I killed my teenager’s fancy college dreams • Hacker News Board

Re: I killed my teenager’s fancy college dreams

#341

Post by mixmastamyk » Fri, Dec 27, 2019, 10:25 PM UTC

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…

Older developer here with a same age friend that’s an electrician for the city. He often makes a lot more than me with overtime. He wasn’t unemployed for a year either due to interview games and ageism bullshit.

Re: I killed my teenager’s fancy college dreams

#342

Post by jschwartzi » Fri, Dec 27, 2019, 10:27 PM UTC

m11a wrote: post #213

everdev wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went to a 4-year college, but earned almost all of my money from self-taught programming and design skills. It's hard to justify the ROI on college. At $25k/year for a low-tier college, you'll spend $100k (if you don't need loans). If you take that $100k and put it in the market (avg. 7% annual returns) with 0 contributions for 45 years, you could spend every penny you make and retire at 63 with $2.1M. At more expe…

What if you don't plan to start your life at 63? I'm not planning for retirement. 63 is a long way off. There's a lot of life between now and then, indeed the majority of my life is between now and then. These kinds of "responsible financial actions" are a bit silly imho. Invest in yourself now, and spend your time well now. College pays for itself, if you spent $100k on a decent degree I guarantee you'll earn that a…

The difficulty is in landing in a decent career out of college. People have this fantasy that all you have to do is get X degree and go apply at X Y and Z corporation to land a job getting paid 6 figures for the rest of your life. And that's probably true if your X is from an Ivy League school or a massive state school with hyper-competitive admission to the program. And what you're paying for at that point is access to the elite so that you can hopefully ride their coattails into a good job.

If you end up going to a 2nd or 3rd tier school it's basically a wash whether you end up anywhere good. And it's even worse if you don't get X degree, but instead have a degree that doesn't make it through the word filters. And you can't fuck anything up or make any mistakes in your entire academic career. You have to network aggressively. Many of my cohort ended up working as electricians, and one of them manages the line at a brewery. College was pretty useless for nearly all of us, and our lives probably would have been improved by not getting the degree, because at least that way we wouldn't be under the tens of thousands of dollars in debt.

We were mostly mediocre. But we were smart and we knew how to figure things out. That doesn't really matter to most employers, who just want you to know a specific field right out of the gate so they don't have to bother training you.

I lucked out, by the way. I managed to find a job in 2009 clerking in a warehouse at a technology sales company, and it was only because I knew someone who worked there as a service technician. His moving up created openings that I would be able to use to move into increasingly technical roles. And after 4 years there I was making about $44,000/yr., doubling my starting salary as a clerk. The real benefit for me was networking with my current boss. Because if I hadn't met him then I'd probably still be working long hours for little pay.

So I would strongly urge anyone who isn't in the top 10% to strongly reconsider taking your advice. $100,000 is a huge amount of money and would have been a crippling amount of debt for me. As it was, the $20,000 I graduated with after working two and sometimes three jobs was hard to cope with until I lucked out.

Re: I killed my teenager’s fancy college dreams

#343

Post by js8 » Fri, Dec 27, 2019, 10:30 PM UTC

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…

> Statistically, you still earn way more with a degree than without.

Hate to be so negative, but it looks like it's all the game of prestige in the hierarchy as it always was: https://www.academia.edu/41235398/Personal_Income_and_Hierar...

Re: I killed my teenager’s fancy college dreams

#344

Post by leetcrew » Fri, Dec 27, 2019, 10:32 PM UTC

qualqual wrote: post #338

leetcrew wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this sounds like a really bad way to spend my tax dollars. by all means, use them to educate the next generation of teachers, social workers, and scientists, but don't make me foot the bill for some kid to study art history for four years and still need government assistance at the end.

> don't make me foot the bill for some kid to study art history for four years This is completely false. In fact, the complete opposite is true. Art history students subsidize the cost of education for STEM students. At least in Canada, your tuition is the same whether you study a STEM field or art history. But STEM has greater costs association with teaching, i.e. lab equipment, lab technicians' salaries, shop space…

you're not wrong, but read the context of the thread. I am replying to a proposal for free college as a taxpayer.

Re: I killed my teenager’s fancy college dreams

#345

Post by mixmastamyk » Fri, Dec 27, 2019, 10:33 PM UTC

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…

Peter Schiff has a great video on YouTube about how these “well intentioned” subsidies have done the opposite and have inflated the price of college in the last few decades. It should be cheaper now due to economies of scale, computers, etc. Not when the government is involved.

Re: I killed my teenager’s fancy college dreams

#346

Post by barry-cotter » Fri, Dec 27, 2019, 10:36 PM UTC

lsc wrote: post #185

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…

>Some of my kids seem like they enjoy academics, but others do not. I'll be pushing the latter toward trade school. Average IBEW (electrical union) pay is about $20/hr for an apprentice and $33 for a journeyman. $40,000 to $66,000 with ZERO DEBT right out the gate is nothing to ignore (and that pay can easily double -- especially in your younger years -- if you're willing to travel and put in those extra hours). It s…

You co-authored a reasonably successful book teaching people how to use a complicated piece of software. You may not have any formal schooling past high school but you’re wildly unrepresentative of the “uneducated”.

Re: I killed my teenager’s fancy college dreams

#347

Post by bonoboTP » Fri, Dec 27, 2019, 10:36 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #328

bonoboTP wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your kids are your kids. While you as a single person may not do much to improve working conditions across society, you can improve your kids' future by steering them towards less physically demanding jobs. Especially people who do physical work themselves try to make sure their kids won't have to. E.g. my grandparents, who were simple village folks working in the fields, made sure to support their kids in getting ed…

The idea that people shouldn't do demanding physical work, and that everyone should to the best of their ability make sure their own kids don't, doesn't seem to me like a good way to structure a society. My uncle was an electrician (he's retired now), and so is one of his sons, and they both seem pretty happy with their lives. Happier than a lot of tech workers I know.

Most individual people don't try to structure society, they try to improve their and their families' lives.

I don't fault anyone for not sacrificing themselves for the greater good of society at large.

And yes, for sure, there can be shitty, stressful and low-paid office jobs and fulfilling, well-paid physical work. If someone finds an example of the latter, I see no reason why they wouldn't recommend it to their kids.

Re: I killed my teenager’s fancy college dreams

#348

Post by Barrin92 » Fri, Dec 27, 2019, 10:44 PM UTC

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…

>Statistically, you still earn way more with a degree than without.

You don't actually. Among non-hispanic white individuals the college premium is at a historic low, for all other groups it's indistinguishable from zero.[1]

And as for realism or pragmatism. I am German and in Germany the majority of people still learn trades and do not go to university. They start earning a paycheck at 17 or 18, they contribute to their social security from the same point, they have good chances of taking over a business given the demographic transition, and they do not have to participate in the competitive hamster wheel that is the American college system or the overrun white-collar service sector including dozens of applications.

And while I can't speak to the crafts and trade sector in the US, in Germany being an electrician is not particularly dangerous, there are strict safety regulations in place and you don't overwork yourself, companies painfully pay attention to it. This isn't the 1920s with people balancing around on steel beams.

When I see the constant anxiety in the US of the millenial generation, the debt driven barely sustainable lifestyles and the constant competition I can only say I am thankful to have grown up in a country where there is a path for normal people to take on jobs that guarantee secure income, without largely useless academic training for a population that is frankly largely unsuited for it.

[1]https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/12/is...

Re: I killed my teenager’s fancy college dreams

#349

Post by barry-cotter » Fri, Dec 27, 2019, 10:44 PM UTC

penagwin wrote: post #85

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 struggled with college and don't know if I'll be returning... I made it over a third of the way to a CS degree but had to take a break from school. I got a job while in college as a programmer - and work full time making around the 50k range. I feel that I self taught myself the necessary technical skills for my job, and that the biggest places for self improvement aren't acedimic but business/relationship related.…

If you have enough work experience you can get onto a distance education Master’s from a UK university without a Bachelor’s.

For example

https://www.ox.ac.uk/admissions/graduate/courses/msc-softwar...

Oxford M.Sc. Software Engineering

A typical applicant will have at least two years' experience in a professional environment, and an undergraduate degree in a related subject. However, more extensive experience may compensate for a lack of formal qualifications, and a strong, immediately-relevant qualification may compensate for a lack of professional experience.

There are others but that’s the best I know of for Software Engineering without a Bachelor’s.

Re: I killed my teenager’s fancy college dreams

#350

Post by JohnBooty » Fri, Dec 27, 2019, 10:46 PM UTC

oarabbus_ wrote: post #309

Kinrany wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I went to a 4-year college, but earned almost all of my money from self-taught programming and design skills. College has other benefits like signalling and networking though.

Eh, unless you're going to Stanford, Duke, or an Ivy League (or maybe USC or $REGIONALLY_RENOWNED_SCHOOL), the networking is definitely not worth the price tag.

What you've written is largely hogwash.

Most fields are not so competitive that you need a degree from an A-list school simply to get your foot into the door.

But you will need to get your foot into the door. Several or perhaps many doors throughout your career. Your network, even if it is not a blue-chip list of Ivy League studs and studettes, can help greatly. Particularly with your first position.

I went to a rather unprestiguous school thousands of miles away from Silicon Valley and the network I established before graduation has directly and indirectly resulted in a lot of work for me over the years.

Anecdotal, sure, but I've heard enough similar stories to be sure that this is a commonplace experience. Not that I need to prove anything. The burden of proof rests with anybody who makes a statement like yours.

Even if the networking one does at $SOME_UNIMPRESSIVE_SCHOOL results in only a few thousand dollars per year over what one would have earned sans networking, over the course of one's working life that can easily equal the cost of a college education.