Using the SAT or ACT to screen college graduates or those with considerable other education or experience beyond high school implies that the employer does not believe that applicants are any better than they were as high school students.
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I was responding to the assertion that college today was the equivalent to high school 20 years ago, so employers require college degrees to essentially get a bright high school grad. I’m simply suggesting we save four years and $200k and have employers use the SAT to find the bright high school grad.
100%. So many fail to understand or acknowledge it. I “use” (whatever that really means) my philosophy and economics education every. single. day. I also use my law degree every single day, and for those who have not been through it, law school is a glorified liberal arts education that doesn’t really prepare you to do much of anything upon graduation. It is incredibly academic and only a little bit practical. What it is … is three years of training you how to think about things. You’re actually qualified to do very little, if any, actual legal work when you graduate. This idea about training the mind is becoming harder and harder to explain, and sell, to people in this era of college as trade school.
You’re being nice, so to use a @circuitrider phrase, I’m going to say the quiet part out loud: it’s a ridiculous position to take IMO. The guy who made that quip famous was a character in a movie who secretly solved math problems that stumped most of the people at MIT. Most people are not Will Hunting, and most people will not, on their own, get themselves to the same place of competency with the things you cite, as well as several other areas of development that you don’t cite without 4 years of trying to learn something in college. It will be far the exception to the rule.
But for the technocrats among us, please, by all means, don’t send your kids to college if they can’t handle engineering or comp. sci. It will help lower the demand for spots, and hopefully lower the cost. My grandchildren will attend even if they don’t want to become engineers or study comp. sci, and I like their chances more if they do than if they don’t.
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No, it is because they want to screen for general intelligence and the SAT and ACT are highly correlated with IQ (which doesn’t get “better” in college). And you can’t be sued for using them, unlike if you develop your own test. As @blossom said, if you do that, you need to “have lawyers and statisticians on speed dial when they are sued for illegal hiring practices”.
Other countries don’t have those legal issues and use verbal and numeracy screening tests for job applicants at all levels (my sister-in-law was asked to take one in the UK when being interviewed for a CEO job at a company with 8 digit revenues).
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Absolutely but the owner/president of the company (national company) would not allow a salaried employee without a college degree.
Is that still true today? I thought there was a general trend towards moving away from the credential-mania that has been the norm over the past few decades.
Those are all skills a student would have developed at a good high school with a couple demanding ECs.
I read the Picture of Dorian Gray in high school.
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Depends on the company/industry. For example, most of the people selling financial products and services I know went to college. I’m sure if I asked they would tell me that it was a ‘check the box’ requirement for the job. But I’m sure many of the people who sell cars, or even manage dealerships, have a college education. I think some pharma sales rep jobs require it.
I didn’t know what a “term paper” was until I got to college. Am I the outlier here?
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There is a program in my city where the Navy (I believe) pays for a 4 month training in advanced manufacturing AND also pays for the housing. After 4 months, they help you get a job in various places around the country. All you need is a HS Diploma or GED. The couple of people I heard of were offered $30/hour with zero previous work experience. I’m trying to get an underemployed extended family member to do it.
I certainly hope they would have started in HS. I would be surprised if many had reached their limits in these areas by the end of HS. I certainly had not, nor usually had the kids I taught in college, and so on.
Indeed, I think I am still learning how to be better in those areas, and HS was . . . let’s say a while ago.
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Maybe so, but I haven’t had to deal with airplane salesmen. I have to hope they don’t lie on the scale that the car salesmen I’ve come across did. I typically wanted to wash the slime off my hands after interacting with some of them. And my experience wasn’t simply “misleading”, it was blatant lying. With house sales, they commonly have to fill out disclosures to alert potential buyers of any issues. And there can be repercussions if they don’t disclose an issue. The seller/agent may, for example, “fib/lie” about some other potential buyers to try to encourage someone to make an offer, but that may not leave the same bad taste in one’s mouth that car shopping often does. There is a reason so many people despise the car buying process.
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Oh, and as a brief followup.
I took an extended “detour” through grad school before going to law school, and in grad school I was first a TA leading recitation sections and also teaching writing sections, and then eventually I was a Teaching Fellow with my own classes. Certainly that whole experience leveled me up a lot in terms of reading, writing, oral presentation, participating in group discussions, leading group discussions, and so on.
OK, then I went to a pretty highly ranked law school, and while all the kids there were definitely smart, and had gotten excellent college grades, for sure many still had a lot to learn in these areas just to get up to speed for law school. And of course I kept learning too. But my point is it was very clear to me that even though these were extremely successful college students, even then they were definitely still very much works in progress toward actually being prepared for a successful start in the legal profession.
Again that is just one profession, but I think this is more or less a truism. Doing these things at the really high level expected of professionals takes a lot of development, and most people coming out of college are not going to be developed to that level yet, let alone high school.
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But sales is more than cars and homes. It’s the computer systems used by hospitals, the cleaning/environmental supplies and often the outsourced employees who use the products, it’s the MRI machines (just to pick on hospitals for a second). I have a friend at a large industrial company-- the selling cycle is two years. That means from the first meeting to actually signing a contract- two years. Big, expensive, complex machinery and the entire suite of software products used to run it. Or people who sell environmental remediation services-- often to municipalities or companies that don’t actually need the service today, but they want to lock in the service for whatever issue they have down the road.
You need more than a big smile and handshake to sell things for millions of dollars at a pop.
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Yes, true. The conversation about sales has veered here from the snake oil salesmen 
The skill to sell at the level you are describing is far different than a car or appliance salesman.
I wrote a good many term papers in high school.
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The reality though is that many salesman chase the payplan - and it could, for example, in my industry - lead to some not nice behavior. It’s the exception, not the rule. Most salespeople I know are completely honestly - although not many are good at showing value.
Truth is - everyone is a salesman. Every student trying to get a job that doesn’t want to be in sales - is a salesman.
But all work the payplan. For example, I have shoe insoles - $600 or $700. They’re 3 years old. They’re great. Don’t need new ones. Yet on my last visit the Dr. notices I’m above my out of pocket max for the year. Guess what, I have new insoles. He worked the payplan. If I wasn’t above, he never would have.
In my industry ELWs (extended length warranties) - huge mark ups. Note to buyers - ask what the MSRP is. Some that buy are paying 3x. Why? The margins are small. If it’s $300, a finance manager making 20% of the gross isn’t going to waste their time for a $60 commission. But a $500 commission…absolutely. For those of you in Florida, you’re in lock - insurance products (an ELW) cannot be sold for over MSRP - which is why the penetration rate is crazy high. It’s a reasonably priced product so people buy them.
In the end though - the pay plan drives a professionals behavior - and not all are created equal.
I have worked for companies where this is not the case.
The decision criteria around pay, bonuses and advancement are MUCH more nuanced than just “did you exceed quota and if so, by how much”.
Mentoring junior employees- which sometimes means letting them get the credit (and the points) on a complex sale. Retention of junior employees- which sometimes means forgoing a sale in order to help that employee focus on their own development. Helping the division meet it’s overall goals- not just sales volume-- but also quality control, rate of customer dissatisfaction, productivity of the non-sales staff, etc.
There are books and seminars and conferences devoted to compensation, incentives and the selling process. It’s not rocket science to move your sales team away from “Every last sale” to “meet company objectives”. What good is a salesperson if they’re selling stuff a client doesn’t need? That burns a customer for a very long time.
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Please move on from discussing sales or start a new thread. TIA