Work vs. Value

8/21/2007

One of my biggest frustrations with academia was the tendency to place emphasis on work. I've heard that this can be different at other institutions, but most people I've talked to generally agree that emphasis in college was placed on work.

Here's a recurring example: I'd often get a lower grade than other peers who "worked harder", even though my final grades or output were very clearly of a much higher quality. I generally didn't have much use for going to class, as I could learn what was presented much more efficiently on my own.

Not that I really cared about getting a B+ instead of an A -- if I did, I would have gone to every class. But it seems like the emphasis on work gives students the wrong priorities.

There seems to be two inputs to value: work and ability. If you have less ability, you can compensate by working harder than average. And if you have above average ability, you may tend to work less.

Note that ability doesn't necessarily directly translate to intelligence, and that I'm not downplaying hard work: those who both work hard and have ability will produce the most value.

But by putting emphasis squarely on work, academia is punishing those with above-average ability. My experience in college was that both the top 5% and bottom 5% of any given class did the least work, but doing less work was uniformly regarded as bad.

In the real world, though, value is most important. As an example, let's take two people who make pottery. One is a natural artist, and makes beautiful pottery. The other tries really, really hard, but the pottery isn't great. It may not be "fair" to the person who tried hard, but the beautiful pottery will be sold for much more money, as it's of higher value. What really matters to people is how much value you are providing them, not how much work you put into it.

I'm also not saying that ability can't be learned: in the above example, ability may represent both natural artistic abilities and learned skills.

It seems like a much better system would be to judge on value, and compare the final output. Those with less ability would be required to work harder to produce the same value -- they won't be taught that hard work without value is OK. And those with above average ability wouldn't be weighted down performing bullshit work; they'd have more time instead to focus on projects more interesting and useful to them.

Damon Allison link

8/20/2007 10:27:17 pm

Enjoyed the post, nice work.

To me it seems the post wants to be titled "Work vs. Ability".

I remember in high school (and perhaps college, but that was a blur) some classes gave "attendance points". That always bothered me.

If the class itself had value, attending class would naturally produce, on average, better test scores. If classes don't add value, anyone with sincere interest in the subject could pull more value out of reading books and reading code than sitting through lecture.

Marcos Toledo

8/20/2007 11:45:34 pm

I, too, agree with the author. I also see people trapped forever in the "but I worked really hard for this!" thing well long after they've left school.

Focusing on work rather than on value is a very "selfish" way of working.

gene

8/21/2007 12:46:32 am

Hmm, imagine if you were both talented and worked really hard. The value you would create would be far beyond the average. Why use talent as an excuse to be lazy?

David link

8/21/2007 12:49:06 am

@gene:
Talent is absolutely not an excuse to be lazy -- although some people with talent shoot for average (and work less to do so), those who work hard and are talented produce the most value.

augustus

8/21/2007 01:28:11 am

David,

I gave a lot of thought to this myself since I decided to get a BS and an MBA.

I think the answer is that people expect too much from school. The school is only meant to give you a foundation.

Remember, being good at school never makes you rich.

I remember reading about Warren Buffet (one of my idols) who completed all his courses with much greater ease than others. Since he was brighter than others, when the story of his life is told, his superior intelligence and wisdom is reflected in his net worth.

-Augustus

Nivi link

8/21/2007 01:28:56 am

Peter Drucker says "Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things."

You are arguing for effectiveness.

Check out "The Essential Drucker" or "The Effective Executive" by Peter Drucker.

Harvey link

8/21/2007 01:34:52 am

Some of us are blessed with more ability than others. We therefore have more responsibility to produce better outcomes. My approach is to take on only those tasks that nobody else can do; to tackle only what others think of as the impossible. This has proven to be most rewarding.

Tony Wright link

8/21/2007 06:50:15 am

The biggest real world example of this is the 40 hour work week. 40 hours of "effort"-- measuring how much time you actually spend WORKING (or how much output you produce) is oftentimes an afterthought.

Sierra link

8/21/2007 12:22:15 pm

For such a busy man, you have an awful lot of time to write brilliant non-work related things. ;-)

Matthew Maroon link

8/21/2007 03:12:07 pm

While I largely agree with you, it's pretty hard for the education system to function like that. Judging value is pretty hard beyond our current testing system, which is not without flaws. It would at the very least require a drastic overhaul in our education system.

Grading on attendance is, of course, ridiculous.

Stephen Hebert

8/23/2007 02:51:25 pm

You definitely misunderstood college. (You may be confusing them with vo-tech schools, which are actually oriented to catalyse a person into someone immediately fit for a professional position.) College is not intended to emulate the professional world - if it was you would not have had to take two foreign languages, two Sciences, and a load of Math and English regardless of how superfluous.

College, particularly in the US (though less so since WWII), is about acquiring an appreciation for all the smart people before you and learning how to follow instructions. That's what gets you that piece of paper in the end - just to say that you had some level of competence in doing what you were told. For most people, that's the skill they will use most in the start of their career when they are in that junior-level position and have not yet starting doing whatever it is that imagined they would be when they got into this.

This is largely because what you study for undergrad is mostly irrelevant - in most cases for your first job, one bachelor's degree is just as good as another. The important stuff comes later, when you actually start working, learning the tools of the trade, and trying to find a niche for yourself in your field. There are certain exceptions to this generalization, of course. In curricula like painting and music performance, you would be judged quite considerably on your ability, especially when compared to that of your peers.

Also, you should realize that 'value' is entirely subjective, and the value of your work can only realistically be determined in terms of 'worth to society' by how much someone is willing to pay you for it.
Your professors aren't about to reach into their own pockets, but in the professional world there is no shortage of people twisted every which way with pockets deep enough to support their aims. But I digress...

College is not for everyone. There is no law requiring people to go, and many don't. People who start working in their fields at young ages often skip right to the working world to avoid all of the unnecessary rites and procedures. From the sound of it, I think you would have better suited to that path. Don't you think?

David Rusenko link

8/23/2007 03:31:28 pm

@Stephen:

Thanks for the long reply. To me, college wasn't and isn't about learning to follow directions (if that's all you learn, that's quite pointless).

I got the most out of my GenEd classes that a college degree requires me to take (not my major-specific classes). Things like art, micro and macro economics, accounting, social studies, english, speech communications, racquetball -- those were areas I learned a lot in, and areas that make a person generally educated (as opposed to just highly specialized).

For certain classes, yes, judging by value may not make sense -- although, surprisingly, some classes you wouldn't expect did so. For example, after the 3rd week of classes, my racquetball professor created a bracket that you could move up or down in. You could challenge players, and if you won, you'd rise in rank; if you lost, you'd go down.

This worked really well, and is one of the classes I've ever worked the hardest at. Why? I came into the class as a Freshman with mostly Seniors, having never played racquetball myself. Out of 30 students, 5 came in with great skills, 2 had some handicap (obesity, etc, and were likely given a passing grade due to extenuating circumstances). The rest of us had to come in and learn.

There were some that didn't practice or try very hard, but were OK at racquetball: they got B's. There were some that weren't very good and didn't try: they got D's/C's. There were some with no athletic skills that had never played: they had to work the hardest. Myself and several others came in with natural athletic talent, but we had to work *really hard* to get a good grade: only the top 5 ranked players got an A, the next few an A-, etc.

If this would have been a work-based class, I would have come in, shown a little "effort" when the professor was watching, got an A, and would likely not have learned to play very well. Instead, I had to come in on my own and practice all the time, to get up to the same level as those that came in having already played for a long time. And guess what? I got a hell of a lot better.

In other words, value-based classes can help out those that don't come in with as much ability (it certainly doesn't hurt them). And it doesn't punish those with ability (after all, everybody is passing the same requirement, and it shows up the same on a transcript). If anything else, judging someone on output/value really ends up showing who is motivated and who is just coasting through life.

I agree, college isn't for everyone. And I appreciate (and enjoyed) the difference between college and vocational school. But I wouldn't dismiss my argument by saying "College probably wasn't for you".

Adam link

10/4/2007 10:32:33 am

It sounds like what you really are concerned with is that your classes weren't/aren't challenging you enough. And that everyone gets graded against each other when it would be much more helpful to each student to be graded based on their own improvement during the class, do you agree? When we don't need to work hard to understand the material all it really means is that we're not flexing our brain muscles, we're coasting and getting weaker.

Hal Needham

12/14/2007 12:08:28 am

David,

I found your post about work vs. value to be interesting and thought provoking.

In our society today, many examples exist of cases where work is put before value, sometimes to the detriment of those involved, or even to the detriment of a wider audience.

Well-meaning people often establish such principles, on the basis of rewarding effort and teaching morals and life-lessons. And there is some good in that.

However, unfortunately, these good intentions can and do obstruct honest performance and objective evaluation.

As a Christian, I see the root of much of this based in a fear-based society, where people are not afraid of God anymore but instead afraid of man. Much of what runs our society today is fear of people, instead of doing what's right.

For example, if you're a baseball coach, it's hard to be objective about the nine kids you put out on the field, when you have a screaming parent demanding that their kid get to play because they showed up at every practice.

This same principle is probably dealt with in academia when a student does tons of work and puts in maximum effort but just doesn't perform that well. It is harder to be objective in our society and give the hard working student a B or a C.

I enjoyed your raquetball example (in a later post) because I saw so much truth in it. When you are forced to perform all that matters is the end result, not so much how you get there. Telling the teacher that you "worked really hard" and "practiced alot" wasn't enough for the best grade in that class if you couldn't compete on the court.

This reminded me of some decisions I made in Morocco in regards to learning language. French and Arabic quickly became passions of mine in Casablanca and I became very motivated to get as close to fluency as possible.

This caused me to re-evaluate the standard path that most cross-cultural workers took, which involved enrollment in a formal class setting. After a few weeks in class it was crystal clear that I would produce much better results on my own. So I dropped out of class and formed my own learning system that involved 14 hours or work per week, 7 of which had to be "real life conversation" in that language. The results were fabulous. By the end of two years I was conversationally fluent (for the topics I needed to discuss such as family, travel, work, etc.) in both languages.

However, there were times when it appeared on the outside like I was lazy or not motivated because I did not go to class. My choice was maximum performance in place of a piece of paper on my wall that says I passed various levels of class and speak the language.

To quote an interesting climate professor I met once, "At the end of the day, nobody cares if you have a degree in fiddle, they just want to see if you can play the thing."

One obvious reason to me that academia takes this road is that it is easier to evaluate hard work than it is value, at least much of the time. It's easy to check off attendance and remember participation. It's a lot harder and more time intensive to sit down with a student that developed their own learning system and evaluate that. Part of my language learning method involved collection and memorization of words/ phrases each week that the STUDENT selected. If the student is into skateboarding they would learn those terms- not the standard vocab to order coffee in a French cafe. But if every student is collecting their own words (which keeps students really interested)- how do you grade them? It's not easy.

Finally, I see some downfalls as well to prioritizing value over work. The major downfall I see is that we as humans are so limited and know so very little, that when we strike out on our own and say, "I can do it better myself than in a group", often we are wrong and miss out on opportunities.

The biggest danger facing people with high ability is pride and arrogance and an attitude of "I can do this all on my own". The problem is that so many real-life scenarios involve other people and often times we're not as clever as we think we are.

I've seen several cases where the best-qualified person didn't get hired for a job because their attitude was, "I've got this in the bag- this will be so easy for me." And in these cases the managers felt that such an individual would not be teachable to do things the way the company wanted them done.

Perhaps professors feel the same way. It would help if they were very clear about their expectations, supported by reasoning. If a class is designed to develop group communication, it makes sense that the students who attend more frequently will get higher grades. But professors should clearly state what they are looking for- value, work or both, to help clarify for students.

I don't write often but I sure write long!
Hal

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David co-founded Weebly, an incredibly easy to use tool that helps millions of people create a professional web site, blog or online store.

He was named to Forbes' 30 under 30 list, is a part-time DJ and has traveled to over 20 countries.

Investments include Cue, Parse, Exec, Churchkey, Streak, Incident Technologies, Adioso and Zenefits.

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