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

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

#351

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

OJFord wrote: post #332

Balgair wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an uncle told me many moons ago: Do more in college. Write a rock opera, spend a week curled up in the union learning about black holes, be good enough to tutor. Don't just graduate with nothing but a taste for bad jazz and cheap beer.

Or, as cousin Melchior put it, 'anything other than a first or a fourth is wasted'. ( Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh. Not sure how internationally read it is, but a worthwhile classic. British degrees are classified from firsts to thirds (via upper and lower second class honours) - but the story is (initially) set at Oxford, which at the time awarded fourths.)

Thanks for the reccomendation! I am a bit confused though. Is 'a first' the top score on an exam or like a suma cum laude?

Free link to the book here:

https://gutenberg.ca/ebooks/waughe-bridesheadrevisited1945/w...

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

#352

Post by dahart » Sat, Mar 18, 2023, 9:35 PM UTC

mtrower wrote: post #322

dahart wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems really funny to me. There’s been a huge push by elites and right-leaning politicians in particular to downplay college education and to trot out blue-collar workers, to convince people not to go to college. Joe the Plumber, for example. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_the_Plumber Conservatives and businesses want more people to take low-paying jobs, and having the masses be educated threatens their abili…

> Conservatives and businesses want more people to take low-paying jobs, and having the masses be educated threatens their ability to pay minimum wage. Not having tradesman threatens the ability of society as we know it to continue. We aren't going to get far without carpenters and plumbers. These jobs simply need to pay more. > and it really very much undermines the notion that somehow people are getting tricked int…

> These jobs simply need to pay more.

Totally agree! What can be done to get trade jobs to pay as much as white-collar desk jobs that require degrees?

> It’s also quite possible for them to come out of college $40k in debt, with no job to show for it, and end up struggling to pay that off for the rest of their lives.

It is possible, sure, but the data shows conclusively that you’re better off, statistically speaking, with a degree. The average outcome for degrees is double the salary and double the lifetime earnings. So if we’re going to talk about struggling, we need to be fair to the people who struggle to pay for food and housing, not just struggle to pay off their college debt. College debt has been going up, and that might be the reason that college educated people are having relatively less saved at retirement age as of late.

Anyway, yeah I agree about the anecdote too.

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

#353

Post by SketchySeaBeast » Sat, Mar 18, 2023, 9:36 PM UTC

happytesd8889 wrote: post #249

A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. I had my best critical thinking class in community college. If I was innately smart, I probably would not have needed it as badly, but that one class gave me a lot of foundation and some credence to 'education' being useful. In other words, I am not smart, but I am educated. Overall, I think society benefits from that. But that was 2 year community college after which I transferred ( and later got an MBA ).

People always use this term "critical thinking" on the internet and I am not sure anybody that uses it has a good definition of what it means or why it is something that can or must be taught in a college kind of environment. At least personally, it's concerning to find out how many people think they are thinking critically all the time, but are not able to think critically about the definition of critical thinking.…

As part of my history degree a required course was a guide to studying history (I don't remember what it was called - it was so long ago my degree could be considered history at this point). The whole course was about looking at the narrative in whatever work we were reading and then thinking about the author of that narrative. It was important to consider what the author was (and wasn't) saying in their work, to consider reasons why they were and weren't saying things.

For instance (and this wasn't an example from the course - that would be brutal to read the whole thing over a semester - I can barely remember the works we discussed directly) - Edward Gibbon's History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. He has a discussion around Christianity and the Catholic Church being one of the reason's for Rome's fall. It's interesting to place this idea in the context of HIS time - he was writing during the late 18th century and we see his contemporary modes of thoughts in events like the French Revolution, when there was a deliberate effort to remove the Catholic Church's power. The contemporary thought and his arguments mirrored each other. It was as much studying the work in its historical context as studying what the work was saying. This is what I think of when I think of critically thinking - considering all the layers of both the argument and why it's being made.

These are probably details around your point 2 in that they are meta questions, and while annoying, are vital to engage with a historical text outside of anything but as a collection of facts and an entertaining narrative.

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

#354

Post by JAlexoid » Sat, Mar 18, 2023, 9:37 PM UTC

xyzelement wrote: post #54

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…

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…

You have a very weird understanding on how colleges today operate.

There has been a lot of progress in exposing students to broad and multifaceted view of human endeavours. Aboriginal cultures are portrayed in full and with their negative and positive aspects in courses about them. I literally had a course on pre-colonial American cultures... that included all aspects of culture.

What would be racist - is having presenting a very lopsided view on what happened before colonial era replaced those cultures in the "new world"

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

#355

Post by cortesoft » Sat, Mar 18, 2023, 9:37 PM UTC

hgsgm wrote: post #79

varunjain99 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd also add 4) A social / networking experience. As an adult, rarely will you interact so often with so many people of your age. 5. A signaling mechanism. I have X credentials so give me job Y. This is far from ideal because the signal can be noisy. But it is a data point. It's similar to how physics PhD's are targeted for quant finance roles - they've signaled they can solve hard problems!

4) if everyone wasn't locked up in college, they would meet other young adults in their neighborhood and social/hobby clubs and entertainment venues 5) in the modern day that can solved by testing regimes. A self-educated quant could take an online qualifying test, and in-person final exam, to get a job in finance.

I disagree with your testing theory. The signal from a degree isn't just that you know the content, but that you can consistently work towards a goal over many years, navigating a large organization with lots of arbitrary rules, and willingness to do assigned work that may serve no purpose.

You can't test to show that ability.

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

#356

Post by Animats » Sat, Mar 18, 2023, 9:39 PM UTC

inglor_cz wrote: post #262

pacaro wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a two edged sword here, both for the university student and the independent learner Learning in a structured environment provides access to the orthodox in the field of study. This can be very valuable to limit unnecessary exploration of blind avenues (there is of course such a thing as necessary exploration of blind avenues) For those who progress through the academy, the risk is that they become narrow thin…

The narrow thinkers / cranks dilemma is beautifully described, thank you. You aren't in the academia, are you? Because you explain things in simple terms, yet very efficiently. One of the diseases of current academia is use of an extremely stilted language, perhaps intended to paper over some logical cracks.

> One of the diseases of current academia is use of an extremely stilted language, perhaps intended to paper over some logical cracks.

One word. Derrida.

ChatGPT and its successors may put a big dent in the pretentious blithering industry. It's now too easy to generate a pseudo-academic style. Large language models are really good at this, because they have so much obscure text upon which to draw.

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

#357

Post by psyklic » Sat, Mar 18, 2023, 9:39 PM UTC

mtrower wrote: post #255

azinman2 wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A lot of what the general public gets isn't deep thought. It's being told what to think. A lot of the what to think is ideas based on assumptions and beliefs. Are people better off for learning them? Yes because what it would be replaced with is even worse and likely instantly falls apart under a modicum of critical thinking.

That's just indoctrination. Great I guess if you agree with the brainwashing. Not so great if you're on the other side.

It's "indoctrination" to point out arguments that fall apart under a modicum of critical thinking?

You could easily argue that education involves learning to construct solid arguments that do not fall apart.

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

#358

Post by lolbert3 » Sat, Mar 18, 2023, 9:40 PM UTC

nonethewiser wrote: post #326

suzzer99 wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I was rich I would still make sure my kids worked at least one blue collar job in their teens. There's no substitute for first-hand experience in that world.

That’s pretty much all high school kids are qualified for. With some exception. Well, unskilled labor at least. Not quite synonymous with blue color but close.

[dead]

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

#359

Post by spacephysics » Sat, Mar 18, 2023, 9:41 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…

Fully agree. And to continue this, I think one step that would be accepted across the aisle (in lieu of total debt forgiveness) is to either severely cut or get rid of interest rates on school loans.

The compound interest working against students is a major part of the predation in these loans.

But banks need to make money? Have a one-time interest tacked onto the total loan amount that doesn’t change over time.

This incentivize banks to not loan out as much to just about anyone, and thereby forcing schools to spend less on frivolous staffing and social issues/needless expansion.

Then, slowly reduce the federal student loan amounts to some arbitrarily low amount, something enough for someone on the median salary to comfortably pay back if they went to a state school.

Blue collar jobs are in desperate need of apprenticeships. And there’s good money to be made. But it is legit hard, physical work. And work that needs to get more respect, because without it, water doesn’t run, lights don’t turn on, roads crumble, and buildings aren’t built.

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

#360

Post by quadrifoliate » Sat, Mar 18, 2023, 9:41 PM UTC

xyzelement wrote: post #54

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…

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…

> Eg I had a class that really critically analyzed native American cultures. Today the class would be considered racist, it would have to a priori be an admiration of those cultures, rather than a critical analysis.

This is bullshit. The difference is that today, your own culture e.g. (non-native) American society till the modern day is considered fair game for analysis, whereas 20 years ago there was probably a fair bit of "they are savages to be studied, whereas we are civilized" complex going on.

Guess what, that tends to temper critical analysis of other cultures as well, and focuses on understanding without judgement. It is dishonest to cast this as "a priori admiration".

> The good news is that its much more accessible now days to learn how to think outside a college system. If that's what you are hungry for, college is perhaps even your least likely bet.

An unnecessary dichotomy. The Internet is not blocked at a college, you can continue to study outside things while you are at college. The problem for most people seems to be that at a college, these ideas will be subjected to rigorous intellectual analysis, whereas on the Internet it's easier to hide in echo chambers where everyone agrees with you.

> I say this as a person with 3 degrees...colleges were more old school then than now.

I think this is little more than viewing the past with rose-tinted glasses. Guess what, things change, and usually in a way that society is better off. I highly recommend against the Internet as a substitute for actual college education because it's not "old school" any more.