The job market is becoming biased towards lesser academic degrees. Dumbing down rules, and our managers are becoming mediocre. The system works like this – according to the graduate careers mag RealWorld.

 Typically, an employer is looking for a high degree, but does not know how to compare the value of a particular course. Hence, arts and social science graduates are more likely to be employed with a high degree than a science graduate with a lesser score but much more valid education.

I’ve been convinced for years that the way society and business works nowadays is to employ staff who are not able to use the initiative that was once required. The central reason is that computing no longer allows free thinking in the workplace. Whereas once the machine was an extension of the person, the person has now become an appendage of the machine.

It now seems that the initial workers who were turned into appendages have become the employers. And like a machine, they can evaluate scores, but do not have the wisdom to evaluate the knowledge behind the result.

Forget The Terminator. The Age of the Machine is with us. And it’s subtle.

© Anthony North, Feb 2007

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