New Executive Order Fights Credential Inflation In The Federal Workforce"
"On Friday, President Trump signed an executive order directing federal agencies to fill job vacancies based on merit, rather than require a minimum level of education for candidates seeking open positions. The order rightly recognizes that a job candidate with several years of relevant experience may be just as qualified, if not more so, than one who has collected a stack of advanced degrees."
https://www.forbes.com/sites/prestoncooper2/2020/06/29/new-executive-order-fights-credential-inflation-in-the-federal-civil-service/#6a382a085759
"On Friday, President Trump signed an executive order directing federal agencies to fill job vacancies based on merit, rather than require a minimum level of education for candidates seeking open positions. The order rightly recognizes that a job candidate with several years of relevant experience may be just as qualified, if not more so, than one who has collected a stack of advanced degrees."
https://www.forbes.com/sites/prestoncooper2/2020/06/29/new-executive-order-fights-credential-inflation-in-the-federal-civil-service/#6a382a085759
Comments
Could have a point. I have read somewhere that part of the rise in for profit colleges was to get degrees for government workers where your salary was based on your highest degrees so you had all sorts of these odd masters degrees and so on. One way to hire people would be experience and IQ tests, probably would work pretty good. I think it is not actually legal to use IQ tests but Wall street and high tech companies actually do just that with a series of questions which are just problem solving questions, so it is not technically an IQ test but is effectively one.
It may also require hiring practices that value merit over cronyism and sometimes nepotism.
Degrees get your foot in the door. Same as experience. That is all. Merit is earned through effort and success associated with the job you were hired to do.
A successful and cited Ph.D. thesis and associated peer-reviewed publication(s) is an extremely good sign of merit.
7/01/2020 6:08 PM"
Fine enough but why are we hiring people with almost no publications and little citations? By the way we are hiring less and less Ph.Ds at the labs. I think LANL is now down 16% of the workforce with Ph.Ds it was close to 40% 25 years ago.
Operations (including security), environmental compliance, facility management, contract compliance, audits and assessments, community relations, etc., etc. require no Ph.D. degree. What percentage is that of the lab employees?
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You should look a little deeper into that. The reason it costs so much is that where the tax to build the slush fund for LRDR (the PHD tax) is burdened. Capital expenditures. So in reality, it is paying for your research into things not specifically funded by the customer.
7/03/2020 8:07 PM"
(1) A couple of points LDRD is only 6% of the labs budgets it is usually less, so it is hardly part of some astronomical amount of money. (2) Yes it is part of the what the customer wants. The customer, (which is a bizarre name and makes no sense to use), is the NNSA, the NNSA itself wants LDRD at the labs for a variety of reasons. (3) LDRD has actually been shown to bring in more more money to the labs in the long run. This is been demonstrated in a several studies, and makes sense when you simply count non-NNSA funding, from DOE, NIH, WFO, office of Army and Navy, not to mention expansions of NNSA programs. As for the reasons to have LDRD, besides research, it also is one of the main tools to recruit postdocs. All you have to do is look at how many NW scientists came in under LDRD. There are also endless programs, computational tools, experimental diagnostics, software, understand of materials, detection devices that have all come from LDRD, all this is very well known, and easy to find.
If you knew the burdens that are put on capital expenditures by the programs for the lab (up to 125%) that more than double the cost you would know how dumb the process is and why your facilities continue to degrade. No one wants to pay double so they dont. In the mean time they dont know why it is double. Its a death spiral.
The guy who keeps typing "LRDR" obviously has no idea what he is talking about, just talking.
7/05/2020 5:31 PM
Good catch. There is something off about this guy. Maybe the Russians or Chinese have trolls on these pages to try and hurt the labs? Seems a bit farfetched but I suppose it is possible.
7/05/2020 9:16 PM
How does this thread "hurt" the lab?
Not the thread, but the poster who misrepresents himself as knowledgeable and gives himself away by using "LRDR" instead of the correct "LDRD" in opposing a funding source for basic and applied research at the labs that DOE/NNSA has consistently supported.
How does this thread "hurt" the lab?
7/11/2020 6:17 PM
Well trying stop the labs from doing cutting edge science and bringing in top talent for one thing. I am sure China/Iran/North Korea/Russia or whoever would be very happy if the labs decline scientifically. Remember a high tide raises all boats, the converse is also true. Clear enough now.