Re: Education, Employment, and Income

[kber <kber@EARTHLINK.NET>]

Eric Crump wrote:

> On Thu, 31 Jan 2002, Victor Steinbok wrote:
> > Being a philosopher does not require a college degree either, unless
> > you plan to be employed as one. :-)
>
> You could always be self-employed! I don't *know* of any freelance,
> entrepreneurial philosophers, but that doesn't mean there aren't any.
>
> :

  Gee, does anybody remember the longshoreman- philosopher, Eric Hoffer,
author of The Ture Beleiever?  Now, I don't believe that he had a college
degree, and sure as heck made a lot of money from his "philosophy"


Of course, we could insist that every important job requires one to ahve a
college degree.  That would mean we'd have to get rid of the following
presdients as role models:  Washington, Lincoln and Truman, for starters

The amount of formal education should not be the emasure of the person.  And
it certainly does not seem to have any correlation with the work many people
do.  After all, our Secretary of education, Dr. Pagie, does have a doctorate,
but his dissertation was, if memory serves, on the reaction time of football
lineman.   Please tell me how that qualifies him for either his previous job
as superintendent in Houston or for his current job?

We need to get beyond credentialling.  After al, Dick Armey's doctorate in
Economics neiher means that he is competent to speak about economics nor that
the degree has qualified him for the pontifications he has made on other
subjects, such as the National Endowment for the Arts  (worry, couldn't
resist - my wife used to work there!!!).

Ken Bernstein