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Students don't seem to be getting much out of higher education (2018)

theatlantic.com

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Re: Students don't seem to be getting much out of higher education (2018)

#91

Post by m0zg »

justinzollars wrote: post #4

I feel like everyone is doing social media marketing - or something equally useless while the world around us is breaking down. In the Bay Area, in San Francisco specifically, voters allocated funds to fix or replace every single Bart escalator. The best hope we have for completing this job is 7 years. Yes you read this correctly 7 years. The problem is we do not have enough licensed escalator mechanics to do the wor…

>> we do not have enough licensed escalator mechanics to do the work

I call BS. An "escalator mechanic" sounds like a profession that could be trained in a year, or far less if the person is some other kind of mechanic. The reason why this training doesn't happen is likely there's not much money to be gained, if anything at all. Or maybe there's a union constraining supply of mechanics, or both.

I agree that there needs to be more vocational education, and less stigma against it. But the claim that the problem above could not be solved with liberal application of cash is dubious at best.

Re: Students don't seem to be getting much out of higher education (2018)

#92

Post by speedplane »

godzillabrennus wrote: post #88
baroffoos wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assure you that if the job is paying enough people will drop any social stigma against trades jobs right away. I'll pick a paid off nice house over showing off to my friends. Although I'm sure the new house is much easier to show off than an office job. I have talked to people working hard physical labor jobs and they make hardly more than I do as a junior/mid level web dev but they are doing back breaking work 6 d…

The national shortage of truck drivers in America does not support your argument. I heard from someone at 160 Driving Academy that you can make six figures with a CDL and the trucking companies will pay you to get one. That's not even as hard on the body as other physical jobs. It is not a well regarded and the community of peers you interact with means that it isn't a very desirable job.

> I heard from someone at 160 Driving Academy that you can make six figures with a CDL and the trucking companies will pay you to get one.

I remember visiting the Daily News (a NYC local newspaper) in the early 2000s and on the tour learned that the unionized delivery guys could make six figures. That was almost 20 years ago. The fact that the same salary as 20 years ago is still possible doesn't really say much.

Re: Students don't seem to be getting much out of higher education (2018)

#93

Post by [deleted] »

godzillabrennus wrote: post #88
baroffoos wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assure you that if the job is paying enough people will drop any social stigma against trades jobs right away. I'll pick a paid off nice house over showing off to my friends. Although I'm sure the new house is much easier to show off than an office job. I have talked to people working hard physical labor jobs and they make hardly more than I do as a junior/mid level web dev but they are doing back breaking work 6 d…

The national shortage of truck drivers in America does not support your argument. I heard from someone at 160 Driving Academy that you can make six figures with a CDL and the trucking companies will pay you to get one. That's not even as hard on the body as other physical jobs. It is not a well regarded and the community of peers you interact with means that it isn't a very desirable job.

[deleted]

Re: Students don't seem to be getting much out of higher education (2018)

#94

Post by nostrademons »

syedkarim wrote: post #80
dbcurtis wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know several elevator mechanics. It pays well, very well. Also is a very dangerous job. Its a special kind of personality. You need to be mechanically handy, and have some electronics and software sense as well. I suspect if more people were aware of what it paid, they would go for it, if they were willing to put up with hazards.

How much dues it pay?

BLS says $80K/year.

https://www.bls.gov/ooh/construction-and-extraction/mobile/e...

Not bad for a high-school education only, but when other people are millionaires because they happened to get into Bitcoin in 2011 or because they picked the right tech startup, I see why folks would rather put their efforts into getting lucky.

Re: Students don't seem to be getting much out of higher education (2018)

#95

Post by speedplane »

_AzMoo wrote: post #83
internet_user wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Skip college, do a 4 year apprenticeship instead - is that really sound?

At least you get paid in an apprenticeship.

Every technical summer internship I worked at I got paid, roughly at the same rate as a junior engineer entering from college.

Re: Students don't seem to be getting much out of higher education (2018)

#96

Post by kiba »

cdf2theworld wrote: post #61

Student here - I was struck by the "summer learning loss" quoted in the article. Everyone I talk to has this, myself included. The greatest reason for this, personally, is subject diffusion. This is especially true from freshman to junior year; we are required to take a dizzying number of classes that not only have nothing to do with our job field, but also have nothing to do with each other. I understand that it's i…

If there's "summer loss"? What about when you leave high school and college?

What happened to the notes you took for your classes at the end of the semester? I suspect that they are thrown away and never seen again.

I suspect part of the problem with education is that we don't learn how to learn, and that we done very little work on how to retain those skills and connect them to our world.

Re: Students don't seem to be getting much out of higher education (2018)

#97

Post by slavik81 »

godzillabrennus wrote: post #88
baroffoos wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assure you that if the job is paying enough people will drop any social stigma against trades jobs right away. I'll pick a paid off nice house over showing off to my friends. Although I'm sure the new house is much easier to show off than an office job. I have talked to people working hard physical labor jobs and they make hardly more than I do as a junior/mid level web dev but they are doing back breaking work 6 d…

The national shortage of truck drivers in America does not support your argument. I heard from someone at 160 Driving Academy that you can make six figures with a CDL and the trucking companies will pay you to get one. That's not even as hard on the body as other physical jobs. It is not a well regarded and the community of peers you interact with means that it isn't a very desirable job.

The guy at the driving academy might not be the most neutral source of information. Is that $100k before or after you buy a semitruck? How much does a truck cost? How often do you see your family?

Re: Students don't seem to be getting much out of higher education (2018)

#98

Post by _hardwaregeek »

There's several issues I've noticed as a student. First, kids are told to go to college immediately after high school. If college was high school 2.0, this would be fine. But college is completely different from high school; it's significantly more expensive, more free form and more rigorous (at least compared to most high schools). I see so many students who clearly have no clue what they want to do, why they're in college (beyond "my parents want me to") or how to accomplish their goals.

Having seen the sheer quantity of kids struggling with simple stuff like cleaning, cooking and not drinking themselves to death, I'm becoming more and more in favor of a mandatory service at the age of 18. Maybe not military like the IDF, but some sort of program where kids are forced to go away from home and learn to be self sufficient. Little Bobby should learn how to scrub a pot and clean a bathroom before he's entrusted with a 240k education. I took a gap year and I was significantly more focused and disciplined than I was in high school. And way better than the majority of my college peers.

But even worse than being unprepared for college, I feel like we've been fostering a poor attitude towards learning. I grew up in an academic family, so to me, learning wasn't a stage of life. Learning was an essential aspect of being alive. Going to college wasn't some arbitrary merit badge that society deems necessary. It was a natural extension of whatever field I wanted to study. I see college as a tool; I need to learn certain topics in order to get what I want in life. Of course, I'm very fortunate to have taken a gap year and worked as a programmer. If nothing else, I know that I like programming, I'm good at it and I'm willing to suffer through the painful parts. It's kinda good to know that before I spent 240k on a CS degree.

Re: Students don't seem to be getting much out of higher education (2018)

#99

Post by Frost1x »

cbhl wrote: post #15
boazbarak wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't presume my institution is representative (nor that it isn't), but for what it's worth, most students I see are not slackers at all. Students often choose the harder courses, and many of them require a significant amount of work (a typical CS course requires 12 hours of work outside lecture and many require much more).

For a CS degree, the slackers can read the slides at home, do the assignments from home, and only come in to do the exams. You're not going to see them until the graduation ceremony. (At least, I didn't.)

How does doing work remotely make one a slacker (other than the aspect of not physically transporting yourself)? And if you're capable of completing a course without being present, what does that say about the course and or your capabilities?

Re: Students don't seem to be getting much out of higher education (2018)

#100

Post by jaabe »

randomacct3847 wrote: post #74

Having worked in tech for a few years in non-tech roles (analytics, product) I was looking for a code bootcamp because I didn’t want to look back and regret not deeply learning in a way that I felt like I could not do with self study alone. I was skeptical but decided to start in SF earlier this month at the best rated/most reputable one I could find. Obviously still early on, but I can say that I’m already grasping…

You can take CS50 and following or the MIT MOOCs on edx.org and learn more about CS in a few weeks than I did during my entire freshman year of the university of Aalborg.

Sure it’s introductory, but so was my freshman year.

I don’t really agree with the article though, I enjoyed philosophy and history as side tracks doing my entire schooling, and I use the creativity and insights I got from those a whole lot more than I ever use economics or math.

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