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More students are turning away from college and toward apprenticeships

wsj.com

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

#611

Post by FredPret »

wolverine876 wrote: post #550
pacaro wrote: post #532

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sub…

Learning from experts is unambiguously good.

College isn't only learning from experts though.

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

#612

Post by Tanjreeve »

castella wrote: post #296
azinman2 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 also grows the intellectual souls, exposing people to far more depth of thought. As a (not so) recent grad from a top public university in the US - for STEM fields, absolutely. But from my exposure to the humanities and liberal arts side of the campus, be it gen ed classes or just day-to-day interactions with those students, it was far more like a brainwashing factory designed to churn out professional activists…

And you're sure that you aren't the one who was upset at being exposed to new ideas and perspectives?

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

#613

Post by eru »

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 also grows the intellectual souls, exposing people to far more depth of thought.

Eh, you can get all that without college. And you can go to college without getting any of that.

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

#614

Post by cutler »

OJFord wrote: post #332
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.

Or, as cousin Melchior put it, 'anything other than a first or a fourth is wasted'. ( Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh. Not sure how internationally read it is, but a worthwhile classic. British degrees are classified from firsts to thirds (via upper and lower second class honours) - but the story is (initially) set at Oxford, which at the time awarded fourths.)

The BBC's serialisation of Brideshead, starring Jeremy Irons (Charles Ryder), Diana Quick and Anthony Andrews, was a huge hit with students when it aired in October 1981. The TV room in the Students Union was full every Sunday throughout the whole series. As for Charles's cousin Melchior John Gielgud, who played Charles's father, delivered some classic lines including this rejoinder to Charles's request for a loan - "Hard up? Penurious? Distressed? Embarrassed? Stoney broke? On the rocks? In Queer Street? Your cousin Melchior was imprudent with his investments and got into a very queer street - worked his passage to Australia before the mast."

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

#615

Post by harvey9 »

mikeg8 wrote: post #427
harvey9 wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked in a call center for a while. I'd call it light blue collar work. You don't get to listen to podcasts but these days you might get a remote position. Physical risk is mostly limited to RSI I guess.

A call center is probably as opposite of blue collar as it gets. The term “blue collar” comes from the blue collards shirts factory and industrial workers used to wear, and is now synonymous with manual labor. There is nothing remotely close to manual labor at a call center. You just had the lowest tier of a white collar job.

The similarity is around control of the workers time in a 'production line' fashion. (I have also worked in a factory on a line).

You're correct about the origin of the term now collar. In places where deindustrialization has cleared out most production jobs, call center work is one of the things that replaced them.

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

#616

Post by shirro »

Trades appear less vulnerable to disruption than just about any occupation as they combine locality with physical and mental dexterity that gives them a moat. We seem to be hitting an inflection point where human knowledge and creativity could become significantly devalued by emerging machine competition.

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

#617

Post by obscur »

cperciva wrote: post #576
zamfi wrote: post #562

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the same — Oxford first means top third of the class, roughly. Summa at Harvard is top 5%, a much higher bar.

Yes. I think the top 1/3 of Oxford undergrads are on par with the top 5% of Harvard undergrads. This is not true of other places which award Firsts.

Your first sentence is interesting, why do you think that?

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

#618

Post by mantas »

phist_mcgee wrote: post #483
pinkmuffinere wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>All paid workers real enemy is the capital class, and we should never forget that. I totally agree with you up to this point, so just want to explain why i disagree with this particular point. I want better treatment for all humans, and I agree that some of the "capital class" is actively fighting this, but some is actively helping it as well. For example, I think Bill Gates, the Collison Brothers, and some of the K…

The people can do good things, but in an exploitative manner?. Earning billions off the labor of others and then giving back is still not moral in my eyes. And I think it's an exception to the rule any way that any in the capital class produce a net benefit to society.

Elite is the same in any system. Be it feudal of the old or ruling class in socialismus-comunismus implementations. That’s just a part of any group of animals.

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

#619

Post by phendrenad2 »

yutijke wrote: post #421

I went to undergrad in India so YMMV for the primarily North American population here. A lot of people look back at college fondly, but to me it just felt like a lot of time and money spent for skills that I had to acquire on my own any way. It was a common opinion among my friends that other non STEM majors seemed to have an easier undergrad life where they could find time to explore things rather than trying to bui…

I spent 4 years getting a Computer Engineering degree (in the US), and learned nothing that I didn't already know. Also, they didn't even bother to teach us the most important aspect of computer engineering (signal integrity......)

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

#620

Post by phendrenad2 »

logicalmonster wrote: post #137

I think the article ignored a massive datapoint in not talking about gender the one time it might actually be a relevant issue. Simply put: women are going to school more and more, and many men are turned off. Getting to the root of this social change would I think provide an explanation.

Is it really a massive data point? It seems entirely overblown by people trying to score political points.
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