News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:The Master’s as the New Bachelor’s (2011) by jseliger on Tuesday December 22, 2015 @05:01PM (#10780661)
I'm a grant writing consultant (see www.seliger.com for more if you're curious) and zero clients out of 1,000+ over 20 years have asked about our education level(s). They want to know if we can write their proposals. It may be that the closer you are to the work itself, so to speak, and the further you are from the bureaucratic apparatus, the more "Can you do it?" questions matter (and can be measured) and the less "What degree do you have?" questions matter.

Some others in this thread have noted that there might be a credentials "arms race" going on—I would add, in particular, in healthcare, education in government, per Tyler Cowen's book The Great Stagnation: How America Ate All the Low-Hanging Fruit of Modern History, Got Sick, and Will( Eventually) Feel Better. Parts of big business may have signaling / credentialing disease too.

Bryan Caplan is writing The Case Against Education, and he argues that too much of education is a signalling arms race. Here is one introduction to his thought: http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2015/04/educational_sig_....

Re:The Master’s as the New Bachelor’s (2011) by dinkumthinkum on Tuesday December 22, 2015 @08:21PM (#10781476)
Yeah but you are a consultant, it is a slightly different role than trying to convince someone to make you an employee, though I understand there may be a similar sort of salesmanship going on. They may assume a consultant should have whatever qualifications or they wouldn't be in business, whatever.

Also, you should not that in many cases consultants in other professions often give full resumes including education (even pictures) in their proposals to RFPs, I would think you would be familiar with that in your work.

Anyway, as far as the "can you do it" stuff .... I think HN too often writes off university as a place one might learn "how to do it" .... Oh well. =)