Diploma Mills

[jsh1138]

Interesting point jsh1138. It took me 5 years as an adult to earn my black belt and it took my son 6 years to earn his. I know many kids, some as young as 8 or 9 that got a black belt from other schools in a year. It kind of makes me mad, because it devalues what I earned because so many are given out so easily. I can see how a ton of meaningless BA degrees may devalue them in general, yet employers can look at transcripts to see details of the degree too.

well exactly, we all know an 8 year old walking around with a black belt is devaluing the belt. We used to say that you'd rather be the best green belt anyone had ever seen vs being the worst black belt that anyone had ever seen. at the end of the day, the belt only means anything because of the people who hold it, not the other way around

its the same thing with degrees. i'd rather be the smartest guy with no degree than the dumbest guy with 10 degrees. you can hand degrees out like candy but at the end of the day it doesn't mean anything or change anything if you don't know the material. the degree is a *symbol* of the learning that you did to get the degree, that's the point of it. if you skip the learning then the symbol is meaningless because people will get in 5 minutes that you have no idea what you're talking about even though you have 5 IT degrees, if you can't fix the router issue or whatever. So then where are you? At the end of the day people are going to see you for what you are, whatever that is or isn't. 

So the idea is a transformational journey, to improve what you are, not just to slap some degrees on the wall and call it a day. I mean whatever people want to do, like I said before, I'm not here to police anyone's learning experience. Just saying you aren't going to be fooling anyone when you get out there in the world so if you want them to be impressed when they see that degree you need to do a little bit of work to go with it