This sort of dreck reminds me of why I stopped visiting Crooked Timber.

So much is ignored or obfuscated that is relevant that it’s like reading a book on astrophysics that doesn’t mention baryonic matter at all.

This is what I meant the other day about being forced (well, in this case, I forced myself) to listen to people dumber than I am.

Most of the assertions in the piece are ludicrous, lies, or expose someone who has never held anything but a job in academia. I’ve held a wide range of jobs over the years (soldier/paratrooper, photojournalist, proofreader, editor, night shift team leader, title examiner, various IT positions, low-level executive, etc.) and in no case for actually performing the required tasks did having a college degree matter a bit, and here’s the proof: I don’t have a college degree.

The job I hold now is not something anyone could learn to do in a short time, but that’s because I have many years of experience that was gained — you guessed it — on the job. There is no college graduate alive who could do my job fresh out of school with no experience.

The wisdom of spending $100,000 for a college education to learn to use Microsoft Office — well, I’ve read more aggressively stupid things in my life, but I’d probably have to go to my hometown to dig up some old KKK newsletters I used to see passed around to top that bit of “wisdom.” The truth is that a relatively-bright person can learn Office in a weekend, and can learn most jobs (especially at the entry level) in a few weeks to months. By the way, the skill levels required to perform many jobs has been reduced by automation as the degree requirements have only risen.

Quiggin doesn’t actually examine any of the reasons that people complain of credentialism, or why it is a problem that requiring ever-more college education to do nearly the same jobs as were previously done by high school grads just as well (such as journalism) is a problem societally or individually. That is but one example. There are many more problems with his (broke-ass) thesis and with credentialism in general.

I wish I had an intellectually-worthless (as it did not make him any smarter) but prestigious credentials like Quiggin so that I could get paid to spew weak and poorly-argued columns into the ether and have easily-misled people laud me for them.

No, I don’t, actually. I’ll take real intelligence and insight over unearned plaudits any day because I enjoy thinking for myself and unlike Quiggin I take no joy from attempting to justify my decrepit ratiocination and pundit-lite gimcrackery with appeals to self-interest and the flattering of my peers.

I have such fun clowning on intellectually-pitiful Crooked Timber crew; maybe I should visit more often. I mean, it’s like playing tackle football with toddlers, so it’s not really fair but it’s fun when you want an easy challenge.