A generation of American men give up on college • Hacker News Board

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#591

Post by mint2 » Tue, Sep 07, 2021, 3:59 PM UTC

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…

Being a white male, anecdotally there is more peer and cultural pressure to care about sports, cars, tv, eating tons of meat, and drinking then there is to succeed at school. And for a few decades now a major political party has been bolstering anti-science and anti college messages.

It is unsurprising less men are finishing college in the face of that culture.

While there’s going to be many causes, the aforementioned seem more important than a message of privilege.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#592

Post by sjg007 » Tue, Sep 07, 2021, 4:01 PM UTC

rgrieselhuber wrote: post #578

sjg007 wrote: post #571

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can’t all be plumbers.. college is worth it. You get access to technology. For computers it was that way until the 90s when you could get access outside of universities. All of the front end JavaScript web apps will be replaced with automation and drag and drop UIs. This will let some people scale but all those code academy kids will need to find new skills.

Computer Science graduates have done well and will continue to do well, although figuring out a post-40s career strategy is a huge necessity. Other fields, other than the specialties? Many will continue to suffer, IMO.

Where does this post 40s mean come from? I mean, seriously... it makes no sense.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#593

Post by MrFoof » Tue, Sep 07, 2021, 4:02 PM UTC

jimbokun wrote: post #528

michaelt wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

College degrees are either incredibly overpriced, or incredibly good value for money, depending on how you analyse them. If you look at some CS graduate making $200,000 a year and assume they'd have made $50,000 without the degree, college looks like an incredibly good investment. On the other hand, if you look at someone paying $1000 per credit hour for online video lectures? I've seen online video at 1% that price…

What percentage of all college students are going straight into a $200,000 a year job?

Not only that, but in most markets those salaries do not exist.

Even in markets that still pay well outside the valley like Boston, that level of compensation is still extremely limited and are < 1% of available positions most of which are quite senior.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#594

Post by mint2 » Tue, Sep 07, 2021, 4:02 PM UTC

teekert wrote: post #313

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…

...an entire generation that feels lost, without purpose, and unwanted. I'd argue that it is largely up to the parents to instill a feeling of worth and help kids/young adults find intrinsic motivation, not the educational system.

But what are the parents to do when they weren’t taught to do that by their own parents? There needs to be an intervention to break the cycle.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#595

Post by seanmcdirmid » Tue, Sep 07, 2021, 4:14 PM UTC

pharmakom wrote: post #56

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’ll actually find similar gender disparities in China and India. Maybe not as pronounced as the USA, but it’s still there. Somehow there is something going on throughout the industry that crosses cultural boundaries.

From a sample of 3 countries (two with very traditional gender roles), I’m not convinced. In Eastern Europe software engineering was a female dominated field.

> From a sample of 3 countries (two with very traditional gender roles), I’m not convinced.

These are the three biggest countries (40% of the world population), and also the ones most represented in tech here in the USA, at least (because they are the biggest).

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#596

Post by zepto » Tue, Sep 07, 2021, 4:16 PM UTC

“Young men get little help, in part, because schools are focused on encouraging historically underrepresented students. Jerlando Jackson, department chair, Education Leadership and Policy Analysis, at the University of Wisconsin’s School of Education, said few campuses have been willing to spend limited funds on male underachievement that would also benefit white men, risking criticism for assisting those who have historically held the biggest educational advantages.”

So this is a direct result of the move away from color blind policies, to race based policies.

> Keith E. Smith, a mental-health counselor and men’s outreach coordinator at the University of Vermont, said that when he started working at the school in 2006 he found that men were much more likely to face consequences for the trouble they caused under the influence of drugs and alcohol.

This is exactly what black students report as racism in school.

Seems like evidence that race based policies are just racist.

> In 2008, Mr. Smith proposed a men’s center to help male students succeed. The proposal drew criticism from women who asked, “Why would you give more resources to the most privileged group on campus,” he said. Funding wasn’t appropriated, he said, and the center was never built.

Obviously white men are not in fact privileged on university campuses.

“Female students in the U.S. benefit from a support system established decades ago, spanning a period when women struggled to gain a foothold on college campuses. There are more than 500 women’s centers at schools nationwide. Most centers host clubs and organizations that work to help female students succeed.”

Men are failing because it is the policy not to support them.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#597

Post by loonster » Tue, Sep 07, 2021, 4:20 PM UTC

bradlys wrote: post #579

inkblotuniverse wrote: post #524

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, to the degree that college is used as a signal of intelligence/skill, it's a waste for individually and collectively. You could just have the college entry exams and hand out diplomas for those, and it would be nearly as good.

Except they’re not used as a measure of intelligence or skill? They’re used as a measure of ability to go through a series of rigorous tests and do a bunch of work you might not like doing. They’re a litmus test to see if you’d likely be good for doing a job you don’t enjoy either. End of the day - work is work and they need history to show you can do more than the bare legal minimum of graduating high school.

Wouldn't 4 years of work history be a better assessment?

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#598

Post by thinkcontext » Tue, Sep 07, 2021, 4:21 PM UTC

10x-dev wrote: post #203

throwtheworld wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

This doesn't match up with my experience as an interviewer at several FAANGs. HR typically wants their diversity numbers up badly so if you're gay, a woman, and/or black they are already incredibly inclined to hire you, as long as you pass the interviews. It's not a walk in the park, but you have this going for you and it's a big advantage imo.

Your experience does not match research on the job market generally. Multiple studies show increased responses to resumes with "whitened" names. This is, of course, at odds with the white victimhood narrative that unqualified minorities are taking jobs, when it is in fact the opposite which is occurring.

https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/minorities-who-whiten-job-resumes...

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#599

Post by blippage » Tue, Sep 07, 2021, 4:25 PM UTC

Brit here, in my 50's. Everyone should - or ought - to receive a good general level of education at GCSEs (i.e. 14/15 year old). Chemistry, Physics, Mathematics, English, etc.. You'll know a fair bit about these subjects if you study for them in school. Very few people actually "need" training beyond that; although I would of course expect my doctor to know rather more than what's in a biology GCSE.

My former boss of the department learned enough chemistry through self-study. I heard Raspberry Pi was hiring guys to work as microchip design with little prior exposure.

In my worldview, everyone gets their GCSEs and goes and gets a job. OR, they follow a trade route, and attend a technical college (in the UK meaning of the word) to learn a skill. OR, the really brainy ones take an academic route, get their A levels, then head off to university to become part of the intellectual elite. I'm thinking 5% of the population here. OR, you get your A levels and then go into a polytechnic for a highly-skilled vocational job.

Polytechnics don't really exist anymore, they've all converted to universities.

Basically, we should all just return to an educational system that we had in the 70's. It was a system that wasn't broken, but we decided to "fix" it anyway.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#600

Post by nemo44x » Tue, Sep 07, 2021, 4:28 PM UTC

refenestrator wrote: post #567

nemo44x wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read “How to be an Anti-Raciat” by Ibram X Kendi. It was a top selling book last year and he is a leading figure of the progressive left. His academic work is cited heavily in other progressive academic literature.

There's an interesting dynamic here where imo the silent majority of progressives don't buy his approach and think it's counterproductive, but any lone soul who says so is called out, which side are you on here anyways. So this guy gets to represent himself as a spokesman for the movement and nobody really wants to contradict it under their real name.

He isn't a lone wolf or something though. Critical Theory covers not only race (as in this case) but gender, sexuality, disability and fat studies, and all types of "social justice" scholarship. They all come from Postcolonial Theory (essentially deconstructing Western thought and Western Liberalism) which has had a massive influence on all of these as they have adapted them.

From bell hooks and Kimberle Crenshaw (intersectionality) into leading theories on feminist and racial thought - this is the progressive and academic left. It is the leading thought in every elite university. And you can't run away from it and say "us silent majority progressives...." - a progressive is either this or they aren't progressive by today's standard. It is a social force that is trying to get inside of everything it can, from unrelated academic scholarship (look at what's in modern STEM curricula) as well as corporate America and now elite high schools.

My advice is to choose Liberalism without identity politics and reject this school of thought as illiberal, totalitarian, and harmful.

(For what it's worth, the entire scholarship of critical theory isn't all awful. There's good things in there and the identification of many societal problems is probably right. However, it isn't unique to them and their solutions for these problems are awful and regressive.)