The Stigma of Choosing Trade School over College • Hacker News Board

Re: The Stigma of Choosing Trade School over College

#201

Post by mises » Fri, Mar 08, 2019, 1:22 AM UTC

analog31 wrote: post #188

mises wrote: post #180

The 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 c…

Perhaps their chances as plumbers are slightly lower. But as businessmen and owners of the 100-person company, they have excellent odds of improving their future. It grew to 100:1 with one owner. In a well-run business, each boy could work on expanding the business and hopefully balance that ratio back out as time progressed.

And yes, technological innovations might be a concern. But the job of middle management might well disappear before the job of a plumber. Ask yourself which is easier to automate.

Farming has been on such a course for a very long time. Quite evident if you look at the tiny percentage of the population that produces America's food today, compared with everyone growing their own only a few thousand years ago.

On this and your point about productivity of capital vs labor, do you have a solution? Quite frankly, I've heard a lot of issues raised around this point, but few good solutions, let alone solutions that don't involve the government.

Re: The Stigma of Choosing Trade School over College

#202

Post by mises » Fri, Mar 08, 2019, 1:24 AM UTC

jonnycoder wrote: post #186

mises wrote: post #180

The 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.

Possibly. I have sadly known many teens that made poor choices as much to spite their parents or to "be themselves"/"develop their own identity" as much as anything else. I didn't blame the college, the boys were responsible for their own decisions. I believe this is known as the second-generation problem: the first generation is very successful due to their family's recent immigration. The second is often much less so (or even less successful) due to their taking everything for granted. And it's not just a theory; I've seen more examples than I could count of this.

Re: The Stigma of Choosing Trade School over College

#203

Post by vonmoltke » Fri, Mar 08, 2019, 1:25 AM UTC

finder83 wrote: post #174

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> general studies courses that make up that "expansive view" of college really are repeats of high school with slightly more work My humanities courses in college were bona fide mind-expanding. The problem is many colleges run their programs more like trade schools, with zero emphasis on balance between the arts and sciences.

I wish mine were more so. It probably does depend a lot on the school.

I took Junior and senior level history classes to satisfy my social science elective requirements. I found them very interesting and enlightening.

I tutored a few people who took the sophomore level "world history" classes that most kids took to satisfy the requirements. Those sounded like little more than brutal rote memorization exercises.

Re: The Stigma of Choosing Trade School over College

#204

Post by pkaye » Fri, Mar 08, 2019, 1:28 AM UTC

mises wrote: post #180

The 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…

Since we are just making things up, was can also say they father is in crippling back pain past his middle age due to all the plumbing work he did before. (This was from a plumber who was lamenting to me while repairing my water heater.)

Re: The Stigma of Choosing Trade School over College

#205

Post by dredmorbius » Fri, Mar 08, 2019, 1:33 AM UTC

ihm wrote: post #18

One 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…

There's a long history behind education, types of it, and the reasons, rationales, and interests behind these. One of the better synopses of these I've found is Wes Cecil's "Myths of the Modern American Mind: Education" (61 minutes, audio only):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFiiOm6fB3c

He traces the history back to Babylonia and scribal training, Plato's Academy, Aristotle's Lyceum, medieval education, scholaticism and the rise of the Seven Liberal Arts with their Trivium (grammar, logic, rhetoric) and Quadrivium (Maths, Geometry, Music (or harmony) and Astronomy), the emergence of the modern physical and social sciences, and the Prussian Educational System which is the foundation of contemporary Western education.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_arts_education

Throughout virtually all of this there's been a sharp division between intellectual and technical education. The liberal arts were distinguished from the technical arts, also called Artes Mechanicae (mechanical arts), servile arts, or vulgar arts, originally: tailoring and weaving, agriculture, architecture and masonry, warfare and hunting, trade, cooking, and blacksmithing and metalurgy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artes_Mechanicae

Since 1800 or so, the distinctions have largely been between pure skills, including trade, vocational, and technical skills (including STEM), professional training (law, medicine, military, religion, and general administration), and humanities or liberal arts. The relative prestige of these has shifted fairly markedly over this period, as well as the increased specialisation within academic curricula and programmes, with the University of Virginia offering eight fields of study in 1825, and Johns Hopkins University using the term "major" for the first time in 1877. The emergence of technical schools, such as M.I.T. (1861) with specialised courses of study helped drive this transformation.

Cecil's treatment is on the light side, but engaging.

Re: The Stigma of Choosing Trade School over College

#206

Post by vonmoltke » Fri, Mar 08, 2019, 1:42 AM UTC

EpicEng wrote: post #103

vonmoltke wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We cannot even make high school graduation in the USA contingent on being able to read. In what states?

My wife is a teacher. You'd be surprised. Kids are pushed along to the next grade for valid and silly reasons alike. Sometimes it's a function of an unstable home life, but no one likes to admit that some people just aren't that bright. She spends countless hours tutoring her underperforming students and some... just don't get it.

Pushed along, sure. To graduate, though, I had to pass a written test. The kids you describe who went to school with me just dropped out without a diploma at some point.

Re: The Stigma of Choosing Trade School over College

#207

Post by munin » Fri, Mar 08, 2019, 1:45 AM UTC

mises wrote: post #180

The 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…

We could tell my story instead. My uncle was an electrician, I didn't take high school that seriously, so my parents wanted me to apprentice for my uncle. I said no thanks, got a low level tech job, worked my way through undergrad and then PhD school, and now I have a cushy, well paid job where I sit indoors in a private office for eight hours a day and think for a living. My uncle had to crawl through attics on hot summer days, fight with rodents and snakes, and deal with live electrical wires and people who don't pay their bills. On top of that, he wound up dead from mesothelioma, probably from spending most of his days just breathing in insulation fibers.

So, thanks but no thanks, basically. You can romanticize the trades all you want but from my experience watching my family and friends from back home, "the trades" are exchanging the better years of your life in time and health to rich people in exchange for an early and painful death.

Re: The Stigma of Choosing Trade School over College

#208

Post by vonmoltke » Fri, Mar 08, 2019, 2:06 AM UTC

war1025 wrote: post #61

vonmoltke wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We cannot even make high school graduation in the USA contingent on being able to read. In what states?

Just doing a quick search online, came across this article which suggests 19% of high school graduates are functionally illiterate. http://www.intellectualtakeout.org/blog/32-million-us-adults...

That article does not do a good job of backing up its claims. The CNN article it references makes much weaker claim. The NALS report specifically states

> While the literacy levels on each scale can be used to explore the range of literacy demands, these data do not reveal the types of literacy demands that are associated with particular contexts in this pluralistic society. That is, they do not enable us to say what specific level of prose, document, or quantitative skill is required to obtain, hold, or advance in a particular occupation, to manage a household, or to obtain legal or community services, for example. Nevertheless, the relationships among performance on the three scales and various social or economic indicators can provide valuable insights, and that is the goal of this report.

So, contrary to the article's claim, the report does not define anyone as being "functionality illiterate".

Furthermore, "functionality illiterate" is not the same as "can't read". It's a weaker standard. It's still a major problem, but that is not an excuse to conflate the two and make claims that high schools can't require graduates to know how to read at all.

Re: The Stigma of Choosing Trade School over College

#209

Post by musicale » Fri, Mar 08, 2019, 2:17 AM UTC

From my perspective, the best aspect of undergraduate programs is that you get the chance to study lots of interesting things outside of your core discipline. That is harder to do once you are working in the field.

The worst aspect is the crippling debt, which cannot be discharged even in bankruptcy.

I went to a student loan web site recently and clicked on something like "discharge eligibility" leading to a form that said that you may be eligible to stop making payments if you have "become deceased." I'm glad they sorted that out.

Re: The Stigma of Choosing Trade School over College

#210

Post by stale2002 » Fri, Mar 08, 2019, 2:23 AM UTC

jinfiesto wrote: post #150

snide wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was exactly my problem with College and why I didn't succeed there. I came from a really good high school that offered a breadth of knowledge across fields. When I went to college (granted in 1998) to become a "web designer" the curriculum and training was just not there. My first year was taking variations of the same math courses, the same english courses and a couple comp sci courses (teaching Java). It was h…

Counterpoint, being exposed to other people's ideas within your discipline of choice is important. You learn a lot faster when you're plugged into a network of brains that are all generally oriented in the same direction. College isn't the only place to find a good network of brains to plug into for your field, but it is convenient, and the barrier to entry (rapidly less so) is relatively low.

> , but it is convenient, and the barrier to entry (rapidly less so) is relatively low.

Quite the opposite. The barrier to entry of being required to spend 10s of thousands of dollars per year is extremely high and has only been increasing over the last 2 decades.

Perhaps college would have been the best option for getting a "well rounded education" at it's price point a couple decades ago, when it was 1/4th the cost.

But at current prices? I strongly doubt it is the most cost effective way of acquiring that service.