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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

#681

Post by Dove »

dkarp wrote: post #158
WalterBright wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EE programs tend to focus on electronics, not electrical systems. But learning how house wiring works is a simple book away. But be careful - unlike electronics, house electrics can kill you. On the other hand, electricians have weird gaps in their knowledge. If I ask them to do something slightly out of the ordinary, this becomes apparent. For example, none of them understand inductive coupling, or even know what it…

I find this with everything. You have to become an expert at everything if you want it done right. Maybe it's because the truly expert help is generally too expensive. Examples: - Taxes/Pensions - if you just rely on your accountant then they'll do the bare minimum and you'll miss out - Energy company - we're rolling out smart gas/elec meters in the UK. There is an old type (smets1) and a new type (smets2). You don't…

It's true with software, too. Unless you are a programmer, it's impossible to tell if your programmers are doing a good job.

Information asymmetry is a real problem, particularly when people are selling information.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#682

Post by nemo44x »

refenestrator wrote: post #673
zepto wrote: post #671

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So, what, I have to vote Trump now? Why is that the implied option?

The 'useful idiot' part that I replied to.

“Useful idiot” is a term coined back in the day to describe people who unwittingly spread the propaganda of communists without really understanding the ultimate goals. In this case being a progressive while disagreeing with the leading ideas of the movement.

And no it doesn’t mean a vote for Trump. It means not supporting candidates that parrot this type of rhetoric and to not support causes/movements that are a part of it. FWIW Trump did ban critical race theory from being brought into federal offices and Biden quickly reinstated it under the guise of “learning to be nice to each other” - which it isn’t. Biden, in this case, I believe is a useful idiot for propagating their propaganda, mistaking it for harmless “diversity training”. There’s a big difference!

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#683

Post by notJim »

throwtheworld wrote: post #349
_Nat_ wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dropping out of a fancy Computer Science program that you're already in would seem like an extraordinarily bad idea. If someone's trying to talk you into quitting and giving up because no one wants you because you're black, well.. that doesn't sound like a good friend to me. Don't get me wrong -- a few tech-billionaires dropped out of college, and apparently it worked out for some. So if you want to try that out, the…

> Dropping out of a fancy Computer Science program that you're already in would seem like an extraordinarily bad idea Of course haha the name brand and few cool professors are keeping me at this point. But I never expected to go from the highest ranking/gpa/scores to having leaving academia even at the edge of the table. > But dropping out because you're black sounds crazy. It’s more like “if I can make X amount anyw…

Apologies if this is obvious, but if you're not getting callbacks, usually the issue is with your resume or application. If you haven't already, I would look for groups that review resumes and applications (especially groups that involve people who are already working or have experience hiring.) You could also try posting on the /r/cscareerquestions subreddit to have people critique your resume.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#684

Post by II2II »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #670
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 are failing because it is the policy not to support them. And because men need the support . I suspect that a lot fewer men needed support in, say, 1950. Why do more men need support than did in 1950? I think the first reason may be because of education. Our education system is failing in a way that it wasn't in 1950. (This may be too harsh. If, say, 10% of high school graduates went to college in 1950, and 50%…

The other thing add that it is okay to support men who need that support. This was exactly what the Ontario Ministry of Education was encouraging men to get into teaching a decade ago. They had data that showed boys attainment of literacy was declining and viewed more male role models as a potential solution.

It is also worth noting that providing supports for men does not mean removing supports for other under represented groups.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#685

Post by sgerenser »

dudul wrote: post #645
spoonjim wrote: post #631

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume Chinese and Indians are not included in "non-white"?

I personally do count them as "non-white" when reviewing applications. Our DE&I group only reports "white vs non-white" and "males vs females" ratios, so I assume they are considered "asians" and lumped into "non-white".

That really makes no sense if the goal is to increase “minority” representation. In my experience at BigTech Indian and Chinese applicants outnumbered white by at least 2:1.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#686

Post by spoonjim »

sgerenser wrote: post #685
dudul wrote: post #645

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally do count them as "non-white" when reviewing applications. Our DE&I group only reports "white vs non-white" and "males vs females" ratios, so I assume they are considered "asians" and lumped into "non-white".

That really makes no sense if the goal is to increase “minority” representation. In my experience at BigTech Indian and Chinese applicants outnumbered white by at least 2:1.

But it’s not the point. The point is to keep the Twitter mob at bay.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#687

Post by [deleted] »

datavirtue wrote: post #458
spamizbad wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a white guy and I bootstrapped my career with no degree and little college (dropped out of community college) by simply padded my resume doing some basic contracting gigs for friends and their professional networks and parlayed that into full-time work. I'm now an engineering manager at a unicorn. I will also say that for all this talk about how easy Blacks and women have it, I don't buy it, and I think people sp…

This. Everywhere I have been as a team lead has had issues hiring. I don't remember ever having two desirable candidates in the pipeline at the same time and getting one felt like striking gold. We didn't give two shits what your gender or race was.

[deleted]

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#688

Post by odessacubbage »

dgb23 wrote: post #379
bmj wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not convinced that all those men need to go to college, but they clearly need something. This. We are seeing the results of what was reported in the book Boys Adrift . My older son just graduated high school. He has no interest in college at the moment, and has shown a gift for working with his hands. He is currently doing a carpentry apprenticeship with an acquaintance that runs a renovation and design company.…

I very much struggled with discipline and motivation at university and eventually dropped out. It was not until I started working when I became a highly motivated self-driven learner. Now I love studying and learning (and teaching), but I do it at my own pace and I choose the things that matter for my work or are just plain fun. Looking back a decade later, it would have been very beneficial if I didn't go to univers…

it is a lot easier to be motivated to learn when you're doing something you want to do and filling in the gaps your knowledge as-needed as opposed to grinding gen-eds because they'll be on the test... that gates your placement into another set of gen-eds.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#689

Post by jjk166 »

wing-_-nuts wrote: post #614
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…

I always found it funny that there were yearly rewrites to textbooks on subjects which hadn't really changed that much in hundreds of years. You telling me there isn't a good calculus textbook in the public domain yet? Really? This is a totally solvable problem, but the powers that be are getting by on grift.

It's not the information in the chapters that changes, it's the problems that students do for assignments that change. For example a problem where one train is going 105 mph and another is going 90 mph gets swapped for one where one plane is going 605 mph and another is going 590. Conceptually it's the same, but obviously a student doing the one problem is going to get a radically different answer from the one doing the other.

And while calculus might have some public domain works that are acceptable, most fields have advanced pretty far since 1925, which might I remind you was before the discovery of DNA, penicillin, plate tectonics, molecular orbital theory, the neutron, the invention of digital electronics, Keynesian economics, Hemingway's first novel, etc.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#690

Post by zepto »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #670
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 are failing because it is the policy not to support them. And because men need the support . I suspect that a lot fewer men needed support in, say, 1950. Why do more men need support than did in 1950? I think the first reason may be because of education. Our education system is failing in a way that it wasn't in 1950. (This may be too harsh. If, say, 10% of high school graduates went to college in 1950, and 50%…

> And because men need the support. I suspect that a lot fewer men needed support in, say, 1950. > Why do more men need support than did in 1950?

My answer is that when men were the vast majority consumers of higher education the system was built to support them.

This accords with what the social justice people would say, and I think they are right about that.

What they are wrong about is that men today should be denied support that other groups have today because men in the 1950s had support that other groups in the 1950s did not have.

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