Category: education

Reviewing SAT/ACT scores as part of a student’s application packet helps an admissions decision be holistic, the university said in a statement. “Standardized tests are a means for all students, regardless of their background and life experience, to provide information that is predictive of success in college and beyond,” Hopi Hoekstra, a Harvard dean, said in the statement. “Indeed, when students have the option of not submitting their test scores, they may choose to withhold information that, when interpreted by the admissions committee in the context of the local norms of their school, could have potentially helped their application.”

The new law is not Holcomb’s first foray into K-12 CS education. Back in 2017, Holcomb and Indiana struck a deal giving Infosys (a big Code.org donor) the largest state incentive package ever — $31M to bring 2,000 tech employees to Central Indiana — that also promised to make Indiana kids more CS savvy through the Infosys Foundation USA, headed at the time by Vandana Sikka, a Code.org Board member and wife of Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka. Following the announcement of the now-stalled deal, Holcomb led a delegation to Silicon Valley where he and Indiana University (IU) President Michael McRobbie joined Code.org CEO Hadi Partovi and Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka on a Thought Leader panel at the Infosys Confluence 2017 conference to discuss Preparing America for Tomorrow. At the accompanying Infosys Crossroads 2017 CS education conference, speakers included Sikka’s wife Vandana, McRobbie’s wife Laurie Burns McRobbie, Nextech President and co-CEO Karen Jung, Code.org execs, and additional IU educators. Later that year, IU ‘First Lady’ Laurie Burns McRobbie announced that Indiana would offer the IU Bloomington campus as a venue for Infosys Foundation USA’s inaugural Pathfinders Summer Institute, a national event for K-12 teacher education in CS that offered professional development from Code.org and Nextech, as well as an unusual circumvent-your-school’s-approval-and-name-your-own-stipend funding arrangement for teachers via an Infosys partnership with the NSF and DonorsChoose that was unveiled at the White House. And that, Schoolhouse Rock Fans, is one more example of how Microsoft’s National Talent Strategy is becoming Code.org-celebrated K-12 CS state laws!

“Getting a college degree is viewed as the ticket to the American dream,” said [Burning Glass CEO Matt Sigelman], “and it turns out that it’s a bust for half of students.” The single greatest determinant of post-graduation employment prospects, according to the study, is a college student’s major, or primary focus of study. It can be even more important than the type of institution one attends. Choosing a career-oriented major like nursing, as opposed to criminal justice, gives graduates a better shot at actually using, and getting compensated for the skills they acquire. Just 23% of nursing students are underemployed, versus 68% of criminal justice majors. However, focusing on science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) subjects is not a guarantee of college-level employment and high wages, the study found. […]

Many college graduates remain underemployed even 10 years after college, the study found. That may be because employers seeking college-level skills also tend to focus on job candidates’ recent work experience, placing more emphasis on the latest jobs held by candidates who have spent years in the workforce, versus a degree that was earned a decade prior. “If you come out of school and work for a couple of years as waiter in a restaurant and apply for a college-level job, the employer will look at that work experience and not see relevance,” Sigelman said.

Long-time Slashdot reader theodp says he noticed posters with CS-education advocacy charts and stats “copied verbatim” from the tech giant-backed nonprofit Code.org. (And “a California Dept. of Education news release also echoed Code.org K-12 CS advocacy factoids.”)

The announcement came less than two weeks after Code.org CEO Hadi Partovi — whose goal is to make CS a HS graduation requirement in all 50 states by 2030 — was a keynote speaker at the Association of California School Administrators Superintendents’ Symposium. Even back in an October 20 Facebook post, [California state assemblyman] Berman noted he’d partnered with Code.org on legislation in the past and hinted that something big was in the works on the K-12 CS education front for California. “I had the chance to attend Code.org’s 10th anniversary celebration and chat with their founder, Hadi Partovi, as well as CS advocate Aloe Blacc. They’ve done amazing work expanding access to computer science education… and I’ve been proud to partner with them on legislation to do that in CA. More to come!”

A study conducted (PDF) by the college found that “SAT and ACT scores are highly predictive of academic performance at Dartmouth” and that “certain non-test score inputs in the admissions process, such as guidance counselor recommendations, do not predict college performance even though they do advantage more-advantaged applicants at IvyPlus institutions, increasing their admissions chances.” MIT had previously reinstated the SAT/ACT requirement.

Long-time Slashdot reader theodp notes that Neo is also benefiting from the education non-profit Code.org:

Eleven years ago, Neo Founder and CEO Ali Partovi together with twin brother Hadi (Code.org CEO and a Neo investor) publicly launched the nonprofit Code.org (backed and advised by big tech companies). With the support of prominent tech giant leaders and their companies, Code.org pushed coding into K-12 classrooms (NYT, alt.) and now boasts that “591,636 teachers have signed up to teach our intro courses on Code Studio and 19,177,297 students are enrolled,” helping to build a pipeline of “college students who excel at CS”. Neo taps into this pipeline, and it looks like others also betting on their success include Neo investors tied to Microsoft, Google, Meta, Amazon, and Uber — including Code.org boosters Bill Gates, Satya Nadella, Reid Hoffman, Jeff Wilke, Sheryl Sandberg, Eric Schmidt.

“I love meeting more and more @Neo founders and Neo scholar candidates who learned to code on Code.org,” Neo CEO Ali Partovi tweeted last summer.

in November Partovi welcomed “32 exceptional CS students” chosen from over 1,000 applicants to be Neo Scholars, “a year-long program of events, trips, and mentorship, as well as long-term membership in our community.”

Figures from the 2022 study The Emerging Degree Reset from The Burning Glass Institute quantify the trend, reporting that 46% of middle-skill and 31% of high-skill occupations experienced material degree resets between 2017 and 2019. Moreover, researchers calculated that 63% of those changes appear to be “‘structural resets’ representing a measured and potentially permanent shift in hiring practices” that could make an additional 1.4 million jobs open to workers without college degrees over the next five years.

Despite such statistics and testimony from Taylor and other IT leaders, the debate around whether a college education is needed in IT isn’t settled. Some say there’s no need for degrees; others say degrees are still preferred or required…. IBM is among the companies whose leaders have moved away from degree requirements; Big Blue is also one of the earliest, largest, and most prominent proponents of the move, introducing the term “new collar jobs” for the growing number of positions that require specific skills but not a bachelor’s degree….

Not all are convinced that dropping degree requirements is the way to go, however. Jane Zhu, CIO and senior vice president at Veritas Technologies, says she sees value in degrees, value that isn’t always replicated through other channels. “Though we don’t necessarily require degrees for all IT roles here at Veritas, I believe that they do help candidates demonstrate a level of formal education and commitment to the field and provide a foundation in fundamental concepts and theories of IT-related fields that may not be easily gained through self-study or on-the-job training,” she says. “Through college education, candidates have usually acquired basic technical knowledge, problem-solving skills, the ability to collaborate with others, and ownership and accountability. They also often gain an understanding of the business and social impacts of their actions.”
The article notes an evolving trend of “more openness to skills-based hiring for many technical roles but a desire for a bachelor’s degree for certain positions, including leadership.” (Kelli Jordan, vice president of IBMer Growth and Development tells CIO that more than half of the job openings posted by IBM no longer require degrees.)
Thanks to Slashdot reader snydeq for sharing the article.

The researchers did not conduct any research to try to explain the drop, but suggest it might be linked to changes in the education system. They also did not address the controversial issue of the accuracy of IQ test scores in general as a means of measuring a person’s intelligence. The paper has been published in the journal Intelligence.