Maggie's Farm

I read Wrangham's book, Catching Fire, a few years ago due to a good report of it over at the Bookworm Room. A very interesting book with a well developed argument.

Between this and the oldest recipe being for beer, thus a likely influence on shifting to farming, the noble savage is taking a beating. In fact, he's starting to look a lot like the suburban dad last Monday, at the grill, meat turner in on hand, beer in the other.

These truly are the end of times. First, Friedman actually rights something reasonable and that doesn't say we should be China.

But it is amusing how he highlights two veterans of Kinsey and Goldman (ages 27 and 28) have a new idea, competency testing for jobs. Sounds good, perhaps they are being disciplined in the testing. Otherwise, and far more likely now they've made the NY Times, their fellow graduates who became part of the problem instead of the solution down at the DOL and DOJ will be calling with threats of government violence for "discrimination" or something.

But this actually appears in the NY Times



That's right boys and girls, you can out compete Stanford and Harvard grads by simply spending some off hours learning to do something useful. All for the cost of a copy of Excel.

I don't know if this is a celebration of the breaking of the education cartel or a sad commentary on the state of the economy and Ivy league education.

They don't indicate the fancy job title for the position but apparently it was a fancy way of saying Excel expert.

But it seems some from Stanford and Harvard applied. Either in desperation or because of the fancy title.

No doubt some of the companies using this "new" competency testing will go bankrupt beating back the government drones since they'll say competency is discriminatory. However, the law actually supports testing that is objectively required for the job. Where companies got into trouble and decided to use college as a proxy was in inquiring about soft skills and subjective criteria. How does one test for an innovative employee?

Competency testing is, I think, the wave of the future. A college degree is no longer a good indicator of competency and with so many going to college, it is not as sorting as it once was. And competency will undo the education cartel since it will put them on objective measurements.

Not to mention, competency testing will permit prove of skill to the cream of an otherwise mediocre university or one who attended school in a foreign country. Expect serious opposition as competency will undermine the professional and licenser cartels as well.