Another strange title. What on Earth is "Double Selection". I did not invent this, it is just a observation of what has been going on for a very long time. Think about it this way. What if you were trying to select the best hunting dog and went about it this way. First you made a list of all the types of dogs out there and narrowed the list down to the top 10%. This means you eliminated from consideration 90% of the possible dogs. Everyone would agree that these were very good dogs, yet you are not through with your search. Next you took the group of dogs in this top 10% group and picked out only the top 10% again. Now you would be down to only one or two dogs. Any one of these last two dogs would be a very good choice. What you have done with this "Double Selection" is to get down to the best dog in 100 or the top 1%. I think you can follow this logic. When you make "Double Selections" you get a 10 times better selection. See how it works? Now lets look at another example.
How about selecting a person for a new position. What most of us have been doing is to select on the basis of a "Single Selection" process. This means we only look at the major in college as though what was learned in that major was all that we needed to consider. We all know that one does not learn all that much in any major compared to what is needed to succeed in a position. What most of us miss is the "Selection" that took place before the kids went to college. I don't think that I am bias on this one, but our smartest and hardest working kids don't "Select" Political Science, Communications or Elementary Education as their majors in college. Our smartest and hardest working kids tend to "Select" technical or difficult majors in college. The net affect of this "Double Selection" process is that our kids who graduate in the technical and more difficult majors are many time more competent than those who were "Double Selected" into less difficult majors.
As I noted in a prior Blog, Business Administration is one of the easiest college majors and attracts those of our kids who are the least capable. Parents and business people need to understand this. How about an example or two? You hear interviews with T. Boone Pickens, the Billionaire oil guy, on TV. He has a degree in Petroleum Engineering". When was the last time that our automotive companies had a really competent President? How about Lee Iacca? He was an Industrial Engineer. How about that? Not a paper shuffler. How about the top guys in the government of China? Zero are lawyers. All are technical people. Interesting? I think that China and Korea must be using "Double Selection".
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How about a Football example? What position do you think college coaches recruit most often? You are right, it is the quarter back. They do this even though most college football teams only have 2 or 3 quarter backs on the team. The reason is that the quarter back position is the most difficult position on the high school team and requires the best athletes. This is a clear case of "Double Selection".
Notice that over the past 25 years, the USA has significantly increased the percentage of college graduates. Now, how did they do it. During the past 25 years, our universities have "decreased" the number of graduates in the more difficult technical areas, while increasing the numbers in the less difficult softer majors like Political Science and Sociology. Sorry, those are the facts.
