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More students are turning away from college and toward apprenticeships

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Re: More students are turning away from college and toward apprenticeships

#51

Post by phpisthebest »

azinman2 wrote: post #40
pclmulqdq wrote: post #26

College seems to have ~3 uses from students' perspectives: 1. A trade school for technical professionals who actually need specialist education (scientists, engineers, lawyers, doctors, etc.) 2. A finishing school for the elite 3. A blood sports arena for the brilliant to complete for professorships (almost all of whom will lose and be saddled with 6 figures of debt and 7 figures of opportunity cost) A lot of people…

It also grows the intellectual souls, exposing people to far more depth of thought. It also builds professional networks. If a person is smart enough to receive it, more education is almost always good. Of course money is a factor, and schools have gotten insanely expensive. I’m glad to hear that more people are finding alternative routes - it shouldn’t be that everyone needs college because quite frankly many career…

I think you have conflated college with education. One can get education, build professional networks, etc with out college and importantly one can go to college complete a degree program while receiving zero education.

many (most) Colleges is more of a social guild than it is an educational ventures

Re: More students are turning away from college and toward apprenticeships

#52

Post by scrapcode »

Mc91 wrote: post #9

I have been programming for a Fortune 500 company for four years. Not long ago, I applied for a job at another Fortune 500 company. HR really had only question for me, they saw on my resume I did not have a college degree listed, and did I have one? I said I went through most of college towards a Bachelors in Computer Science but dropped out before graduation. I did not get the job, although I don't know if that's wh…

I completed my BSCS at a state school in my 30s after already being a freelance/amateur programmer for many years. I can honestly say I did not learn a single new thing about programming. In fact, almost every single bit of the programming I learned was completely wrong by todays standards, and rife with mistakes.

Re: More students are turning away from college and toward apprenticeships

#53

Post by mfer »

azinman2 wrote: post #40
pclmulqdq wrote: post #26

College seems to have ~3 uses from students' perspectives: 1. A trade school for technical professionals who actually need specialist education (scientists, engineers, lawyers, doctors, etc.) 2. A finishing school for the elite 3. A blood sports arena for the brilliant to complete for professorships (almost all of whom will lose and be saddled with 6 figures of debt and 7 figures of opportunity cost) A lot of people…

It also grows the intellectual souls, exposing people to far more depth of thought. It also builds professional networks. If a person is smart enough to receive it, more education is almost always good. Of course money is a factor, and schools have gotten insanely expensive. I’m glad to hear that more people are finding alternative routes - it shouldn’t be that everyone needs college because quite frankly many career…

> But I wouldn’t dismiss its value in being taught how to think.

Few universities teach how to think. Most teach what to think. Critical thinking, reasoning through ideas and concepts, and research are often lacking.

> I wish there was a bigger focus in physics, math, and philosophy for those who didn’t know what to do

I don't buy that. You can't by a psychiatrist. You can't be a medical doctor or nutritionist. There are a lot of useful things in this word, that we collectively need, you can't do with those.

But, I do think teaching philosophy would be useful. That involves learning how to think things through which isn't, for the most part, taught.

> If a person is smart enough to receive it, more education is almost always good.

There is an error in reasoning right here. The implication from the context is that you need to go to a college or university to be more educated. That's not true. It's also a complex question to ask, what level of education on what does who need?

Re: More students are turning away from college and toward apprenticeships

#54

Post by xyzelement »

azinman2 wrote: post #40
pclmulqdq wrote: post #26

College seems to have ~3 uses from students' perspectives: 1. A trade school for technical professionals who actually need specialist education (scientists, engineers, lawyers, doctors, etc.) 2. A finishing school for the elite 3. A blood sports arena for the brilliant to complete for professorships (almost all of whom will lose and be saddled with 6 figures of debt and 7 figures of opportunity cost) A lot of people…

It also grows the intellectual souls, exposing people to far more depth of thought. It also builds professional networks. If a person is smart enough to receive it, more education is almost always good. Of course money is a factor, and schools have gotten insanely expensive. I’m glad to hear that more people are finding alternative routes - it shouldn’t be that everyone needs college because quite frankly many career…

I think you are referring to something on one hand very valuable, on the other hand it's very easy to graduate college without learning that, and I think colleges themselves in recent decades are pivoting away from.

A hundred+ years ago when "almost nobody" went to college, college was a place for those hungry and willing to sacrifice for intellectual growth. Nowadays college is a baseline consumer good that "almost everyone" is expected to consume, and having the desire for intellectual growth as a prerequisite just wouldn't scale.

I also think that some of the classes I took (20 years ago, at a state school) would not be taught this way today. Eg I had a class that really critically analyzed native American cultures. Today the class would be considered racist, it would have to a priori be an admiration of those cultures, rather than a critical analysis. Ditto even on a class that focused on Soviet dystopian literature taught by an emrigre.

The good news is that its much more accessible now days to learn how to think outside a college system. If that's what you are hungry for, college is perhaps even your least likely bet.

I say this as a person with 3 degrees. Higher education worked for me because I made sure it did and colleges were more old school then than now.

Re: More students are turning away from college and toward apprenticeships

#55

Post by hippich »

Mc91 wrote: post #9

I have been programming for a Fortune 500 company for four years. Not long ago, I applied for a job at another Fortune 500 company. HR really had only question for me, they saw on my resume I did not have a college degree listed, and did I have one? I said I went through most of college towards a Bachelors in Computer Science but dropped out before graduation. I did not get the job, although I don't know if that's wh…

Check out uopeople.edu. you should be able to transfer most of credits and finish it off in your own time. If nothing else, to not have these stupid questions from hr

Re: More students are turning away from college and toward apprenticeships

#56

Post by azinman2 »

phpisthebest wrote: post #51
azinman2 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also grows the intellectual souls, exposing people to far more depth of thought. It also builds professional networks. If a person is smart enough to receive it, more education is almost always good. Of course money is a factor, and schools have gotten insanely expensive. I’m glad to hear that more people are finding alternative routes - it shouldn’t be that everyone needs college because quite frankly many career…

I think you have conflated college with education. One can get education, build professional networks, etc with out college and importantly one can go to college complete a degree program while receiving zero education. many (most) Colleges is more of a social guild than it is an educational ventures

Very few on their own would get anywhere close to what a college gives you in terms of an education. Particularly in ways that are far broader than what you’d do professionally.

Keep in mind college is 4 years of education on a daily basis.

Re: More students are turning away from college and toward apprenticeships

#57

Post by loeg »

hotpotamus wrote: post #23
lvl102 wrote: post #17

Being a plumber, for example, is far more lucrative for most people. Military, police, then lawyer route is also very lucrative.

One of those is not like the other in that it requires extensive college. It also happens to be the one that pays more than the others.

Entry level police jobs pay better than a lot of lawyer jobs, with a lot less debt.

Re: More students are turning away from college and toward apprenticeships

#58

Post by gloryjulio »

tempsy wrote: post #47
pclmulqdq wrote: post #26

College seems to have ~3 uses from students' perspectives: 1. A trade school for technical professionals who actually need specialist education (scientists, engineers, lawyers, doctors, etc.) 2. A finishing school for the elite 3. A blood sports arena for the brilliant to complete for professorships (almost all of whom will lose and be saddled with 6 figures of debt and 7 figures of opportunity cost) A lot of people…

it’s more like people tricked into going into the finishing school route at a non-elite college, not about whether you come from a rich family or not and don’t need to take on debt. Go to an Ivy League and major in history and you still have a better chance at getting a job at an elite investment bank than someone who goes to a non target state school and majors in statistics or something.

Yes, basically lots of low tier unis are not worth wasting ur money on.

Ironically, I learnt the most important skills(learn how to learn effectively, prioritization etc) only after I started to work in a company where I was getting coached. I would have been far more efficient if go back to school now.

Re: More students are turning away from college and toward apprenticeships

#59

Post by ghaff »

killjoywashere wrote: post #38
newhotelowner wrote: post #4

My daughter got rejected from one of the UC. They received 130+k application for 6k openings.

Yeah, the UC's application system is a bit ... disingenuous is the wrong word, but it's a win-win for applicants and colleges: all the applicant has to do is check all the boxes and pay the not-terrible application fees and bam, they've applied to all the schools. This pretty much forces all the students to apply to most, if not all, of the campuses. Which gives every UC campus the maximum possible applicant pool.

Unless evaluating the applications is centralized, I'm not sure it's a great win for schools.

As someone who has been on the conference committee for quite a few events, I often think that having some friction or even strict limits to submitting a proposal isn't the worst thing in the world. In theory, you want the widest possible pool. In practice, each proposal/application takes some time to evaluate and, especially given conferences obviously don't have quantitative filters like GPA or SAT, picking the best 50 sessions out of a few hundred is generally a lot less random than picking the best 50 out of 2,000.

Re: More students are turning away from college and toward apprenticeships

#60

Post by Chris2048 »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #44
71a54xd wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the software eng market gets really really bad I might just become a licensed electrician and manage 4-5 electricians. I could remember enough of the 40% of an EE degree I finished before pivotting to CS. Another option is getting some BS real estate certs and building some kind of middle-man operation where I facilitate / officiate sales of high end homes to rich people who can't view something before they buy (m…

> I might just become a licensed electrician Depending on state, it can take several years to become licensed. I recommend starting sooner vs later, even if only part time.

I looked into this myself (not in US) - all paths seemed to require full time apprenticeship..
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