What do Rachael Ray, Larry Ellison(Oracle), and Michael Dell(Dell) have in common? If I added Bill Gates(Microsoft), Steve Jobs(Apple), Dave Thomas(Wendy’s), and Richard Branson (Virgin Brands) to the list you would recognize all of them as highly successful people who do not have college degrees. These individuals are repeatedly presented as examples of people who did not need college to be successful. Am I advocating not going to college? Absolutely Not! These highly successful people are the rare exception. Success being the intersection of opportunity and preparedness, college prepares students for the additional opportunities that are provided to those with a college degree.
After reading Thomas L Friedman’s OP-ED column, How to Get a Job at Google, in which he interviewed Laszlo Bock, the senior vice president of people operations at Google, my first thought was that Bock was characterizing a college education as irrelevant to a person’s success in their field. I found this troubling and decided to take another look at the article. After a few more reads of the article, I now feel the just of Bock’s statements minimize the value of a college degree but does not portray a degree as useless.
In the article Bock refers to 5 hiring attributes that Google uses. Foremost is general cognitive ability; which he describes not as IQ but the ability to process on the fly. Second is leadership, not in the traditional sense but as a collaborative team leader who is willing to relinquish power. Third and fourth are humility and ownership. Bock describes ownership as a willingness to step in and solve a problem, and humility as learning from failure. Least in importance of the attributes is expertise. In his experience GPA’s are worthless and do not predict anything. Instead Google is looking for employees who are innately curious and willing to learn. Bock feels that too many colleges “don’t deliver on what they promise. You generate a ton of debt, you don’t learn the most useful things for your life. It’s [just] an extended adolescence.”(Friedman) He goes on to say that for most young people “going to college and doing well is still the best way to master the tools needed for many careers.” (Friedman). So basically, everyone is different and each student needs to find their own path to prepare themselves for the opportunities that will be presented to them while on their career journeys.
While Bock doesn’t find a college education to be the shining indicator of success that it once was it still has a purpose in providing students with basic skills to start a career. Keeping in mind that “the world only cares about — and pays off on — what you can do with what you know (and it doesn’t care how you learned it)” (Friedman), and in this age when innovation is increasingly a group endeavor, it also cares about a lot of soft skills — leadership, humility, collaboration, adaptability and loving to learn and re-learn. (Friedman)
References:
Friedman, T. L. (2014, February 22). How to Get a Job at Google. The New York Times. Retrieved from
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/23/opinion/sunday/friedman-how-to-get-a-job-at-google.html?_r=1
After reading Thomas L Friedman’s OP-ED column, How to Get a Job at Google, in which he interviewed Laszlo Bock, the senior vice president of people operations at Google, my first thought was that Bock was characterizing a college education as irrelevant to a person’s success in their field. I found this troubling and decided to take another look at the article. After a few more reads of the article, I now feel the just of Bock’s statements minimize the value of a college degree but does not portray a degree as useless.
In the article Bock refers to 5 hiring attributes that Google uses. Foremost is general cognitive ability; which he describes not as IQ but the ability to process on the fly. Second is leadership, not in the traditional sense but as a collaborative team leader who is willing to relinquish power. Third and fourth are humility and ownership. Bock describes ownership as a willingness to step in and solve a problem, and humility as learning from failure. Least in importance of the attributes is expertise. In his experience GPA’s are worthless and do not predict anything. Instead Google is looking for employees who are innately curious and willing to learn. Bock feels that too many colleges “don’t deliver on what they promise. You generate a ton of debt, you don’t learn the most useful things for your life. It’s [just] an extended adolescence.”(Friedman) He goes on to say that for most young people “going to college and doing well is still the best way to master the tools needed for many careers.” (Friedman). So basically, everyone is different and each student needs to find their own path to prepare themselves for the opportunities that will be presented to them while on their career journeys.
While Bock doesn’t find a college education to be the shining indicator of success that it once was it still has a purpose in providing students with basic skills to start a career. Keeping in mind that “the world only cares about — and pays off on — what you can do with what you know (and it doesn’t care how you learned it)” (Friedman), and in this age when innovation is increasingly a group endeavor, it also cares about a lot of soft skills — leadership, humility, collaboration, adaptability and loving to learn and re-learn. (Friedman)
References:
Friedman, T. L. (2014, February 22). How to Get a Job at Google. The New York Times. Retrieved from
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/23/opinion/sunday/friedman-how-to-get-a-job-at-google.html?_r=1