In Reply to: Degrees don't necessarily make you smarter posted by DSCBruin on December 10, 2024 at 13:32:05
All the degree shows is that you persevered, put your life on hold for a period of time, and had the concentration to be able to explore the ins and outs of a line of specialization.
Though it shows one more thing: a professor of mine at UCLA once stated that the thing you really learn at grad school is the skill to learn new things. You have to figure out fairly quickly how best you learn something, and that's a skill you get to apply elsewhere if/when needed.
Beyond that, yeah, the degree does not indicate how smart a person is. Nor does it indicate a person's worth, personally, socially, intellectually, or financially. It's just a thing that shows how you spent a few years of your life and what particular corner of the intellectual landscape you kept digging into, whether you actually found anything or not.