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A generation of American men give up on college

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Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#121

Post by ceilingcorner »

trainsplanes wrote: post #108
Arete314159 wrote: post #42

One guy they profiled is making $20 an hour in Toledo, Ohio. If he's working full time, that's 40k a year. Zillow has a number of houses for sale in Toledo for under $40k. Like, they need some work, but a real house, under 40k. I think that guy is doing fine, he should just keep doing exactly what he's doing.

Are the houses in safe neighborhoods? If there are cheap houses in a city and nobody's buying, there's a good reason for that. Carefully taken pictures online may look okay, but people in many cities know to steer clear of specific areas. And regarding repairs, I've been to houses that have decent photos online, but upon entering, they're clearly rotting out. It'd be cheaper to knock the house down and start again.

There are plenty of decent houses in safe areas across the Midwest for $50-100k.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#122

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

roenxi wrote: post #118
atoav wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a certified EE and have a MA of fine Arts (film). Living in Europe where I had to pay 350 Euros per semester (which included a public transport ticket for the whole province), I didn't have to make a choice between the two. I did both because I was interested in both. After university I was well equiped to do freelancer work in my field and earned well. I don't think this "you have to be hard or else you won't s…

If you are a certified EE, you almost certainly paid for your own MA with your own taxes. So I don't have a problem with the MA, but the framing of "life is wonderful in Europe" is missing the fact that the only theoretical upside is you had less choice.

How do exactly do you get from "I could afford to go to college for a STEM professional degree and an arts MA without any debt or financial stress" to "Less choice"?

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#123

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

orwin wrote: post #102
Bayart wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a legacy of socialist regimes enforcing gender ratios. Gender disparity is usually proportional to freedom of choice. ie. countries where there's less pressure to choose a particular field are more disparate in their gender ratios across disciplines.

I'm not sure about that, i've hear Professor Emeritus Mallard talk about his youth in the genetical field and the first use of computers to assist geneticists, he told me that he basically never saw men doing computer work, and that changed in the 80s, along with the culture.

There were a lot of women in computing in the 50s, 60s, and 70s, and they've mostly been forgotten by the "Women don't really like this stuff" crowd.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#124

Post by DasIch »

heurisko wrote: post #114
wwweston wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't know anyone who believes this. Anyone who actually knows what adjectives are and how they work believes this. Or people familiar enough with the substance of the discussion to know it includes discussion of what healthy masculinity is. Here's an easy-to-digest example: https://ifunny.co/picture/if-you-ever-find-yourself-confused... > Do you think I could get away with calling it "toxic femininity" instead?…

> Oh, yes. Nobody would dare talk use the phrase toxic femininity. /s I think people certainly use the phrase "toxic femininity", but such examples are from the long-tail. In institutions, it is no-where near as discussed as much as "toxic masculinity", and probably discussing it would be be frowned upon. You can see mentions of "toxic masculinity" amongst United Nations literature, for example, which can't be said f…

The discourse around these kinds of topics comes almost entirely from feminists at least the part that is constructive. That inevitably leads to some problems being ignored as they are not so interesting to feminists. I don't think you can fault them for that.

Gender norms that are criticised by feminists are in real life frequently re-enforced by women for example. Even feminists like much of the political left are also fragmented and have differing opinions. This lack of a consensus combined with an expectation to behave in a specific way and a group that can be somewhat trigger happy in going from "statistically this group of people is privileged" to "this person from this group is privileged" is I think deeply problematic and challenging to navigate as a men. I also think it's incredibly stupid from political standpoint.

Unfortunately it's difficult to engage in such discussions in a constructive way because they are very attractive to people who see feminists as an enemy.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#125

Post by roenxi »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #122
roenxi wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are a certified EE, you almost certainly paid for your own MA with your own taxes. So I don't have a problem with the MA, but the framing of "life is wonderful in Europe" is missing the fact that the only theoretical upside is you had less choice.

How do exactly do you get from "I could afford to go to college for a STEM professional degree and an arts MA without any debt or financial stress" to "Less choice"?

If he? hadn't consumed the resources necessary to get the MA, he would still have paid the same amount of taxes - most of which will be subsidising other people.

But if paying the full cost, there would be a choice where down one path there is more money because less resources were consumed, and one that would be roughly equivalent.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#126

Post by [deleted] »

Arainach wrote: post #60
throwcommonsns wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's this unfortunately prevailing attitude that you aren't successful in America if you aren't living in New York or San Francisco. It's absolutely bonkers. There are many other great places in this country besides those two cities.

If you can make NYC/SF money and save/invest a portion of your income, you can retire and do significantly better elsewhere. You can't do the opposite. If you can have a decent lifestyle in Ohio on 40k (big if, when you factor in retirement planning) you can still fundamentally never leave Ohio.

[deleted]

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#127

Post by sammalloy »

roenxi wrote: post #125
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do exactly do you get from "I could afford to go to college for a STEM professional degree and an arts MA without any debt or financial stress" to "Less choice"?

If he? hadn't consumed the resources necessary to get the MA, he would still have paid the same amount of taxes - most of which will be subsidising other people. But if paying the full cost, there would be a choice where down one path there is more money because less resources were consumed, and one that would be roughly equivalent.

I just want to point out that a MA in film was extremely cheap at one time. A friend of mine got one at a state school for about $5 grand in the early 1990s. The issue is that inflation and rising costs in the US have wildly diverged from real wages. People aren't going to college in the US because it isn't economically feasible. Meanwhile, all my European friends have PhDs which were subsidized by their native countries. The fact of the matter is that the US is not taking care of their citizens, and has failed an entire generation.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#128

Post by belorn »

wwweston wrote: post #96
doubleunplussed wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know anyone who believes this. Words mean what they're intended to mean and interpreted to mean, and that's how it's used in practice. Claiming otherwise is just a bald-faced "nuh-uh" when people who use the term are confronted with the double standard. If there wasn't at least a little bit of complicity in it being interpreted as a general diss on masculinity, the term would never have caught on, or a differ…

> I don't know anyone who believes this. Anyone who actually knows what adjectives are and how they work believes this. Or people familiar enough with the substance of the discussion to know it includes discussion of what healthy masculinity is. Here's an easy-to-digest example: https://ifunny.co/picture/if-you-ever-find-yourself-confused... > Do you think I could get away with calling it "toxic femininity" instead?…

All pejorative has a literal interpretation that is not pejorative. The question generally lies in how it will get interpreted and what implied message it carries. In most cases there exist a non-pejorative word that can used as a substitute which does not carry the same disrespectful connotation and hostility. As the pejoration of the word occurs, the assumptions that occurs is that continued usage has the intention of hostility.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#129

Post by smt88 »

ceilingcorner wrote: post #113

COVID has accelerated this big time. Why spend $5,000 a semester to watch a Zoom lecture from an average professor when you can open YouTube in a new tab and see a world-class professor share the same information for free? It makes no rational sense. The moment that a serious, legitimate credential system appears, every average university will disappear overnight. We'll be left with an oligarch class that attends the…

> Why spend $5,000 a semester to watch a Zoom lecture from an average professor when you can open YouTube a new tab and see a world-class professor share the same information for free? It makes no rational sense.

Because there is much more possible value in college than just the education.

Socializing is a huge part of it. College is a good place to learn how to make friends, date, network, etc.

It's also nearly free at many schools, so I don't envision the future you're describing ever happening. Most 18-22 year olds couldn't think of a better place to be than on a campus almost exclusively filled with people in their age group.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#130

Post by zapnuk »

baron816 wrote: post #63

A lot of this is driven by narratives—A narrative that college isn’t worth it anymore. A narrative that (white) men are uniformly privileged and life is just easy for them. And a narrative that those men aren’t wanted by society any more. I’m not convinced that all those men need to go to college, but they clearly need something. They need to feel like they’re part of society. Nothing good can come of an entire gener…

I wonder how woman feel reading such comments. Men dominated better paying jobs and positions of power since forever. It took 50+ years between equal rights before the law to equal opportunities in the labour market and education.

Men still have every opportunity a woman has. In addition, they are still recognized more for leading positions. They also dominate about every trade related job.

Yet, they are 'left without a purpose', when all they need it to do is do whatever they want.

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