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More students are turning away from college and toward apprenticeships

wsj.com

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

#471

Post by ricardobeat »

wolverine876 wrote: post #408
mkl wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suggest you read the article. If that doesn't answer your question I think you and I are interpreting the claim differently.

I'm not reading articles (especially Wikipedia) and trying to infer your argument for you. You state it if you've got it. Stop making excuses. Assume I know about the Cambodian genocide.

"tried to restart society by eliminating people who didn't fit the mold" seems like a decent, if a bit simplistic, description of the Cambodian genocide. What exactly are you up against?

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

#472

Post by confidantlake »

listless wrote: post #346
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…

You don't sound at all like a terrible person, in fact I think this is a fairly common experience. My grandpa told me a very similar story about freezing his ass off in a far north oil town and seeing how the foremen lived compared to him. That spurred him to go to college and live a much nicer life.

I went through a smaller version of that myself, working at a shitty job in the lifeguard in the hot sun as a teen. Saw people who were 30 or 40 still working there. I knew I did not want it to be me. Got a degree, ended up at an underpaid part time office job, starting at 6 am every morning. But a few guys there had full time jobs that paid well and started at 9. Those were the programmers. Decided that was the road to go, went back to school and joined the good life.

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

#473

Post by alphanullmeric »

azinman2 wrote: post #40
pclmulqdq wrote: post #26

College seems to have ~3 uses from students' perspectives: 1. A trade school for technical professionals who actually need specialist education (scientists, engineers, lawyers, doctors, etc.) 2. A finishing school for the elite 3. A blood sports arena for the brilliant to complete for professorships (almost all of whom will lose and be saddled with 6 figures of debt and 7 figures of opportunity cost) A lot of people…

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…

Philosophy? A subject so useless the only jobs it qualifies you far are those that have you teach it to others. I have no idea why you’d group a pyramid scheme with two sciences.

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

#474

Post by troyvit »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #26

College seems to have ~3 uses from students' perspectives: 1. A trade school for technical professionals who actually need specialist education (scientists, engineers, lawyers, doctors, etc.) 2. A finishing school for the elite 3. A blood sports arena for the brilliant to complete for professorships (almost all of whom will lose and be saddled with 6 figures of debt and 7 figures of opportunity cost) A lot of people…

This is messed up and gendered today but when I went to school in the '90s people would add a 4th use, saying some women were in college to get their MRS (ie. just find somebody to marry). No clue if it's like that today. Also I don't get why a dude couldn't do the same thing.

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

#475

Post by bombolo »

pdntspa wrote: post #412
Larrikin wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say that knowing eligibility requirements of the governor of Kentucky without using the internet is useless information to everyone that doesn't work in the Kentucky election office. The useful skill is being able to find the information on the Internet if you want to run for governor of Kentucky. If you grow up in Kentucky learning it once in seventh grade is sufficient so you know it's a possibility, but wi…

Why do we need this stupid metric of "will I ever use this"? That is a recipe for ignorance. You will never be able to handle novel circumstances if you limit your knowledge to shit you think you will need.

True… but trivia isn't necessarily knowledge

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

#476

Post by confidantlake »

karmelapple wrote: post #469
the_only_law wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I had nurse friends who had impressive pay on paper, but we’re desperate to work in anything else because the shifts were hellish.

I don’t understand the hours expected of healthcare professionals in the USA. It sounds like madness and a definite route to burnout. Why don’t the professional organizations and other groups mandate serious reform for this? Have more reasonable max hour stretches, etc. Are the difficulty of hospital handoffs primarily the source for the awful hours demanded?

Isn't it ironic that healthcare professionals have such unhealthy work?

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

#477

Post by pclmulqdq »

revelio wrote: post #406
FooBarBizBazz wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear it used to be that there was a culture of serious working-class learning in England. Like, the barbers in the shop would pay some street-kid to read them books -- there was no TV -- while they cut hair. And the cabbie could get into a conversation about Kant or something with his passenger. Maybe just to mess with them, but still.

The surprisingly intellectual cabbie is practically a trope. They get to talk to a lot of different people so can end up learning all sorts of things you wouldn't expect.

They also have to be pretty smart and able to study to get past the knowledge, so cabbies in London are often actually pretty intellectual people.

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

#478

Post by pinkmuffinere »

phist_mcgee wrote: post #376
listless wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Both can still be valid. Mental health days are good, and burn out is a real phenomenon. It's a shame that blue collar workers don't have access to these facilities, and yes office workers are by and large 'softer' than blue collar workers. But we should fight corporations and organisations to provide those facilities for everyone , and not pick sides in a working class debate (not that you did that). All paid worker…

>All paid workers real enemy is the capital class, and we should never forget that.

I totally agree with you up to this point, so just want to explain why i disagree with this particular point.

I want better treatment for all humans, and I agree that some of the "capital class" is actively fighting this, but some is actively helping it as well. For example, I think Bill Gates, the Collison Brothers, and some of the Kennedy's have been a large net positive on humankind. Perhaps those examples aren't perfect, but at the very least we can imagine somebody belonging to the "capital class" that also helps improve conditions for everyone. I think anyone that's trying to improve the human condition is a friend.

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

#480

Post by khalilravanna »

Balgair wrote: post #238
xyzelement wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

Love this thought. I’d also throw in that doing well in college can be as simple as trying tons of new experiences with the absurd low risk entailed with being a kid with almost total freedom and almost 0 real responsibility. Make friends, make memories, but most of all: make lots of mistakes!
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