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The Stigma of Choosing Trade School over College

theatlantic.com

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Re: The Stigma of Choosing Trade School over College

#211

Post by stale2002 »

throwawayjava wrote: post #154
sodafountan wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The person you replied to also doesn't mention that just because you attend a trade school doesn't mean you can't acquire an expansive world view on your own, again more stigma that is indicated in the article. Why wouldn't a linesman, electrician or carpenter be able to self educate? We live in the day and age of the internet, the largest store of human knowledge ever to exist is a few clicks and an inquisitive mind…

College provides TIME with no or minimal responsibilities beyond your learning. That time for self improvement is the valuable resource that doesn't really exist for most people outside of college. Not because college is wonderful, but more because you cant get unsecured loans to sit at home and read. (Also, pet peeve: these conversations often compare highly motivated and indepenhdent people who take the no college…

> College provides TIME with no or minimal responsibilities beyond your learning. That time for self improvement is the valuable resource that doesn't really exist for most people outside of college.

Sure. But don't you think that there could hypothetically be better ways of doing this, without spending 10s of thousands of dollars per year?

Maybe there is a better "not a college" - college type experience that is more effective at achieving these started goals, for less money.

Re: The Stigma of Choosing Trade School over College

#212

Post by austincheney »

With regard to computer science I doubt many students could tell you the difference between their college curriculum and a trade school, aside from taking extra classes outside of compsci. If you go to college hoping to learn how to code or to learn a programming language, imo you are treating college as a trade school.

Trade schools teach a skill. Colleges provide an education. Those are not the same. With the proper discipline you can teach yourself a skill, and with programming, unlike many other trades, you often have all the tools you need already at home.

* Education - https://www.dictionary.com/browse/education

* Skill - https://www.dictionary.com/browse/skill?s=t

In short a skill teaches you to do something. An education teaches you to make decisions. The number of computer science graduates that cannot make simple decisions about the code they write is stunning, to the point of negligence.

I think the confusion comes from why people attend college. If you ask them the common answer is "To get a better job!". College doesn't get you a job. It isn't job placement or vocational training. Trade schools often do provide those. I suspect it is disappointing to graduate college and still have trouble acquiring a better job.

Re: The Stigma of Choosing Trade School over College

#213

Post by taurath »

finder83 wrote: post #173
taurath wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

College has the time to add a lot more nuance. People graduate high school with relatively basic understanding of communication, history and economics - and those basic understandings aren’t enough to expose you to the nuances of the world. I’ve always felt like high school gives you just enough to have a very simple worldview, and college starts you on a path to realize that everything is more complicated than you t…

It probably depends a lot on your high school and teachers. I had a unique high school experience in that I went to public school for two years and private school for two. The private school did a much better job of teaching those nuances, and challenged me 10x more than public school ever did. That probably says as much about the public school as the private school though, which just helps to support my point that w…

I went to a way different private school where most of the sciences were a conspiracy against god and the church. Not all are equal (and most of the “school choice” debate is around govt money to pay for the science is the devil schools)

Re: The Stigma of Choosing Trade School over College

#214

Post by kbenson »

Retric wrote: post #198
snide wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was exactly my problem with College and why I didn't succeed there. I came from a really good high school that offered a breadth of knowledge across fields. When I went to college (granted in 1998) to become a "web designer" the curriculum and training was just not there. My first year was taking variations of the same math courses, the same english courses and a couple comp sci courses (teaching Java). It was h…

I don’t know about your school, but most of the useful classes generally occur later on. So, dropping out after a year means you missed out on the most useful parts. It might seem wasteful, but gateway classes are what allow upper level courses to assume basic competency and move much faster. I had a computer architecture class where one assignment was to write a fairly simple program in x86 ASM and the handholding w…

> Competent staff was hard to retain and enrollment was skyrocketing.

And, from my experience being part of that skyrocketing enrollment, quite a lot of them wanted to learn to "make stuff" and were complaining well into their third and fourth years that they weren't learning how to "do anything" in their computer science classes, since it was mostly theory.

The thing is, they were teaching theory because that's the harder stuff to pick up on your own. Want to learn a specific language? Just do it. It's not that hard, and there are online resources and plenty of books. Want to learn how to make some particular thing? harder, but also mostly doable from self study. But what would spur someone to learn theory of computation topics, or how to do algorithm complexity and runtime assessment? That's the sort of stuff that really benefits from a knowledgeable instructor, and only a small percentage of self-taught people will likely stumble into learning. Computer science is a science, and that's what they teach in school. It also makes you a better programmer, but it pays off in small ways over many years through more intricate knowledge, instead of front-loading all the gains into making you passable right now. That the better solution for some people, but not all.

Re: The Stigma of Choosing Trade School over College

#215

Post by bmdavi3 »

pretendscholar wrote: post #126
jseliger wrote: post #7

The crazy thing is that most colleges have evolved non-academic party tracks, or simple tuition-extraction tracks: https://jakeseliger.com/2014/04/27/paying-for-the-party-eliz... . Talking about "college," as if it's just one big unified thing, doesn't make sense today (if it ever did). I spent ten years teaching college, and I wish this point were better emphasized in the media narratives.

Do you think the college model makes sense for science/engineering?

If you want to learn as fast as possible, I think it does.

For me, my computer science program in college was finally a place to get answers and move on when I did encounter that one stumbling block.

Even if I could learn 99% of whatever material I was interested in from reading things online, I'd inevitably spend at least that much time struggling with something I didn't get that really held me up.

For example. For the life of me, I couldn't understand why, a computer program wouldn't know at compile time how much memory its data structures would use. So while I could read about malloc, I just didn't get the use case (as dumb as that sounds). As you can imagine, asking someone who knows what they're doing leads to a real quick "ah ha, of course" moment.

This was in 2001 before stackoverflow existed, and it felt like I was living in a bubble. Maybe things are different today. If I were learning from scratch now, I'm sure I could have learned the answer to that question and much more on my own.

But I have to think that I would have just entered college a little bit further, stuck on slightly harder questions.

To say nothing of the things school made me do that I wouldn't have done on my own, like learn how a compiler works, or take a database course. Two things I feel are paying dividends to this day.

Re: The Stigma of Choosing Trade School over College

#216

Post by naniwaduni »

tracker1 wrote: post #139
mixmastamyk wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kind of book, grammar, literature? What made it so difficult?

"5th Grade English" a lot of the content itself was centered around proper use of grammar. In practice, these days, it feels like nobody really cares.

It doesn't help that most prescriptivist poppycock is flat-out wrong, either.

Re: The Stigma of Choosing Trade School over College

#217

Post by TrinaryWorksToo »

Retric wrote: post #198
snide wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was exactly my problem with College and why I didn't succeed there. I came from a really good high school that offered a breadth of knowledge across fields. When I went to college (granted in 1998) to become a "web designer" the curriculum and training was just not there. My first year was taking variations of the same math courses, the same english courses and a couple comp sci courses (teaching Java). It was h…

I don’t know about your school, but most of the useful classes generally occur later on. So, dropping out after a year means you missed out on the most useful parts. It might seem wasteful, but gateway classes are what allow upper level courses to assume basic competency and move much faster. I had a computer architecture class where one assignment was to write a fairly simple program in x86 ASM and the handholding w…

How am I supposed to know that the classes will get better? Why should I spend my very valuable time in classes that don't challenge me in the way I want?

Re: The Stigma of Choosing Trade School over College

#218

Post by TrinaryWorksToo »

kbenson wrote: post #214
Retric wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know about your school, but most of the useful classes generally occur later on. So, dropping out after a year means you missed out on the most useful parts. It might seem wasteful, but gateway classes are what allow upper level courses to assume basic competency and move much faster. I had a computer architecture class where one assignment was to write a fairly simple program in x86 ASM and the handholding w…

> Competent staff was hard to retain and enrollment was skyrocketing. And, from my experience being part of that skyrocketing enrollment, quite a lot of them wanted to learn to "make stuff" and were complaining well into their third and fourth years that they weren't learning how to "do anything" in their computer science classes, since it was mostly theory. The thing is, they were teaching theory because that's the…

I have been able to stumble into it by tracing down jargon and reading textbooks.

Re: The Stigma of Choosing Trade School over College

#219

Post by throwawayjava »

H1Supreme wrote: post #182
throwawayjava wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

College provides TIME with no or minimal responsibilities beyond your learning. That time for self improvement is the valuable resource that doesn't really exist for most people outside of college. Not because college is wonderful, but more because you cant get unsecured loans to sit at home and read. (Also, pet peeve: these conversations often compare highly motivated and indepenhdent people who take the no college…

> College provides TIME with no or minimal responsibilities beyond your learning This is only true for situations where you live on campus, and your parents give you an allowance for anything not included in tuition. Many, many students have to work while going to school. Classes + part-time work can easily add up to the same amount of time one spends on a full time job.

Even in that case you're still spending 20 hours a week on classes. I dont know about you, but I couldn't sustain 40 working hours + 20 working hours for 4 ywars.

Also, there's a qualitative difference between a job and a part time gig. my part time jobs in early college were trivial and required no mental, no emotional effort, and no outside of work skills development. My part time jobs in late college were mostly tutoring, which was doubly good becayse I reviewed material and also I could do less of it because it paid well.

In any case, at the very least the combo of part time and no mental/emotional/professional devlopment effort makes a huge difference. At least IME.

Re: The Stigma of Choosing Trade School over College

#220

Post by throwawayjava »

stale2002 wrote: post #211
throwawayjava wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

College provides TIME with no or minimal responsibilities beyond your learning. That time for self improvement is the valuable resource that doesn't really exist for most people outside of college. Not because college is wonderful, but more because you cant get unsecured loans to sit at home and read. (Also, pet peeve: these conversations often compare highly motivated and indepenhdent people who take the no college…

> College provides TIME with no or minimal responsibilities beyond your learning. That time for self improvement is the valuable resource that doesn't really exist for most people outside of college. Sure. But don't you think that there could hypothetically be better ways of doing this, without spending 10s of thousands of dollars per year? Maybe there is a better "not a college" - college type experience that is mor…

Not really anything that scales, although that may just be a lack of imagination. College could be cheaper, though. It is in most countries. Not just at point of purchase but also in the absolute number of dollars spent sense as well
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