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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

#601

Post by chakkepolja »

zepto wrote: post #596

“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 hi…

Men don't complain. It's not the male biological imperative.

Consider modern "feminists" and their obesity-is-fine propaganda. No man complains about male underwear models being very fit and handsome. If anything, men want to become like them.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#602

Post by tchaffee »

10x-dev wrote: post #441
tchaffee wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> as long as you pass the interviews. Aren't these are known to be extremely difficult interviews compared to most tech interviews? What percentage of candidates who apply get hired? I would imagine the numbers are quite low?

My opinion is that generalist interviews are difficult but not 'extremely'. For example, here is a problem I came up with at one company: Given a list of chapters in a video course, and a list of user bookmarks, write a function that groups the bookmarks by chapter. Chapters and bookmarks are defined as millisecond offsets from 0 (the start of the video file). I'd specify the data structures for junior devs and let t…

> then hacking the process by learning to solve algorithm and data structure problems is acceptable

Have you considered that underrepresented candidates might not have the free time outside of university, family, and job responsibilities in order to compete with those whose families can support them to focus on only university and preparing for interviews?

If HR wants their diversity numbers up, maybe HR needs to consider having some diversity in the interview process itself? I wouldn't expect a cookie cutter process to result in much diversity of background or thought.

> Whether someone's ability to solve these types of problems quickly is indicative of their skill level is a hot topic of debate

One of the best interviewing tips I learned that has served me extremely well is to try disprove my impression of the candidate. It seems like this process entirely fails at that.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#603

Post by nemo44x »

unethical_ban wrote: post #565
nemo44x wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When one of progressives guiding philosophies is “The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.” then this is exactly the plan. It’s all in their texts and one only has to read them to see plainly the type of policy they work towards.

Just so you know, chalk me up as an 'anti-woke' leftist. Which might mean "Economist(TM) centrist". I can be in support of anti-systemic-racism actions that do not act on an individual level. I can support universal healthcare, higher income equality and whatnot, without the binary race worldview that Kendi puts out.

Yes you can - you'd be a "Western Liberal", or "Liberal Scientist" or whatever else we want to name the philosophy of thought that began with the Enlightenment. And being a "leftist" in that is 100% consistent with that.

We tend to refer to "liberals" as people on the left but in general a liberal is anyone who is consistent with liberal beliefs which include a fair amount of "conservatism" as well. However, there's quite a few folks on the right that are as illiberal as the progressives are on the left.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#604

Post by refenestrator »

nemo44x wrote: post #600
refenestrator wrote: post #567

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 (in…

I'm not trying to let anyone off the hook, just describing the dynamics as I see them.

I identify as a cultural moderate for that reason. This stuff is all divorced from actual politics, economics or governing, it's purely cultural.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#605

Post by loonster »

yardie wrote: post #472
ekianjo wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It would be much better to reduce the cost of college so that it’s more valuable for more people To do that, would be very helpful if the government stopped giving zero interest loans. This is resulting in costs skyrocketing.

LOL. I wish the government gave 0-interest loans. As it stands in the US, Stafford Loans are higher than most car loans [3.73% undergrad, 5.28% graduate, 6.28% PLUS]. Costs are skyrocketing despite government loans. It's not the working/middle class students asking for new buildings, new "centers of research", new dorms, etc. Colleges are building these things, giving you the bill, and your options are go:not go.

As the percentage goes lower the amount of debt will increase. The same thing happened in mortgages. The monthly payment stayed relative constant (plus inflation).

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#606

Post by gumby »

kortilla wrote: post #411
gumby wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I built my house with union labor (union shop) and found the level of competence higher than was typical with jo the random contractor (of course there are exceptions, and for some jobs it doesn’t matter). Likewise with the machine shop a few jobs ago: although we weren’t a union shop, for some jobs we hired contractors in for the union members produced better work, especially for the safety critical stuff. I have no…

> built my house with union labor (union shop) and found the level of competence higher than was typical with jo the random contractor So you built two homes, one with a well researched union labor group and one with a well researched contractor? Or is this just some BS elaboration based on comparing contractors you hired for small time shit with the big house job?

Excellent epistemic inquiry. I’ve owned homes for over 30 years, and have experience with hiring contractors for remodels. Also hired non-union contractors to do building work on offices over the years. And the company that had a machine shop? One of our channels was home construction and overall I was not impressed with the kind of work I encountered.

But to really get to your question: I started my 3-year home construction odyssey with a non-union contractor who had to be fired due to poor execution. The replacement was a union shop. That’s about as much A/B testing as one can get.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#607

Post by betwixthewires »

I'm one of these men. Of course I chose nor to go at a time when the ratio was closer to 1:1. It's one of the best decisions I ever made, I stumbled into it and didn't even make a deliberate decision, I felt bad about it for a few years. A happy accident I guess.

And I've done well for myself. I hear college graduates earn more over their lifetimes but anecdotally I don't see it. Financially I'm doing better than almost every person I know that went, the vast majority of my peers who went have a negative net worth due to student debt and own no property, so the bar is low, but I'm doing fantastic. I think the truth is, when credentials aren't rare, how well you do is more based on your mind and some quality you have than on credentials.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#608

Post by jlund-molfese »

betwixthewires wrote: post #607

I'm one of these men. Of course I chose nor to go at a time when the ratio was closer to 1:1. It's one of the best decisions I ever made, I stumbled into it and didn't even make a deliberate decision, I felt bad about it for a few years. A happy accident I guess. And I've done well for myself. I hear college graduates earn more over their lifetimes but anecdotally I don't see it. Financially I'm doing better than alm…

Yeah, a lot of studies seem to report on average income of graduates with various degrees compared to those who didn't finish university, but don't account for socioeconomic status.

I'd be curious what the numbers looked like when controlling for all the other variables which influence someone's income.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#609

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

professoretc wrote: post #546
jjk166 wrote: post #514

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yeah, I'm not even sure how that would work? Like, if my department goes with a particular textbook, or a certain number of classes all use textbooks from the same publisher, then sometimes we get discounts on things like solutions manuals or custom editions, but I don't know how a publisher would pay a particular professor for picking their textbook.

Well they all send you free books, in the hope you'll pick their one.
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