More students are turning away from college and toward apprenticeships • Hacker News Board

Re: More students are turning away from college and toward apprenticeships

#281

Post by pdntspa » Sat, Mar 18, 2023, 8:21 PM UTC

somenameforme wrote: post #261

sitkack wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think pre-U education should focus on didactics and metacognition, philosophy, logic and the scientific method. To really focus on the thinking behind the thinking, to never do it by accident. University should not be separate from earlier forms of education, things that are university like should also filter back into to high school and middle school. As a borderline-crank myself, I think we need more folks with c…

You just end up kicking the can around the same problem. While college education being dumbed down is a typical topic, the exact same is earlier education - and also for the exact same reason. Here [1] is an 8th grade exam from 1912. Good luck! The issue isn't some failure of education, but the fact that people are different and have different skill sets. And as education came to be expected to be something everybody…

How dumb is your expected audience if that test required a "good luck!"

It's like basic math....

Re: More students are turning away from college and toward apprenticeships

#282

Post by jltsiren » Sat, Mar 18, 2023, 8:21 PM UTC

pclmulqdq wrote: post #26

College seems to have ~3 uses from students' perspectives: 1. A trade school for technical professionals who actually need specialist education (scientists, engineers, lawyers, doctors, etc.) 2. A finishing school for the elite 3. A blood sports arena for the brilliant to complete for professorships (almost all of whom will lose and be saddled with 6 figures of debt and 7 figures of opportunity cost) A lot of people…

4. A socially acceptable excuse for spending a few years learning and doing interesting things, instead of focusing on something more productive in the short term.

When I was a student, it was a different time and place (20+ years ago in Finland), but this was a major motivation for many people. Some people didn't have the financial means to take advantage of that, some had too many social obligations, and some were simply not interested in learning. But for many, learning was a major reason for attending a university.

And this was not about the elite. In fact, studying a field with a clear professional identity and good prospects for a high-status high-paying job predicted having high-status professional parents and right-wing values. Studying a more academic field was a weaker predictor for left-wing values and middle-class parents. If anything, the elite saw higher education more as an investment, while the middle class was more likely to treat it as an opportunity to do interesting things.

Re: More students are turning away from college and toward apprenticeships

#283

Post by pclmulqdq » Sat, Mar 18, 2023, 8:22 PM UTC

morpheuskafka wrote: post #142

pclmulqdq wrote: post #26

College seems to have ~3 uses from students' perspectives: 1. A trade school for technical professionals who actually need specialist education (scientists, engineers, lawyers, doctors, etc.) 2. A finishing school for the elite 3. A blood sports arena for the brilliant to complete for professorships (almost all of whom will lose and be saddled with 6 figures of debt and 7 figures of opportunity cost) A lot of people…

> fields that don't truly need the education Even if that's true, isn't part of the problem that a lot of those office jobs that don't absolutely need the knowledge still expect a bachelor's degree? Even if it was nothing more than "finishing school," you're going to have a hard time finding a job in HR, sales, etc. without college.

You are today, but that's because it is a signaling mechanism that you are a reasonably hard worker and willing to put up with bullshit. Also because practically everyone worth hiring has one.

This is not a stable equilibrium, though, when you couple it with the tremendous rise in prices.

Re: More students are turning away from college and toward apprenticeships

#284

Post by NathanNgata » Sat, Mar 18, 2023, 8:23 PM UTC

azinman2 wrote: post #40

pclmulqdq wrote: post #26

College seems to have ~3 uses from students' perspectives: 1. A trade school for technical professionals who actually need specialist education (scientists, engineers, lawyers, doctors, etc.) 2. A finishing school for the elite 3. A blood sports arena for the brilliant to complete for professorships (almost all of whom will lose and be saddled with 6 figures of debt and 7 figures of opportunity cost) A lot of people…

It also grows the intellectual souls, exposing people to far more depth of thought. It also builds professional networks. If a person is smart enough to receive it, more education is almost always good. Of course money is a factor, and schools have gotten insanely expensive. I’m glad to hear that more people are finding alternative routes - it shouldn’t be that everyone needs college because quite frankly many career…

> It also grows the intellectual souls

maybe only a byproduct, it's more of a means to an end system. people are at the universities they are in because going to college still means something to the job market as opposed to learning everything else where. The people who really grow there 'intellectual souls' are those who would grow it regardless of environment/circumstance.

while I do believe it is a great thing for people to desire to advance themselves intellectually I don't believe it should cost as much as it does. It's ridiculous.

> If a person is smart enough to receive it + many aren’t smart enough for it

the benefits of becoming educated in its most fundamental sense don't vary with intellectual ability.

the way educational institutions are currently structured is one of many ways of educating people, so the question becomes whether that way of educating is optimal for an individual.

---- (opinion)

universities should be purely for the pursuit of knowledge and shouldn't be there to provide relevancy to the job market. That should be the job of systems specializing in providing pathways to certain job market sectors.

currently universities conflate the two which has lead to most of the problems they have been ascribed with today

Re: More students are turning away from college and toward apprenticeships

#285

Post by jseliger » Sat, Mar 18, 2023, 8:24 PM UTC

alsaaro wrote: post #88

As someone who has worked two of the most intensive blue collar jobs, people should be wary of romanticizing blue collar work. Blue collar workers are expected to really work at their jobs. White collar workers can chill if there is no work to be done, or be sent home early with pay, or take a relaxation day and just browse the internet and listen to podcasts. They have perks, you see white collar workers leaving wor…

As someone who has taught college, off and on, for many years, people should also be wary of romanticizing college.

The question is always "relative to what?"

Anyway, the move towards apprenticeships has arguably been underway for years: https://seliger.com/2017/06/16/rare-good-political-news-boos...

Re: More students are turning away from college and toward apprenticeships

#286

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Mar 18, 2023, 8:24 PM UTC

rthomas6 wrote: post #264

Rant: I feel like most people haven't really thought about why colleges are so expensive now. It is because of the federally guaranteed student loans. It means there's pretty much no downside to banks loaning an arbitrarily large amount, because if the student doesn't pay it back, the government will. And since most 18 year old students have pretty much zero price sensitivity, and they now have unlimited funds, colle…

[deleted]

Re: More students are turning away from college and toward apprenticeships

#287

Post by mtrower » Sat, Mar 18, 2023, 8:24 PM UTC

azinman2 wrote: post #192

kneebonian wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It also grows the intellectual souls, exposing people to far more depth of thought. "See, the sad thing about a guy like you is, in 50 years you're gonna start doin' some thinkin' on your own and you're going to come up with the fact that there are two certainties in life: one, don't do that, and two, you dropped 150 grand on a fuckin' education you could have got for a dollar fifty in late charges at the public li…

Few will spend a huge amount of time self educating, and even fewer can read the books and understand what to extract from it without guidance. That’s the whole point of having a subject matter expert design and teach a curriculum. If you don’t value that, then in your world we should abolish high schools and earlier as well. If you look at societies where people don’t go to school versus where people do, the results…

So wait, if a person fails to benefit from college, it's their own fault for not taking what was "handed to them on a platter" (as you mention in another of your posts" --- but if they fail to self-educate, it's only natural and thus a problem of not going to college?

Re: More students are turning away from college and toward apprenticeships

#288

Post by jackmott » Sat, Mar 18, 2023, 8:24 PM UTC

azinman2 wrote: post #75

xyzelement wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are referring to something on one hand very valuable, on the other hand it's very easy to graduate college without learning that, and I think colleges themselves in recent decades are pivoting away from. A hundred+ years ago when "almost nobody" went to college, college was a place for those hungry and willing to sacrifice for intellectual growth. Nowadays college is a baseline consumer good that "almost…

Re: critical analysis. I agree with you that inconvenient truths now get muzzled because they don’t fit an acceptable meta-narrative. This is very problematic for society and when taken to the maximum, can lead to thinks like Cambodia’s attempt at restarting society by killing all those who didn’t fit the model they were looking for. > If that's what you are hungry for, college is perhaps even your least likely bet.…

[dead]

Re: More students are turning away from college and toward apprenticeships

#289

Post by randcraw » Sat, Mar 18, 2023, 8:25 PM UTC

scrapcode wrote: post #52

Mc91 wrote: post #9

I have been programming for a Fortune 500 company for four years. Not long ago, I applied for a job at another Fortune 500 company. HR really had only question for me, they saw on my resume I did not have a college degree listed, and did I have one? I said I went through most of college towards a Bachelors in Computer Science but dropped out before graduation. I did not get the job, although I don't know if that's wh…

I completed my BSCS at a state school in my 30s after already being a freelance/amateur programmer for many years. I can honestly say I did not learn a single new thing about programming. In fact, almost every single bit of the programming I learned was completely wrong by todays standards, and rife with mistakes.

Sounds like you attended a bad school. I earned a MS in CS at age 30 atop my BS in zoology and 6 years of work as a programmer. My MSCS program introduced me to many new and useful concepts and techniques that have informed all the nontrivial computing tasks I've undertaken since, now 33 years. That degree has proved to be the best investment of my life, by a large margin.

Re: More students are turning away from college and toward apprenticeships

#290

Post by Dudeman112 » Sat, Mar 18, 2023, 8:25 PM UTC

zoogeny wrote: post #65

azinman2 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also grows the intellectual souls, exposing people to far more depth of thought. It also builds professional networks. If a person is smart enough to receive it, more education is almost always good. Of course money is a factor, and schools have gotten insanely expensive. I’m glad to hear that more people are finding alternative routes - it shouldn’t be that everyone needs college because quite frankly many career…

Your post makes me consider what other avenues to achieve the growth of intellectual souls and exposure to depth of thought could exist other than paid-for highly-structured institutions. I think people wax poetically about their own experiences without really considering the experiences of others. We've had free public libraries for centuries now. We've had a pretty open Internet for decades. There is literally noth…

>There is literally nothing stopping a 20 year old human who lives in Western society from growing their intellectual soul through learning

Except for humans in general being utterly shite at pursuing learning without guidance or an immediate goal, both in regards to the learning effectiveness (i.e. how much you learn per amount of time or effort), and having the discipline to keep the grind

Most people are not, in fact, capable of just going to a library (or using the internet) every day and deeply learning a subject. They need an external force to actually keep grinding, even if they do want to do it by themselves