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

Re: The Stigma of Choosing Trade School over College

#221

Post by throwawayjava » Fri, Mar 08, 2019, 3:31 AM UTC

mises wrote: post #200

paganel wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 woul…

Not a ding on poetry or art. More the fact that I have heard many accounts of boys giving up the family business to go pursue such things as a career. More seriously, I've also heard of similar situations where the boy majors in management or something to that effect, gets out, and can't find a job (this was more common in 08-12). Tradesmen pretty much always have work.

08-13 was fucking brutal for folks in construction in most parts of the country.

But then, us tech folks forget the dot com bubble when things are good too.

Re: The Stigma of Choosing Trade School over College

#222

Post by throwawayjava » Fri, Mar 08, 2019, 3:33 AM UTC

mises wrote: post #199

opportune wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since we're just making these things up, how about a story where the dad is a deadbeat HVAC repairman who fucks up his back and gets addicted to pain pills while his three kids study medicine, law, and computer science and go on to be a general surgeon, judge, and tech billionaire

That's ridiculous; it's more of a parable than it is "just making these things up". I have, if not in those exact words, heard of such things happening with some regularity. What I wrote is supposed to make the point that you can be successful as a tradesman and that college is not absolutely necessary. What you wrote makes no point about the importance of college education vs trade school (the topic at hand, if you…

The lesson in BOTH parables is "work hard on things that matter". Having them side by side is useful because many people draw the wrong conclusion if you only show them one.

Re: The Stigma of Choosing Trade School over College

#223

Post by throwawayjava » Fri, Mar 08, 2019, 3:38 AM UTC

EpicEng wrote: post #104

claudiulodro wrote: post #64

I blame the recession more than any stigma. There is a stigma around working at McDonalds, not skilled trades. I and many other millenials definitely applied for trade apprenticeships back when we got out of high school. In my case after doing very well on the electrician apprentice entrance exams I was still 200th in line because of the recession, and they weren't really onboarding many new apprentices. I ended up g…

> I blame the recession more than any stigma. There is a stigma around working at McDonalds, not skilled trades. For at least thirty years we have been telling our children that, in order to be successful, they need to go to college. We remind them of this constantly; college is the goal. That message implies that anything else is less than. There is definitely a stigma regarding trade skills, but not necessarily one…

Consider re reading the rest of the parent comment...

Re: The Stigma of Choosing Trade School over College

#224

Post by snowwrestler » Fri, Mar 08, 2019, 4:06 AM UTC

finder83 wrote: post #56

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…

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…

You can’t learn in high school what you can learn in college for two simple reasons: 1) there’s not enough time to learn it all, and 2) even if there was, the human brain does not work the same at 14 years old that it does at 18 years old.

And you don’t get an expansive view of human knowledge in “general studies courses,” you get it by taking a broad array of specialized courses. Again: takes time.

Trade schools are great for learning a trade but there is a lot more to life than a trade. There’s more to a society than who has a higher salary.

Re: The Stigma of Choosing Trade School over College

#225

Post by snowwrestler » Fri, Mar 08, 2019, 4:11 AM UTC

snide wrote: post #136

finder83 wrote: post #56

Earlier 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…

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…

Can high schoolers still test out of college intro courses with high AP test scores? I came into college with a semester’s worth of credits via AP tests and started in some 102 classes.

My college also offered two flavors of popular intro courses... like there was Intro to Biology for people who wanted a taste of it, and a different Intro to Biology for people who intended to major in biology.

Re: The Stigma of Choosing Trade School over College

#226

Post by sanderjd » Fri, Mar 08, 2019, 4:13 AM UTC

kbenson wrote: post #214

Retric wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know about your school, but most of the useful classes generally occur later on. So, dropping out after a year means you missed out on the most useful parts. It might seem wasteful, but gateway classes are what allow upper level courses to assume basic competency and move much faster. I had a computer architecture class where one assignment was to write a fairly simple program in x86 ASM and the handholding w…

> Competent staff was hard to retain and enrollment was skyrocketing. And, from my experience being part of that skyrocketing enrollment, quite a lot of them wanted to learn to "make stuff" and were complaining well into their third and fourth years that they weren't learning how to "do anything" in their computer science classes, since it was mostly theory. The thing is, they were teaching theory because that's the…

> Want to learn a specific language? Just do it. It's not that hard, and there are online resources and plenty of books.

This is why I always find myself skeptical of boot camp type programs. So many of them seem focused on specific tools: node plus react! rails plus angular! etc. On the other hand getting a top down view of things is also useful. But I think this is what I enjoyed about my college program; there was time for both. Bottom up theory can seem pointless and unmotivated, and top down practicum can be hard to extend and generalize. The combination is powerful.

Re: The Stigma of Choosing Trade School over College

#227

Post by wmeredith » Fri, Mar 08, 2019, 4:14 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…

How “good” is that expansive view of human knowledge? Is it worth $100k? Is it for everyone?

Re: The Stigma of Choosing Trade School over College

#228

Post by war1025 » Fri, Mar 08, 2019, 4:28 AM UTC

vonmoltke wrote: post #208

war1025 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I agree that it wasn't the most scholarly article.

As an alternate, I just finished a week ago this book by the former Secretary of Education that talked about how poorly a lot of the schools in America prepare students for success in the world, and how often they have lowered their standards rather than working to teach kids better.

He told a story at the beginning about how when he was in college he was going to tutor a star basketball player for a rough school in Chicago. He said the kid came from one of the rare for the area homes where both parents were present and working. He had a stable family life in an area where most kids didn't. His parents were doing their best to set their kids up for success.

Anyway, the first thing the author did as part of tutoring was to give the kid some placement exams to see what he needed work on for getting into college. This was a kid who made the honor roll and was a junior in high school. The guy had a 4th grade reading level. The school system had been promoting these kids every year to the next grade even though they weren't learning anywhere near what they should be.

So it may not be 20%, and it probably isn't in any of the better schools that people hanging around HackerNews are likely to have come from, but there are some really rough schools in America where kids are getting terrible educations.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/37827417-how-schools-wor...

Re: The Stigma of Choosing Trade School over College

#229

Post by sodafountan » Fri, Mar 08, 2019, 5:54 AM UTC

throwawayjava wrote: post #154

sodafountan wrote: post #129

Earlier 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 only provides TIME if you're part of a privileged class of people who:

- Had parents who instilled strong academic achievement at an early age.

- are between the ages of 18 and 22 with no family to take care of, no serious medical conditions, and really no major financial obligations.

- are interested enough and have the mental aptitude to study a major that can justify sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt.

- are sound enough to make it through a sometimes very rough and volatile period of young adulthood and stay focused enough to actually learn the material.

College is a privilege, historically that's what college was, only recently did college become a ticket to the middle class in the minds of most people. I really think that attitude needs to change. In all honesty, I make more than enough money now to go back and finish my degree and I'd probably get a lot more out of college a second time around - because I'd be there to learn, not to try to get the biggest paycheck. The incentives for college these days are all wrong. We need more young people spending their earlier years learning how to actually provide concrete value for the market, once they earn the money, then they can go and get that foundational and expansive education - most of which will certainly better you as a person but you'll never actually use in any concrete way in your day to day life.

Re: The Stigma of Choosing Trade School over College

#230

Post by austincheney » Fri, Mar 08, 2019, 5:54 AM UTC

jteppinette wrote: post #34

If 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…

> After 12 years of general education, how do you justify more?

You cheat yourself by treating it as an overpriced trade school but delude yourself into thinking its something more grand. The average college graduate in the US has a 9th grade reading level at best and many cannot follow simple instructions.

You can start with the hiring process by differentiating between skills and education. I would hope the people that are hired to a given job are competent in their skills but instead people are often hired according to the candidates available in the marketplace. When in doubt you can at least discriminate against some of the unqualified candidates by education level.