How unethical is student financial aid?

[PDS]

Wellyeah, I think that I think, at least I think so, but really, what do I know? I do not have the cognitive confidence of you all, and the evidence of my senses has let me down before.

The great question is: who is it that is observing those thoughts while you are thinking?

[caroljane]

What, you mean Obama and the Government mind thugs? Just what I need.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I don't know if your firm deals with computer technology, but what if an young applicant showed up who had dropped out of highschool, but was a hacker going straight? A bit of a smartass, but your sense of character judged him to be sincere?

Sort of like the people who haunt Defcon (or see here) or, maybe, Social Engineering?

Deanna,

I just came across this:

Security Consultant Heckles NSA Head: Shouts “Freedom!”; “Read The Constitution!”

by Steve Watson

Prison Planet

Aug 1, 2013

Although the slant of Alex Jones' site is about government abuse, if you watch the video, a couple of other things stand out, actually honk out if you are looking for them.

1. General Keith Alexander said, "You're the greatest gathering of technical talent anywhere in the world. If we can make this better, the whole reason I came here was to ask you to help us make it better."

In other words, the USA government was there looking for talent. I doubt it was worried about high school diplomas or college degrees.

2. The event where the General spoke is called Black Hat USA 2013. This has grown into a security-focused thing, but that's not its roots. The original idea was for misfits in the cyberworld to get together and share their knowledge.

Go to that site and take a look at some of their briefings (for July 21 and August 1 see here). You will find topics like:

A Practical Attack Against MDM Solutions

A Tale Of One Software Bypass Of Windows 8 Secure Boot

Creepydol: Cheap, Distributed Stalking

Evading Deep Inspection For Fun And Shell

Exploiting Network Surveillance Cameras Like A Hollywood Hacker

Hacking Like In The Movies: Visualizing Page Tables For Local Exploitation

Hacking, Surveilling, And Deceiving Victims On Smart TV

Hot Knives Through Butter: Bypassing Automated Analysis Systems

How To Build A Spyphone

Is That A Government In Your Network Or Are You Just Happy To See Me?

Java Every-Days: Exploiting Software Running On 3 Billion Devices

Let's Get Physical: Breaking Home Security Systems And Bypassing Buildings Controls

Mactans: Injecting Malware Into IOS Devices Via Malicious Chargers

Million Browser Botnet

Power Analysis Attacks For Cheapskates

Predicting Susceptibility To Social Bots On Twitter

The Outer Limits: Hacking The Samsung Smart TV

Using Online Activity As Digital Fingerprints To Create A Better Spear Phisher

You get the idea. We're talking serious talent here.

Guess who the sponsors of this event are? Here's the list on the front page:

Accuvant LABS

FireEye

IBM

MicroSoft

Palo Alto Networks

Quayls

Rapid7

RSA

Tripwire

Now it's a mistake to assume all the people there are into the corporate thing. You will find those folks among the speakers and organizers and certain kinds of attendees, but the ones who show up from the shadows (NOT paying the normal cost company people pay if they pay at all, I might add, although that is not publicized) are an underbelly of talent in this country just crying for a space where they can work and actually believe in what they are doing.

And the speakers know this. Just look at the front page picture of the event's Review Board:

These dudes don't look like they have much time to devote to the diploma game. And should some of them have degrees, their look is not designed for college graduates as the event's target market.

There, just at this one event alone (and there are plenty), you have a pool of qualified people who, if treated right but in a manner outside the box, would drastically increase the wealth of any company. And they are not that expensive, either. Most of these people don't care that much about money. Their thing is believing in what they are doing.

The USA government knows that. IBM and MicroSoft know that. That's why they're there.

I believe there are pockets of talent like this all over America. And in all kinds of different fields, too. Education. Entrepreneurship. Even things like the food industry and furniture and clothing manufacturing. Well... maybe not in big oil and pharmaceuticals and so on, but I could be wrong.

Many super-talented people are drifting away from traditional employment models, especially because they can with the Internet. They no longer need corporate gatekeepers and the ass-kissing game to make a living at the level they desire. I believe companies that understand this will flourish and those that don't adapt will suffer.

Michael

[Robert Baratheon]

Michael - I'm all for anti-bureaucratic thinking, but I think you're focusing on the exceptional cases that popular entertainment glamorizes while ignoring the overriding trend, which is that people with degrees in their fields tend to make more reliable workers than those who lack them. A degree from an accredited institition doesn't tell us the whole story of an applicant, but it tells us a lot. True, there are computer whizzes out there who are brilliant people and lack formal qualifications. But it isn't obvious that betting the farm on such individuals is a wise bet for any organization. Such hires could make you rich when they found the next Twitter, but they are also more likely to max out the company credit card on hookers and heroin, or post sensitive company information to a hacker forum because you told him he couldn't smoke in the elevator. Extracting an antisocial 18-year-old from his parents' basement and handing him a six- or seven-figure salary is a very high-risk/high-reward proposition, and the embarrassment or financial ruin he might cause a firm is a tough hurdle to clear. This is doubly true when the person is ideologically driven, e.g., what happens when he decides your corporate profits are evil and must be returned to the proletariat? A computer science degree provides us with valuable baseline information - we know the applicant can meet deadlines, we know he can follow directions, we know he didn't burn the university down while he was there, and so on. It's a mistake to treat credentialism as the be-all-end-all in hiring, or especially as an end in itself, but there is a legitimate presumption in favor of those who do obtain credentials that would be unwise to ignore. Most people understand this on a basic level. For example, the doctor who performed my LASIK surgery had medical degrees from Harvard and Yale, so it was a pretty safe assumption he'd do a good job (he did). Would you have trusted a whiz kid from the medical forums to cut up your cornea? I think it's a popular misconception that bureaucratic trappings can only be overcome by hiring Cool Hand Luke, or the Girl With the Dragon Tattoo from society's underworld. There are companies that have achieved highly successful decentralized control models while still drawing heavily from top firms and academic programs. Valve is one such example.

[caroljane]

Robert, this reminds me of someone who posted here in the past (forget who) an obvious computer prodigy who believed that computer expertise was the acme of human achievement, scorned anyone who did not realize that, and possibly had dropped out of school. I have seldom been in the position to hire people, but genius even so I do not think I would have hired him.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Actually I think a bit differently.

If what you need is a cog in a machine, i.e., a bureaucrat or a person with an employee mentality, a diploma is a great way to evaluate that the person works within a bureaucratic system well enough to plow through the donkey-work and BS, and is willing to jump through that system's hoops to get to the end.

If you are looking for creativity or an entrepreneurial spirit, a diploma means absolutely nothing at face value.

There is a skill set in handling the second kind of person. Not everyone is willing to learn it. (But it looks like the USA government, MicroSoft, IBM, etc., are.)

Michael

[caroljane]

Michael, you have a romantic notion that business leaders are divided between beaurcrats and innovators. In their hiring practices they are quite similar.......

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

The Fountainhead opens with Roark laughing because he just quit college.

But Ayn Rand got her degrees while in Russia. There she had to.

On coming to the USA, she never got a creative writing or screenwriting degree.

And she made an excellent employee at all the jobs she took.

Michael

[Robert Baratheon]

Actually I think a bit differently.

If what you need is a cog in a machine, i.e., a bureaucrat or a person with an employee mentality, a diploma is a great way to evaluate that the person works within a bureaucratic system well enough to plow through the donkey-work and BS, and is willing to jump through that system's hoops to get to the end.

If you are looking for creativity or an entrepreneurial spirit, a diploma means absolutely nothing at face value.

There is a skill set in handling the second kind of person. Not everyone is willing to learn it. (But it looks like the USA government, MicroSoft, IBM, etc., are.)

Michael

Some degree of conformance is necessary to function within any organization. If you're paying someone to be your employee, chances are you're going to want them to be accountable to you and accomplish certain things at your request. An independent streak is cool and all until you ask them what they've produced over the past three weeks and they tell you to piss off, dad. A degree is assurance that the individual is at least capable of respecting your authority over them and delivering some type of value to the organization. If you're hiring Joe Blow off the street without the benefit of the academic vetting process, it will always be a craps shoot and the potential for disaster increases exponentially. A business should always be open to exceptions - expose itself to positive black swan events if you will - but at the same time it should take reasonable precautions and make use of tried and true vetting mechanisms to reduce the chance of cataclysmic downsides. In other words, hire from Harvard, but don't focus too heavily on the GPA.

[Brant Gaede]

Joe Blow off the street merely needs to be properly vetted, just like the college grad. Of course no vetting means an exponential increase in risk relative to the job. It's character above all and how do ya know the grad didn't cheat his way through college? So many do.

--Brant

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

RB,

Do you speak from first-hand experience?

From your comments, I suspect not. I suspect you are deducing from what you think should be. That's not a good posture to teach others from.

I highly suggest you never work in the backend of the art or entertainment industries where success is the primary standard and flaky artists the public just loves are the norm.

Like I said, it's a skill set to handle people like that. (I speak from experience and I was damn good at it.) Those who learn it prosper greatly, like I did in Brazil before I melted down into drugs and alcohol. And they will prosper even in normal everyday work environments. Since I don't work in normal work environments, I can't speak from my own experience, but I can point to those I observe.

Here's a problem a business owner I knew in Brazil asked me. Which employee would you rather have? One who brought great wealth to the company but was slightly dishonest and skimmed a little on the sly? Or another who was totally honest, but did not increase the company's wealth very much?

There are two kinds of managerial people who would give immediate answers, both opposing. The business owner I knew preferred flexibility and took the extra money coming in. His business grew and I know that for a fact.

Those who don't learn this skill set plod along with what they've got and hope for the sporadic glimmers of talent their bureaucracies let through.

Competent vetting is far more than looking at bureaucratic results like diplomas or, horror of horrors, standardized HR psychological evaluations.

Michael

[Robert Baratheon]

RB,

Do you speak from first-hand experience?

From your comments, I suspect not. I suspect you are deducing from what you think should be. That's not a good posture to teach others from.

I highly suggest you never work in the backend of the art or entertainment industries where success is the primary standard and flaky artists the public just loves are the norm.

Like I said, it's a skill set to handle people like that. (I speak from experience and I was damn good at it.) Those who learn it prosper greatly, like I did in Brazil before I melted down into drugs and alcohol. And they will prosper even in normal everyday work environments. Since I don't work in normal work environments, I can't speak from my own experience, but I can point to those I observe.

Here's a problem a business owner I knew in Brazil asked me. Which employee would you rather have? One who brought great wealth to the company but was slightly dishonest and skimmed a little on the sly? Or another who was totally honest, but did not increase the company's wealth very much?

There are two kinds of managerial people who would give immediate answers, both opposing. The business owner I knew preferred flexibility and took the extra money coming in. His business grew and I know that for a fact.

Those who don't learn this skill set plod along with what they've got and hope for the sporadic glimmers of talent their bureaucracies let through.

Competent vetting is far more than looking at bureaucratic results like diplomas or, horror of horrors, standardized HR psychological evaluations.

Michael

Welllll... I don't have any first-hand experience as a supervisor (a bit too young for that), but I never cared much for the "white people don't get to talk about race" or "men don't get to talk about abortion" debate restrictions where experience is (selectively) conflated with knowledge. Some of the physicists on this forum have lectured on the surface conditions of different planets and satellites. I may be mistaken, but I doubt they've ever visited them. Having said that, I've read more about the subject of management than most, I've worked for a few different companies and government agencies, and I've been told by more than one person that I'm good at "managing up" the chain of command.

Although it might sound like a cop-out, I would truly need more information to be able to make a responsible decision in the hypothetical case you have presented. Hopefully, that is a sufficient answer in itself - I'm not categorically opposing or accepting.

Here's my basic philosophy on the subject: talent is rare and stratified - thus, it is expensive and difficult to maintain it. Some workers aren't just better than others - they outperform others by orders of magnitude. In my workplace, there is one particular "superstar" employee who is synonymous with the organization and can perform the work of 20, or perhaps even 30, "average" employees in our division. Beyond that, there are certain tasks that only he can do. I think management should be willing to tolerate any number of quirks and demands from such talent to keep them happy and producing, which to their credit, has largely been their approach toward this individual in that case. Most of the other employees *hate* this person because of his quirks and overt arrogance (and I suspect because of his ability), but I've made friends with him and admire him greatly.

Dishonesty, and especially theft, are quite another matter though. If an employee is actually stealing from a company or its customers, retaining such an individual in the hopes that their "skimming" will remain petty is a very risky proposition - you could get lucky - there are always winners and losers at the blackjack table - but it's precisely the type of thing with the potential to bring down an organization Enron-style. I think such situations have a legitimate presumption against them but at the same time are very fact-dependent.

[Samson Corwell]

The schools assume that you will receive federal assistance and have priced that into their business model. Federal aid - especially the widespread availability of federal Stafford loans - is the central reason why the cost of higher education has tripled over the past two decades. If you don't accept federal assistance, you are effectively subsidizing others by paying double for your own education. It's too bad that you have to get your own tax money (or your parents') back through the redistribution process, but you didn't create or endorse the system into which you were born. At least your use of the money for school is honest and productive, unlike all the "disabled" SSI/SSDI/welfare cheats and do-nothing public employees who surf eBay all day. I don't see anything wrong with using it.

Obviously, when the government reaches into every area of human life, avoiding government benefits is quite tricky.

I am familiar with Rand's answer to the question of student aid. But if the premise is that the recipient of aid has already paid or will someday be paying for those goodies through taxes, is there then any form of government aid one should not accept?

What about free day care, Head Start, housing vouchers, weatherization subsidies, heating bill subsidies, cell phone subsidies, free legal advice, or food assistance?

Wouldn't all government benefits be fair game if one has paid taxes?

There are plenty of government benefits that are fundamentally dishonest or promote unproductive behavior. For example, if someone is mentally competent, they should be ashamed to accept SSI/SSDI or a disability pension even if they are fully eligible for it under the lax requirements. In the 21st century, being able to use a computer means being able to work. There is an important cultural taboo that has been lost there over the past half-century. Public and military employees who do little productive work during the day should be similarly ashamed to collect their salaries and benefits, although I realize many of them are powerless to do much about it.

Student aid falls into a separate category because it, at least in theory, involves doing something productive and bettering oneself for reentering the workforce. It's also been priced into the higher education model (resulting in skyrocketing tuition in a vicious feedback loop), so anyone who doesn't utilize the assistance is essentially being penalized and paying twice.

Bit of a catch-22, eh?

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Here's my basic philosophy on the subject: talent is rare and stratified - thus, it is expensive and difficult to maintain it.

RB,

I disagree. I believe talent is all around us, gobs of it, and it is consistently squashed by paint-by-the-number rules and little dictator-wannabees.

Part of the reason I gravitated toward Rand when I was young was this belief.

I am very pleased to see the Internet is proving me right.

I see an explosion of talent when I go online, so much I can't consume even a tiny fraction of it.

Michael

[caroljane]

Here's my basic philosophy on the subject: talent is rare and stratified - thus, it is expensive and difficult to maintain it.

RB,

I disagree. I believe talent is all around us, gobs of it, and it is consistently squashed by paint-by-the-number rules and little dictator-wannabees.

Part of the reason I gravitated toward Rand when I was young was this belief.

I am very pleased to see the Internet is proving me right.

I see an explosion of talent when I go online, so much I can't consume even a tiny fraction of it.

Michael

[caroljane]

But say you hired a fraction of it, say at hourly wages, and they spent a good portion displaying their talent on the internet instead of on their assigned tasks? Or is that assumption built into the average workplace nowadays?

[Brant Gaede]

There's so much (unrealized and thwarted) talent we might even say it's innate. Competence, expertise and character are other matters entirely.

--Brant

[Darrell Hougen]

It is an oft-repeated canard in the U.S. that technology firms "can't find" qualified applicants to fill their positions. Host of EconTalk Russ Roberts likes to ask complaining employers why they don't simply pay more to attract talent. Then the hemming and hawing begins. The proof is in the pudding that most of the complaining firms 1) don't really need, 2) don't really value, or 3) can't really afford the quality of talent they purport to be seeking in the first place. I'm similarly unimpressed with the lament that we "need more STEM" workers in the United States. If there is such an unfilled need out there for technology workers, then why don't the positions pay more?

"Need" depends upon your point of view. Employers would probably like to hire more "STEM" workers, but only if they could do so at a cost they could afford. As a STEM worker, myself, I see no need for any more.

Darrell

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

But say you hired a fraction of it, say at hourly wages, and they spent a good portion displaying their talent on the internet instead of on their assigned tasks? Or is that assumption built into the average workplace nowadays?

Carol,

When you do it right, it doesn't work that way.

Look at Google for a very good example. I could cite a whole bunch of companies like that.

Managing talent ain't about controlling others. It's about producing and believing in a cause.

Unfortunately, the "average workplace nowadays" (as you called it) is premised on power and obedience. That's why you do get people who's very first thought is to do things like you asked about instead of adding increase to their company. Government employees who spend long hours on porn sites, for example. Company employees who cheat whenever they can on overtime, billing expenses and benefits, pilfering company property, etc., while only doing their assigned tasks in as mediocre manner as they can get away with. And so on.

Incidentally, talent doesn't run solely on "assigned tasks." It also dreams up tasks. It creates wealth--more wealth than it consumes, which is what top organizations do for their customers.

This isn't rocket science. But it doesn't fit the cradle-to-grave guaranteed income mentality.

Michael

[Robert Baratheon]

Here's my basic philosophy on the subject: talent is rare and stratified - thus, it is expensive and difficult to maintain it.

RB,

I disagree. I believe talent is all around us, gobs of it, and it is consistently squashed by paint-by-the-number rules and little dictator-wannabees.

Part of the reason I gravitated toward Rand when I was young was this belief.

I am very pleased to see the Internet is proving me right.

I see an explosion of talent when I go online, so much I can't consume even a tiny fraction of it.

Michael

I'm skeptical, Michael. Sure, everyone has a special skill set and is creative in certain ways, but nobody wants to pay for the vast majority of the content that's produced on the internet, and businesses are (at least primarily) about making a profit by providing valuable goods and services. All the good managing in the world can't make the majority of that content any more in demand. I have a YouTube video of me playing a video game with 100's of thousands of views on it. Sure, people will watch it for free, but nobody's going to pay for it, and the $50 I'd get from advertising if I went "pro" and made one every week isn't even worth the trouble.

I think organizations like Google and Facebook are successful because their debut products were truly revolutionary, innovative, and useful, not because of all the gimmicks like hammocks and catered lunches, or "creativity hours" on Fridays. Yahoo enjoyed similar success with its search engine, then adopted a similar "open" culture with generous telework agreements; the result was stagnation and a bunch of people loafing around while the stock plummeted. Most jobs in the U.S. are fairly low-skill and mundane, and there wouldn't be much a productivity benefit from adopting an "open" culture. Organizations like Valve, however, that have a rigorous vetting process and go after top talent in the software development field, have done well by keeping their employees happy and giving them more of a free reign.

Let's take one example of stratified talent: I'm the only one in my local office who can write competently enough to produce a near-finished-quality written product. So my boss gives me the difficult writing assignments, then assigns some other workers to "help" me so they feel included in the team and aren't just sitting around all day. But in reality, their contributions aren't very useful and have to be significantly reworked if they are used at all. They simply don't have the basic skills to get the job done. I don't see how managing them differently would change that fact without sending them back for years of schooling or very rigorous and expensive training (even then, many of them probably aren't capable, to be honest).

I mentioned earlier that we get around 300-500 applicants per open position, depending on the type. Of those applicants, around 80-90% don't have anything resembling a useful skillset or experience and go straight into the recycling bin. For an additional screening, we give the remaining bunch some basic prompts and a writing assignment. Most return back appalling gobble-de-gook, and we're left with 2 or 3 OK but not phenomenal candidates. If talent were truly overflowing out there in a landscape of milk and honey, I think this process would go very differently in practice.

[caroljane]

Whoa Michael! I agree with you all the way about managing talent. But I was commenting on being an employer, the person with the power and control in a workplace. Of course bosses should be collaborators, managers, mentors etc and frequently are. But their actual position in the workplace is that of dictator.

[Brant Gaede]

Whoa Michael! I agree with you all the way about managing talent. But I was commenting on being an employer, the person with the power and control in a workplace. Of course bosses should be collaborators, managers, mentors etc and frequently are. But their actual position in the workplace is that of dictator.

Is this an argumentum ad hominem?

--Brant

"dictator" should, generally speaking, be saved for actual dictators for the same reason the Mafia isn't just another business enterprise whatever Francis Ford Coppola put into his films

[Brant Gaede]

Here's my basic philosophy on the subject: talent is rare and stratified - thus, it is expensive and difficult to maintain it.

RB,

I disagree. I believe talent is all around us, gobs of it, and it is consistently squashed by paint-by-the-number rules and little dictator-wannabees.

Part of the reason I gravitated toward Rand when I was young was this belief.

I am very pleased to see the Internet is proving me right.

I see an explosion of talent when I go online, so much I can't consume even a tiny fraction of it.

Michael

I'm skeptical, Michael. Sure, everyone has a special skill set and is creative in certain ways, but nobody wants to pay for the vast majority of the content that's produced on the internet, and businesses are (at least primarily) about making a profit by providing valuable goods and services. All the good managing in the world can't make the majority of that content any more in demand. I have a YouTube video of me playing a video game with 100's of thousands of views on it. Sure, people will watch it for free, but nobody's going to pay for it, and the $50 I'd get from advertising if I went "pro" and made one every week isn't even worth the trouble.

I think organizations like Google and Facebook are successful because their debut products were truly revolutionary, innovative, and useful, not because of all the gimmicks like hammocks and catered lunches, or "creativity hours" on Fridays. Yahoo enjoyed similar success with its search engine, then adopted a similar "open" culture with generous telework agreements; the result was stagnation and a bunch of people loafing around while the stock plummeted. Most jobs in the U.S. are fairly low-skill and mundane, and there wouldn't be much a productivity benefit from adopting an "open" culture. Organizations like Valve, however, that have a rigorous vetting process and go after top talent in the software development field, have done well by keeping their employees happy and giving them more of a free reign.

Let's take one example of stratified talent: I'm the only one in my local office who can write competently enough to produce a near-finished-quality written product. So my boss gives me the difficult writing assignments, then assigns some other workers to "help" me so they feel included in the team and aren't just sitting around all day. But in reality, their contributions aren't very useful and have to be significantly reworked if they are used at all. They simply don't have the basic skills to get the job done. I don't see how managing them differently would change that fact without sending them back for years of schooling or very rigorous and expensive training (even then, many of them probably aren't capable, to be honest).

I mentioned earlier that we get around 300-500 applicants per open position, depending on the type. Of those applicants, around 80-90% don't have anything resembling a useful skillset or experience and go straight into the recycling bin. For an additional screening, we give the remaining bunch some basic prompts and a writing assignment. Most return back appalling gobble-de-gook, and we're left with 2 or 3 OK but not phenomenal candidates. If talent were truly overflowing out there in a landscape of milk and honey, I think this process would go very differently in practice.

You write extremely well. I'd put you in the same league as Barbara Branden.

--Brant

(I said nothing about your illogic and lack of rationality or the moral status of someone who pushes old ladies in wheelchairs down the stairs like Richard Widmark did while laughing hysterically in that movie over 60 years ago.)

[caroljane]

I am not arguing anything. It was just a thought about the balance of power in a workplace. I was just sayin'.

Sometimes I take a break from relentlessly advancing Agenda 21 and, you know, just say stuff. Especially here on OL.

[Dglgmut]

lol... the balance of power in the workplace is heavily in favor of the worker.

And for that reason the consumer is fucked (also the worker).