More students are turning away from college and toward apprenticeships • Hacker News Board

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

#501

Post by sammalloy » Sun, Mar 19, 2023, 12:59 AM UTC

mythrwy wrote: post #446

sammalloy wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Colleges need to cost less. Much less. Conservatives have waged a targeted attack on US education by shifting the federal and state tax burden to students. This began with Ronald Reagan and ended with the Koch network. Conservatives intentionally did this because they believe the traditional academic system in the US produces liberals and democrats. By shifting the tax burden to students, they have disincentivized…

"Conservatives have waged a targeted attack on US education by shifting the federal and state tax burden to students." What? Do you mean college used to be paid for by taxes and now students have to pay for it and that's why college is so expensive? If not what exactly does that mean? A link to a collection of ideological ramblings and one sided opinions isn't really "evidence" in any meaningful sense of the word. I…

> Do you mean college used to be paid for by taxes and now students have to pay for it and that's why college is so expensive?

That’s exactly what it means. Not sure why you think this is an opinion. It’s a demonstrable, historical fact based on solid evidence. I provided reliable sources in my initial comment which you waved away and dismissed out of hand. Tax cuts for the rich, supported by deep cuts to educational budgets, led to increases in the cost of education for everyone else. This isn’t seriously disputed by anyone. It was Koch’s published strategy circa 1980, it was subsequently embraced by Reagan conservatives for that decade, and is now enshrined by conservatives as standard operating procedure. There are literally hundreds of academic sources supporting this fact. Conservatives don’t want to pay for public education because they believe it produces liberals and democrats, and they aren’t entirely wrong, in the sense that education does have a liberalizing influence on society. The problem is that public opinion (also known as democracy) is against conservatives, as the public overwhelmingly supports funding education and lowering the cost for everyone. Conservatives are aware of this, which is why they are passing anti-democratic legislation in as many states as they can. None of what I’ve written here is controversial in any way. This is what is occurring.

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

#502

Post by mym1990 » Sun, Mar 19, 2023, 1:00 AM UTC

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…

Ah yes, going into work every day sneering at your employer as they are your true mortal enemy, sounds like a perfect way to live.

I am assuming that since you think this, you don't have a job?

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

#503

Post by throwaway4aday » Sun, Mar 19, 2023, 1:01 AM UTC

syzarian wrote: post #437

dahfizz wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And communism leads to concentrated, uncontested power. The dictatorship of the proletariat will never dissolve itself once it gets absolute power.

It is possible to have communism without concentrated, uncontested power. We have seen no such implementation as of yet but it can happen. As with most revolutions there is a period of absolutism that follows its success.

I agree that you could have communism without concentrated power but the key there would be that all governance and choice of governance would be rescinded to the smallest possible communities. That means, absolutely and without debate, that those communities could choose whatever form of economic organization that they wanted to, so you would wind up with a heterogenous mixture of every kind of economic theory, communism, capitalism, socialism, mercantilism, and probably a dozen other variations. That would be great if you could ensure that certain rights were broadly respected such as freedom of movement so that people could leave a system they disliked and join one they preferred.

I don't necessarily see communism working over a long period even at that scale though. I think attrition would be too high. The chance of some whacko gaining too much power would be too high. Moral would degrade over time when people were able to compare their own situation with that of their neighbours under other systems.

Honestly, I think we'd be better off making room for small communes and giving them legal protections similar to corporations. Establish some decent laws that allow people to organize and live that way for as long as they want to but also ensure that such systems aren't abused and are held to account when they do wrong. There's a time and place for them in many people's lives but it isn't something we should try to impose on a broad, unwilling populace.

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

#504

Post by hintymad » Sun, Mar 19, 2023, 1:04 AM UTC

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…

Yet in the meantime UCLA got 146K applications this year, and UCSD more than 130K. Students with 4.3+ weighted GPAs and 15+ APs still got rejected. UC's admission officers (AO) in their pubic talks made it clear that academic performance account for only 40% in admission, extracurricular activities another 40%, and personality 20%. So, UC systems give AOs 60% of the discretion! How is it different from the garbage Xiaolian System that Chinese used before the Tang dynasty? But I digressed. The point is the demand for top-tier university is nothing but higher.

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

#505

Post by cperciva » Sun, Mar 19, 2023, 1:05 AM UTC

OJFord wrote: post #462

cperciva wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"First" means "first class honours" aka. the highest designation of degree. The US equivalent is summa cum laude, yes.

It's not quite equivalent in that it's more standardised and every university uses it. I think it's more accurately equivalent to 3.x GPA or above; probably you could find graduate entry requirements (though most are probably fine with at least a 2:1/upper second) stating exactly that as their equivalent admissions criterion.

Let me rephrase that. An Oxford first is equivalent to summa cum laude from an Ivy League.

Yes, the standard for graduate admission around the world (and also other things, like undergraduate research awards in Canada) is upper second.

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

#506

Post by te_chris » Sun, Mar 19, 2023, 1:09 AM UTC

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…

The payoff to the finishing school part is different if you’re not in the US where the cost is now insane.

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

#507

Post by bumby » Sun, Mar 19, 2023, 1:10 AM UTC

bombolo wrote: post #475

pdntspa wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Trivia is defined as “information of little value.” So who determines what is trivia and what isn’t?

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

#508

Post by irrational » Sun, Mar 19, 2023, 1:11 AM UTC

meh8881 wrote: post #459

irrational wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know. I studied ancient history and historical linguistics in college. I managed to graduate with 23 years, but I don’t consider my time in college to be wasted at all. College introduced me to a much more diverse group of people. I got to interact with very smart people on a continuous basis which helped me to think more clearly, more logically, etc.

People talking about the economics of college and citing their experience from over two decades ago as if it’s supposed to be comparable to today is really frustrating.

The economics wasn’t the important part. The things I learned studying ancient history and linguistics and how those have made me a better person and developer are.

I do understand how much tuition has skyrocketed. The year I graduated, tuition was $1,360 per semester. In 2023, tuition is $3,152 per semester. That is a $1,792 increase only 25 years (I graduated in 1998)

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

#509

Post by Nifty3929 » Sun, Mar 19, 2023, 1:12 AM UTC

rthomas6 wrote: post #264

Rant: I feel like most people haven't really thought about why colleges are so expensive now. It is because of the federally guaranteed student loans. It means there's pretty much no downside to banks loaning an arbitrarily large amount, because if the student doesn't pay it back, the government will. And since most 18 year old students have pretty much zero price sensitivity, and they now have unlimited funds, colle…

Upvoted, but I have a slight difference as to the best way to help the underprivileged: it’s better to just give money without any strings or designated purposes. This preserves the full competition and downward cost pressure since people can always use some or all of the money elsewhere.

If you provide funding (loans or cash) that is earmarked, then it serves as a price floor and upward cost pressure on that thing.

Let’s just give everybody $20k per year between ages 18-22, with no strings.

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

#510

Post by ericd » Sun, Mar 19, 2023, 1:15 AM UTC

hamburglar wrote: post #182

pacaro wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a two edged sword here, both for the university student and the independent learner Learning in a structured environment provides access to the orthodox in the field of study. This can be very valuable to limit unnecessary exploration of blind avenues (there is of course such a thing as necessary exploration of blind avenues) For those who progress through the academy, the risk is that they become narrow thin…

The self-taught path can also lead to another kind of deficiency, which is someone who knows all the concepts but doesn’t know how to talk about them efficiently. This ends up being the type of person who spends 5 minutes describing a component of their design where items are stored based on a key and can be looked up by that key so another process can stash and retrieve those things rather than recompute them but th…

I think reimplementing that stuff is probably a big part of why you felt they were so brilliant, though - once you've built your own way up the tech tree, you can see the whole tree, and move around it at will, drawing disparate parts into solving whatever problem you have right then.