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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

#531

Post by spaceflunky »

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.

You’re just infantilizing women by blaming every outcome on “society”. I fully believe women are capable of making their own decisions and there’s no “cabal of men” holding them back from unclogging toilets.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#532

Post by the_only_law »

actually_a_dog wrote: post #508
the_only_law wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and in your late teens and early 20's you'll make a lot more than most college grads. I question even this. I live in an area of the US without a strong union culture, and known a lot of people in the trades and it doesn’t seem uncommon to see job postings for X apprentice starting at $13-$15 and hour. I could get close to that at a shitty gas station clerk job.

I'd like to see some harder numbers on this, too. I'm from a similar area, but, maybe things are different in other places. It would be great to see the figures adjusted for cost of living.

It’s hard to get good data broken when you’re looking into things like career level, etc. but when I go on the BLS salary page for my MSA I can see the following

HVAC Repair. It’s a pretty common trade out here. I have a number of family who’s done it at one point. There’s probably a pretty strong demand given how miserable I was when my AC died the other day. Annual median is $42,640

Insurance Claims Processors, which in the particular city I live in tends to be one of the big options for otherwise unskilled college graduates. Annual median: $43,570

Not that big of a difference, though I suppose you could argue the former has the slight advantage of not having as much educational debt burden, which probably exceeds that ~$1k difference.

However like the GP noted, a person in the latter position likely has better options late career.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#533

Post by JackFr »

rgrieselhuber wrote: post #422
ashtonkem wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Bad for us as a society how?

Well, two ways. First, broadly speaking across the economy, a college graduate 2000 hours a year typically produces more GDP$ to the real economy than a non-college graduate. There are a lot of caveats to that statement, but broadly it's true and that's why people will refer to education as human capital. Second (and I believe this is the more controversial claim), as a society we really do benefit from intellectuals expert in history, literature and other liberal arts and from basic research, by which I mean scientific research which has no immediately forseeable practicable application.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#534

Post by yardie »

snakeboy wrote: post #481
yardie wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a lot more people of color trying to break into the field than there are companies willing to hire them. There is a big difference between what they are saying and what they are implementing and I can say with absolute confidence that diversity is just lip service. FAANGs primarily recruit from other FAANGs. If none of those companies are diverse how are they going to diversify their recruitment?

> FAANGs primarily recruit from other FAANGs How could that be? I was under the impression that a huge amount of new hires come in each year from fresh university graduates.

Take Apple for example, out of the 600+ jobs posted on their career website only 19 even mention students. And some of those are actual student jobs: student outreach, student recruiters. If they have a different pipeline for recruiting students I'm not aware of it. If new graduate positions are only recruited at campus job fairs that has a greater potential to be worse. FAANGs haven't been recruiting from majority minority schhols or HBCUs.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#535

Post by Aerroon »

notanzaiiswear wrote: post #183
oldsecondhand wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a legacy of socialist systems where you can have 2 years of paid maternity leave and then go back to your previous job.

Also I guess you HAVE to go back to your job. Everybody has to do their part for society.

The Soviet Union also tried to encourage having children. Not only did they have maternity leave, there was even a 6% income tax on childlessness.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#536

Post by baron816 »

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…

I think your comment, and the responses to it help advance my point: there are a bunch of narratives out there that are not wholly rooted in reality (or out of date in your case). These can have detrimental effects.

There are certainly black individuals who would pursue a career in tech, if not for the (perhaps earned) perception that tech is hostile towards black people. Things have changed, but the narrative hasn’t, and that is doing real damage.

I’m trying to say the same sort of thing applies to white men and college—just there being a perception of college campuses being hostile to them is going to prevent many of them from going. And people will be hurt by that, in one way or another.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#537

Post by racl101 »

rgrieselhuber wrote: post #447
racl101 wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine their point is people forgoing a post secondary education.

The conflation of college with education was natural and understandable until the last 10-15 years, but that appears to be changing.

I agree as well. I'm just speculating about OP's point.

Now you can get a pretty decent education from watching lots of videos and an education that commensurate with one that you'd plunk down thousands of dollars for at a university or college.

Especially in the era of COVID where they would have you watch videos anyways during a period of lockdown.

So glad I'm not a student right now. I'd feel so ripped off.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#538

Post by tck42 »

nemo44x wrote: post #511
tck42 wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That quote, in context, is available here. https://www.penguin.co.uk/articles/2020/june/ibram-x-kendi-d... I think it's pretty clear from the full text that he's not advocating for racism against past racists or their offspring (which, intentional or not, is what your use of the quote makes it sound like).

He's advocating for "anti-racism" which claims there is no such thing as "not racist" policy, only racist policy and anti-racist policy. But he jumps through hoops to redefine racism so that it can suit his argument that "not racist" doesn't exist. That if you don't consider race in literally everything then you are racist, by his definition. This is in direct opposition to the Civil Rights act of 1964: "Since the 19…

I think the redefining racism you mention is simply pointing out, at a high level, that one law does not erase injustice ingrained into power systems that were instructed by racism for literally hundreds of years, or the effects those systems have had on the targets of this racism and their offspring (things like generational wealth accumulation), and everyone else subject to those systems.

The other thing is the idea that, for those of us growing up in various segments of society that are affected by the above, our very mechanism of thought was generated by this system, and that affects how we think about and perceive these systems (and everything else).

I believe he's simply advocating for being conscious of the above two facts, when examining these systems and reforming them (and of course when teaching the history of these systems). To ignore race and racism as if it never happened is to allow all of that ingrained racism to perpetuate (of systems and of thought). All of this sounds pretty reasonable to me, but that may be due to my particular experience.

That said - I'm no expert, I've only read the linked passage so far, though I've now ordered the book and will start reading it tonight. I'll refrain from commenting further here (I think we're pretty off-topic already). Thanks for the discussion!

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#539

Post by zabzonk »

jjk166 wrote: post #514
zabzonk wrote: post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's not really a thing. Sorry, it is. I've worked in higher education and I've seen it happen. What other explanation do you have for the sales of these ludicrous "textbooks"?

It's not like there is a cheap alternative that the professors can switch to. All new edition textbooks are expensive. They can't specify out of print editions because then you can't guarantee that your students can get access to them, and the textbook companies update the problems in the books just enough to make using a different edition from the one specified impractical. Some publishers may incentivize using thei…

Then don't require (note, require) students to buy textbooks at all - what are these lecturers supposed to be doing? Are there no libraries. Don't outdate them every year to make second hand ones useless.

> ridiculously overpriced

Well, you admit it yourself.

And the books aren't even any good!

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#540

Post by jimbokun »

rgrieselhuber wrote: post #422
ashtonkem wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Bad for us as a society how?

Personally, I don't know. But I find it interesting that the only politically permissible way to even discuss it is by looking at how it could hurt women:

> Yet the stakes are too high to ignore, she said. “If you care about our society, one, and, two, if you care about women, you have to care about the boys, too. If you have equally educated numbers of men and women that just makes a better society, and it makes it better for women.”

The possibility that it could be bad for men I guess is not a relevant consideration when evaluating the impact on society.

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