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

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

#341

Post by ChrisMarshallNY » Sat, Mar 18, 2023, 9:15 PM UTC

I just took 2 years of a redneck tech school (EET technician trade school).

Didn't have much choice. I'd pretty much trashed my life, by the time I was 18, and needed to rebuild it, with limited resources.

Turned out to have worked out well, for me; although the school, itself, is now long gone. It was basically one of those wrench academies that popped up, after Vietnam, to suckle from the teat of the GI Bill (many of my classmates were Vietnam vets. The GI Bill was awesome).

The main thing that it taught me, was professionalism and self-discipline. It was also pretty current, for the tech (colleges tend to be a lot farther behind; at least in undergraduate).

But I had to do a great deal of personal bootstrapping, after that, to do OK.

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

#342

Post by psyklic » Sat, Mar 18, 2023, 9:15 PM UTC

xyzelement wrote: post #98

azinman2 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

Re second point, I mean something else. 200 years ago I had to go to university because why? That's where the books and smart people were concentrated. So I would pay a lot of money and physically relocate myself to access those books and people. Now? I can study online, I can read, I can converse with super bright people of my chosing without the friction and limits of doing that in a college environment.

> Now? I can study online, I can read, I can converse with super bright people of my choosing

This is true, but in practice few people do it. Most people will not have much time left for study alongside a job. And without the "friction"/motivation college brings, most people will not learn anywhere near as much.

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

#343

Post by varispeed » Sat, Mar 18, 2023, 9:16 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…

One of the reason is that blue collar workers ceded their leverage and bargaining power to unions, that not necessarily have their best interest in mind - unions work in their own interest and that depends on how well corporations can tip that interest in their favour using brown envelopes and other ways.

At the same time the power of workers being able to create their own business and sell their services have been eroded over time, to the point that in some countries it is so regulated it is almost impossible for the workers to organise in small businesses providing services.

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

#344

Post by giraffe_lady » Sat, Mar 18, 2023, 9:16 PM UTC

nonethewiser wrote: post #307

corbulo wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are upsides, like a certain degree of pride from really feeling like you worked hard and going to bed truly tired. Those are the things I miss about that kind of job. Going to bed as that particular kind of tired was just awesome.

In better shape too. Some jobs wear you out. But being on your feet all day and doing moderate heavy lifting is far better for your health than sitting down all day.

Maybe for the first decade but it's nearly impossible to avoid accumulating injuries and eventually chronic pain or disability over a whole career.

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

#345

Post by TaylorAlexander » Sat, Mar 18, 2023, 9:17 PM UTC

Price of college is going up. Wages are stagnating. Quite unfortunately, it makes perfect sense that fewer people would think the expense is worthwhile. I wish we offered free high quality university educations. The USA can coast on its dominance for only so long before the lack of educated people sinks us.

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

#346

Post by listless » Sat, Mar 18, 2023, 9:17 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…

At the risk of sounding like a terrible person, I'd like to be honest for a second about why I went to college, which is to avoid this exactly reality that you just laid out.

I enlisted in the military after finding college to be too boring for my taste. 3 months later I found myself doing the hardest manual labor of my life on a riverboat for the Coast Guard. The pay was not great and nobody cared if you didn't feel like working or were exhausted. The system (as is the military) is not merit based and the guys at the top were pretty awful to the ones at the bottom. By contrast, the officers in the coast guard had nice offices, nice crisp uniforms, nice private rooms, nice private dining quarters, ect. And the difference between those two (enlisted and officer) is a college degree.

What I learned is that I did not want to be an enlisted man. It's a lot of very hard work for little pay and even the highest enlisted man is still saluting the lowest officer.

This was enough to galvanize me to go to college and finish as quickly as I could.

Blue collar jobs are not for everyone. They were not for me. I realize the Coast Guard is not a perfect microcosm of the real world, but in a lot of ways it is. Now that I have the white collar job, I still chuckle at "mental health days" and people complaining about being "burnt out". I chuckle because I remember those days on the river, baking in the hot sun after working for 36 hours straight and how much we all would have laughed until we cried if those words had come out of someone's mouth.

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

#347

Post by psaux » Sat, Mar 18, 2023, 9:18 PM UTC

California Universities just had the most applications in history. UCLA 145k applicants, UCSD 130k applicants. Respectively they are both down now to about a 3% and 5% acceptance rate due to the spike. Might be Covid holdovers due to a gap year, or with the economy as it is, out of state applications have dropped.

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

#348

Post by the_only_law » Sat, Mar 18, 2023, 9:18 PM UTC

Dudeman112 wrote: post #290

zoogeny wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 f…

Also learning is more than just reading a whole lot. Not every field or subject is software development where the tools you need to actually do are so easily accessible.

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

#349

Post by HEmanZ » Sat, Mar 18, 2023, 9:26 PM UTC

briHass wrote: post #132

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…

Anyone that hasn't done manual labor really has no idea how rough it can be. I worked as an office-furniture-mover in my early 20s (Summers in college), and some days were pretty tough. Granted, that's pretty low on the manual labor skills spectrum, but even for a guy in prime physical shape, it's tiring and has elements of danger. Now that I'm double that age, the manual labor I've done like rewiring my house, insta…

I don’t think anyone idealizes those kind of physical labor jobs. Usually “the trades” is much more skilled manual labor: plumbing, hvac, welding, specialized mechanic work and repair, woodworking/carpentry, etc.

No one says people should want a life of a mover, meatpacker, or ditch digger.

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

#350

Post by thomastjeffery » Sat, Mar 18, 2023, 9:34 PM UTC

fschuett wrote: post #298

thomastjeffery wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trouble is: where? The alternative is a variety of places, and practically all of them have some kind of tax; where it be coffee, alcohol, or some kind of membership fee. What we are missing is called, "the third place".

The third place is called "church" and it has been the center of socialization for 2000 years before western society replaced it with college and nightclubs.

I disagree.

Church is more equivalent to hobby clubs and work. Church is focused on a specific narrative, whether that be religious belief or generalized "unity". No matter how casual the experience, churches have purpose and exclusivity.

The third place isn't only physically missing: it's missing in our social behavior. It could easily exist in public parks, but we are expected to avoid strangers.