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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

#651

Post by zepto »

refenestrator wrote: post #647
zepto wrote: post #643

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the silent majority of progressives Really, from what I can see all of current progressivism is compatible with his approach. The silent majority of people who would have called themselves progressives a decade ago are silent because they are silenced and called racists or just right-wing if they question the new orthodoxy. Ergo, the people you are referring to as a silent majority are no longer included as progres…

If all of my policy preferences code as progressive but I think Kendi and the white fragility lady are jackasses, what does that make me then under your definition?

Someone who is looking for another group. Kendi and DiAngelo’s ideas are what progressives are actually enacting.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#652

Post by betwixthewires »

watwut wrote: post #499
icare_1er wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fail to see how a women being unable to open a bank account in the 60s, explains why a girl born in 2000, would not want to spend her time geeking on her computer trying to build a website, in 2012. But i'm all ears.

> would not want to spend her time geeking on her computer Well, based on studies I have seen, if the family had only one computer, it waay often in boys room rather then in girls room. PC was assumed to be boys toy. The culture emerges from there. Anecdotally, that is patter I do see around. Parents of young girls are way more often enforcing "no screen till this or that age" while parents of young boys almost brag…

I've never known a family with a family computer put it anywhere but a common area. I'm sure they're out there but I've never seen it.

Maybe boys get more screen time in families like that because they're more interested in computers? Maybe it's assumed to be a boys toy because boys show more interest in it?

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#653

Post by BeFlatXIII »

pwthornton wrote: post #35
frankbreetz wrote: post #10

On the other side: A stat shared at my most recent tech companies meeting, they are trying to hire more women. 5000 people applied for a single position and 15 of them were women. This was for a high paying tech job.

One thing I am starting to wonder about is if there is a systematic guidance counseling failing in high schools and colleges. There are so many well paying tech jobs that we just aren't getting that many candidates for. Forget not having a great gender ratio, it is often hard to find a lot of candidates for my openings. If I can't offer sponsorship, it can take awhile There clearly seems to be a lot more knowledge in…

It's also a failure on schools to prepare their top students for the useless signalling rituals necessary to get the job in the first place. Either it's a life skills class in high school teaching you how to fill out paper applications for a part-time job and an interview that will take anyone with a pulse who doesn't mouth off to the interviewer or it's a career development department that is optimized for getting business majors management internships but either clueless or 15 years old advice for getting started in STEM fields.

Good programs exist in this space, but they're the exception (and no single person can possibly create a properly comprehensive survey without resorting to opinion polling).

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#654

Post by triactual »

Applejinx wrote: post #330
zarkov99 wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its not that the support structures do not exist, after all they never did and men did fine without them, its that college is suffused with an ideology that is anti-men, anti-merit and, for the most part, useless for anything but its own self-propagation.

You've got a fundamental difference of opinion around the basic purpose of the exercise and can't be trusted to have a rational opinion about what's really going on. What is 'merit' for? If your answer is 'distinguishing between things of worth and things that are valueless' then there's a problem, and you are prematurely contextualizing. Briefly, you cannot be trusted to dictate the contexts of value for the whole w…

Trusted by whom?

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#655

Post by tchaffee »

edmundsauto wrote: post #641
tchaffee wrote: post #602

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 con…

The problem is that companies also want an objective hiring process, because otherwise employee bias will seep in. The fact that these two issues are in opposition (plus the general recruiting pipeline issues) are why this is such a difficult problem to solve.

> The problem is that companies also want an objective hiring process

Usually only at a very superficial level. Enough to comply with the law. And to be fair, some companies do have good intentions with a little extra effort and money put into diversity efforts.

A truly objective hiring process would take into account that Joe and Charley who both got the same results on the coding test are not equally qualified if Joe grew up poor, with parents who never graduated high school, paid his own way through university by working full-time, and along with raising a child as a single parent. While Charley comes from a wealthy family and focused only on studying and job interview prep. With his parents passing along some of their own higher education to him as needed, connecting him to their large network for job opportunities, etc.

Joe is obviously a better candidate. His starting line was far behind Charley's and yet he crossed the finish line at the same time. Joe would be a better candidate even if he passed the finish line a little after Charley. If you want a truly objective hiring process you need to look at starting lines, not just finish lines.

Most companies are doing almost the opposite and only looking at the finish line. They want to look only at the skills and exclude the actual person in a misguided effort to be objective.

All that really does it amplify existing societal bias and privilege by rewarding those who got the most breaks in life.

> this is such a difficult problem to solve.

Agreed. And it would be more expensive. Part of why the status quo is so hard to change. You've got to spend the money and do the work. Or take shortcuts and discriminate on one side or the other.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#656

Post by golemotron »

ceilingcorner wrote: post #116
atoav wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a certified EE and have a MA of fine Arts (film). Living in Europe where I had to pay 350 Euros per semester (which included a public transport ticket for the whole province), I didn't have to make a choice between the two. I did both because I was interested in both. After university I was well equiped to do freelancer work in my field and earned well. I don't think this "you have to be hard or else you won't s…

> "you have to be hard or else you won't survive"-mentality Europeans often have this opinion but I don't think it's an accurate reading of the issue. The issue is not that Americans work too hard, it's that this hard work is no longer actually amounting to anything. In the past, you could pay for college by working summers at the local restaurant. Today the average debt is $30K and you still won't get a decent job.…

> The article (and others) just show that American men are starting to put their efforts into places that do reward them; namely, the trades and entrepreneurship.

Call it toxic or not, there's a male drive toward autonomy. Joining corporations that are run by HR just isn't as attractive.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#657

Post by zz865 »

approxim8ion wrote: post #582
inkblotuniverse wrote: post #522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Men want to be wanted, and women generally don't want to be with a lower-status man than themselves. What proportion of women tend to date men who earn less than them, are shorter than them, have a lesser degree than them? Not a very big one, and men know it, so they steer clear of those women. Similarly, most men prefer to date women shorter than them, who earn less than them, etc. Why? I'd guess because most men li…

This all seems horribly insecure. I refuse to partake in it as a man.

What does that mean? You will seek out a over educated achiever wife or avoid one?

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#658

Post by harimau777 »

zepto wrote: post #643
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.

> the silent majority of progressives Really, from what I can see all of current progressivism is compatible with his approach. The silent majority of people who would have called themselves progressives a decade ago are silent because they are silenced and called racists or just right-wing if they question the new orthodoxy. Ergo, the people you are referring to as a silent majority are no longer included as progres…

I think that the issue goes both ways. Modern conservatives have adopted a strategy of ignoring or exploiting discrimination and inequality. So if someone cares about addressing those issues, then the current progressives are the only game in town.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#659

Post by WalterBright »

pitched wrote: post #640
WalterBright wrote: post #624

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to brand, print Maxwell's Equations on the card. Or put a simple amplifier circuit on it. P.S. Maxwell's Equations on a t-shirt are popular, I even sold one for a while.

Just out of curiosity (I don’t mean this to be a dig and don’t carry either cards), why are Maxwell’s Equations good but Ohm’s Law is an instant no-hire? How I remember the story is that, when Ohm published his equation, it came as a huge shock because no one was expecting it to be so simple. There’s a lot of beauty in that simplicity. Maxwell’s equations aren’t that complex but they aren’t exactly _linear_. Valuing…

1. Ohm's Law is taught the first day of 4 years of an EE degree. Ohm's Law should be part of your soul, not something a cheat sheet is needed for.

2. The 3 versions of the formula are obvious to anyone who remembers high school freshman math. It's barely even algebra.

Carrying that cheat sheet signals you know neither electronics nor the most basic algebra.

Maxwell's Equations, however, get introduced in 2nd or 3rd year in college. You'll need a year (probably two) of calculus to even understand the notation. The equations unify the theories of electric fields and magnetic fields.

Only people who have studied Maxwell's Equations will even recognize them, so by putting them on a t-shirt you're signalling that you are an educated EE to other educated EEs. Other people won't even know what they are.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell%27s_equations

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#660

Post by teawrecks »

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…

After a few hundred years of race/gender based policies working in favor of whites/males, I don't know what else we would expect from a deliberate effort to reverse it. You can't expect to play a game, give one team an advantage for the first half, give neither team an advantage in the second half, and call it a fair game at the end. Yeah, it sucks for individuals in the meantime, but we were simply never going to achieve an equal opportunity society without taking from the group who was unfairly advantaged.

If it stays this way for an extended period of time, then yeah, we will end up creating the inverse problem, but for now I don't know what else anyone expected. We just need to keep an eye on it, use science, don't hide any data, and have a well informed plan on how to ease back affirmative action as we determine that we have succeeded in undoing centuries of unfairness.

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