Ask HN: Are you unable to find employment?

I would speculate that what you’re seeing is society in general being much more of a monoculture than it used to be. Extremes still exist, but they are far fewer than they were 100 years ago, when people couldn’t even use certain water fountains because of the color of their skin.

Maybe the point you’re getting at is that universities used to be edgier—it was more of an environment for challenging the status quo and not being afraid of controversy. I agree that it’s extremely not like that anymore, to the point that even guest speakers on campus are frequently boycotted or threatened.

I think it may be indoctrination in a systemic way, but not as a conscious, active effort. I don’t think there’s a secret group of people deliberately making universities more monocultural with that as the intended outcome. But I recognize that a process may have naturally led to this regardless.

> General education needs to happen in K-12

I think there’s value in extending general education beyond what public schooling offers, which isn’t much. Public school really fails to engage students in meaningful and interesting ways. People graduate hating math and thinking it’s stupid and pointless because they’re never given context as to why it’s interesting, or shown all the cool things math allows us to do. Universities can engage people in topics they wouldn’t normally consider, and that’s where the value of general education comes in. My partner is a great example of this—she got to attend a series of university lectures when she was in high school, covering a broad range of topics designed for her age group to help them figure out what interested them. She attended a physics lecture on dark matter, and it genuinely sparked an interest in a topic she had previously found hideously boring. She now has a PhD and a prestigious career in that field, and it never would have happened without that generalized exposure that universities provide.

> Nobody in their right mind would suggest an English or History major should be forced to take a solid year worth of CS coursework as a condition for obtaining the degree. Why is the reverse OK? It is not.

I would say English is definitely a worthwhile course for CS majors, due to my previous point.

> Here's another thought experiment

Yes, I agree. A university is not optimal for maximum efficiency in job performance, but that’s not really its primary goal. And I think universities are fine the way they are (minus the monoculture, the expense, and the problematic treatment of grad students, along with the publish-or-perish mentality). That said, there should also be better, more accessible mainstream options for the kind of training you’re describing.

america needs immigrants, both ones coming through the soutern border as well as those flying in to JFK with the view of Statue of Liberty. both political parties are money-lobby driven and immigrants, both blue and white collar, are good for business.

What skills do you have to make you competitive in a saturated market?

Do you really think greedy corporations who are only out to make a profit are going to go out of their way to hire someone less qualified to oppress White men?

I can get behind the argument that MSM uses it this on every election cycle, but to deny that the US workers (both blue and white collar) are getting negatively affected by this is putting on a blindfold.

> ... both blue and white collar, are good for business.

That is a truism, of course more people consuming is good for business. The problem is defining "business", its side effects, and who owns it. There is a whole bunch of work on assessing the impact of immigration on local populations (a lot of it propaganda tbf), but reality is that something that benefits Twitter, Amazon, or Microsoft bottom lines might not be aligned with the interests of the workers in the same geographical areas, and this money might not trickle down at all (btw the failure of trickle down is a very common leftist argument...)

Bezos being able to import a bunch of devs might make him and the landlords in Seattle a bit more rich, but benefit none to Joe the recent graduate that needs a job to pay the bills and cannot really afford to retrain on another field with a more favorable supply/demand ratio.