I really don’t understand this aversion to trade schools as a viable career path. The college-is-the-only-path-to-success is distinctly American and to me seems more like a narrative perpetuated so that parents feel justified paying 80k a year to send their kids to any back-alley no-name school in the states. I think it’s pretty disgusting and exploitative.
The Stigma of Choosing Trade School over College
181–190 of 247 posts
Re: The Stigma of Choosing Trade School over College
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
The person you replied to also doesn't mention that just because you attend a trade school doesn't mean you can't acquire an expansive world view on your own, again more stigma that is indicated in the article. Why wouldn't a linesman, electrician or carpenter be able to self educate? We live in the day and age of the internet, the largest store of human knowledge ever to exist is a few clicks and an inquisitive mind…
College provides TIME with no or minimal responsibilities beyond your learning. That time for self improvement is the valuable resource that doesn't really exist for most people outside of college. Not because college is wonderful, but more because you cant get unsecured loans to sit at home and read. (Also, pet peeve: these conversations often compare highly motivated and indepenhdent people who take the no college…
> College provides TIME with no or minimal responsibilities beyond your learning
This is only true for situations where you live on campus, and your parents give you an allowance for anything not included in tuition. Many, many students have to work while going to school.
Classes + part-time work can easily add up to the same amount of time one spends on a full time job.
Re: The Stigma of Choosing Trade School over College
#183One thing that is always missing from these articles is the idea that it’s actually good for individuals (and for our society) to get an expansive view of human knowledge rather than a narrow training to turn you into a worker on a production line (or at a computer). Of course right now that’s a path that’s not accessible to many people, and people may have other financial reasons for going to trade schools, but I th…
The main thing missing from the article is intentional conflation of inherently opposing situations.
True, a union apprentice electrician's classwork is not all that wide. However, I may be one of the only people here on HN who took my first 64 credits and an associates degree at a local tech school (for about $50/credit, admittedly quite a few years ago) and I received credit for 48 of them at the institution where I later got my BSCS. I assure you I had to sit thru the same intro to sociology, psych, public speaking, physics, and calculus classes as any other freshman. The main difference was trade school students tend to be older and more serious and pay more attention in class. The quality of lab equipment in degree granting fields (EE) was similar in trade school and uni. The quality of equipment in non-degree labs (physics) was vastly inferior, yet good enough.
Neither of my experiences have anything to do with "semester long coding bootcamps" and similar training mentioned in the article.
True, that university education is all pretty much the same; however, "everything that is not going to college" has quite a bit of diversity.
Speaking of diversity, there is zero permitted diversity of thought or political opinion in university today; they are single political party indoctrination centers. Surely almost any other post-high school experience would better prepare students for the diverse real world.
Re: The Stigma of Choosing Trade School over College
#184Their argument is based on a very privileged person who had every option and chose the one he liked best.
That's great. Good for him.
But my concern is that people get pushed towards trades for a variety of bad reasons. It's not that trades are bad, but a lot of them are pretty brutally hard work. You end up destroying your body. In exchange you get a working environment that seems continually more and more worker hostile.
Re: The Stigma of Choosing Trade School over College
#185The apocryphal story here is as that of the successful plumber. He works hard, learns his trade, and eventually starts his own plumbing business. This business employs two other plumbers. He also has a wife and three children. As they age, his business grows. By the time his children are 17, he employs twelve other plumbers and is worth over two million dollars. He speaks to his sons about joining his business. All t…
Some people just want to spend their time learning about Gothic art or about Persian poetry instead of fixing other people's plumbing, there's nothing wrong with that, quite the contrary.
And to add a further non-apocryphal anecdote: I'm probably never going to be reach (I'm approaching 40 and you kind of feel this sort of things) but were I to die tomorrow one of my best memories/things that happened in my life would be the fact that I got to appreciate the poetry of Hafez [1] because of my dad. He had a book of his in our library, I knew my dad liked his poetry so one day I just picked the book and I liked his poetry, too. It became a sort of a new bond between me and my dad that I can still feel now, 20+ years after I had first read Hafez's poems.
More to the point, not everything in life is about money.
Re: The Stigma of Choosing Trade School over College
#186The apocryphal story here is as that of the successful plumber. He works hard, learns his trade, and eventually starts his own plumbing business. This business employs two other plumbers. He also has a wife and three children. As they age, his business grows. By the time his children are 17, he employs twelve other plumbers and is worth over two million dollars. He speaks to his sons about joining his business. All t…
I'm the last person to defend colleges, but in this story the father did a poor job of being a good long term role model if all three sons failed at life relative to their father's work ethic, financial habits, or positive encouragement. It wasn't the fault of the college. Someone other than the father "sold" the worthless-degree college route and/or kept the sons brainwashed well after college.
Re: The Stigma of Choosing Trade School over College
#187If students are coming out of 12 years of general education needing more general education, that is a failure of the public school system. We should fix that instead of pushing people into more school. After 12 years of general education, how do you justify more? In my opinion, we should be pushing specialized education at a younger age. When students exit high school, they should have skills that they can expand or…
The problem is not the school system but rather too much education and commodification of education. 100 years ago , knowing how to read and write and do basic math was special and made one employable, but now such skills are so commonplace, so more advanced education is needed to differentiate one's self
reading and math and education in general aren't meaningless values in zero sum games, they enable the creation of wealth. The purpose of attainment of education and skills is not to differentiate yourself, it is to enable you to do things that you were unable to do before.
Re: The Stigma of Choosing Trade School over College
#188The apocryphal story here is as that of the successful plumber. He works hard, learns his trade, and eventually starts his own plumbing business. This business employs two other plumbers. He also has a wife and three children. As they age, his business grows. By the time his children are 17, he employs twelve other plumbers and is worth over two million dollars. He speaks to his sons about joining his business. All t…
During the course of your story, the worker-to-owner ratio has grown from 1:1, to 100:1. So the chance of the three children actually improving their lot as plumbers has actually gone down, not up.
And your story doesn't mention the recession, or the replacement of plumbing labor by technological innovations.
A similar story is happening in farming.
But it's a good lesson, as it teaches the relative productivity of capital and labor.
Re: The Stigma of Choosing Trade School over College
#189One thing that is always missing from these articles is the idea that it’s actually good for individuals (and for our society) to get an expansive view of human knowledge rather than a narrow training to turn you into a worker on a production line (or at a computer). Of course right now that’s a path that’s not accessible to many people, and people may have other financial reasons for going to trade schools, but I th…
As a tradesperson myself, I completely reject the idea that the trades place limits on people.
In my opinion, getting an expansive view of human knowledge has almost nothing to do with where and what you formally study. Indeed, as you progress through higher learning institutions a person tends to learn more and more about less and less.
If a person is curious and motivated they'll have more luck getting an expansive view that those who are not.
It may very well be that motivated curious people attend higher learning institutions more, but those people will obtain their expansive view in spite of their formal education, not because of it. Generally speaking.
Re: The Stigma of Choosing Trade School over College
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
Except that's what high school should be. And let's face it, general studies courses that make up that "expansive view" of college really are repeats of high school with slightly more work, at least if you take honors classes in high school. And if that expansive knowledge is being surrounded by peers who are in pursuit of higher learning...that's not the typical college experience these days. High school is becoming…
The person you replied to also doesn't mention that just because you attend a trade school doesn't mean you can't acquire an expansive world view on your own, again more stigma that is indicated in the article. Why wouldn't a linesman, electrician or carpenter be able to self educate? We live in the day and age of the internet, the largest store of human knowledge ever to exist is a few clicks and an inquisitive mind…
What I most keenly miss from college, and think self-education lacks, is the peer group.
In college I could sit with a group of 5, 10, or more people who have the background and interest to discuss a wide variety of topics at a high level, from world history to Shakespeare to calculus.
Online isn’t the same, and finding such a peer group outside school is much harder.