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

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

#531

Post by csomar » Sun, Mar 19, 2023, 2:16 AM UTC

eyelidlessness wrote: post #528

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…

I’m just a HS graduate who should’ve failed my senior year, and I may well have dropped out of HS if I could go back and do it again. So, an enormous grain of salt should accompany what I’m about to say. I think the benefits of a liberal arts education are probably worth everything its proponents say. Having a well rounded education, which exposes one to not just new ideas but an openness to new ways of thinking, is…

This "broad" education can be useful, but not in a vacuum. It would be better if you are a technician, engineer or whatever and you pursue some kind of liberal art education; or say societal/psychological studies; or English studies, etc...

The point is, the real world still needs you to be productive in different things. You'd better have that first, get some real world experience and then expand your career horizontally by getting into these fields. I think the mistake is that some people have been pursuing these career in a vacuum and also took a lot of debt while doing it.

So while they might have had an interesting experience while at college, they are not of much use in the outside world.

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

#532

Post by pacaro » Sun, Mar 19, 2023, 2:16 AM UTC

wolverine876 wrote: post #414

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…

> Learning in a structured environment provides access to the orthodox in the field of study. That's a trope of critics, but not what happens. Have you studied in college? They (almost always) cover a very wide range - much wider than you will discover on your own - and the focus is to teach you to think critically and be able to examine them yourself. They are not there to teach you information, or that is secondary…

So not only have I studied at a university (a canonically prestigious university FWIW), I have also had the good fortune to work closely with academics and researchers in my career.

I did not exclude other benefits of a university education in my statement, I simply highlighted one of the things that sets it apart from learning in isolation.

How wide a range of subjects one might discover on ones own is arguably broader (although of course not precluded by an academic education either)

I am largely self taught in CS (my degree was in another subject), but that had not prevented me from having multiple patents and having published academically too.

There are many other factors at play, and where and how you are educated is only one of them.

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

#533

Post by nine_k » Sun, Mar 19, 2023, 2:17 AM UTC

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…

It's definitely great to have all these wonderful things like wider general knowledge and being exposed to a serious depth of thought.

The problem is, of course, the expense. Unless you have an independent source of income (a family-taught trade, or inherited wealth), you end up with all this more advanced knowledge at a position where you have little opportunity to apply it, and a crippling debt.

To my mind, the right way to proceed is not to eliminate this kind of study, but to transform it so that it does not cost an arm and a leg. Which, I think, is completely doable.

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

#534

Post by selimthegrim » Sun, Mar 19, 2023, 2:18 AM UTC

than3 wrote: post #442

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…

Unfortunately, Its almost a certainty that you're wrong about this. They realize #3 has subsumed both #1 and #2 with the added twist of inescapable debt slavery with no deterministic way to complete those degrees. Education is no longer an investment, its a casino with the house winning 80% of the distribution. I'm sure you've heard about weed-out classes where people fail not because of lack of knowledge, but from s…

There is a calibration test in physics education called the Force Concept Inventory. Was this administered to any of these individuals?

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

#535

Post by TylerE » Sun, Mar 19, 2023, 2:19 AM UTC

antasvara wrote: post #452

OJFord wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or rather between them, yes. (Or a bit lower than 4.0, that's perfect right? Or do you not have to get full marks on every exam to achieve that?)

4.0 would mean that you got a letter grade of "A" in every class. In the US, that usually means you got a final grade of 95% or higher in every class.

95? I have never seen that. 10 point seems to be the most common (A=90+).

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

#536

Post by selimthegrim » Sun, Mar 19, 2023, 2:22 AM UTC

phist_mcgee wrote: post #378

HEmanZ wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think anyone idealizes those kind of physical labor jobs. Usually “the trades” is much more skilled manual labor: plumbing, hvac, welding, specialized mechanic work and repair, woodworking/carpentry, etc. No one says people should want a life of a mover, meatpacker, or ditch digger.

I think that's a cultural thing. In Australia, trade workers are very highly paid and generally very well respected in society (even day labourers). In fact many envy 'tradies' as they're called, because they can outearn white-collar workers pretty easily.

I believe there was a comment on here earlier about how surfer tradies were the preferred partners of female doctors.

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

#537

Post by cat_plus_plus » Sun, Mar 19, 2023, 2:24 AM UTC

Good! Teach people to support themselves and contribute something tangible to society while letting them already earn some money in the process. They will then be financially secure and in better position to discover themselves, expand their minds and pursue hobbies. I am getting a blast learning kickboxing and digital photography right now, while a coding job puts food on the table.

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

#538

Post by Anon84 » Sun, Mar 19, 2023, 2:24 AM UTC

   Today, colleges and universities enroll about 15 million undergraduate students, while companies employ about 800,000 apprentices. In the past decade, college enrollment has declined by about *15%*, while the number of apprentices has increased by more than *50%*, according to federal data and Robert Lerman, a labor economist at the Urban Institute and co-founder of Apprenticeships for America.

If A drops by 2.25M and B increases by 260k, saying that people are turning away from A and toward B might be a bit of a stretch…

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

#539

Post by rayiner » Sun, Mar 19, 2023, 2:28 AM UTC

eyelidlessness wrote: post #528

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…

I’m just a HS graduate who should’ve failed my senior year, and I may well have dropped out of HS if I could go back and do it again. So, an enormous grain of salt should accompany what I’m about to say. I think the benefits of a liberal arts education are probably worth everything its proponents say. Having a well rounded education, which exposes one to not just new ideas but an openness to new ways of thinking, is…

> Having a well rounded education, which exposes one to not just new ideas but an openness to new ways of thinking, is invaluable.

In what way is it invaluable?

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

#540

Post by ghaff » Sun, Mar 19, 2023, 2:32 AM UTC

pdntspa wrote: post #521

bumby wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously the entire test is about what’s taught in class, but distilling it down to the single dimension of “basic math” in your dismissal was what I found interesting.

Because it was the one area I was familiar with. The others... not so much. But if I was in classes contemporary to the test and had paid attention, I probably would have.

Most of the math I could do pretty straightforwardly though I'm unsure of the phrasing in a couple of cases.

Grammar I could probably have done in eighth grade but I forget some of the terminology.

Areas like history, I'd know a fair bit (as an American) but there's a lot of historical essentially trivia that I wouldn't know though may have known at one time.

Some of the double letters and other things in the spelling I'd probably get wrong. That's what red squiggly underlines when typing are for.