How is it that there are good ceo's that weren't A students in college?

I don't get why this isn't known as common knowledge. Teachers should be sharing this with students to get them prepared.

 

The real world involves passing numerous tests, and there must be winners and losers. However, the reason why students need to take so many of those tests is because people do not trust the teachers to teach. So you test the products of their labor to see if the teachers have been doing their jobs.

Do you trust teachers enough to just let 'em teach without any requirement to provide you with progress reports? Teachers would certainly prefer to have your trust, but I don't think they've earned that trust.

 

That isn't the intent of college. The intent of college is to produce an educated person.

 

Not at all. Education is only knowledge. What it takes to be a successful CEO is a very unique set of skills and character traits, plus a bombproof work ethic, none of which can be taught in college.

 

Define "educated".

 

No, Its not strange. Its perfectly natural.

Getting an "A" in college, just means you were properly socialized, and indoctrinated.

 

An education is a resource. Some people do more with that resource, some do less. Some do great things with very little. *shrug*




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easy!!! name one non-white ceo that got bad grades in college and is still successful....you can't do it can you?

obvious racist is obvious

 

SO you're telling me that you have quite literally pulled the private grading records of every ceo on the planet?

 

There are many kinds of genius and great minds can put powerful intellect to very different uses. Some men gave the world atomic theory, quantum mechanics or the Sistine Chapel; others gave it helicopters, electric motors, the internet, telephones...

Not sure I'd discount someone as possessing genius just because he found a way to get paid for his contributions.




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Much has been said already in this thread that is correct, mainly regarding people's skills, ambition, and leadership qualities. Those cannot be easily taught, but rather have to do with personality. From my two kids, one has leadership qualities, the other doesn't, so he'll possibly never make it to CEO level .

Then, there is also the much-predicted disdain for college professor, one poster going so far to say that they are all idiots (thanks for calling me an idiot).

Some of these qualities necessary for CEOs actually also have to be present in successful college professors. Try to stand in front of a class of 200 freshmen without leadership qualities, they'll walk all over you.

Then, there is ambition, which many professors have in spades (some here call it ego). Since scholarship is usually very competitive, you won't get anywhere without ambition and work ethics.

Finally, regarding people's skills: Of course there are those without people's skills, but they are usually self-selecting to stay away from the classroom and focus solely on research.

Today, at least in the sciences and engineering, faculty pretty much run their own little research "business" within the university. It entails selling a product (to granting agencies), managing people (postdocs and grad students), taking care of paying those people, managing a lab etc. Thus, the life of the average college professor is actually much more complex than what people outside of academia think and it is not the ivory tower where one can follow pointless ideas for the whole tenured life.

 

You probably make teachers mad with thisw post. Even though I agree. This is why teachers references are no good.

 

Teacher references are usually pretty good because it's just like asking your friend to hook you up with a date, and he hooks you up with Propecia the crackho, you aren't going to ask him to hook you up again. Those graduate employment rates help sell a school a lot more than how many students got good grades.

Have you ever heard teachers complaining about teaching to the test? They generally hate that because quite often, you have maybe a few students in a classroom you can teach anything to, and the rest are there for the credits. So do you really help those 25% and if the rest want to join in, then all they have to do is start participating. If they don't, then we'll bumrush enough of them through the system to keep the bell curve looking somewhat bellish, and they'll eventually end up taking a job with the department of motor vehicles where they will do the exact same nothing they did in class, but get paid for doing it.

 

If employers don't trust teachers then they can't be credible. It can't be both ways.

 

That is the complicated part of it. There is no one good definition of educated.

Colleges aren't intended to be vocational. They are intended to generate and disseminate human knowledge. For the most part, though, being able to finish a four year degree tells you a lot about a person, and for that reason, college educated folks are often preferred in the job market.

 

Please show evidence that teacher's references are "no good."

The thing is, who asks anybody to give a reference for them that isn't glowing? I would never ask somebody to be a reference unless I thought they were impressed by me. I know as a former teacher, that when I taught, no student that I didn't think highly of ever even asked me to be a reference.

 

Well, students do ask. I usually explain to them that even a mediocre reference may be worse than no reference at all, since the first thing hiring managers do is look for red flags. That's why, as you say, there is a self-selection process happening, leading to only glowing references being written. It is not because teachers/professors write glowing references for ALL students, which has been suggested by others on this thread who probably have never written a letter of reference in their lives.

 

The best case of that would be George W. Bush, a C student at his family's college who was refused admission to his home state college law school for academic reasons, a confirmed draft dodger who served two terms as president of the U. S.

 

people smart vs book smart... and of course some are just born with a last name and that is all they need

 

So please explain why people smart and book smart are so different to the readers. Some don't know the difference.

 

you can have good people skills, but be dumb as a post

you can be smart and not have good people skills

ceo's have to have good people skills

 

In fact, not just for CEOs, but whenever someone starts a business it may be beneficial to display a certain amount of ignorance.

One of the brightest guys I went to university with was brilliant with his scientific knowledge and analytical skills. However, he would never start a project, because he could list 100 reasons, most of them very well analyzed, of why the project would fail. 90% of the time he was probably right, because a large number of scientific projects do, in fact, fail (as do most businesses). However, he would have never found out about the small amount of projects that would, in fact, work.

 

good quote

"We learn by doing, by taking risks, by failing, and, only then, by succeeding. We grow from our mistakes and from our failures.
If we cannot see that failure is the essential other half of success, then we try to avoid the failure and, in so doing,
we avoid success." ~ '2150 AD' by Thea Alexander

 

"Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new."

— Albert Einstein



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Sight unseen having a degree is better than not. An interview can easily
change that perception but with a degree you won't get the interview. Depends on the industry. In entertainment or the arts it doesn't mean too much. In business it's all over the place. In medicine and engineering it means everything. College doesn't mean success. It just ups your odds.