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I killed my teenager’s fancy college dreams

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Re: I killed my teenager’s fancy college dreams

#221

Post by aspaceman »

Zyst wrote: post #61
themagician wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can be completely average talent wise, get a job at an ad agency and 5-7 years later be a creative director making bank. Art school can actually be a great investment if you want to do creative work for hire.

This is a weird ponzi-scheme like comment. If you are a creative director, you have people working under you. How do you all get to be creative directors?

Because not many people go to art school and pursue that route.

You'd be surprised how many high-level creative positions are available, especially in games. It's kinda political to get a position of course. But being an artist is pretty sustainable if you're willing to put out work for a studio of that sort.

Re: I killed my teenager’s fancy college dreams

#222

Post by jki275 »

standardUser wrote: post #119
jki275 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Extremely low probability of any of those happening. Besides, military service changes you. It gives you perspective you will never get anywhere else.

Extremely high probability compared to any other developed nation. The US fights foreign wars with alarming regularity, We are currently fighting several.

That’s because other developed nations barely have militaries. Of those who actually do and deploy and do the things we do the numbers are probably about the same - very low.

Re: I killed my teenager’s fancy college dreams

#223

Post by DanBC »

rayiner wrote: post #139
mnm1 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but you're gambling that you will survive and that you will survive intact. A life full of PTSD or without legs or arms or eyes isn't worth a million a year, let alone $60 to $125k. Then there's the very real possibility of dying. Not to mention the high risk of suicide afterwards. Given those risks, I can't see how the military is a good option.

Mortality rates in the military are actually lower than in the civilian world: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22694586 > Crude mortality rates are lower among U.S. military members than their civilian counterparts; service members must be healthy when they enter service and deaths from illnesses are relatively infrequent. Suicide rates for veterans is on the high end, but comparable to other highly physical prof…

The worrying thing about those rates for veterans is that the spike is in younger people, which is not the normal pattern.

There may be a "cohort" effect. See this tweet for an example of this happening in the UK: https://twitter.com/ProfLAppleby/status/1161940914308300801?...

If this is happening it's potentially really worrying, because risk usually increases with age. So we'd see an increase in rates of death as this high risk group ages into a higher risk group.

Re: I killed my teenager’s fancy college dreams

#224

Post by thatfrenchguy »

NPMaxwell wrote: post #167
thatfrenchguy wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that group came because they were granted land by a government. We omit money and how it works You also omit the part where the people already living there got genocided I guess.

Yes. I would categorize genocide by relatives as something that most people would not want to face -- it's "probably another topic" It's a mistake to omit that too.

Fair :-)

Re: I killed my teenager’s fancy college dreams

#225

Post by toolslive »

ameister14 wrote: post #36
toolslive wrote: post #11

What I don't understand is: why don't they go to a university in Europe? I just checked for my alma mater: tuition fee is ~500 euro for 1 year. You pay about 4k in rent per year (this is probably too high an estimate). The level of education is high, and the programs are available in English.

Tuition for EU residents is usually not the same as tuition for American students. It's still cheaper than school in the US, but not by nearly as much

Here's the tuition fee table for KULeuven. https://www.kuleuven.be/inschrijvingen/registration/fees

This university is located in Belgium (where people speak Dutch, English and French), and ranks quite well.

https://nieuws.kuleuven.be/en/content/2019/ku-leuven-rises-t...

Travel time from NY is about 7h. Sure, you might be in for a culture shock, but someone coming from Alabama will have a shock going to MIT or Caltech too.

Re: I killed my teenager’s fancy college dreams

#226

Post by LoSboccacc »

seiferteric wrote: post #131
honkycat wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this trade school obsession is foolish. Everyone cargo-cults it as "pragmatic" without actually analyzing what the jobs entail and what you can actually expect to make. Statistically, you still earn way more with a degree than without. You EARN that pay in the trades, and being an electrician is dangerous. The work is hard on your body. A lot of electricians end up on disability. I wasn't very academic growin…

> Statistically, you still earn way more with a degree than without. I would need to see better information on this. I would think a lot of people without a degree don't do much of anything at all and bring the average way down. It would be better to see what the average is for people who complete a trade school program vs the average of people earning a degree.

earning is a misleading figure anyway, a lot of these high paying jobs for graduates are in big cities where the cost of living offsets the higher income

Re: I killed my teenager’s fancy college dreams

#227

Post by LoSboccacc »

honkycat wrote: post #212
djaque wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other issue is the health toll many of the trade jobs have. See what 40 years of running cable on your hands and knees as an electrician will do to you vs a cushy desk job.

Yep, exactly. I went down this "trades are great!" rabbit hole a while ago because I had a cousin who had a friend telling him: "You can be making 6 figures in 5 years as an electrician!" I was surprised when I found out his buddy didn't have a bridge to sell him as well. Your career is not just about money earned. It is about the lifestyle. It is about your physical health over a long period of time. It is about you…

yeah because the average dev guy can run marathons, right?

Re: I killed my teenager’s fancy college dreams

#228

Post by baking »

baron816 wrote: post #155

There’s some weird things about this article. 1) Their daughter likely would’ve qualified for quite a bit of financial aid, which potentially could have brought a fancy art college to within reason for her. That she never even applied to her dream schools means she will never know if they would’ve been competitively priced. 2) Collectively, student debt is $1.6T, but that doesn’t tell you much about the per graduate…

My biggest issue with it was that you are in the "too well-off to get aid but not well-off enough to pay cash" gap, then you should be expanding the number of schools you are applying too, not reducing. In-state and out-of-state public schools, and a wide mix of small to large private schools in both the "reach" and "safety" categories to see what kind of financial offers you get. With the caveat that if it turns out you hate the school that offered you money and end up transferring out, you lose all those other offers and you will be pretty much limited to public schools.

Re: I killed my teenager’s fancy college dreams

#229

Post by CloverMuzak »

As someone who made this choice (not going away to an expensive school), I still regret it. I went to a local school and lived at home, almost everyone I knew moved away. I never developed the same social circle as my friends who went away did. There were so many experiences I missed out on and opportunities that were closed to me because I wasn’t where the action was. I don’t have any memorable college stories to tell or any connections with reach outside of the local community. It stifled my growth professionally and socially, and I would not recommend it.

Re: I killed my teenager’s fancy college dreams

#230

Post by nine_k »

honkycat wrote: post #98
hajile wrote: post #71

And here we have once again why the government shouldn't be subsidizing student loans and shouldn't exclude them from bankruptcy. We need to quit incentivizing sub-prime loans. Unlike the housing crash where the houses retained most of their value and could be sold later, you can't sell your degree to pay back the money. If you're getting a necessary degree, it's very uncommon to default on your loan because you'll b…

I think this trade school obsession is foolish. Everyone cargo-cults it as "pragmatic" without actually analyzing what the jobs entail and what you can actually expect to make. Statistically, you still earn way more with a degree than without. You EARN that pay in the trades, and being an electrician is dangerous. The work is hard on your body. A lot of electricians end up on disability. I wasn't very academic growin…

I think it's not just black and white.

Is college universally useful? No, it may leave you without knowledge on how to earn decent money, while crippling you with a heavy debt.

Is college completely useless? No, it's quite useful for some, and even indispensable for certain professions (e.g. medical doctors).

I'd say that college is useful for those who actively extract knowledge and experience from it, and that knowledge can help pay the tuition. This is definitely not 100% of students. Going to college just to hang out with kids and obtain a diploma for decoration, expecting to be passively taught, or studying stuff no business wants to pay for, is silly, of course.

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