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A generation of American men give up on college

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Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#341

Post by jkhdigital »

Applejinx wrote: post #315
atoav wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The article (and others) just show that American men are starting to put their efforts into places that do reward them; namely, the trades and entrepreneurship. Good point. I did not intend to argue otherwise. To go into trade is not an irrational reaction on an individual level — quite the opposite in fact. What I did argue however, was that making it hard for people to get a higher education is not a good thing f…

I'm an American and agree completely. My concern is that this '90% struggling' is considered by too many to be a default, the desired state of things. This pops up over and over again in so many ways. I think it leads to people drawing their distinctions, around who is superior and who is inferior, and then it leads to those people making an unnecessary logical jump and deciding that those inferior people need to be…

People are not components in an engineered system. When you work with statistics it might appear that way, but people have a way of creating conflict and chaos when least expected. It is a fallacy to think that one need only set up the right societal structures and this problem will magically vanish.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#342

Post by grayclhn »

the_only_law wrote: post #253
sammalloy wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just want to point out that a MA in film was extremely cheap at one time. A friend of mine got one at a state school for about $5 grand in the early 1990s. The issue is that inflation and rising costs in the US have wildly diverged from real wages. People aren't going to college in the US because it isn't economically feasible. Meanwhile, all my European friends have PhDs which were subsidized by their native count…

I determined I didn’t want to continue school around 17/18 for a variety of reasons. Some out of my own arrogance and some I still hold to this day. Because of this of course, I didn’t “set myself up” for school so to speak. Didn’t bother with managing good grades, taking standardized tests or building my portfolio with any of the academic or non academic line items schools typically look at. Flash forward and I star…

Start with community college part time, get grades and take prerequisites, then apply to other programs. Spending two years at community college and then transferring to a 4 year college is pretty common as well if you want to attend full time, but part time is going to be easier.

I don’t know where you live or what you want to study, but if you focus on taking the coursework you need it becomes a lot easier. I’d suggest calling admissions departments as well, not trying to piece everything together yourself online. Feel free to email me if you want to share more information and I can give more specific and better researched suggestions.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#343

Post by arthur_sav »

throwtheworld wrote: post #99
baron816 wrote: post #63

A lot of this is driven by narratives—A narrative that college isn’t worth it anymore. A narrative that (white) men are uniformly privileged and life is just easy for them. And a narrative that those men aren’t wanted by society any more. I’m not convinced that all those men need to go to college, but they clearly need something. They need to feel like they’re part of society. Nothing good can come of an entire gener…

> A narrative that (white) men are uniformly privileged and life is just easy for them. This is very perspective dependent. I’m a black college student now and every conversation with friends back home includes some mention of dropping out because it’s not for us as well. When you see people with equivalent resumes already coasting by in the job market because they could get their last names and LinkedIn photos past…

> Innovation out of desperation, I guess.

It's the only way to innovate imo.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#344

Post by zzbzq »

Ensorceled wrote: post #331
10x-dev wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't match up with my experience as an interviewer at several FAANGs. HR typically wants their diversity numbers up badly so if you're gay, a woman, and/or black they are already incredibly inclined to hire you, as long as you pass the interviews. It's not a walk in the park, but you have this going for you and it's a big advantage imo.

> HR typically wants their diversity numbers up badly This kind of implies that they don't actually hire diversely or the issue wouldn't be so dire ...

It could also imply lack of candidates.

Which is demonstrably true; they're not hiring from the general population they're hiring largely from universities, and you can look at those universities and see there's already an imbalance in demographics of the available job candidates.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#345

Post by cascom »

davidhunter wrote: post #191
dkarp wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find this with everything. You have to become an expert at everything if you want it done right. Maybe it's because the truly expert help is generally too expensive. Examples: - Taxes/Pensions - if you just rely on your accountant then they'll do the bare minimum and you'll miss out - Energy company - we're rolling out smart gas/elec meters in the UK. There is an old type (smets1) and a new type (smets2). You don't…

This is an interesting observation and matches with my experience. I'd add: 1) There's a race to the bottom with services in terms of pricing. For example, NHS GPs have strict time limits within which to provide a particular service. These time limits have reduced over the years and so individual doctors are capable of providing a better service but are can't given the constraints. People rarely are willing to pay mo…

I agree totally agree on both points. I also think though there is an opacity element, If you can’t see/will know if these service providers did a good “quality” job corners are habitually cut.

E.g. if I have a new button that’s been sewn on a jacket, or have my house painted, I can easily see if the right button was used, or if spots were missed while painting. However if I take my car in for an oil change, I don’t really know if the right grade of oil and an OEM filter was used, nor do I really care to recheck my accountants work on my taxes (as long is it roughly pencils to what I expected).

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#346

Post by jensensbutton »

dkdk8283 wrote: post #164
spoonjim wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You must have bad information because FAANG companies compete over hiring black software engineers. They want to get their numbers up and there aren’t many to hire.

My company is only hiring black engineers or women. You have no chance if you are a white man and don’t have an in.

When was the last non-black hire at your company?

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#347

Post by vimy »

long_time_gone wrote: post #311
zarkov99 wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its not that the support structures do not exist, after all they never did and men did fine without them, its that college is suffused with an ideology that is anti-men, anti-merit and, for the most part, useless for anything but its own self-propagation.

==its that college is suffused with an ideology that is anti-men, anti-merit and, for the most part, useless for anything but its own self-propagation.== I never felt like this kind of victim while in college (mid-2000s). I wonder if all colleges have changed or if society has changed. If it is society that has changed, maybe our colleges are simply reflecting the real-world change.

It’s only been the last +- 5 years that this became the dominant thinking at colleges.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#348

Post by bigbillheck »

exporectomy wrote: post #259
dkdk8283 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My company is only hiring black engineers or women. You have no chance if you are a white man and don’t have an in.

How is that legal?

People can just go on the internet and say whatever they like.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#349

Post by throwtheworld »

_Nat_ wrote: post #155
throwtheworld wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A narrative that (white) men are uniformly privileged and life is just easy for them. This is very perspective dependent. I’m a black college student now and every conversation with friends back home includes some mention of dropping out because it’s not for us as well. When you see people with equivalent resumes already coasting by in the job market because they could get their last names and LinkedIn photos past…

Dropping out of a fancy Computer Science program that you're already in would seem like an extraordinarily bad idea. If someone's trying to talk you into quitting and giving up because no one wants you because you're black, well.. that doesn't sound like a good friend to me. Don't get me wrong -- a few tech-billionaires dropped out of college, and apparently it worked out for some. So if you want to try that out, the…

> Dropping out of a fancy Computer Science program that you're already in would seem like an extraordinarily bad idea

Of course haha the name brand and few cool professors are keeping me at this point. But I never expected to go from the highest ranking/gpa/scores to having leaving academia even at the edge of the table.

> But dropping out because you're black sounds crazy.

It’s more like “if I can make X amount anyways today, why do it Y way when I’ll be behind anyways? Might as well gain the experience and be in the same position 4-5 years from now?” if that makes sense but I understand it sounding rash through text.

> why not apply for an internship?

It seems we all have the same issue of never getting responses online. It’s very odd considering we’ve done incredibly well when the interview is direct with the person hiring (as in this is the person that makes the final decision), but situations like that are limited.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#350

Post by pessimizer »

smitty1e wrote: post #74
baron816 wrote: post #63

A lot of this is driven by narratives—A narrative that college isn’t worth it anymore. A narrative that (white) men are uniformly privileged and life is just easy for them. And a narrative that those men aren’t wanted by society any more. I’m not convinced that all those men need to go to college, but they clearly need something. They need to feel like they’re part of society. Nothing good can come of an entire gener…

My brother in law is an electrician. I had enough EE in college to change a light switch without burning the house down. However, that book-learnin' fell apart when confronted with troubleshooting a strangely wired room, and I got very polite while asking him over to bail me out. These fellows eschewing the ivory tower, where being of European extraction and bearing a Y-chromosome on the college campus is an indictme…

> These fellows eschewing the ivory tower, where being of European extraction and bearing a Y-chromosome on the college campus is an indictment

I hate to have to mention this, but not all American men are white.

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