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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

#71

Post by throwcommonsns »

hattmall wrote: post #69
throwcommonsns wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's this unfortunately prevailing attitude that you aren't successful in America if you aren't living in New York or San Francisco. It's absolutely bonkers. There are many other great places in this country besides those two cities.

Those aren't even that great of places so I think it's pretty regional on thinking that. But definitely there's an attitude of needing to be in a major city to be successful and it's not entirely false. The big difference is major urban area vs not. Sure, NYC/SF are super expensive, but almost every urban area is when compared to other smaller cities or rural areas. The issue is that for a lot of people they can only…

I know people in the Bay Area who spent two or three hours a day commuting before moving back out to the mid-west again for remote work. This is a typical commute from SF to Mountain View, for example.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#73

Post by hattmall »

pwthornton wrote: post #32
mikewarot wrote: post #12

Unless you're going to be a Professional Engineer or some other licensed individual, or you're getting a free ride, college isn't worth it any more. Going deep into debt for a credential that doesn't have a reasonably large future value is a huge mistake many are pushed into making.

This is just not borne out by the data. The gap between high school grads and college grads pay is getting wider and wider. You shouldn't go to college if you aren't going to be a serious student and you'll be a legitimate risk for dropping out. But if you are willing to commit yourself and get decent grades, you'll be in much better shape than most people with just a high school diploma. Your advice is also sounds r…

You make several times 90k?? So like how much? Several has to be at least 3 right, so $300k+?

What degree do you have??

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#74

Post by smitty1e »

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…

My brother in law is an electrician.

I had enough EE in college to change a light switch without burning the house down.

However, that book-learnin' fell apart when confronted with troubleshooting a strangely wired room, and I got very polite while asking him over to bail me out.

These fellows eschewing the ivory tower, where being of European extraction and bearing a Y-chromosome on the college campus is an indictment, are going to trade schools and will make fat piles of cash repairing plumbing.

Hopefully, they are gracious with all the Grievance Studies majors who are standing by to condescend in their direction.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#75

Post by durnygbur »

atraac wrote: post #57
throwinthsaway wrote: post #3

Getting into debt to get a piece of paper that only lets you begin to enter the job market after gathering enough credentials by either working for free or talking to others and hopefully trying your luck even though there are 100s for a single internship... College is a scam unless you're paying close attention and don't get into debt in the first place. Those who manage to jump through all of the hoops don't realiz…

> Those who manage to jump through all of the hoops don't realize that there is a secondary scam waiting for them: working for a wage without significant stock options while someone makes millions sitting around doing nothing off of their effort. I know this is the thing in US and shouldn't surprise me but I'm based in central Europe and honestly the thought of this still feels so abstract to me. I'd love to have an…

Europe is behind of America in this regards, Europeans are submissive, timid, and desperate. Want to know where are your stock options? Travel south to the Mediterranean and watch - mansions, palaces, yachts, butiques, luxurious hotels, hostesses and models, German limousines and supercars. There they are.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#77

Post by happythen »

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…

No way. Being white is definitely a leg up. Well, at least for me, a white guy, no college degree. Life is much easier. I don't think there is any support missing for us, that actually sounds hilarious. We need to work on lifting others up.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#79

Post by silverpepsi »

Arainach wrote: post #60
throwcommonsns wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's this unfortunately prevailing attitude that you aren't successful in America if you aren't living in New York or San Francisco. It's absolutely bonkers. There are many other great places in this country besides those two cities.

If you can make NYC/SF money and save/invest a portion of your income, you can retire and do significantly better elsewhere. You can't do the opposite. If you can have a decent lifestyle in Ohio on 40k (big if, when you factor in retirement planning) you can still fundamentally never leave Ohio.

Assuming the rest of the world doesn't exist, though. Can't honestly say I'm targeting having more retirement money than needed to get by in some combination of Ukraine, Thailand, and Colombia.

Major life regret? Thinking other countries didn't exist when I was at the age to enter college and taking on massive loans to pay exorbitant US tuition for a school that wasn't anything special when I could have found overseas options at a fraction of the cost.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#80

Post by doubleunplussed »

DasIch wrote: post #65
wasmburger wrote: post #59

I wonder if it could be because masculinity is being challenged on campus in the current era. Why would a male who has issues with women want to go to a place where he will be challenged to change his views in sensitivty and toxic masculinity courses? Conversely, why would a male who does not have issues with women go to a place where he will be labeled as having toxic masculinity? It's not like these issues haven't…

The term “toxic masculinity” does not and is not intended to imply that masculinity itself is toxic.

I don't know anyone who believes this. Words mean what they're intended to mean and interpreted to mean, and that's how it's used in practice. Claiming otherwise is just a bald-faced "nuh-uh" when people who use the term are confronted with the double standard.

If there wasn't at least a little bit of complicity in it being interpreted as a general diss on masculinity, the term would never have caught on, or a different term would have been chosen in the first place. In the face of repeated misunderstandings, people using the term would pick a new one. They haven't done that. Why? It seems to me that they are quite happy to be "misunderstood" 95% of the time.

The gender swapped equivalent seems to be "internalised misogyny". Do you think I could get away with calling it "toxic femininity" instead? Nobody would let that pass. Do you think I could get away with calling any obviously bad behaviour associated with femininity, "toxic femininity", at all? I don't think I could.

It's widely considered by men to be an insulting term, and if people who use it don't want to insult people, they should pick another one. They don't though, which is telling.

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