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More than 1M fewer students are in college, the lowest numbers in 50 years

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Re: More than 1M fewer students are in college, the lowest numbers in 50 years

#891

There are three problems that colleges need to fix. 1) Skilled trades pay better than most bachelor's degree track jobs. My kids can make more money with a six month apprenticeship than they will with all but a few 4 year degrees. If you can drive a forklift, you can make $45K/yr... which is identical to what an firsty year teacher makes. 2) There are better options than college for many. One of my daughters did a si…

One question I’ve had is if tuition paid via student loans can go to a college endowment. That should end immediately, if so.

Tuition money is fungible. If a school gets 20% of it's funding from loans (no idea what the real number might look like) and uses 30% of tuition money to fund their endowment, then the accounting will show that all of the loan money went to fund operations and only cash payments went to the endowment.

We've already seen this in every state where lottery funds "go to education." The new money doesn't increase the budget for education, it only frees up some money to be spent on something else.

Re: More than 1M fewer students are in college, the lowest numbers in 50 years

#892

There are three problems that colleges need to fix. 1) Skilled trades pay better than most bachelor's degree track jobs. My kids can make more money with a six month apprenticeship than they will with all but a few 4 year degrees. If you can drive a forklift, you can make $45K/yr... which is identical to what an firsty year teacher makes. 2) There are better options than college for many. One of my daughters did a si…

Director of marketing after one year in the field is wild. Congrats to her.

She runs her own TikTok.

I'm kidding but really the job title doesn't necessarily mean much.

Re: More than 1M fewer students are in college, the lowest numbers in 50 years

#893

There are three problems that colleges need to fix. 1) Skilled trades pay better than most bachelor's degree track jobs. My kids can make more money with a six month apprenticeship than they will with all but a few 4 year degrees. If you can drive a forklift, you can make $45K/yr... which is identical to what an firsty year teacher makes. 2) There are better options than college for many. One of my daughters did a si…

I encourage you to reexamine your position and perspective on things. It's too much to unpacking one reply, however every one of your points suffers from a kind of perspective shift that skews your perspective on things.

Yes, the whole system is utterly convoluted, twisted, and perverted into dysfunction; but I also find it astonishing that you claim it's some kind of debt-bondage, right after clearly making the point that you can just go into a skilled trade or to a marketing bootcamp and that just alone the drive and work ethic of someone who has a job before 18 will set you up for success.

The real issue is that the upper class has colluded to corrupt the whole education system, largely for self-enrichment, which has also have an exorbitant impact on America's competitiveness by inefficient allocation of human resources into ever increasingly useless degrees. It is not a coincidence that all these changes have correlated the increase in communistic/socialistic type policies and mentalities.

Re: More than 1M fewer students are in college, the lowest numbers in 50 years

#894

There are three problems that colleges need to fix. 1) Skilled trades pay better than most bachelor's degree track jobs. My kids can make more money with a six month apprenticeship than they will with all but a few 4 year degrees. If you can drive a forklift, you can make $45K/yr... which is identical to what an firsty year teacher makes. 2) There are better options than college for many. One of my daughters did a si…

Which boot camp? I’m asking for an interested family member.

Re: More than 1M fewer students are in college, the lowest numbers in 50 years

#895
post #697

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure there are some pipefitters who make a lot of money, but we should go by averages, not outliers. The average for "Plumbers, Pipefitters, and Steamfitters" is $56,330 per year, according to the BLS. For "Software Developers, Quality Assurance Analysts, and Testers" it's $110,140 per year. For "Physicians and Surgeons," it's $208,000 per year. We also need to consider that running your own business is a lot of…

> One of the benefits of office jobs is that you get high pay, stable hours, relatively low stress and get to work in an air-conditioned room. So I would still prefer that over skilled trades even if the pay was the same. One of the downsides is your job can be easily outsourced to a country with lower wages, and with remote work here to stay (IMO), that is going to be even easier than before. There are no remote plu…

Software development is a team sport. It’s as much about having proper work cadence, communication, etc.

It’s really hard to outsource.

Re: More than 1M fewer students are in college, the lowest numbers in 50 years

#896
post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it is my vague impression from history that in real yet slow-moving crisis, those that are able to command and control high-value resources do in fact continue to thrive while others fail in increasing numbers. This works, until it doesn't, to make a cute phrase, because in dynamic systems, either the system re-stabilizes in a new and different composition, or there is sudden, increased failure.

If I understood you correctly, you're describing the efficiency-resilience problem: A system that is efficient is highly specialised for their environment, and thus susceptible to failure if the environment changes; a system that is resilient will not be as efficient, but can adapt to a changing environment. This seems to apply to all kinds of things - people, organisations, software, religions. I guess as often in l…

What does this say about economics and supply chain failures during a pandemic? I think you’re on to something.

Re: More than 1M fewer students are in college, the lowest numbers in 50 years

#897

There are three problems that colleges need to fix. 1) Skilled trades pay better than most bachelor's degree track jobs. My kids can make more money with a six month apprenticeship than they will with all but a few 4 year degrees. If you can drive a forklift, you can make $45K/yr... which is identical to what an firsty year teacher makes. 2) There are better options than college for many. One of my daughters did a si…

Also, a degree may have a negative contribution. Is the ideological bend of some college degrees potentially harming mental acuity through confusions and bad mental habits? E.g. if you take a math degree that teach "2+2 != 5" this degree is likely to reduce mental acuity. You'll be a great activist, but not a great mathematician or teacher.

I meant to say “2+2 != 4” :D

Re: More than 1M fewer students are in college, the lowest numbers in 50 years

#898

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With regards to 1 A lot of the trades are hard on your body. By the time you are 45-50 your knees could be wrecked and that makes it hard to do service work like electric/HVAC. There are an argument that desk work isnt healthy either but that is a different discussion.

alot of engineers(and other tech employees) are forced out of the field due to ageism by 45-50 so its a wash.

I’m an aging engineer. Have not witnessed this.

Re: More than 1M fewer students are in college, the lowest numbers in 50 years

#899

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1. Many trades also pay like crap and have a very limited window in which you can do it. In addition many are not welcoming to women at all, regardless even if you take the highest paying trades, do they pay more than the highest paying careers that require higher education? Exactly. These types of post often ignore the actual work being done. A graduate student might make a comparable hourly rate to an amazon ware…

Working in an Amazon warehouse would not be considered a "trade" by most definitions. It doesn't require much if any training and amost anyone in normal physical condition can do it. It's more of a pure "laborer" job, these have always paid less than skilled trades.

You've missed the point. Very obviously working in an Amazon warehouse isn't a trade. The point isn't that working at an Amazon warehouse is a trade, nor the job's actual wage...

The point is that two jobs with superficially equivalent wages can be far from equivalent in things like the toll it might take on one physically...

The same could be said for the starting salary of graduates with undergraduate accounting degrees and entry level plumbers ($40k-$50k annually)... Similar in terms of wages, far from equivalent in terms of physical demands...

Re: More than 1M fewer students are in college, the lowest numbers in 50 years

#900

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Source on programming starting out female dominated? Also, I'm curious what a programmer's job looked like in the beginning.

A women (Ada Lovelace) is "often been cited as the first computer programmer" [1] Also the term "Computer" was actually an occupation (that was dominated by women) before the modern usage [2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace#First_computer_pr... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_(occupation)

Is there any evidence for a grammatically feminine version of “computer?” “Computress?”

Edit: https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/computress

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