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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

#251

Post by AnimalMuppet »

forapurpose wrote: post #94

As is often the case, the answer is built into how the question is framed: If we frame the question as, 'what is the most efficient way to train people with directly salable skills', then college is inefficient and probably not the best solution. But if the question is, 'how do we best prepare people for life, including critical thinking and knowledge about the world, and to improve our society', college blows away a…

> Four years spent studying the leading thinkers, thinking, and critical approaches in a diverse array of fields, tutored by leading experts, is an incredible way to sharpen your mind, knowledge, and critical thought.

It is. How many people actually get that when they go to college?

(More than get it in trade school, sure. But if that's the promise of college, I'm not sure that college delivers all that well...)

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

#252

Post by AnimalMuppet »

jerf wrote: post #4
jrs95 wrote: post #3

It doesn’t need to be one or the other. Just because trade schools are good doesn’t mean we should ignore the needs of everyone who wants a 4 year degree or has a mountain of student loan debt.

It's even better than that. If trade schools can recover some prestige, and more people who would be happier and better off for going there do go there, then colleges can become better colleges, too. Colleges trying to be both is doing a disservice to everyone.

More than that: If the people who would be better off going to trade school go there, and so fewer people go to college, the price of college can go down, just due to supply and demand.

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

#253

Post by erikb »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #245
erikb wrote: post #105

A financial gap of any kind comes from unfair advantages in a vastly complex system. How could something like that be solved by attending another kind of school. Imo these are two totally independent things.

A different kind of school can leave you prepared to exploit a different kind of gap. If that gap is the one that is currently widening, then being positioned to exploit it can be a wise choice, in two ways. First, it can be wise for you . There's a lot of money to be made in filling that gap. Second, though, it can be wise for society . That gap is growing because there aren't enough people going into that area to k…

That sounds reasonable. But is a gap of capital really exploitable without capital?

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

#254

Post by AnimalMuppet »

erikb wrote: post #253
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A different kind of school can leave you prepared to exploit a different kind of gap. If that gap is the one that is currently widening, then being positioned to exploit it can be a wise choice, in two ways. First, it can be wise for you . There's a lot of money to be made in filling that gap. Second, though, it can be wise for society . That gap is growing because there aren't enough people going into that area to k…

That sounds reasonable. But is a gap of capital really exploitable without capital?

Skills are a kind of capital.

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

#255

Post by [deleted] »

dionidium wrote: post #167
Consultant32452 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing that has really opened my mind on this is Amazon Home Services. Basically, if you're incorporated, insured, and can provide a few references proving you do decent work, Amazon will shovel business your way. And you can limit the services you provide. For example, one of the services you can buy on Amazon Home Services is "Door knob replacement." This is a VERY low level skill that requires only the most bas…

What's amazing to me is that there are people who don't feel like they're capable of changing their own doorknob. (I get it; there are some people who would rather just pay, but surely some of these people just don't feel like they could manage this task. That's wild.)

[deleted]

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

#256

Post by Double_a_92 »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #206
Double_a_92 wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apprenticeships should be regulated (by the state). You should have some degree at the end that qualifies you to also work for a potential competitor. Meaning they should teach you a solid but generic base of skills. And not just let you do manual labour that doesn't require much skill.

Why would you want the state to stop poor people from earning a decent living just because they haven't completed the full set of requirements for a state sanctioned certification? The going rate to have your main sewer line snaked in my area is $250. If that's the only thing you know how to do, why can't you just sell that service?

That shouldn't stop the companies from hiring untrained people to just work from them.

But it would be nice if there was an "official" apprenticeship for young people as a valid alternative to a college degree. And that shouldn't be some specific training for some random company, but lead to a comparable skill level so you can work everywhere in the country in that field.

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

#257

Post by TheCowboy »

013a wrote: post #225
TheCowboy wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>they try to "smart-shame" those that have / persue "book smarts" I suspect this anti-intellectual attitude is underrated as a key problem in American culture. There could be greater value for lifelong learning, science (as in valuing empiricism over arbitrarily inventing your own facts), problem-solving oriented attitudes, and open-ended discussion. People shouldn't feel complacent and act like they don't have room…

This is a tangent to your comment: Its pretty common to see people complain about anti-intellectualism as a big problem in modern society. Then, you ask people like Mike Rowe (and I'd bet the author of this article) what the biggest problem is and they'd say its anti-blue collar. At first I thought these two ideas were at ends, but the more I think about it the more I wonder if the real root concern should just be th…

Part of that anti-intellectualism is viewing people as anti-"real/hard work". If your job disappears because it's outsourced, automated, or you throw out your back, you are going to be more successful in finding satisfying new work if you didn't stop learning.

What I'm talking about applies to all people, including blue collar workers. I have a blue collar background, and I've worked labor intensive jobs. I grew up in a red part of the country, but it applies there as well.

I'm not debating if people should go to college or trade school. Mike Rowe has a dog in that fight but I don't. He claims that there is a shortage of people in the trades. If that's true, why don't companies raise wages and signal that there is a need?

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

#258

Post by dionidium »

srtjstjsj wrote: post #228
GuiA wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's wild to me too, but rich lazy people who subcontract out everything is much better for society than rich people who hoard their money forever, so I'm certainly not going to shame them about it :)

maybe they are rich because they work hard/long for more than $30/hr ?

There's as much here that's cultural as economic. There's no ceiling on how much I'd have to earn before I'd pay somebody to do that kind of work for me, because (for someone with my working-class background, at least) hiring someone to do that for you feels degrading and emasculating.

It's a simple task you can and should do yourself. Money has very little to do with it.

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

#259

Post by dragonwriter »

quicklyfrozen wrote: post #246
AnonymousPlanet wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's like when you see the meme/trope about Ikea furniture being hard to assemble. Oh dear, I always thought that was about missing parts or pieces not fitting. This gives a new perspective …

I don't think missing or misfitting parts is a common problem with Ikea -- I've certainly put together a fair amount and haven't run into those problems. TBH, I think many people don't have the patience to follow the instructions. Even with the wordless ones Ikea uses, it can take a few minutes of study to understand the exact orientation of pieces a diagram is calling for.

I actually find wordless instructions much harder to follow; insofar as Ikea builds.are difficult (they rarely are particularly, mostly just time consuming drudgery which isn't the same thing), it's because of rather than in spite of wordless instructions.

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

#260

Post by Consultant32452 »

wahern wrote: post #249
Consultant32452 wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ALL certification requirements are intended to limit entrants into the market. Whether or not that's worthwhile is subjective. If a client is uncertain of their ability to judge risk, then they can hire from a trusted industry provider/union and pay a premium. I'd still like the ability to legally hire a poor person who may not have received a good enough public education to fulfill all of the state requirements for…

UL certification requirements are often incorporated by reference into law. Which is one reason why there's not a proliferation of private standards in that space, with the concomitant race to the bottom. _You_ might not need the nanny state to protect yourself from yourself, but many people do. In fact, pretty much everybody does, at some point in their lives, in some circumstances. (You just don't know when or wher…

If anyone wants protection from a nanny, state or otherwise, they can pay for it. Offer all the certifications at the state level you want, just don't interfere with my ability to do business with anyone I please whether they're certified or not.

>society has an interest in providing minimum safeguards.

Requiring you to work at below market rates for YEARS is not in the best interest of society. Harming the poor or immigrant workers by not allowing them to earn a decent living is not in the interest of society. All of these things are in the best interest of the incumbent wealth, not "society."

If you want some protection, then you can easily pay for it. Hire a contractor through Home Depot, Sears, or some other trusted industry name where you'll get lots of contractual protections and the benefit that a multi-billion dollar corporation wants to keep a good reputation if it wants people to keep doing business with it. This works much BETTER than taxes because everybody DOES get to pick and choose where their money goes.

>These solutions are intended to solve collective action problems, which by definition cannot readily and consistently be solved by everybody acting independently.

These solutions are intended to maintain incumbent wealth which harms the poor. You keep trying to sell me on you protecting me, which you obviously know I don't value, without addressing the fact that your ideology keeps the poor in their place. There's two wealthy groups you're protecting here. First, as the property owner, I'm almost certainly more wealthy than the laborer. And secondly, you're protecting the wealthy incumbent workers who don't want lower skilled workers undercutting them.

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