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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

#701

Post by staysafeanon »

baron_harkonnen wrote: post #462
smitty1e wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 indictme…

> all the Grievance Studies major Area, ethnic, cultural, gender, and group studies (I'm assuming "Grievance Studies" falls under this category), at least in the US, have been in steady decline since 2008, and even at their peak only accounted for 0.5% of majors (now just 0.3%). Even if you want to add in humanities in general that has gone from 3% to just above 2% The idea that college campuses are ever more filled…

I don't see where in your source the data paints that picture? Social sciences and history is 8%, family and human sciences is another few percent, journalism is also listed out separately, as is liberal arts and humanities... Maybe there are better sources that break things down per major so we can see the growth?

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#702

Post by AnimalMuppet »

zepto wrote: post #690
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #670

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 de…

Fair point. But my impression (only that) is that college in 1950 was much less hand-holding and "supportive" in general than it is in 2021. What there was, however, was almost certainly tuned for males (and in fact white males).

I totally agree with your last paragraph.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#703

Post by aksss »

Frost1x wrote: post #410
davidhunter wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an interesting observation and matches with my experience. I'd add: 1) There's a race to the bottom with services in terms of pricing. For example, NHS GPs have strict time limits within which to provide a particular service. These time limits have reduced over the years and so individual doctors are capable of providing a better service but are can't given the constraints. People rarely are willing to pay mo…

I blame the extreme penetration of capitalism everywhere. We've created a culture where everyone thinks like a business and looks to do the minimal effort for the maximal compensation. If you don't do this, "you're dumb" (and, unfortunately, maybe there's some truth to this). In a culture obsessed with looking for exploitation opportunities at every corner, what do we expect? Everyone is running so "lean" and "effici…

Looked at another way, capitalism has commoditized services that were historically unobtainable by certain classes for all intents and purposes. So now you have mediocre servicing at prices everyone can afford. You can still get expert services if you can truly pay for it, and that hasn't changed.

Making something a "human right" doesn't make it immune to the rules of scarcity. Expert services are scarce, which is why they cost more, even in socialist/communist countries. Communism is, after all, just state-owned capitalism. :) People still get rich in communist countries, experts still get outsized reward, it's just that the opportunities to get rich are constrained to the bureaucrats, and the outsized reward will either come from the system or be facilitated by a black market.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#704

Post by anm89 »

teawrecks wrote: post #660
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 ac…

The great irony of this logic is that you are totally embracing might is right politics. As long as your team wins. But that's not how might is right works.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#705

Post by anm89 »

bmj wrote: post #234
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…

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.…

My belief is that time will prove this to be an excellent strategy. Knowing how to make things of high quality with your hands is the new college degree in many ways in the sense of being a high value minority in the labor market.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#706

Post by astura »

the_only_law wrote: post #486
pc86 wrote: post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on what you're comparing it to. You can go to a trade school and learn contracting, or be an electrician, or an HVAC installer, and in your late teens and early 20's you'll make a lot more than most college grads. But unless you branch out into your own business your income is capped lower than a generic college grad's probably is. And importantly, those careers are typically hell on your body. I know we a…

> and in your late teens and early 20's you'll make a lot more than most college grads. I question even this. I live in an area of the US without a strong union culture, and known a lot of people in the trades and it doesn’t seem uncommon to see job postings for X apprentice starting at $13-$15 and hour. I could get close to that at a shitty gas station clerk job.

How competitive are these apprenticeships? A super smart super hard working friend of mine really wanted to do an electrician apprenticeship but at the time (about a decade ago) the wait-list was several year long so he went to college instead.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#707

Post by anm89 »

smitty1e wrote: post #74
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 indictme…

The irony is that this will be viewed as a new form of of privilege.

Its schrodingers privilege. the privilege was being so priveleged that you were pushed out of the traditional credentialing system.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#708

Post by anm89 »

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…

This feels so true to me. I think this is the biggest reason that things feel so unfair to many average people. because the resources required to get good service in almost every meaningful endeavor are just totally unobtainable to people so you either make yourself an expert in everything or get screwed left and right.

This is starting to push me in the direction of off grid/ sustainable living just to minimize these dependencies

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#709

Post by odessacubbage »

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?

according to kendi's framework, you would be a racist.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#710

Post by mhh__ »

WalterBright wrote: post #659
pitched wrote: post #640

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 y…

Then a smug physicist will walk by with either the the equations of quantum electrodynamics or Maxwell's equations in terms of differential forms on their t-shirt

Besides, EEs usually cheat by assuming a sinusoidal solution anyway.

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