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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

#51

Post by petre »

david38 wrote: post #26
otoburb wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the article women still believe the trade-off to be worth paying for and attending college since their application numbers are still holding steady. Are most of them making a huge mistake? I guess it depends heavily in the credential(s), but I think there has to be a deeper reason for falling and unbalanced undergraduate enrollment amongst men.

Women are known to chase institutional accolades more than men when given the opportunity. It is in line with a general preference for more security. Will it work today? Probably. There are few women in the trades. If you can get a cheap degree, it is likely better than no degree.

No, women are generally underpaid compared to men, so it's obvious that they'll try to get the appropriate degrees in order to be able to compete.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#52

Post by throwcommonsns »

notfromhere wrote: post #48

There’s a lot of anti-intellectualism that floats around in male culture, and a pernicious attitude that you can make it without a degree (despite the reality that a lack of credentials locks you out of most high paying or leadership roles). Tech likes to pretend credentials don’t matter, but that’s entirely not true. Not surprising that enrollment is down when too many men think learning things is for nerds. Source:…

Even people with degrees are locked out of those high paying or leadership roles. Meanwhile, others can make it just fine by learning a trade. As a junior engineer, I was making the same amount as my degree less counterparts working in the oil industry were.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#53

Post by pharmakom »

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.

It’s actually the safety / creepiness risk of having to work in people’s homes.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#54

Post by noduerme »

notfromhere wrote: post #48

There’s a lot of anti-intellectualism that floats around in male culture, and a pernicious attitude that you can make it without a degree (despite the reality that a lack of credentials locks you out of most high paying or leadership roles). Tech likes to pretend credentials don’t matter, but that’s entirely not true. Not surprising that enrollment is down when too many men think learning things is for nerds. Source:…

I didn't go to college, and I'm one of the techs you're referring to. But techs also think on-job experience and self-motivated projects are equivalent to or better than college, and both of those are necessary.

There are tons of high paying jobs available to people who learn trades, either in trade schools or on the job. Much of tech is like a trade - as a software engineer, I certainly have more in common with a car mechanic working on custom builds than I do with an accountant, lawyer, doctor or CEO. A lot of Americans were sold the false idea that college would help them know what they wanted to do, and make money. But it's not a magic beansprout you just ride up to the heights of society... definitely not when everyone else is doing it and everyone else is in debt. You have to actually be motivated. And if you're motivated... well it's kike George Carlin said about self help books: You went to the bookstore to go find a self help book, you're motivated, what do you need the book for?

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#55

Post by citizenpaul »

chuckee wrote: post #13
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.

I see. And there's no non-college educated professions where women are prevalent? It's plumbing or bust? Of course clearly when women were under-represented in college, that was due to misogyny. And now that they are over-represented, it's also due to misogyny. No matter what the facts are, the conclusion is the same. There's a word for that.

Good luck getting anyone on hn to consider that just maybe colleges being often openly hoatile towards men might drive them elsewhere

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#56

Post by pharmakom »

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.

From a sample of 3 countries (two with very traditional gender roles), I’m not convinced. In Eastern Europe software engineering was a female dominated field.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#57

Post by atraac »

throwinthsaway wrote: post #3

Getting into debt to get a piece of paper that only lets you begin to enter the job market after gathering enough credentials by either working for free or talking to others and hopefully trying your luck even though there are 100s for a single internship... College is a scam unless you're paying close attention and don't get into debt in the first place. Those who manage to jump through all of the hoops don't realiz…

> Those who manage to jump through all of the hoops don't realize that there is a secondary scam waiting for them: working for a wage without significant stock options while someone makes millions sitting around doing nothing off of their effort.

I know this is the thing in US and shouldn't surprise me but I'm based in central Europe and honestly the thought of this still feels so abstract to me. I'd love to have an option of choosing jobs that offer stock options.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#58

Post by savanaly »

PaulHoule wrote: post #25
dragonwriter wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the class were gender-balanced the odds of that would be 1/512 If each arrival at the desk were an independent draw from the full class, then, sure, the chance of any given set of 9 arrivals having 9 women would be 1/512. (Though the chance of the sequence of 10 including 9 women and 1 man is 10/1024, or about 5 times more likely; by cherry-picking the set of arrivals to consider, you are añready making the set…

yeah i am a p-hacker who can do any kind of statistics so long as it is nonparametric statistics because i only know the binomial distribution

On a site like this where anyone can comment and only a few do, this is the far greater problem compared to p-hacking: https://web.ma.utexas.edu/users/mks/statmistakes/filedrawer.....

There are probably 512 people in this thread right now that have had that same experience you did but didn't reject the null hypothesis so they're not commenting.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#59

Post by wasmburger »

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 been all over the press for years.

#MeToo Is Making Colleges Teach Toxic Masculinity 101

https://www.thedailybeast.com/metoo-is-making-colleges-teach...

Toxic Masculinity and Higher Education

https://www.higheredjobs.com/Articles/articleDisplay.cfm?ID=...

And so on. A quick search turns up 1000's of such links

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#60

Post by Arainach »

throwcommonsns wrote: post #50
Arete314159 wrote: post #42

One guy they profiled is making $20 an hour in Toledo, Ohio. If he's working full time, that's 40k a year. Zillow has a number of houses for sale in Toledo for under $40k. Like, they need some work, but a real house, under 40k. I think that guy is doing fine, he should just keep doing exactly what he's doing.

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.

If you can make NYC/SF money and save/invest a portion of your income, you can retire and do significantly better elsewhere. You can't do the opposite.

If you can have a decent lifestyle in Ohio on 40k (big if, when you factor in retirement planning) you can still fundamentally never leave Ohio.

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