, so they’re barring the 13 from graduating while they wait for people to lose interest.
Thank you for sharing your perspective. Tbh I never even considered that as a possibility, though you could be right - we’ll see what happens.
No, they’ve been placed on probation and cannot graduate for at least 1 year.
Thank you - THIS Is the kind of detail I have been wanting to know. The college will not simply “delete” their grades for the prior 4 years, so being placed on probation is quite a significant hardship, but less than if that were to happen. Do you happen to know if they would simply get their degree one year later, or have to be “re-admitted” to Harvard again for that to happen? (my guess is the former, or even if the latter then a streamlined re-admission process proffered)
So this sounds like “introducing a delay in getting their degree” process, rather than “banning them from ever receiving a degree from that institution for life” one.
The article mentioned someone who gets to keep their Rhodes Scholarship even, so definitely people are sympathetic, and I wonder if the main harm from all of this will fall onto the institution of Harvard itself.
It is a spiteful action because they know they would lose the ensuing lawsuit if they went further.
I fucking sue you know how much it cost to go to Harvard.
The kids are alright.
That’s like 50% of the graduating class?
I just checked, and yeah, just over. The graduating class of 2024 has 1,980 students.
Harvard, Harvard, Harvard… Isn’t that Bill Ackman’s school?
That speech and the crowd’s reactions gave me the chills.
And Genocide Inc recruiters looking closely at the ones quietly graduating.
Trump will arrest all Palestine protesters on day 1 and promote REAL genocide in Gaza. All you anti-Biden assholes can eat a dick because that’s what you’ll get from orange Mussolini.
Good for them, it takes courage to go against the grain.
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Fuck off scammer
Graduation is optional. The dream we were sold in highschool of “go to college” was propaganda spun up by colleges looking to pad their books with your tuition. Many jobs you are seeking have apprenticeship programs where they pay you to learn.
College is and remains a giant expensive mixer to find someone to date. That’s mostly it. Anything outside of a select few professions can be learned outside of a campus with fresher material.
If you want to learn a profession there is nothing gatekeeping you from doing it.
I can’t speak for you, but I personally want a doctor who learned the profession through an organization that gatekeeps people who didn’t go to college from doing it.
It’s almost as if you breezed by the acknowledgement that some jobs do require secondary education. A fun fact about those doctors, nurses, and other medical professionals: following school they then spend another 4+ years in residency where they actually develop the skills they need to be that doctor you were referring to.
You acknowledged that first and then you said- “If you want to learn a profession there is nothing gatekeeping you from doing it.”
So the second thing you said contradicted the former. I assumed via the way time works that the second one was the one you meant to say.
One statement does not contradict the other. Learning and education are not gatekept by a school. That is the point I made. Widen your view for a moment and maybe understand that a person can learn anywhere. The means to do so exist outside the hallowed halls of academia.
Learning and education are not gatekept by a school.
They are when it’s medical school.
Widen your view for a moment and maybe understand that a person can learn anywhere.
Not if they legally want to practice as a doctor.
The means to do so exist outside the hallowed halls of academia.
Not if you wish to legally practice medicine.
Anything outside of a select few professions can be learned outside of a campus with fresher material.
I can’t help but notice your… selection… seems to align with something I already covered. It really is a shame they dropped language arts from grade school curriculum.
edit:
To drill into this further - while there is a barrier to practice: that does not mean you cannot learn anything about the medical field while outside academia.
Yes, and then you keep contradicting that by saying things like “Learning and education are not gatekept by a school” and “Widen your view for a moment and maybe understand that a person can learn anywhere. The means to do so exist outside the hallowed halls of academia.”
It’s not my fault you can’t make up your mind.
The gatekeeping happens at the end or after the university and before you enter the profession.
It’s generally called a test (or multiple tests) which judge the quality of one’s knowledge before one is allowed to practice as an expert in a certain area.
The graduation is the part where the University produces a certificate in which they state that they have indeed tested somebody’s knowledge and how good it was determined to be. If a person goes through the whole learning process but don’t get that certificate, future employeers might not (in some areas, they legally can’t) consider that person for employment in that area (I explain why at the end).
Generally the actual learning is not gatekept: for example, in my area - software development - people absolutelly can do the entire learning outside formal education and still end up working in it professionally, though at the start of one’s career one still has to have some kind of evidence of one’s capabilities (which in this case isn’t provided by a University having assessed your knowledge on it), so normally the path to it that bypasses Academia involves first working professionally in an adjacent area (such as systems administration) and moving from that to software development (good sys admins have to know how to program)
However for “protected professions” (such as Law) or for were the costs of errors can mean death (such as Medical or Civil Pilot) at minimum you have to be assessed including a significant practical period under supervisions (a couple of years for a Medical doctor depending on speciality, 1000h of flight for Civil Pilots, plus specific training each kind of plane they’re flying) and that practicing under supervision is lot harded - often impossible - to get if a person didn’t come via a formal education setting.
Also in some areas it’s pretty close to impossible to get certified as knowledgeable without going through the entire formal Education process, which is indeed unfair and should not be the case - if should be possible for anybody to pay to be assessed and certified without having to pay for the formal learning.
Even in areas which are neither protected professions nor life-and-death, not having the certification which is the Diploma negativelly impacts a person’s chances to find their first and maybe second jobs. The problem is when hiring managers get lots of candidates for a position, they don’t have time to talk to them all because they also have to do their normal job alongside candidate selection, so instead they prune the list of candidates and not having something that in some way certificates that a candidate has the required knowledge (which for a first job is generally a Diploma, but for latter jobs is going to be previous job experience) is a common criteria because it usually works.
College increases your pay rate and opens the door to research and development, there is no alternative. You’re not going to engineer bridges and plan cities without a degree. The majority of Citizen Science papers submitted are students pursuing a PhD, and the vast majority of them have incredibly small sample sizes for data sources.
You’re just not going to have a large impact without a degree, and the number of exceptions prove the rule.
Pay rate increases while at your job and gaining “higher” education is a mixed bag. How much did that education cost vs the pay raise? How long is required to break even on that investment? With the constantly rising costs for said education that gap isn’t getting smaller either.
The sciences are, certainly, one field that can benefit from higher ed. Of course I made such an acknowledgement in my original statement as well. While it seems a few dozen people chose to take that as ‘we don’t need no education’… the statement was directed at funneling the masses through a system to extract profit… and to have a high hit rate offer courses that could be learned directly from the trade being entered. It’s a racket. A long con. And it’s an unfortunate reality a lot of students don’t realize they are caught in until they exit the machine on the other side.
According to the USA’s BLS the median pay going from a high school graduate to master’s degree more than doubles to 5988 a month, and this doesn’t even consider how employable that person is as a result of their degree rather only the ones who are employed meaning that the average HS graduate probably has even less to live off of.
A Graduate Student might pay roughly $950 USD a month, so even on master’s degree salary it’s a benefit of $2054 USD.
HS 746 * 4 = 2984 Masters 1497 * 4 = 5988 Difference 5988 - 2984 = 3004 After Loan Repayment 3004 - 950 = 2054In other nations the Education might even be offered for free, even for immigrants, in which case it is even better.
I may not like the state of academics as a profit driven business, it’s one of the many dead dream machines of our modern society, but education as an option for bettering one’s self and as a concept is something I vehemently defend.
I appreciate you taking the time to do the math. It was early enough to where I wouldn’t trust my caffeine deficient mind to do. Kudos.
You and I agree on your final point completely, I just simply believe in non institutional learning. (where applicable, of course)
Education does lead to better pay, certainly. The numbers are somewhat more complicated when it comes to the arithmetic behind it. This is where I find nothing but crippling faults with the American education machine.
An average cost of instate education for a masters is (this is low) 45k. If repaid at 6% apr in 3-5 years were looking at roughly 4500-7k in interest. Let’s call it 50k total deficit. During this same time (3 years education+3 years repayment) let’s assume our highschooler is working and investing his earnings in a moderate 6-10% fund. In 6 years how close are they? Which is closer to home ownership (it’s a joke. neither! but we can dream.)
Without question at a certain point the masters degree will pay off and assuming the same strategy - will overtake the highschool graduate in assets… but the time investment is far more significant than one would anticipate. The actual calculations are very complex as a lot more goes into each of these scenarios- but it does illustrate some of the flaws with assigning x wage vs y wage. In the end I am not specifically speaking against all higher education but speaking for an understanding that it isn’t the only path to take.
It massivelly, massivelly depends on the area.
In cases were errors can mean death, people will simply not be allowed to practice without the kind of “practical learning whilst under supervision and being assessed” that you see for example for doctors, and which are incredibly hard to conduct outside a formal education environment so in practice you’ll probably not find it (often only people who are trained doctors from countries whose universities are not recognized locally get that kind of opportunities without going through the local formal education system so that they can gain compatibility and practice locally).
In other areas it’s just because practically the having a Diploma or not is an easy way to prune down tons of candidates for entry-level positions: for example if you’re a hiring manager in IT still having to do all the other work alongside hiring and you have 20 candidates for a single entry level position, putting aside those who neither have relevant job experience nor a Diploma is pretty logical and has a high probability of avoid wasting time with people who have no clue how to do the job - you need to be pretty free of other work to spend the time interviewing all 20 candidates just in case one of the has all the necessary knowledge but no proof of it.
Mind you, even things like Software Development still hire people without Diplomas - they just have to show relevant experience such as having worked in an adjacent area which also uses those skill or having participated in open source projects.
However going through the whole paid for formal education process to get a Diploma and then not actually being able to work in that area because there are far fewer jobs that graduates can indeed often be considered a con - it really depends on how useful all that preparation in a formal education setting ends up being for your actual job.
I apologize for not responding to this sooner - you took the time to write that out and I had obligations which didn’t leave me much time to read through it.
First off- I agree completely that it depends significantly on the field- this was my reason for not stating all educational paths are irrelevant. With a nod to your mention of pruning - it doesn’t appear to be solving much considering how bad the entry level job market is for a lot of graduates. I have been fortunate in my career and know people from both camps. Both sides will freely admit the grass looks greener on the other side (which I would take as an acknowledgement of similarity.)
My issue is and remains with the for-profit education system we have now. We have basically sold these young minds on “you need to go to college or you will struggle and fail as an adult.” It doesn’t matter what field you take college is the only path. We then have a surplus of graduates flooding a market that simply cannot absorb that many new bodies. Aforementioned graduates have debt and a need to find work to pay that debt down … and they are desperate. Perfect. Here’s your underpaid entry level position with 0 job security - work harder than you should to maybe have a chance of not being laid off come earnings season.
Capitalism does not belong in higher education - and when that higher education wants to stand on some ivory tower and hold a students livelihood hostage? Fuck them. They may offer structured education but they do not gate keep learning. I digress.
Generally speaking I think your views more or less fall into the “technically yes, but it’s complicated” category… which I have 0 issues with. Education is complicated. Especially now- and I think a lot of the discussions that draw focus to it and its issues are valuable. Cheers.
College (esp private schools, more than community colleges) can certainly be overpriced for plenty of people.
Though…
What percentage of Big 4 and big tech company employees have college degrees?
That use to be the case for programming jobs, but ever since the layoffs, those with a degree are at an advantage. I was laid off, but it only took me 6 weeks to land a new job thanks to my CS degree. My cohorts without a degree have been looking for 6 months…
I’ve seen the opposite be true as well - but food for thought here: some of your cohorts probably had similar work experience as you… meaning the differentiator (tie breaker) was certainly the additional “experience.” I’m glad you found the job. Layoffs have been brutal lately.
Balls
Learning a profession is sadly a relatively small part of how an institution helps you get a good job.
There are a number of jobs that have an insurmountable check box for “has college degree” in the HR checklist. Doesn’t matter if every interviewer says “hire him”, HR will refuse. Hell about three years into my career, my employer lost some records including their documentation that I had a degree, and they had informed me that I had three months to get my university to prove my status again, or my job would be terminated, that I had gotten and by their own admission I could not possibly have had if hadn’t proven it before, but their prices was clear, so I had to get them what they wanted to keep the job.
Further, there are particularly exclusive companies that may insist on a particular set of colleges, e.g a list of ivy League universities that they will accept applicants from and nothing else will cut it, because they advertise their ivy League credentials to clients.
Even without a formal list, the names carry weight. When I was working on vetting candidates, which was usually a pretty grueling interview process, management had one guy skip the interviews and go straight to job offer because they saw MIT as their school.
In my experience, the people from there are not special and are not particularly better equipped for the sorts of work I deal with, but branding carries a lot of weight.
That sounds like a rough experience friend, but if I was working at a company that needed to check up on my documentation after working there for some time - I’d probably find a new job where I wasn’t just employee 253966.
To your point about names carrying their weight - that’s a problem in itself: what about those that don’t go to ivy league? What about those that do that simply lack any marketable skill outside of where they went?
I agree that the interview process at a lot of aforementioned places is particularly awful. Once working there it typically doesn’t improve. The facilities are nice enough, sure… but I’ve seen far too many people working for companies like that get laid off regardless of how performant they were. They are just a line item.
The point I made initially was that many jobs do not require the degree to do the work. Many professions do not benefit from a 4 year college building a curriculum around now outdated information.
There are good companies and good professions that do not have those requirements.
While it’s true that many people’s careers post-college are not directly related to their degree, it’s still valuable to employers.
What a degree says is that an individual can sucessfully complete a project that takes years of work and at least enough professionalism to get through.
I see this point used frequently - and it isn’t wrong … but it’s only half of a statement. In that time let’s say someone holds a position for 4 years of experience. These two things are not equally weighted, but very similar at that point. As time progresses that piece of paper continues to lose value when compared to experience in the field.
The degree is, in essence, a signal that someone has achieved at least the base level of competency in a field and stuck with it for x time. So assuming 2 parties with 0 work experience vie for a job naturally the degree holder will win out. It gets murkier when comparing someone with 4 years with in field experience to a 4 year degree holder with 0 experience.
The point I aimed to make was just that. It’s a perfectly reasonable assertion.
There’s a world of difference in dedication to completing a 4-year project when you’re being paid to be there working and when you are not.
Sucessfully completing a college degree shows that someone is driven, can accomplish goals, and make forward-looking decisions.
I respectfully disagree with the difference between someone working on a project or job for 4 years being less “driven” than their counterpart. Execution and follow through are based on per individual. Downplaying the efforts simply because it doesn’t align with your perspective is incorrect. Both individuals are putting forth similar efforts to learn a trade. As I asserted above.
Someone simultaneously spending money, building debt, and foregoing income for years to complete a project that will result in better longer-term prospects absolutely shows drive and a focus on the long-term.
Not going to college doesn’t mean someone doesn’t have those qualities, but the degree is prrof of minimum qualifications and drive.
I know everything necessary to build a house from the ground up, but if you want an electrical upgrade you should hire a licensed electrician and not me because they have the credentials to back it up.
As I asserted earlier - you are heavily downplaying the efforts of someone working in the same field for the same amount of time and treating it differently. That simply isn’t a fair assessment and is being used to sell a statement that is a half truth. Both individuals have something to show for their time investment that highlights their value. One has a degree which, for the reasons you have specified, is valuable - one has 4 years of experience in the field highlighting they are competent enough and skilled enough to be an asset to the same company for 4 years. To head off the followup: does every worker at a job have 100% “hire this man” energy? Certainly not. Conversely does every graduate have what it takes to succeed in a field? Absolutely not. With that in mind both individuals applying to a new job with the aforementioned experience/degree will, and should be, weighted similarly.
With regard to your electrician example: a licensed electrician is just that. When you hire one do you care if he got a degree in EE prior to getting his license? The result is what matters. This is the point I keep driving at. If I hire a lawyer, I could care less what is hanging on his office wall - I care that he passed the bar and wins consistently. There are many paths to the same result… don’t simply scorn one because it is a path you wouldn’t take.
You literally can’t take the bar without a law degree. The bar is just a test at the end of the journey.
Because the ability to pass one test is no replacement for a holistic education in the law.
Hell, I know more about the law in my particular field than 99% of attorneys. But that doesn’t mean shit in a courtroom.
Do you care of your electrician is licensed? You should. Because someone can know enough about electricity to get by and make things work and still be dangerous. That shortcut they used to steal a return off a separate circuit to save a wire run in the garage works great until the GFI fails on a short and you get electrocuted using the sink.
Credentials are important. Some college degrees are essential for their specific jobs (doctors, lawyers, scientists). Others are useful skillsets combined with a degree that acts as a credential that says “independantly accomplishes multi-year complex goal involving 40+ successful milestone tasks (courses) with no supervision required.”
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