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More students are turning away from college and toward apprenticeships

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

#541

Post by ghaff »

xyzelement wrote: post #273
patja wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nowadays college is a baseline consumer good that "almost everyone" is expected to consume I think this depends quite a bit on your socioeconomic class. Overall in the US, only about 1/3 finish a college degree

You get the point I'm making though, right? :) If you want to sell your product to 33% percent of kids, your product has to be very easy to consume.

Are you suggesting that college is a standardized product? Most people can get through a generally non-selective state school--and, to be clear, some of those graduates have done extraordinarily well for themselves. But selective elite schools aren't selling their product to 33% of kids.

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

#542

Post by saalweachter »

selimthegrim wrote: post #536
phist_mcgee wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

By surfer do you just mean "a tradesperson who surfs for fun", or is there a slang meaning there?

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

#543

Post by ethbr0 »

khalilravanna wrote: post #480
Balgair wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an uncle told me many moons ago: Do more in college. Write a rock opera, spend a week curled up in the union learning about black holes, be good enough to tutor. Don't just graduate with nothing but a taste for bad jazz and cheap beer.

Love this thought. I’d also throw in that doing well in college can be as simple as trying tons of new experiences with the absurd low risk entailed with being a kid with almost total freedom and almost 0 real responsibility. Make friends, make memories, but most of all: make lots of mistakes!

Making mistakes is one of the most important parts of college, but sadly another one that's being torn down by over-zealous administration and campus policing.

My father went to a small, rural school whose local police force generally took the approach that as long as it didn't hurt anyone "At worst, a night in jail and no record of the arrest." Even for what would be considered distribution of hard drugs now.

When I went to school, students got a slap on the wrist for burning a hole in their dorm floor with thermite.

10 years after I went to school, a student was charged with a terrorism offense for making a dry ice pressure bottle and tossing it out of their dorm window as a joke.

And as near as I can tell, it's gotten stricter since. See: bitching about Harvard's dismantling of independent fun.

"Make lots of mistakes" isn't feasible if it ends up on a permanent record.

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

#544

Post by cat_plus_plus »

rootusrootus wrote: post #449
xyzelement wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are referring to something on one hand very valuable, on the other hand it's very easy to graduate college without learning that, and I think colleges themselves in recent decades are pivoting away from. A hundred+ years ago when "almost nobody" went to college, college was a place for those hungry and willing to sacrifice for intellectual growth. Nowadays college is a baseline consumer good that "almost…

> I had a class that really critically analyzed native American cultures. Today the class would be considered racist, it would have to a priori be an admiration of those cultures, rather than a critical analysis. It's amazing that now we're getting hit from both directions in this regard. The left would like minorities treated with kid gloves, and now the right wants to muzzle schools that would say anything critical…

Culture is a shared fiction of unity and greatness that enables great civilizations to overcome otherwise inevitable tribal warfare. So Native Americans and Pilgrims sat down together for a Thanksgiving feast with Turkey and mashed potatoes. Should we teach this to children despite there being more to the story? Well it depends, do we want descendants of Pilgrims and Native Americans to sit down for a Thanksgiving feast today, or do we prefer various 2020-style riots to go on? That's the original political correctness, prioritizing getting along over being right. It's not wrong to tell kids that being a boy or a girl doesn't matter, just follow your dreams. Some day they will discover that it sometimes does matter, and that being born 200 years earlier would have sucked. But by then they will develop good habits like striving for individual equal treatment over tribalism. Where left gets it wrong is treating children like adults when it comes to gore and sexuality and adults like children when it comes to free speech.

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

#545

Post by saalweachter »

karmelapple wrote: post #469
the_only_law wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I had nurse friends who had impressive pay on paper, but we’re desperate to work in anything else because the shifts were hellish.

I don’t understand the hours expected of healthcare professionals in the USA. It sounds like madness and a definite route to burnout. Why don’t the professional organizations and other groups mandate serious reform for this? Have more reasonable max hour stretches, etc. Are the difficulty of hospital handoffs primarily the source for the awful hours demanded?

It especially seemed dumb at the beginning of COVID when one region's hospital would get slammed and already have been operating at the edge of burnout before half the staff was out sick and the amount of work tripled.

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

#546

Post by defrost »

saalweachter wrote: post #542
selimthegrim wrote: post #536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

By surfer do you just mean "a tradesperson who surfs for fun", or is there a slang meaning there?

Literally tradespeople that surf when the breaks are good.

Good job, good income, fit and healthy.

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

#547

Post by sidlls »

mfer wrote: post #120
sidlls wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The context within the social and economic structure of society matters, too. Very few good quality careers are accessible for the self-taught individual.

Who defines good quality? Is this compensation? Is this satisfaction with what you do? Is this ability to pay your bills and save enough? How much does one need (what's enough)? This is all complicated and we tend to focus on compensation. That's why so many people stay in jobs for the pay while they hate the work. There are lots of good quality jobs out there if you expand your definition beyond "highest compensatio…

In our society jobs that are satisfying are often not an option (even for the trades), regardless of the pay and regardless of the educational requirements.

In the context of this thread it is (almost) all about compensation. "Good quality" is in the sense that one can earn enough to "meet their bills (and then some)" and also weather a major event (such as a medical event). Satisfaction may or may not apply.

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

#548

Post by judge2020 »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #339
nonethewiser wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I crazy or did Biden just try to pay for a bunch of student loans? Legality still pending AFAIK. Just because Obama may have ended one policy doesn’t mean they aren’t backstopped by the government. Either way the point remains that the debt cannot be dispelled through bankruptcy which makes them less risky for banks.

>Just because Obama may have ended one policy doesn’t mean they aren’t backstopped by the government. Yes, it does. Since 2010, a lender will not be paid by the government if the borrower defaults. >the debt cannot be dispelled through bankruptcy Yes, they can. https://www.investopedia.com/how-to-file-student-loan-bankru...

Aren't most student loans already loaned directly by Sally Mae / the government? Private loans aren't the issue afaik.

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

#549

Post by fbdab103 »

bluedino wrote: post #31
Mc91 wrote: post #9

I have been programming for a Fortune 500 company for four years. Not long ago, I applied for a job at another Fortune 500 company. HR really had only question for me, they saw on my resume I did not have a college degree listed, and did I have one? I said I went through most of college towards a Bachelors in Computer Science but dropped out before graduation. I did not get the job, although I don't know if that's wh…

A job opened on my team where I am working at as contractor. My boss told me to apply for the job. I got an email back right away from HR stating that I didn't meet the requirements of having a degree. Joke's on them, I already work there.

I am not sure which is more amazing: that someone informed you in a timely fashion that you were no longer under consideration or that they told you why.

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

#550

Post by wolverine876 »

pacaro wrote: post #532
wolverine876 wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 broa…

> How wide a range of subjects one might discover on ones own is arguably broader

The original claim was about concepts beyond an orthodoxy, but whether concepts or subjects, it's very unlikely you will discover on your own more than a university full of domain experts who spend lifetimes discovering and studying these things. It's not remotely plausible.

> 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.

Good for you. It doesn't mean you wouldn't have been better off learning CS from experts - especially with all your talent - nor is it a representative sample of education. Most people who don't go to college have no hope of matching its benefits on their own.

Also, your field of study was CS. I don't know about orthodoxy taught in CS, but again, in humanities and social sciences, what's taught is how to develop your own thinking. For example, parroting this orthodoxy (and rhetoric) of the anti-intellectual reactionaries is not a sign of well-developed critical thinking.

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