A generation of American men give up on college • Hacker News Board

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#451

Post by humanrebar » Tue, Sep 07, 2021, 1:27 PM UTC

Aunche wrote: post #359

throwcommonsns wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's this unfortunately prevailing attitude that you aren't successful in America if you aren't living in New York or San Francisco. It's absolutely bonkers. There are many other great places in this country besides those two cities.

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.

That works great until you get married and start a family.

I mean, in theory there could be acceptable ways to let a couple with babies have roommates. But the design problems alone seem too complicated to attempt, let alone the cultural problems.

Also, keep in mind that a young couple with kids might have only one income earner. And that couple is in the same apartment hunt with singles willing to share multi-tenant residences. Sometimes three or four of them!

Point being, "get roommates" doesn't scale over time or over the entire population.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#452

Post by CountDrewku » Tue, Sep 07, 2021, 1:28 PM UTC

phendrenad2 wrote: post #8

This is because in our society, it's more acceptable for men to drop out and get into some skilled trade, like plumbing or climbing telephone poles. People just won't accept that women can also do that. So there's a lot of pressure to make sure your female children go to college and get a degree.

>People just won't accept that women can also do that.

Most women just don't want to do that. I don't think it has much to do with acceptance. Women that want to become plumbers are few an far between.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#453

Post by ekianjo » Tue, Sep 07, 2021, 1:28 PM UTC

ashtonkem wrote: post #401

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #360

Great news, the concept that you need college to succeed was one of the greatest lies told to my generation. Pleased the next generation is waking up. End of the day if the loan can't be written off, if the loan is just handed out to 18 year olds and has almost no limit then the organization that asks for the loan will inevitably balloon out of all proportion and no longer be reflective at all of the value you get ba…

> Great news, the concept that you need college to succeed was one of the greatest lies told to my generation. I guess it means what you mean by “succeed”. Going to college is and always has been a reliable way towards earning more money[0]. The issue isn’t that college doesn’t work, the issue is that it’s basically an asset bubble of sorts and the cost exceeded its value. If huge chunks of future generations skip co…

> It would be much better to reduce the cost of college so that it’s more valuable for more people

To do that, would be very helpful if the government stopped giving zero interest loans. This is resulting in costs skyrocketing.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#454

Post by treis » Tue, Sep 07, 2021, 1:28 PM UTC

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…

Send me your resume to and I'll pass it along:

taway1343@gmail.com

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#455

Post by bawana » Tue, Sep 07, 2021, 1:28 PM UTC

Maybe we could have once justified the premium charged by US universities. But now you can get excellent education in most of the world FOR FREE. To see how this impacts our jobs at home, just look at the healthcare field. Most new physicians are imported from abroad. They can work for less because they do not have massive loans to repay.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#456

Post by nickd2001 » Tue, Sep 07, 2021, 1:28 PM UTC

astura wrote: post #326

nickd2001 wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you mean by "we know we’re not what companies are looking for even with fancy CS degrees", simply that they're looking for identically qualified people that aren't black? If so, I'm extremely sorry to hear this, and disgusted that its happening. I can't actually think of anyone I worked with who'd knowingly treat or value a black colleague or interview candidate any differently, but maybe that's white blindness on…

>that they're looking for identically qualified people that aren't black? You see this here on HN all the time, articles about "how we do hiring" that start out with "I would only hire someone who I'd want to get coffee with." Which, to me at least, makes it sound like the person is looking to hire friends/drinking buddies that also have technical skills, not employees. It's a signal that the person is looking for "t…

Seems to me 100% their loss, if they don't want you! I'm white and male, but the wrong side of 40. Occasionally I've faced ageist "humour". But anywhere that's unfriendly to older people, women, non-white people, would IMHO suck to work even if you were young, white, male etc. Wouldn't wanna work with prejudiced people even if they think I'm "like them". Working in a diverse inclusive team is far more joyful, as well as more productive. BTW in my current workplace, there's a lady who's both older and black. She's awesome at her job, has a unique set of skills built up over many years. IMHO she's irreplaceable as well as a fun nice person to work with. So thank goodness we don't have something that'd have made her feel unwelcome....

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#457

Post by clipradiowallet » Tue, Sep 07, 2021, 1:29 PM UTC

Boilerplate job/career options for young men thinking about attending vs not attending college...

1) Enlist in the military. pay is sub-par, but your living expenses are well taken care of. picking a job that has a civilian equivalent is clutch here.. eg combat medic, electrician, plumber, various IT-related fields.

2) Skilled trades - eg plumber, electrician, HVAC-related. These pay from 50k to 150k depending on what type of work you do. The "high end" for example being a new-construction electrician, working for themselves, making $75/hr with overtime. All these fields have high job security - plumbing, electricity, and HVAC are not a 'fad', and are likely to increase in demand over time.

3) Own a "low tech" business, the sort you might already work for if you are a teenager. Eg...landscaping. You can make $15/hr running a weed eater, or with a small investment and some people skills - you can pay other people $15/hr to run a weed eater, and you run the business. This is more difficult than it seems on the surface (management and people skills), but it is not something you need a college education to succeed at.

4) Specialty/niche fields...these are more difficult to break into if you don't know someone already. Some examples are mosquito spraying(for a city), [water] well digging, or roadside assistance for a larger contract(like cell phone roadside assistance, AAA, or dealer contracts). These are easier to break into if you already know someone who owns that type of business, who will show you the ropes so you know what you are getting into.

This isn't an exhaustive list by any means, but hopefully someone finds it stimulating enough to come up with some ideas about work options that do not involve a mountain of student debt.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#458

Post by datavirtue » Tue, Sep 07, 2021, 1:29 PM UTC

spamizbad wrote: post #329

icare_1er wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on the number of "affirmative-action" initiatives that I see all over the US, in many tech-companies (I don't know about other fields), I'd say that being a women, or black, is definitely a huge plus to get your foot through the door, with many recruitment programs blatantly saying they are only for minorities, which sounds to me like pretty much segregation in reverse, but that indeed seems to be the agenda of…

I'm a white guy and I bootstrapped my career with no degree and little college (dropped out of community college) by simply padded my resume doing some basic contracting gigs for friends and their professional networks and parlayed that into full-time work. I'm now an engineering manager at a unicorn. I will also say that for all this talk about how easy Blacks and women have it, I don't buy it, and I think people sp…

This. Everywhere I have been as a team lead has had issues hiring. I don't remember ever having two desirable candidates in the pipeline at the same time and getting one felt like striking gold. We didn't give two shits what your gender or race was.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#459

Post by CountDrewku » Tue, Sep 07, 2021, 1:30 PM UTC

temp10298385 wrote: post #64

spaceflunky wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> like plumbing or climbing telephone poles. People just won't accept that women can also do that. You sure about that? Or is it that the majority of women don't see themselves unclogging toilets for a living? I have never seen it, but I would suspect list of female applications to plumbing or electrician school is very very short.

I do not necessarily agree with the original post’s statement but this response seems confused to me. Few female applicants to trade schools is consistent with the original statement. If it is societally unacceptable for a woman to be a plumber then I would expect women to act as any rational agent and factor this in when planning their future career.

It's socially unacceptable for a lot of men to be in trades as well, especially if you factor in family background. Let me know what school promotes trades as a good alternative to traditional education? It's almost always looked at as the options for "stupid" people. I don't think your anecdote holds up at all. It seems fare more likely that women in general just do not want physical labor jobs.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#460

Post by the_only_law » Tue, Sep 07, 2021, 1:30 PM UTC

grayclhn wrote: post #342

the_only_law wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sug…

The problem with part time is it adds significantly to the time cost. The attractiveness of a degree to me declined significantly if I won’t be able to complete it till my 30s. I can stomach the lost wages if education could be completes in a mostly standard time, but otherwise there’s already a very good case to be made for staying with what I do now.