Certificates, not College

Another thing I find interesting is the idea of using certification in place of college degrees. To get a college degree, you have to pay up and attend the place for four years and then get good enough grades to graduate. But your grades often depend on how obedient you are, and not on your knowledge.

When I worked at Microsoft, I spent much of my time interviewing and hiring software developers, as the company was growing rapidly. I soon found out that a degree doesn't mean much, even from a highly ranked college. We used to put the candidates on the spot and make them solve programming problems on the white board in front of us. I learned from bitter experience to start with a really easy question, the computer equivalent of "Who is buried in Grant's tomb?". One candidate, a freshly minted PhD from a well-known university, was totally stumped. I had several easy ones to offer up, and he could not do one of them. Say, how about those Mariners?

I've noticed sometimes young people aim for Microsoft network certifications instead of college. I don't know if it's right for them, but I get the idea. The real question is whether testing for certification is possible for various disciplines, in a way that can't be gamed.