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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

#411

Post by kortilla »

gumby wrote: post #217
WalterBright wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EE programs tend to focus on electronics, not electrical systems. But learning how house wiring works is a simple book away. But be careful - unlike electronics, house electrics can kill you. On the other hand, electricians have weird gaps in their knowledge. If I ask them to do something slightly out of the ordinary, this becomes apparent. For example, none of them understand inductive coupling, or even know what it…

I built my house with union labor (union shop) and found the level of competence higher than was typical with jo the random contractor (of course there are exceptions, and for some jobs it doesn’t matter). Likewise with the machine shop a few jobs ago: although we weren’t a union shop, for some jobs we hired contractors in for the union members produced better work, especially for the safety critical stuff. I have no…

> built my house with union labor (union shop) and found the level of competence higher than was typical with jo the random contractor

So you built two homes, one with a well researched union labor group and one with a well researched contractor? Or is this just some BS elaboration based on comparing contractors you hired for small time shit with the big house job?

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#412

Post by teddyh »

DasIch wrote: post #65
wasmburger wrote: post #59

I wonder if it could be because masculinity is being challenged on campus in the current era. Why would a male who has issues with women want to go to a place where he will be challenged to change his views in sensitivty and toxic masculinity courses? Conversely, why would a male who does not have issues with women go to a place where he will be labeled as having toxic masculinity? It's not like these issues haven't…

The term “toxic masculinity” does not and is not intended to imply that masculinity itself is toxic.

This is another very good example of a ‘motte-and-bailey’ term. The term means whatever you want it to mean, at any given moment. When the term is attacked, it retreats to mean only the toxic parts of masculinity. When not attacked, it means the inherent toxicity of all masculinity.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#413

Post by Aunche »

Gollapalli wrote: post #393
Aunche wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These days, it's not enough to live in a world-class city, you need to have your own kitchen, living room, and bathroom that barely get used. The people I know who complain about high cost of living refuse to live with other people.

God forbid you have your own place like the last three generations before you! No, just rent and share like a college student your whole life. That makes sense.

Everyone has to make trade offs. You want to live in the cultural capital of the world or place where the average income is over six figures, but everyone else does as well. There's limited space in these cities, so you need to bid top dollar if you want to keep a place for yourself.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#414

Post by throwtheworld »

10x-dev wrote: post #203
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…

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.

> long as you pass the interviews.

40 applications and 2 resume consultations later and no interview even offered. Meanwhile, some guy you run circles around in real world programming/business experience is 8 for 10. My white classmates noticed this before I did because I’ve just accepted it as part of life.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#415

Post by pwthornton »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #46
pwthornton wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing I am starting to wonder about is if there is a systematic guidance counseling failing in high schools and colleges. There are so many well paying tech jobs that we just aren't getting that many candidates for. Forget not having a great gender ratio, it is often hard to find a lot of candidates for my openings. If I can't offer sponsorship, it can take awhile There clearly seems to be a lot more knowledge in…

You’ll actually find similar gender disparities in China and India. Maybe not as pronounced as the USA, but it’s still there. Somehow there is something going on throughout the industry that crosses cultural boundaries.

I'm not commenting on gender disparities in other countries, although I have seen first hand what you are saying about China and India. What I am saying is that when I hire for various tech jobs, I get a ton of non-American candidates. It can be hard to find good American candidates at times. The demand for the jobs is there, but it's clearly not be communicated to American high school and college kids enough.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#416

Post by sudosysgen »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #271
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…

"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." I can only recommend that you have to base life decisions on your own experience, because it can differ dramatically. I have an experience from which I have drawn some conclusions - I am an immigrant and many of my co-immigrants are convinced that the locals dislike th…

A study has been made with your experiment here in Canada. The result was that the white-sounding profiles got more interviews based solely on last name, no picture needed.

[PDF, French]: https://www.cdpdj.qc.ca/Publications/etude_testing_discrimin...

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#417

Post by busterarm »

s5300 wrote: post #209
notanzaiiswear wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Women didn't and don't need well paying jobs to start a family. What "equal right" do you mean, that "equaled opportunities in the labor market and education"? Also you seem to miss on the fact that men get worse grades in school (which some say is because of discrimination), which makes it harder for them to enter university.

Why is it that you default to the idea that women want to start a family? It's a big ass cool world we have going on, and starting a family effectively ties you down from being able to explore it. Good grief.

The default state of affairs is that organisms want to reproduce and in our species the female is uniquely equipped for this purpose.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#418

Post by alisonkisk »

thatfrenchguy wrote: post #387
RandomLensman wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, but I think it conflates two things: i) getting a college education and ii) the price of it. Maybe the price in the US just isn't right anymore. At the same time, the "elites" do make sure their offspring does get a prestigious (signaling) college/university education. So baring big changes to how society is run, some things will be difficult to get to without a college education.

> Maybe the price in the US just isn't right anymore. Has it be right since at least the 1990s though? There’s clear divergence between income and college costs in the USA, and it’s hard to see why, given everyone in the industry seems to be taking a part of the honey pot. Seriously, how did we arrive to “textbook for a semester are more expensive than tuition is in other counties”?

Not all college is not expensive. Diploma mills and elite colleges and pseudo-elite private colleges are expensive. Liberal arts degrees are expensive. Your local public community/technical college has great ROI for a career-related field. In most states, your public university has a great ROI as well. (If you are paying full price, it may be because you are on the "diploma mills" track within a multi-track school)

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#419

Post by lyaa »

Levitz wrote: post #335
lyaa wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who has experience with the educational systems of the middle east, I find it amusing how you are misinterpreting the situation. It's extremely hard for women in these countries to get good careers in any field other than teaching or medicine especially since they are often forced to marry and leave the work force (they can't work without their husbands' permission and they almost always handle all child c…

So let me get this straight. Your reasoning is that in brutally sexist societies women choose to study completely male-dominated fields because they don't have to make a living after it, whereas in the most egalitarian societies in the entire world sexism pushes them towards traditionally female fields to escape discrimination?

The point is, in middle eastern societies, the realities of working in STEM don't impact the choices women make for their college majors as much. Most of them go to college before marriage with the expectation of not having a long term career in what they study (public colleges are almost always free there, btw). They decide what to do considering different sets of pressures in comparison to women in the west.

Women in more egalitarian societies make their choices under different pressures. They need more of a long-term plan for their career choice and they don't have as many children or marry or leave the workforce as early nor as often as women in the middle east.

Do note though that as more women get into STEM, the experienced and perceived discrimination levels drop dramatically and even more women make the switch. Also, I think it's useful to note that there has been a systemic reduction in what I call the level of "generational misogyny." I can confirm from my own experience that there is a huge difference in how older vs younger (Younger folks are way more egalitarian and some of them assume that they all get the same treatment from older folks but that is just not true. A 30 years old male researcher could have entirely pleasant and productive working relationships with both female researchers in his generation and male researchers in their 60s. He might not expect or understand the degree of hostility or discrimination his female colleagues face when dealing with these very same older researchers. I believe that as time passes and the egalitarian culture actually gets to the "top of the food chain," we will see a distribution that is more representative of male and female preferences without the added discriminatory pressure.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#420

Post by gilbetron »

icare_1er wrote: post #177
zapnuk wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how woman feel reading such comments. Men dominated better paying jobs and positions of power since forever. It took 50+ years between equal rights before the law to equal opportunities in the labour market and education. Men still have every opportunity a woman has. In addition, they are still recognized more for leading positions. They also dominate about every trade related job. Yet, they are 'left withou…

No one ever stopped women from pursuing career in high-frequency trading or anything else. No one ever stopped women from inventing Amazon or Microsoft from their garage. No one ever stopped women from choosing to graduated in science, maths, finance, rather than art, litterature, or "gender studies".

They literally have. That's exactly what nearly all of history has been. Women face an entire pipeline of people trying to stop them from pursuing anything beyond a family. My wife, in high school, was directly told never to take any math in college because girls can't do math. From the moment they are born, most women were told they can't do things boys can do. Yes, these days a fair amount of girls are finally told they can do things, but they still face discrimination. A man fails at something and they'll be told to stand back up and keep trying. A woman fails, and they get told, "well, nice try, you did your best! Go ahead and start a family!"

As another anecdote, I have friends that are married and both in the same science field in academia. Both work at the same university. The woman was told that she needed to prove that she wasn't just hired because of her husband. The man was not told the same.

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