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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

#551

Post by rootusrootus »

juve1996 wrote: post #433
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.

The idea that plumbers/hvac/welders etc don't have physical wear and tear is also a myth that needs dispelled.

Indeed, I've talked to a number of 20-something tradespeople in these fields and many of them already have back problems. I think if you go into the trades, you need to plan your career carefully and plan on stepping into management or business ownership by the time you reach middle age. They are hard jobs.

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

#552

Post by wolverine876 »

ricardobeat wrote: post #471
wolverine876 wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not reading articles (especially Wikipedia) and trying to infer your argument for you. You state it if you've got it. Stop making excuses. Assume I know about the Cambodian genocide.

"tried to restart society by eliminating people who didn't fit the mold" seems like a decent, if a bit simplistic, description of the Cambodian genocide. What exactly are you up against?

What claim in the original post does that support? None, it has nothing to do with it.

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

#553

Post by doctorwho42 »

downrightmike wrote: post #382
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…

Also, if the colleges give out a certain amount of grants to students who can't afford the artificially high tuition, they become non-profits and can bank all that cash into their endowments. That's really the why of tuition hikes. Greed. Thanks MIT who took this to the supreme court in 91 and fucked all future generations!

And their endowment is over 25 billion.... And why again, are their salaries lower than industry again?

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

#554

Post by wolverine876 »

Animats wrote: post #356
inglor_cz wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The narrow thinkers / cranks dilemma is beautifully described, thank you. You aren't in the academia, are you? Because you explain things in simple terms, yet very efficiently. One of the diseases of current academia is use of an extremely stilted language, perhaps intended to paper over some logical cracks.

> One of the diseases of current academia is use of an extremely stilted language, perhaps intended to paper over some logical cracks. One word. Derrida. ChatGPT and its successors may put a big dent in the pretentious blithering industry. It's now too easy to generate a pseudo-academic style. Large language models are really good at this, because they have so much obscure text upon which to draw.

Speaking of blithering, you are only parroting some Internet tropes in an echo chamber (which is probably where you learned them). You know by now that such things are nonsense; they are a waste of time and a poison to knowledge and reason.

And I think you are far behind the times - I'm not sure many people study Derrida these days.

What have you read recently?

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

#555

Post by wolverine876 »

inglor_cz wrote: post #262
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 narrow thinkers / cranks dilemma is beautifully described, thank you. You aren't in the academia, are you? Because you explain things in simple terms, yet very efficiently. One of the diseases of current academia is use of an extremely stilted language, perhaps intended to paper over some logical cracks.

> One of the diseases of current academia is use of an extremely stilted language, perhaps intended to paper over some logical cracks.

What have you read recently from academia?

> You aren't in the academia, are you? Because you explain things in simple terms, yet very efficiently.

Sometimes things aren't simple.

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

#556

Post by klabb3 »

pacaro wrote: post #119
xyzelement wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re second point, I mean something else. 200 years ago I had to go to university because why? That's where the books and smart people were concentrated. So I would pay a lot of money and physically relocate myself to access those books and people. Now? I can study online, I can read, I can converse with super bright people of my chosing without the friction and limits of doing that in a college environment.

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…

As far as generalizations go, this is as good as it gets. Well put.

To generalize even further, perhaps to the point of uselessness, is to find balance between tradition and your own spirit–patiently learning how things are, while always critically considering how they could be different.

As long as you maintain perspective like this, and you’re aware of the biases and pitfalls of the avenue you’re pursuing, you can do great in either, or why not spend time in several?

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

#557

Post by jimbokun »

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…

4. Extending adolescence 4 more years, slowing down the transition to full adulthood.

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

#558

Post by jmoak3 »

mikeg8 wrote: post #435
jt2190 wrote: post #179

> 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. So in the last decade: A…

Demographic shift? There could have been (probably was) larger number of 18-24 year olds ten year than today.

Definitely the demographics:

https://www.populationpyramid.net/united-states-of-america/2...

I would hate to be fighting to join academia right now in a world where there's a solid chance the student body is shrinking:

https://educationdata.org/college-enrollment-statistics

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

#559

Post by waynesonfire »

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…

the people that can learning math, physics, and philosophy will have no troubles regardless of whether they study math, physics, or philosophy.

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

#560

Post by zamfi »

OJFord wrote: post #416
zinckiwi wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

American translation: graduating with anything other than a 4.0 or a 1.0 is wasted.

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?)

C is often the lowest passing grade — so, same saying really.
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