91–100 of 281 posts
College degree is non-essential for most people, unnecessary for at least 50%.
I totally agree with the article, but to me the saddest part of all of this is I'm unconvinced that a college education is actually even that useful. (I say that with a four year CS degree). Most majors, to be blunt, are pretty useless in terms of real world skills. The argument is "they teach you how to think". I don't know how you would even measure that, but it doesn't seem that true, especially since colleges are…
>I'm unconvinced that a college education is actually even that useful. How is this a question? How many high school grads have you interviewed and thought you could spin them up to the usefulness of a graduate from nothing in a reasonable amount of time/effort? Education is expensive, sure. We can talk about that... but useful? It seems obviously useful to me.
Poster is more likely asking whether the education gained in college is actually useful vs the doors opened by having that diploma.
If one dropped out of college right before graduation with 99% of the education, likely that person would end up with worse off job prospects compared to the person who completed their program
Higher education is often a needless gatekeeper for keeping those with generational wealth wealthy
Often a subtext that I feel is missing here is that in the end people aren't that different on average, and our parent's wealth matter more
Today, zip code is a pretty accurate predictor of success, there's so much embedded in a zip code such as wealth, industry, and safety that affects kid's outcomes.[0]
[0] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/too-often-student-success_b_1...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>I'm unconvinced that a college education is actually even that useful. How is this a question? How many high school grads have you interviewed and thought you could spin them up to the usefulness of a graduate from nothing in a reasonable amount of time/effort? Education is expensive, sure. We can talk about that... but useful? It seems obviously useful to me.
Not sure if you're missing the point of the poster above. Poster is more likely asking whether the education gained in college is actually useful vs the doors opened by having that diploma. If one dropped out of college right before graduation with 99% of the education, likely that person would end up with worse off job prospects compared to the person who completed their program
I totally agree with the article, but to me the saddest part of all of this is I'm unconvinced that a college education is actually even that useful. (I say that with a four year CS degree). Most majors, to be blunt, are pretty useless in terms of real world skills. The argument is "they teach you how to think". I don't know how you would even measure that, but it doesn't seem that true, especially since colleges are…
I agree. I say all of this as someone making over six figures working from home in a situation I could have never imagined myself in ten years ago. I needed my degree; but just to get my foot in the door. I didn't learn much during the process itself other than to recognize the meta fact that I had to do it to get out of my current situation. This would have been a real problem for me financially if it didn't work ou…
However, I have not met (except on HN) any successful "knowledge workers" without a degree. I'm sure there are many factors contributing to that: smarter people are more likely to pursue degrees in the first place, companies may ignore otherwise good candidates since they lack a degree.
But another possibility is that many of us underestimate the skills we learned in pursuing our degrees. Certainly many people obtain those skills in other ways, but it's impossible to know if I personally would have.
Now those of us with postgraduate degrees and who are in the elite of the Democratic Party live in our own Versailles, and we don’t know any working-class people either—except perhaps the name of a barista at Starbucks or the woman who comes by at night to clean the office. I think this is one thing churches did really well; people from all social spheres coming together to serve their God. It didn't matter what job…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>I'm unconvinced that a college education is actually even that useful. How is this a question? How many high school grads have you interviewed and thought you could spin them up to the usefulness of a graduate from nothing in a reasonable amount of time/effort? Education is expensive, sure. We can talk about that... but useful? It seems obviously useful to me.
Not sure if you're missing the point of the poster above. Poster is more likely asking whether the education gained in college is actually useful vs the doors opened by having that diploma. If one dropped out of college right before graduation with 99% of the education, likely that person would end up with worse off job prospects compared to the person who completed their program
However, they said college education not college diploma. They're clearly talking about the skills learned.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This type of concern trolling makes me want to ramp up the "redneck" and "flyover state" rhetoric. If the group of people that idolize Steven Crowder and other PC anti-police can't handle the rhetoric they dish out then let Trump destroy there lives. Because that's the cruel irony, the educated and wealthy are not hurt by Trump nearly as much as the poor white trash are. If you went to University and all you can must…
If you have this kind of disdain for these people why not let them split off and govern themselves in their own country? What good can possibly come from letting two groups that hate each other take turns ruling over one another?
What could go wrong?
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Why would people from UK vote for barrack Obama?
barrack Obama was super popular in UK. the day he was elected, his speech was played everywhere in Manchester, over and over again. my questions were for US voters as well.
In my view, education has begun to act like wealth, because education is a form of wealth, and the productivity divide between wealth and work is increasing. Still, I'm skeptical of the whole idea, because it just seems too convenient for Republicans to drive a wedge between the Democratic party and the working class based on a perceived social division rather than real policy: We took away your unions and safety net…
>We took away your unions and safety net, but by golly, we'll protect your "dignity." Organized labor may not have been targeted explicitly like by Republicans, but Democrats haven't really been a friend to them either [1]. Both parties have been on board with the neoliberal agenda for 40 years. [1] http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/01/democrats-paid-a-huge...
In a democracy, every interest or issue is either represented by a constituency that will vote reliably in support of it, or it's not and it will suffer. Labor's suffered for the last half century for two reasons:
1) The Democratic buy-in on civil rights and reproductive freedom, and subsequent defection by those hostile to it -- these cut across the lines drawn around working class constituencies and eroded that constituency's reliability.
2) Americans have examined and bought into neoliberal-supporting ideas (or auxiliary ideas that keep progressive economics from gaining mindshare). Discourse architects have been effective enough at shaping political and policy conversations that a good number of politically active citizens and officeholders understand issues the way those advancing neoliberal policies would like.
When you understand this dynamic, you don't see the movement as Mr-Burns-thumb-twiddling by DLC/DNC sellouts, you see the Democratic party struggling for a constituency that will let it win elections along the odd way that key lines are drawn in the US system and finding that it had to move a neoliberal direction.
And you get a sense of the scope of the work that'd be necessary for a working-class friendly politics to take root again, which is gonna be much harder than just electing President Sanders or Warren (which is not an easy sell in itself).