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The Stigma of Choosing Trade School over College

theatlantic.com

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Re: The Stigma of Choosing Trade School over College

#241

Post by stale2002 »

GarvielLoken wrote: post #234
stale2002 wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> , 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…

What do you mean? Collage and University is free. You only have to pay for study material and rent! And the Government provide you with free studygrants and loans at an affordable rate and payback plan.

I am not sure what country you are from (or if you are being sarcastic?), but it is definitely not America.

If you have to go 100K into debt, this is a huge barrier to entry. It means that only rich people, or those who are willing to shackle themselves into debt, can afford to go to college.

Re: The Stigma of Choosing Trade School over College

#242

Post by Nasrudith »

ceej01 wrote: post #160
Nasrudith wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plumbers I can see from the range and messiness of the tasks as very non-standardized beyond pipe thicknesses, and the diagnostics and HVACs as a cousin likely would have some similar issues but why would welders be a very hard to automate task? Not dismissing it I just wonder what the "hard for machines" aspect is that I'm missing. I know there are plenty of robotic welders out there and that progress implies they'l…

Correct me if I'm wrong, but sounds like you are thinking of welding in a factory? I know a lot of welding is repairing damaged equipment. Especially older or already Jerry-rigged devices. I'd imagine it would be extremely difficult and expensive to develop an AI and a machine that would be adaptable enough to do these sort of projects. Would construction welders be any less 'non-standardized' than Plumbing or HVAC?…

Ah that explains it - a maintenance vs construction thing - notice how repair has become the expensive option compared to creating new? Manufacturing has a far more constrained process which allows for readily automatable braindead repetition because it gets results. If construction now isn't readily automatable surprisingly doesn't matter too much. Building new things can be reengineered to a "friendlier" option like say screws and nails instead of joins but maintenance needs to take what they have and their moving parts.

Building everything to a schematic is easier to automate but I believe that already isn't the bulk of labor demand.

Theoretically a smart system with diagnostics could be more readily automated but those would be more expensive and probably be new constructions and come with their own host of technical and logistical issues. Sure it would be nice to have clogs and leaks mapped and remedied but it would take a while to become universal even if they were rolled out tommorow and worked perfectly.

Re: The Stigma of Choosing Trade School over College

#243

Post by jdmichal »

zanny wrote: post #195
linuxftw wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Public education is fundamentally broken in this regard (except for the times tables, IMO much more time should be spent on math in-school vs homework). History in the elementary school level seems near useless, aside from building reading comprehension skills.

I'd much rather see kids doing things in class that benefit from the use of multiplication, along with exposure to how to do it and arguments for using it, than to just lecture them on repeatedly writing 2x2=4 2x3=6 2x4=8 over and over for weeks. I'm pretty sure in my own first grade experience that was the point where half the class started drifting towards the "I hate math" camp of now-adults.

Isn't this roughly the idea behind Montessori method?

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

Also, math education in general has a huge problem around teaching solutions without teaching the problem. (Hence the pervasive question of what will I ever need this for...) I will always know what a limit does, because my precalculus teacher taught it by finding the area under a curve using rectangles. We started with large rectangles, were shown the error. Cut the rectangles in half, hey error goes down. Make them really really small, error goes down even more! What happens if we make them zero? Oops, equation explodes because zero-width rectangles also have zero area... The function is discontinuous at zero. So let's learn limits to work around discontinuous points of a function!

Re: The Stigma of Choosing Trade School over College

#244

Post by newyorkcityguns »

I think the days of college being a needed step in order to enter the workforce are ending. Unless you want to work in academia or need a specialized track of education like a career in the sciences, the days of the Ba opening doors are basically over. The corporate jobs that require a Ba are hardly worth the bother these days. Electricians and plumbers can make more without all the PC mind control crap in the corporations.

Re: The Stigma of Choosing Trade School over College

#245

Post by Retric »

TrinaryWorksToo wrote: post #217
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…

How am I supposed to know that the classes will get better? Why should I spend my very valuable time in classes that don't challenge me in the way I want?

Be proactive.

You can look up the required courses for your major/minor to get a listing, then look up corse descriptions in a course catalog, and even look up the books associated with each class.

If that’s to hard talk to seniors with the major you’re considering to get an idea what’s ahead. I even sat through an upper level class in high school to see if I wanted to get an engendering or CS degree.

Re: The Stigma of Choosing Trade School over College

#246

Post by Retric »

User23 wrote: post #231
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…

Parent evidently came from a college preparatory school. Since most high schools don’t actually prepare students for college, freshman and sometimes sophomore year are remedial education for those unfortunates. Anyone who attended a prep school is going to be bored out of their skull by that crap. As far as I can tell the solution is to allow opting out of the remedial classes, but they are a profit center so good lu…

That’s what AP classes are for in the US. Well prepared students end up skipping most of their first year classes. Though some schools are very picky https://oue.fas.harvard.edu/apexams

Re: The Stigma of Choosing Trade School over College

#247

Post by GarvielLoken »

stale2002 wrote: post #241
GarvielLoken wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean? Collage and University is free. You only have to pay for study material and rent! And the Government provide you with free studygrants and loans at an affordable rate and payback plan.

I am not sure what country you are from (or if you are being sarcastic?), but it is definitely not America. If you have to go 100K into debt, this is a huge barrier to entry. It means that only rich people, or those who are willing to shackle themselves into debt, can afford to go to college.

It's the norm in Europe. I was taking a jab at you guys implicit understanding that university cost a lot, it doesn't in half of the western world.
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