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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

#171

Post by gigatexal »

More folks should be given the option for vocational training in blue collar roles that pay really really well. Ever had a decent electrician or plumber come to your house to fix something? They make bank/hr. Or even a welder or carpenter etc etc not the whole world needs to be tech service workers, the economy is more nuanced than that.

But social stigma stemms from everything from dating to parents to friends etc if one does not complete a 4-year degree.

Most tech firms are lifitng the requirement for such a degree as in tech if you can do the work you can do the work and can (I'd say should) be hired. (In a sense, most coding/programming work is blue collar in that sense -- you don't need rocket science to center a div ;)

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#172

Post by ajuc »

mercy_dude wrote: post #150
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…

> A narrative that college isn’t worth it anymore Is it entirely false though? What benefit does a college degree in sociology does to a person (and even broader society) when the person will likely be in over 100k+ debt?

The right question is - why does it have to cost so much when it's possible to teach the same exact thing for ~3k USD in eastern Europe :) And then these developers come to USA or western Europe and it doesn't seem that they are performing badly :)

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#173

Post by tchaffee »

dkarp wrote: post #158
WalterBright wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EE programs tend to focus on electronics, not electrical systems. But learning how house wiring works is a simple book away. But be careful - unlike electronics, house electrics can kill you. On the other hand, electricians have weird gaps in their knowledge. If I ask them to do something slightly out of the ordinary, this becomes apparent. For example, none of them understand inductive coupling, or even know what it…

I find this with everything. You have to become an expert at everything if you want it done right. Maybe it's because the truly expert help is generally too expensive. Examples: - Taxes/Pensions - if you just rely on your accountant then they'll do the bare minimum and you'll miss out - Energy company - we're rolling out smart gas/elec meters in the UK. There is an old type (smets1) and a new type (smets2). You don't…

If you're spending that much time doing all those things then maybe truly expert help is just expensive rather than too expensive.

There is no doubt though that people do better work when supervised and knowing what questions to ask an expert helps sets expectations about what level of work you will settle for.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#174

Post by wwweston »

belorn wrote: post #128
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?…

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…

> All pejorative has a literal interpretation that is not pejorative.

Even assuming that's true, it doesn't follow that every literal interpretation should be or is understood as pejorative, which leads to the question of why this one should be understood that way.

Given that toxic masculinity has specific definitions and specific criticisms to offer that distinguish critically targeted behavior AND also has associated discussion affirming desirable masculine behavior, it makes much more sense to treat it as a specific technique than a general attack on masculinity.

Unless, of course, you think that things like bullying or other forms of social violence for the purpose of establishing personal dominance or personal entertainment is part and parcel with masculinity. Which sounds kindof, I don't know... poisonous or something to me.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#175

Post by lhoff »

mih wrote: post #163
WalterBright wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EE programs tend to focus on electronics, not electrical systems. But learning how house wiring works is a simple book away. But be careful - unlike electronics, house electrics can kill you. On the other hand, electricians have weird gaps in their knowledge. If I ask them to do something slightly out of the ordinary, this becomes apparent. For example, none of them understand inductive coupling, or even know what it…

Out of curiosity, why shouldn't one run low voltage wires through same holes as AC wires ?

The AC voltage will induce noise onto the low voltage wire. That noise can be of a higher voltage then the low voltage and damage the equipment behind it.

See also https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_induction

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#176

Post by icare_1er »

happythen wrote: post #77
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…

No way. Being white is definitely a leg up. Well, at least for me, a white guy, no college degree. Life is much easier. I don't think there is any support missing for us, that actually sounds hilarious. We need to work on lifting others up.

Based on the number of "affirmative-action" initiatives that I see all over the US, in many tech-companies (I don't know about other fields), I'd say that being a women, or black, is definitely a huge plus to get your foot through the door, with many recruitment programs blatantly saying they are only for minorities, which sounds to me like pretty much segregation in reverse, but that indeed seems to be the agenda of some leftists.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#177

Post by icare_1er »

zapnuk wrote: post #130
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 withou…

No one ever stopped women from pursuing career in high-frequency trading or anything else. No one ever stopped women from inventing Amazon or Microsoft from their garage. No one ever stopped women from choosing to graduated in science, maths, finance, rather than art, litterature, or "gender studies".

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#178

Post by formerly_proven »

WalterBright wrote: post #138
smitty1e wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My brother in law is an electrician. I had enough EE in college to change a light switch without burning the house down. However, that book-learnin' fell apart when confronted with troubleshooting a strangely wired room, and I got very polite while asking him over to bail me out. These fellows eschewing the ivory tower, where being of European extraction and bearing a Y-chromosome on the college campus is an indictme…

EE programs tend to focus on electronics, not electrical systems. But learning how house wiring works is a simple book away. But be careful - unlike electronics, house electrics can kill you. On the other hand, electricians have weird gaps in their knowledge. If I ask them to do something slightly out of the ordinary, this becomes apparent. For example, none of them understand inductive coupling, or even know what it…

This is more an observation on the curriculum for a vocation in some locale than a general observation about vocational schools/training.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#179

Post by notanzaiiswear »

frankbreetz wrote: post #10

On the other side: A stat shared at my most recent tech companies meeting, they are trying to hire more women. 5000 people applied for a single position and 15 of them were women. This was for a high paying tech job.

They left out actual subjects chosen by students in the article.

Still, doesn't that story also point to a surplus of engineers?

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