Who's Missing from America's Colleges? Rural High School Graduates • Hacker News Board

Re: Who's Missing from America's Colleges? Rural High School Graduates

#251

Post by tr0ut » Fri, Feb 23, 2018, 3:51 PM UTC

jjeaff wrote: post #156

austincheney wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most jobs that do require higher education don't actually make any use of the higher education. This is a serious misunderstanding of what education is or is for. Higher education doesn't exist to provide a skill. That is what trade schools are for. I know this is largely disagreeable for many people on here who learned to program in a university CS program. Higher education exists to provide the educational backgr…

>necessary to function in a professional, often corporate, setting. This means things like communications skills, following complex directions, and problem solving I wonder if just working in a corporate setting and learning these skills as an intern or junior employee might be far more effective.

I believe so. Besides all the intangibles "Tastes great less filling" etc.. I still believe college/uni prepares you to work. Sorry this is an unpopular belief. Certainly we can debate the original inception and intentions of university all the way back to Greeks pontificating too. I digress..

If it did not. Employment would not require it. Because as most have stated above. It was not about preparing for the workforce. It was for all these other reasons, or the theory of the subject. Why would we want a MS if all they did is meet people and learn how to cook a meal for themselves because they're no longer under their parents thumb?

I would say not too far into ones career. Education matters very little. As in diminishing returns. The best you'll get after attending 'University of X' 5-10 years into your career. Is a high-five because the hiring manager went there too. Not because you're so much better off because you had a class on .Net and Network fundamentals. This is mostly true in all but the very specialized jobs in Tech. For the specialized few that went to top universities.

Re: Who's Missing from America's Colleges? Rural High School Graduates

#252

Post by emodendroket » Fri, Feb 23, 2018, 3:57 PM UTC

throwawayfjk wrote: post #178

jacobolus wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you quote the part that you feel is condescending? The text of the article seems largely straightforward and factual to me. It doesn’t say that there’s anything inherently bad about not going to college, but rather that not having a college degree has made it difficult for some people to find new careers in places where many types of labor are facing declining demand because of large structural forces, and that t…

I would assume that the rural are rational to the same degree as anyone else, so the statistical difference mostly means they find college less beneficial relative to their opportunities. There is too much of an agenda feel to this piece, from the title to selective interviews and statistics

Rationality in normal people interacts substantially with the environment they're in, especially when we're talking about eighteen-year-olds with no experience trying to fully support themselves.

Re: Who's Missing from America's Colleges? Rural High School Graduates

#253

Post by emodendroket » Fri, Feb 23, 2018, 4:02 PM UTC

randomdata wrote: post #219

mulmen wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was continually measured and critiqued in college. It was called grading.

He is referring to measuring you in your time after college to see how what you gained from the experience has actually shaped your life, and if it matches what was expected from the onset. But given that you don't have a perfect clone that is in every way equal except for having gone to college, it is understandably difficult to measure. It seems, at best, we have people trying to compare the worlds best prodigies w…

The populations of both people who go to college and those who do not are so large that I feel like we could likely control for effects (at least extreme ones like you're talking about) and make useful judgments.

Re: Who's Missing from America's Colleges? Rural High School Graduates

#254

Post by tr0ut » Fri, Feb 23, 2018, 4:03 PM UTC

rweba wrote: post #243

throwaway0255 wrote: post #94

Most jobs don't require higher education. Most jobs that do require higher education don't actually make any use of the higher education. Are people who didn't follow the author up the ivory tower all failures who just fell through the cracks? What if some people are perfectly happy working in HVAC? These articles are always so condescending. The position that all people should by default go to college and that peopl…

(1) Your sentiment is common on HN and I do agree that a college degree is overemphasized as a universal panacea, but it's also absolutely true that lots of people benefit from a university education. Comments like yours make it sound like every individual student would be better off if they skipped college. I don't think that's true. (2) Going to college is like joining a gym. Some people go to the gym every day, se…

So either you're not from the States or you were well funded in your own educational pursuits. Both are fine this, is not a personal attack.

It is not hard to find evidence that American university is outrageously expensive. And for what is the average result? You learned the theory/basics of X subject? Or you met cool people and had a good time?

I think we're getting to the point that it is not worth it for a common job and certainly not for a common job in tech.

(Not arguing medicine or advanced science/engineering degrees!)

Re: Who's Missing from America's Colleges? Rural High School Graduates

#255

Post by emodendroket » Fri, Feb 23, 2018, 4:03 PM UTC

gilgoomesh wrote: post #150

austincheney wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most jobs that do require higher education don't actually make any use of the higher education. This is a serious misunderstanding of what education is or is for. Higher education doesn't exist to provide a skill. That is what trade schools are for. I know this is largely disagreeable for many people on here who learned to program in a university CS program. Higher education exists to provide the educational backgr…

I know that's what everyone claims but it's an insidious trope that encourages people to trust in a system that lacks measurable benefit. "Don't worry that you'll never use this information. Trust us: we've prepared you in nebulous ways that can't be measured or critiqued."

I think what's truly insidious is this idea that anything other than narrow vocational education is useless because you will "never use" it.

Re: Who's Missing from America's Colleges? Rural High School Graduates

#256

Post by UncleMeat » Fri, Feb 23, 2018, 4:05 PM UTC

forkLding wrote: post #3

Theres also the concern if you're not really doing a STEM subject that has high career prospects, its not really worth it to take on student debt from college only to graduate without a stable career. I think this may also be a concern to people from rural areas who can have livable careers without college.

This is a risk, like anything else. But in aggregate college graduates make far more money than non-graduates, much more than would offset even the crazy tuition today.

Re: Who's Missing from America's Colleges? Rural High School Graduates

#257

Post by heedlessly2 » Fri, Feb 23, 2018, 4:08 PM UTC

ghufran_syed wrote: post #191

bernardino wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comes at, I think, a critical point for me. In short, I spent four years at a community college (completing my associate degree in CS and exhausting almost all the courses I found interesting i.e. Mysticism, Writing Short Fiction, etc), and now in the fall I'm planning to attend San Francisco State University for CS. A few old high school friends, who attend Berkeley (one just graduated and is starting work in f…

If you want to start working, and have the skills to do it, just start working! You could finish your entire cs degree part-time for less than the cost of one semester at Berkeley, via university of London ( https://london.ac.uk/courses/computing-and-information-syste... ) My daughter did this, started working at the age of 19 as a software developer, and is finishing her degree part-time. She should graduate when sh…

i don't know about the UK, but i know in the United States that "Computer and Information Systems" isn't as marketable as "Computer Science". Since most major tech companies know that CIS is for those who can't handle data structures and algorithms. But hopefully her 5 years as a dev could counteract that. If she switched to CS, then that would be a lot better

Re: Who's Missing from America's Colleges? Rural High School Graduates

#258

Post by emodendroket » Fri, Feb 23, 2018, 4:09 PM UTC

tr0ut wrote: post #251

jjeaff wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>necessary to function in a professional, often corporate, setting. This means things like communications skills, following complex directions, and problem solving I wonder if just working in a corporate setting and learning these skills as an intern or junior employee might be far more effective.

I believe so. Besides all the intangibles "Tastes great less filling" etc.. I still believe college/uni prepares you to work. Sorry this is an unpopular belief. Certainly we can debate the original inception and intentions of university all the way back to Greeks pontificating too. I digress.. If it did not. Employment would not require it. Because as most have stated above. It was not about preparing for the workfor…

> If it did not. Employment would not require it.

That's not so clear. Other theories I've heard include "college is a good proxy for being reasonably intelligent and able to complete a difficult task" (mostly from employers themselves) and the more cynical "college education is a class signifier." I personally would say that college is worthwhile, from a purely work perspective, because it provides the student with the tools to encounter a new problem or concept, learn about it, and teach himself how to solve it, but that there's something to the other two explanations I mentioned too. My Japanese degree taught me nothing about programming, but the experience of learning Japanese in a university was useful when I decided I wanted to learn how to program.

Of course there are exceptions (if you're a doctor your higher education materials were obviously directly relevant), but to me this helps explain why so many employers care about a college degree, and not necessarily a degree in a particular subject.

> Not because you're so much better off because you had a class on .Net and Network fundamentals.

A computer science program that has courses devoted to stuff like .NET frankly doesn't sound like a very good one, since the idea of learning comp-sci is to understand underlying principles rather than memorizing how to use a particular tool.

Re: Who's Missing from America's Colleges? Rural High School Graduates

#259

Post by emodendroket » Fri, Feb 23, 2018, 4:13 PM UTC

tr0ut wrote: post #254

rweba wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(1) Your sentiment is common on HN and I do agree that a college degree is overemphasized as a universal panacea, but it's also absolutely true that lots of people benefit from a university education. Comments like yours make it sound like every individual student would be better off if they skipped college. I don't think that's true. (2) Going to college is like joining a gym. Some people go to the gym every day, se…

So either you're not from the States or you were well funded in your own educational pursuits. Both are fine this, is not a personal attack. It is not hard to find evidence that American university is outrageously expensive. And for what is the average result? You learned the theory/basics of X subject? Or you met cool people and had a good time? I think we're getting to the point that it is not worth it for a common…

Even in the crudest measure, lifetime earnings, going to college still looks pretty good. Getting a tech job in the first place is much easier if you have a degree. This is not to deny that some have managed without it and have done very well, but they walked a harder road to get there.

Re: Who's Missing from America's Colleges? Rural High School Graduates

#260

Post by emodendroket » Fri, Feb 23, 2018, 4:16 PM UTC

heedlessly2 wrote: post #246

throwaway0255 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's important to keep in mind that college is meant to enrich people as individuals, not explicitly prepare them for jobs. Technical/vocational schools are for job prep. The more college is shown to be failing the job market, the more I hear this argument. Are people who don't go to college less enriched individuals? Lately, academics seem to be shifting their value proposition to the instillation of this undetect…

while not necessary, college provides a social framework for many people. if i visit, NYC, SF, Seattle, Chicago, Boston, or DC, then i have alumni friends i can hit up and hang out with. I'm not sure how you could do the same without going to college

That seems like a pretty weak argument. Join a large church and you can probably meet people in every city too, and you won't need to take out huge loans to do it.