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Trade school, not 4-year college, is a better bet to solve the US income gap

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Re: Trade school, not 4-year college, is a better bet to solve the US income gap

#71

Post by thaumasiotes »

sandworm101 wrote: post #32
bruceb wrote: post #2

Remove the social stigma of not going to college. Hardly any tv shows that show young non college grads as positive.

>> Hardly any tv shows that show young non college grads as positive. Really? See Friends. And looking at a list of top current Sitcoms, RickAndMorty, Bobs Burgers, OrangeIsTheNewBlack, TheGoldbergs, KevinCanWait, even TheBigBangTheory has a leading character without any college education. The setup of the educated character being one-upped or taken down a peg by the more socially aware character is a standard sitcom…

> Really? See Friends.

> The setup of the educated character being one-upped or taken down a peg by the more socially aware character is a standard sitcom trope.

That trope is common on Friends. But out of the cast of six, there are four college graduates and two non-graduates, and the non-graduates are depicted as raging idiots.

Re: Trade school, not 4-year college, is a better bet to solve the US income gap

#72

Post by Double_a_92 »

Apocryphon wrote: post #10

Isn't Germany, one of the more booming economies of Europe, a place that promotes the trades and provides educational tracks for interested students to easily get into apprenticeship programs? And where there isn't stigma against entering such a field?

There is still a stigma... The difference is that you have to be kinda smart to even get into Highschool first.

Otherwise you basically have no other options than to do an apprenticeship or a trade school after middle school.

Re: Trade school, not 4-year college, is a better bet to solve the US income gap

#73

Post by AstralStorm »

toasterlovin wrote: post #33
toomuchtodo wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Social stigma is not the problem. Employers requiring degrees for jobs that don’t require a degree are the problem. They force the cost on the student, and with demand for college education then bring inelastic, colleges have all of the pricing power to charge whatever they want.

I have seen it argued that the reason for this is that employers are prohibited from using intelligence tests to evaluate job applicants, so they use years of education as a proxy for intelligence.

Which it is not. Mostly it is a proxy for being able to deal with terrible bureaucracies (maybe useful?) and having enough money to live through it. (classist)

Re: Trade school, not 4-year college, is a better bet to solve the US income gap

#74

Post by SapphireSun »

smallnamespace wrote: post #68
mediasavvy wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What percentage of self-made billionaires started out as millionaires? what percentage of poor people become self-made billionaires? What percentage of poor people who become self-made billionaires do so by going to trade school?

I think people argue past one another a lot about this because both facts can be simultaneously true: the US really is a land where a hard-working, smart, and motivated person (with a big pinch of luck) can work their way up from the top, and yet it's also a place where most people at the bottom aren't simultaneously hard-working, smart, motivated, and lucky. If they were, they would've moved up the rungs already. I…

You've arrived at the unthinkable thought. Why indeed, in a very rich country, do any poor people at all exist? Why is this crime not remedied immediately? The only possible explanation in a democratic society, is that somehow the upper classes have rigged the system via political machinations, voter suppression, dividing the intermediate classes against each other, and propaganda. It's a sobering thought. We might also ask ourselves, why are billionaires allowed to persist? Is that not itself, in the face of suffering, a crime on the face of humanity?

Re: Trade school, not 4-year college, is a better bet to solve the US income gap

#75

Post by nopii1234 »

cylinder wrote: post #63
nopii1234 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since this is a throwaway: CSLB-C8 (Concrete contractor)

Experience based licenses keep supply limited.

FWIW the experience requirements didn’t seem too onerous for a profession. The rules seem to be in place to insure a standard of quality, not to limit supply artificially.

Furthermore, there are plenty of unlicensed contractors that we have to compete with, and a license requirement isn’t stopping them.

Re: Trade school, not 4-year college, is a better bet to solve the US income gap

#76

Post by AstralStorm »

s0rce wrote: post #22
Retric wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see Jobs that could be done with a high school diploma that now request a masters degree. This creates an insane hurdle for someone to get into the upper middle class. Having people enter the workforce 4+ years sooner not only reduces debt it also allows them to be productive generating a lot of wealth. Consider what it means if doctors skip an undergrad degree, it's not only less debt, but also more working years.

Yup, and many STEM jobs that once provided on the job training and needed a bachelors now require a PhD.

Thus we get garbage doctorates. A doctorate was supposed to be the culmination of a scientific career.

Re: Trade school, not 4-year college, is a better bet to solve the US income gap

#78

Post by SapphireSun »

analog31 wrote: post #60
indubitable wrote: post #37

Another idea, indirectly related, is to simply stop treating all university degrees equally. The whole reason student loans are so broken right now is because they cannot be dismissed, so lenders are incentivized to lend with reckless abandon. In the worst case scenario the loan converts into a lifetime rent on an individual that automatically adjusts for inflation. On the other hand, the idea behind creating special…

In my view, this idea runs the danger of creating a planned economy, with characteristic boom-bust cycles and scams. The choice of which degrees to fund has to be made on either past data or some sort of current fad. The list of preferred degrees will of course create competition to get into those programs, but it may also encourage colleges to create watered-down or even fake disciplines that can absorb more student…

"...with characteristic boom-bust cycles and scams." 2008 called, I told them you're available.

Re: Trade school, not 4-year college, is a better bet to solve the US income gap

#79

Post by ringaroundthetx »

teslabox wrote: post #58

> "There are too many four-year colleges serving too many students, The Screwing of the Average Man [0] said that college used to be something the upper-class sent their children to so they'd have a leg up on the "uneducated" masses. Then the congress provided the GI Bill to subsidize college for WWII veterans. This kept disgruntled veterans occupied while the economy retooled to peacetime production. Thus began the…

Sudbury and Montessori schools offer a model that seems to encourage students to learn at their own pace

Provides a positive feedback loop that seemed to have positive results in the real world as well

Re: Trade school, not 4-year college, is a better bet to solve the US income gap

#80

Post by roseburg »

dogruck wrote: post #42

The real question is how can we reduce the cost of education (or training) while simultaneously better aligning training with the most valuable careers. Trade schools are much cheaper than college. In addition, we don’t have enough trained craftsmen.

There is a shortage of trades workers, and it's only going to get worse because the bulk of the workers are currently older and are retiring much, much faster than they are being replaced. We are just at the beginning of a crises level shortage. Labor prices will continue to rise and this will be absorbed by everyone.
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