Disclosure: I'm an automotive diesel mechanic by trade, and chose the anti college 15 years ago.
Trade school cannot continue to be a four letter word in american households. HVAC, plumbers, machinists, welders and electricians are all facing massive shortages and offer a skilled, well paying job with benefits. These are all 1-2 year with an apprenticeship and the opportunity to build something you can be proud of.
I'm just gonna vent for a sec out of envy: As someone who did the software route, there are days I deeply wish I had done this sort of thing instead. My neighbor is a welder, lives in a house the same as mine, doesn't work crazy hours without getting paid overtime, doesn't spend weekends keeping up with the latest welding technology or practicing esoteric welding techniques just to pass an interview (as I sit here learning Rust because my team is starting to use it and practicing interview problems because I'm trying to transfer internally at the company). His boss probably doesn't pressure him to go give talks at welding conferences off hours as publicity to the company. Or come in on Saturday's to listen to presentations on what other parts of the welding org are working on. I'm tired of a career that consumes _my life_. I so truly just want to clock in, clock out, work about 40hrs/week and have time for my family. But I'm scared to do that in my industry, it just moves too fast and it's too easy to feel left behind, especially where I'm at in it--a weird limbo between programmer and manager where I'm expected to know how do to things without being allowed time to learn them. I loved programming when I was younger, and I still do, but my god I hate this industry. I daydream about taking a pay cut just to be able to go live in like... Cheyenne, WY or something and not be a part of the tech rush. Once I pay down my house a bit and can afford to start over with my family somewhere else, I just might. /rant
If any software folks who understand where I'm coming from wanna chime in on that, I'd love to hear about what you did about it... Or maybe I'm just a negative nancy, that's plausible too.
I feel like my life and career as a software guy is pretty cushy. I work probably 35 hours a week on average, remote, on a schedule I prefer. I have a ton of time left over for socializing, hobbies, TV, games, etc. But, this was a deliberate progression for me.
And it could even get easier. I could do 20 hours a week of consulting work and still get by. I don't think I'd want to do that, but I could.
I don't know where you live or what area you work in, but I think the thing you want actually is achievable, maybe with a pay cut, or maybe not even. The fact that you're having to learn to use Rust because it's all the sudden getting used on projects says to me that you're working at some place where people put way too much of themselves into work.
Yeah, there are so many entirely separate "software industries" where life is so completely different, it's crazy.
If you hate your job, don't just accept "this is how the industry is". Look around a bit and you might find a corner of it that's more to your liking.
Of course, some of the nicer parts are "by invitation only". Once you've proven yourself to the right people, you might get invited to work on the saner and more fun projects.
I'm having the exact same experience. It took me about 10 years to figure it out.
I'm still kind of a workaholic, but I could do way less and it'd be fine. It's also super nice to have a safety net of more and more remote jobs now. Even if the whole economy melts down, people somewhere in the world will still need software built and maintained remotely.
Remote work is so much closer to feeling like it's not a job than office work, which is a huge deal for me.
And you can move to a lower cost of living area, avoid state income taxes, and still have a competitive salary to your city-dwelling peers.
Maybe that's still true, but it's a big market. Any time I look at remote job listings, I see lots of good companies to choose from. Whenever a friend tries to recruit me, I ask them if they hire remote and they mostly do.
Yeah, I really just have a couple of former clients that would give me as much work as I asked for. Not the most rewarding work, which is why I don't do it anymore.
How long have you been doing this? Did you keep working during big downturns & have your skills changed over time? I see way to many people thinking the job market of the last 5 years is normal.
6-7 years. Totally acknowledge that the gravy train could come to an end and make life harder. Hopefully that doesn't happen or most of the folks on here will be worse off!
Blue collar work isn't all sunshine and rainbows. Blue collar workers often have to pull forced overtime on weekends or weeks on end if the job needs it. I worked in a factory for the longest year of my life, and we had a rule in place that you could not be forced or voluntarily work more than 15 days in a row without a day off. And people regularly hit that limit of 15 days working 12 hours a day during busy season, sure they were getting paid overtime but it wears on you. And then if you ever need to switch jobs, you might end up on the bottom of the seniority totem pole and stuck on 2nd or 3rd shift on a non-traditional work week. We only shut down on 2 days of the year and that was Christmas day and Thanksgiving day for 24 hours.
Here in Germany, thanks to the agreements with the works council, there is no forced overtime without proper agreement and the respective compensation.
Naturally not every company has such agreements in place, but even then, you are free to search for help on work law.
Same applies to several other countries.
Of course, the extent that people seek for help, depends on how much they can afford for support, or the consequences at the current employer if they eventually win. But all in all, most European law tends to be on employees side.
Counterpoint: he is destroying his body. He's pretty commonly lifting heavy things and exposing himself to hazardous chemicals. Depending on what kind of welding he's doing, he's breathing smoke from all kinds of different paints and oils. There are fume extractors/ventilation, but they don't remove everything.
My dad and grandpa are both plumbers. My grandpa destroyed both his shoulders. He's had one replaced, and needs to have the other one done. My dad is well on his way to destroying his shoulders too.
I'm kind of tired of the trades "break your body" argument.
I think just as many bodies routinely get destroyed in office environments—especially in tech. You know the trope. Sitting all the time under artificial light breathing nasty "inside" air staring at screens in open office environments with a lot of mental stress. Etc.
In each case, blue collar or white, proper care can be taken to avoid these injuries. Especially in blue collar trades.
I think your last point holds true, but it's really not an equivalent amount of stress you're putting on your body in an office. You can always go outside more after work and remain physically active to counteract the damage you're doing by sitting in an office all day, but if you're in a physically intensive trade, you can't avoid the damage you're doing by remaining less active after work.
Also you're going to have less energy to do the physical activity you want to do.
I paved roads for a summer at 18 and even though I was a very young energetic kid, I was barely getting anything out of my evening workouts or soccer games with friends after 10 hours outside shoveling asphalt.
Sure I might get some RSI, but my welder friend has to contend with someone on site accidentally creating phosgene gas. I don't feel like the two levels of potential self harm are in the same ball park.
Your welder friend could also end up with RSI- depending on how much grinding he does in a day. That was the main reason I quit being a mechanic, it's actually easier to prevent RSI in an office environment by careful selection of equipment, whereas running a grinder for an hour with your wrists at a funny angle since it's the only way to get the tool into the work is sometimes just required.
Sure but you don't get carpal tunnel from screwing up once, you get it by screwing up over and over for a decade. Trade injuries are often one shots. Being said if you don't have the discipline to avoid posture injuries you might not have what it takes to survive a trade.
Plumbers pick their own work conditions as they are often self employed. So uh kinda? Mostly not. Heavy things are still heavy and still need to be lifted. You're probably not going to bring in a jack.
My best friend was a HVAC repairman and is a programmer now. He's happier as a programmer. Some people are happier as an HVAC repairman, and more power to them. However it's not the norm for people who have done both.
Plumbing isn't the only kind of blue collar work, but I expect even there the work safety has improved considerably. Many things that used to be heavy are now light (copper and lead vs PVC and other plastics), many things that used to be toxic are no longer required or have safer alternatives (e.g., solders), and in general the cultural expectation for a plumber to risk life or limb for a job is far lower.
And if you're working in a factory, conditions have improved far more drastically. Worker safety is serious business given OSHA and legal liability associated with workplace injury.
Happy to hear about your best friend; I doubt it extrapolates, but it doesn't matter much to me--I don't have a dog in the fight.
Sounds like you should spend some time in a trade. It's still worth doing don't get me wrong but there are more risks, they are harder to avoid, and with worse consequences.
One interesting comparison that is likely to become highly relevant over the next couple of decades is long term viability. In software you're getting pretty old by your late 30s. By your 40s you're edging towards obsolescence. Beyond that? Of course there are exceptions but I think it's safe to say that they're the exception.
The is only something that's not such a big deal yet because the rapid growth of software is very young, and consequently so are most software developers. By contrast the average age of a welder in the US today is 55. [1] It'll be quite interesting to see how this plays out. You have people increasingly living well into their 80s, yet they start to lose their place in the job market after after a couple of decades? Maybe the bias against older workers will simply fade as the industry matures alongside its workers, but if it doesn't then there's going to be quite a spectacle over the next couple of decades.
I wonder about that - is it that tech sheds older workers, or that tech just seems to skew young because it's a young "industry"? There weren't a lot of older programmers in the 90's because there weren't that many young programmers in the 70's. The "older programmers" today are the ones (like me) who were young programmers in the 90's, and today, at 45, I've never felt any real age pressure. I think it's just a bit harder for me to find jobs now than it was when I was in my 20's, but I don't think that's because I have a few gray hairs and more wrinkles than I used to, but because I'm asking for 3 times as much money.
Or maybe I'm just being unrealistically optimistic and life is about to get really difficult for me.
I think you hit on the key point. Like you mentioned, you're expecting 3 times as much as you were initially. On top of a better understanding of your own value, you're also going to have a better understanding of the employer:employee relationship. In other words you're not going to bend over backwards solely in in hopes of proving yourself, achieving some sort of recognition, or other such things. I don't think companies are choosing not to hire older developers because of any form of discrimination or even a belief that older developers have less skills. Instead, it's just a value measurement no different than e.g. outsourcing. It's the same reason that I think most large tech companies are pushing hard for 'get [anybody with a heartbeat] into computer science'. Increase the labor supply, lower labor costs, increase profit margins.
This would also explain why other industries don't suffer from a similar problem. In software development companies collect software developers by the tens of thousands. This results in extremely high labor costs and so reductions on this front can see tremendous savings. As an example Google has about 100,000 employees. That means reducing their average salary by just $10 per year is worth a million dollars of 'free' revenue (yeah, ignoring taxes etc). Really amazing to think about those numbers! By contrast even very large companies in other fields will have relatively small numbers of engineers. For instance petroleum engineering is critical in the fossil fuel industry which is an extremely large industry, yet there are only a total of 33,700 petroleum engineers in the entire country.
There is bias against tech workers who haven’t learned anything in the last 10+ years. I’m less certain that there’s bias against workers over a particular age per-se.
To counter your point: there's just not enough data on modern day software industry jobs to really understand the physical and neurological harm it can bring to your body. I can see entire arms being replaced just from the phone syndrome alone.
I follow a You tuber his handle is Ave, He went into detail about it , I don't have the video title off hand. Being a former welder it really caught my attention. He was testing scrap he brought into his shop with a geiger counter. Commentor's below mentioned they had to test all steel coming in because it could set off sensitive monitors and halt the production line.
> As someone who did the software route, there are days I deeply wish I had done this sort of thing instead.
Don't. As an office worker, you have to worry about carpal tunnel syndrome, your back going and cardiovascular disease from sitting.
Manual labor means repetitive strain injuries and working in an environment that's conducive to hurting one's self.
Those who do manual labor and aren't able to stack capital, become their own boss and hire others will have to worry about all of those things, and the effects of aging on their ability to do their job. Bodies deteriorate with time, and a single injury might prevent them from ever being able to work again when they hit their 40s, 50s or 60s.
> I daydream about taking a pay cut just to be able to go live in like... Cheyenne, WY or something and not be a part of the tech rush
Find an agency or consultancy to work for. There are plenty of them using decades' old tech, maintaining their clients' projects, and "new and shiny" is actively avoided in favor of what's worked for years.
I’m right there with you, there’s this weird insecurity that follows you around throughout your career, and it’s exhausting trying to satisfy it.
That said, the trades just don’t pay as much as software does. I’ve thought once or twice about making a career change to that world, but it’s not nearly the kind of money we like to think it is. Sure, there’s a skill shortage, but a cursory look on indeed paints a less glamorous picture
Not in the tech epicenters they don't, but they absolutely do in most of the country.
I know an electrician that made 75k a year plus as much overtime as he possibly could want (also to show this isn't just a rare anecdote, the top 25% electricians make a median salary of 71k). If you are a solid tradesman or tradeswoman that knows how to a. show up on time, b. communicate well, c. do the job, congrats, you are already in high demand. That's at least equal if not more than most software devs get paid around where I am. I bet if we counted off hours worked and oncall time, and added hours to hours, the electrician would make more. That's 75k working a proper 8 hours a day and not a minute more.
Hold on. I’m not even sure what percentile this is referring to. It sounds like it has to be at least an 80th percentile salary among all electricians. If that’s the case, then 80% aren’t making $71k, so this sounds a lot worse than you make it out to be.
If you note here, there also seems to be cost of living adjustments just like you would find in tech centers as well, so California and New York averages seem higher. A lot of Electrical work is also unionized, so I don't know if that is a factor in any of this, but it seems like some tech workers seem to think unionization is better so there's that. The IBEW (http://www.ibew.org) for example seems to claim their workers on average make 37.69/hr which is right at 75k. The statistic is a bit outdated, but if anything it remained flat, if not slightly increased.
That sounds like 75th percentile is $71k. The IBEW number is more convincing (I also can’t imagine it’s gone down since 2016).
I still have to wonder how much of that is location dependent. $71k in most parts of the Midwest is quite comfortable. In the most expensive urban areas, it’s “livid with 5 roommates and never being able to save much” levels. It would be good if some of these stats were broken down by region, at least, if not MSA.
Doesn't seem to be the case. Average starting electrical work salary is right around on par for average starting web developer salary in my area (45k-50k for both)
I think that comparing the trades to software is a bit too coarse; there's a huge range of skill/experience/compensation variation in each.
Last week, I hired a gasfitter to do something that was straightforward, but needs to leave a paper trail. The job he did roughly equates to setting up a static website or similar - basically "turning the crank" for half a day; no fancy skills or tools. His billable rate is about twice what I made at my last local tech job; I was doing fairly fancy DSP firmware, he's got more work available than time to do it. And his rate is substantially lower than another quote I got to do the same job.
I think you're right that this is largely a "grass is greener" situation, but it's also important to look at the externalities of the options. It seems possible to have a successful trades career that rarely involves going over 40 hours/week, but it's hard to do the same in skilled software development. There's also the physical cost; working at a computer all day is super unhealthy.
Just FWIW your experience doesn’t sound anything like the software jobs I’ve had. In fact all my programming jibs have been pretty close to your ideal. I’m currently in an enterprise job, but have done startups and consulting agencies as well. Only the startup had any long hours.
I’d encourage you to get a new job. These days programmers are in extremely high demand, and you sound like you’ve gotten stuck working at a place with a non-ideal culture.
If your company requires interview to transfer _internally_, you should consider leaving. Microsoft was like that (maybe still is, I don't know), and it was easier to get a job elsewhere than to go to a desirable team.
Microsoft definitely still did as of late 2017, when I was still there. You're absolutely right, it was easier to just get a job elsewhere and that was what I did! Hah. I'm trying to avoid that here, because I like the company, just hoping to work on a different product.
Is a transfer interview not common elsewhere? Anyone know if Amazon or Google requires something like that?
Alternatively, I know blue collar folks that are working crazy overtime, odd hours, sometimes 60-70 hours weeks to make close to software engineer salaries. I also know talented software engineers that work 40 hours a week and make x3-x4 what anything blue collar could pull in.
99% of the software industry isn't like that either, of course. You're just paying the cost of working in the glamorous bit that funds landlords the best.
You're probably right. Any recommendations on where I might look that's not as glamorous? Not being facetious (in case it sounds that way), just curious to have some recommendations.
I'm not going to call you a negative nancy, but I will say that you got a bad deal out of things, IMHO.
I work in the UK, I probably do a 35-40 hour week depending on the week. I work from home two days of that week. I don't spend my weekends learning new stuff unless I have an itch I want to scratch. I don't really have a boss.
I got into server-side programming from the get-go, it moves a lot more slowly in terms of tech than anything web/frontend-ish. I've picked up a lot of crypto/security knowledge along the way. I've managed to leverage that into a contract consultant-developer type of deal. I get paid well*
My only real downsides are that my commute is long because I work in London 3 days per week, but that's really down to me as I refuse to live there. I have no job security at all as a contractor, but to be honest I consider job security in permanent employment to be an illusion much of the time.
(*off the scale according to glassdoor, not sure how true that is, I know that contractors have their own scale. Compared to a silicon-valley salary it's still not that impressive, but then I don't have to put up with what you describe!)
Part of the reason you feel compelled to do all of that as a professional programmer is because you're facing intense competition from desperate people everywhere in the world. Skilled "tradesmen" aren't. There's a reason we do and they don't, but we dare not speak it's name.
There are software jobs all over the country if you don't mind working for ordinary salaries (instead of whatever nutso numbers NCG's are making at FAANG these days). Cheyenne itself isn't even that far from a variety of software.
You should quit a job that has you work crazy overtime if that's something you don't like. I don't _ever_ work more than 40 hours, religiously. I may not be the highest paid ever but I'm perfectly okay. Saving money, enjoying my time in the hammock in a modest house with a modest car.
>doesn't work crazy hours without getting paid overtime
That's not a problem with software, that's a problem with the crazy idea of "unpaid overtime". I'm from Europe, and honestly the first time I heard about it I thought that it must just mean it's legal in US not to pay extra for overtime.
As the gp said though, you can enter those trades with a couple of years of apprenticeship, and I think you could do all the fun programming you desire on the side.
My dad was a welder. I can speak confidently on the subject. I am a software engineer with a long academic career (PhD). I have lived in both worlds. I even weld as a hobby and used to work in his shop off and on.
For the most part, welding as a career sucks big time. It is a dirty, nasty, disgusting business and working as a welder can't possibly pay you enough to really ever get ahead unless you open your own business of some kind and have employees or something like that. It fucking blows compared to an office job writing software.
Even if you can tolerate the horrible working conditions--my dad had to crawl down pipes inside power plants barely big enough to fit into and weld internal seams. He also had to climb into ridiculously high places dragging heavy gear and spend hours up there welding in 100 degree heat of course wearing long-sleeves and heavy clothing. It was a living hell. He did this usually for about $25/hr (1980s, early 1990s).
It gets worse. Oh it get so much fucking worse: The people he had to work with were the most miserable lot on the planet. Drunks, druggies, wife beaters, guys with 20 DUI arrests, biker trash. These were his co-workers and constant companions. If you're the average of the 10 people who spend the most time around, he was doomed! Guys would go out to lunch and drink then come back and operate heavy machinery. OSHA? GTFO! They laughed at safety. No time for that on clock! People got hurt, went on Worker's Comp. I have dozens of stories from back then and I doubt it is any better today. Do you like unions? Because welders have to be in unions more often than not. Unions are just another power structure to lord over people with--the drunks run the unions. It's ugly business. They give the best jobs (foreman) to their buddies. Everyone else is SOL. Only 10 slots at a job in town? Guess you're working out of town this year. And so on.
> HVAC, plumbers, machinists, welders and electricians are all facing massive shortages and offer a skilled, well paying job with benefits.
Exactly. These jobs pay well because for the past couple of decades, people have followed the common advice and overwhelmingly chosen to got to university instead of learning trades. Supply has thus become smaller than demand and wages have risen as a result.
Now that the tides are turning, if people start following the new increasingly common advice to learn trades instead of getting a degree, what will happen? If university enrolment falls by 50% and trades college enrolment increases by the same amount, what kind of job market the new cohort of tradespeople will have upon graduation? If enrolments remain like that for 20 years, what would the job market for trades be in 2040?
I sincerely doubt that blue collar jobs can offer better long-term career prospects, stability, and lifetime earnings than white collar ones. But then again, having gone through Alberta's recession and seeing what it did to blue collar jobs, I might be overly pessimistic.
I think that many skilled blue collar jobs will be very late to never automated. I think a lot of white collar jobs will be automated, possibly within the career lifespan of today’s 17-year olds choosing a path.
The overall costs are lower and the time from completion to realization that either it’s not for you or the job market is saturated (even just locally) is much quicker.
You’re less likely to end up with a glut of HVAC repairmen or welders versus something like lawyers or (would be) programmers.
I think the tide started to turn on this a while ago, honestly. I remember my dad telling me how much money good machinists, plumbers, electricians made and how there's always jobs available.
He pushed heavily for University, but I started getting programming jobs in high school and realized quickly the truth of supply and demand. There will always be demand and need for these types of jobs and they are not low skill at all.
Since then I've heard a lot of people marveling at the need and value of trade jobs.
If I had to quibble at the direction, it would be at the risk that specialization carries. My grandfather was a chiropractor but in later years found a more lucrative career as a copier repairman. This job was highly desired and well paid but for numerous reasons became less so in the 80s and 90s. What happens when you have devoted your career to a specialization and then it disappears or radically transforms?
This is why I feel like hyper-specialization in universities should be limited to masters or doctorate degrees- if the market for airplanes goes poof, then a "I can design ailerons" type of degree is basically worthless and can mean that you won't be qualified for a job for a while.
One of the things that Jewish communities have done for a while is have the men gain both a skill (university degree), and a trade, so that if one fails, they can switch to the other and still provide for their families. For example, after getting laid off in an economic downturn, being able to fix others refrigerators might be the thing that keeps yours from going empty.
The other thing that I wish people would learn is living well within their means, so that if something happens, they don't lose everything that was theirs / the bank's.
It seems like we could prevent this by making retraining and respecialization a more normal part of education and career. What intrinsic purpose is there to doing one job for your whole life? If you can learn copier repair, you can probably learn some other useful engineering/repair trades.
Want to learn "Welding and Metal Fabrication Technology" Estimated net price: $ 31576.00
Are you kidding me? 31k$ to learn how to weld?!?! Looks like average welder income is $16.09 an hour here in Indy... basically a year's gross salary... except you won't start at $16.09, looks like you'll start at $12 an hour or less.
If we do your profession:
"Diesel and Truck Technology" is $56,253 for a 13 month program
"Diesel and Truck Degree" is $63,473 for a 15 month 'degree'!!!
Community college! The PCC[1] welding program costs $5200 for a 1-year certificate. They also offer training in a variety of other trades for roughly the same price.
IvyTech is really the only 'community college' and in fact is 2 of the 3 schools that come up when you search 'Indianapolis community college' (the other I've never heard of and given the neighborhood it is in I doubt it's a proper educational program) in Google. It is $140 a credit hour (which isn't true, they add tons of fees) for in-state students. Using your example the only welding certificate they have is Structural Welding at 21 credit hours which after all fees appears to be $4690 for in-state students. It appears only 20% of their students actually complete the program on time (within 8 months) too which doesn't say much for the school... https://www.ivytech.edu/academics/gainfulemployment/ge/struc...
IUPUI, hands down the cheapest accredited university in Indianapolis, doesn't have a 'welding certificate' or anything remotely approximating it. They do have 'certificates' on their minors page but the only thing remotely trade related is some certificates in motorsports
I have one cousin who decided to be an electrician, and another that is doing elevator installation and repair. I was suprised how well they're paid, it's probably because we've got strong unions in the area. Neither did any college, and they started out making about $25 an hour with no prior work experience.
I still think people should go through college eventually, even just for resume padding. I spent ~8.5 years in the military and have almost 10 years of experience in my field, but HR at some places won't give me the time of day because I haven't finished my degree yet.
People need to remember some of these jobs are tied to specific parts of the economy and can have downturns like anything else. I have a couple friends who are electricians and when the housing/construction market went pear shaped a decade back they both had a rough time of it. Turns out lots of electricians work in relation to construction and when there is no new construction there is a lot less work.
This happened to my uncle, who was a plumber. Most of his work was in new construction and when new construction basically stopped for a few years there wasn't nearly enough work to go around for all the plumbers in the area.
He went back to college and became a math teacher, which he enjoys.
> Long term, this will have to be addressed with tons of construction
If your fresh new trade school grad is 20 years old, you're betting on there being 40+ years of continuous expansion. A welder can't switch to an electrician the same way a C++ programmer can switch to Rust.
Long term (10+ years) it'll be addressed by the baby boomers dying off. The generation just entering college now is tiny - there's going to be a housing glut somewhere between 5-10 years from now.
This housing shortage could easily have been predicted by demographics - starting in 2003, Millenials started leaving their parents homes and forming households of their own, and starting around 2012 they entered peak house-buying years. The baby boomers are not dying off yet, and the generation that is dying off (the Silent Generation) is small. Thus, not many homes are entering the market for the number of new households being formed.
That might be one of those "true but meaningless" facts.
1. The housing shortage doesn't mainly manifest as homelessness, but as housed people crowding into existing places and rural people not being able to afford to move to higher paying jobs in cities. So the number of homeless is relatively small.
2. The empty houses are in depopulated rural places where there is no reason to live.
A number I see thrown around is that California is "missing" 3 million homes right now, and people keep moving in.
Couldn't SV solve most of the homelessness virtually overnight by financing a hundred or so large homeless shelters or urban camping grounds? If every company pitched in and had it run by competent private firms I imagine they could make a huge difference, more than any taxes would do.
I grew up in Vermont and my high school had a tech program. Plenty of guys I went to school with here working as an apprentice by the time they graduated. I know a lot of them are just scraping by though. It seemed to me like there is a shortage of skilled people only in certain areas. I knew a dozen people I could call if a pipe burst in Vermont. In Chicago, I have to call a service and have a stranger fix it. I know a lot of the guys who I went to school with have zero interest in moving away from their hometown.
So how many women do you know that are diesel mechanics?
A lot of the surplus in college graduates is due to women entering and graduating with four year degrees or more. They simply can't or won't repurpose to those trades. When I was in tech school, we were 80% or higher male, with virtually all the women clustered into hairdressing and machine drafting, with a few outliers in graphic design (printmaking then) and the trades you mentioned. And Machine drafting was where the misfits ended up, the ones who didn't fit into traditional trade work; none of us worked in our field if i remember.
Very few people seem to even think about how the trades can't be an answer for slightly above half of the college-going populace. Even then, honestly trade work is something that will nail you unless you move to management later on.
I agree with everything you’re saying, but FWIW the article seems to be accusing colleges of being too “careerist” and offers basically the opposite of college AND trade school, a philosophical exploration without a particular emphasis on vocation.
Those aren't contradictory. Historically, the intended purpose of University education has always been scholarship, research, exchange of knowledge and ideas etc. If you didn't want that, you would go find an apprenticeship or enroll in trade school.
The whole "have to go to college to get a job" requirement is a very recent development, and that is what the article is speaking against.
While I agree they are decent jobs, I think you are severely underestimating the costs of many trade jobs. My father, a heavy equipment mechanic, can't even open up a jar anymore because his hands are so worn down from wrenching his whole life, they are basically simple claws even if he won't admit it to himself. My grandfather who did masonry, had constant near unbearable back pain by his 50s to the point where he had trouble sitting up in a chair without severe effort. My uncle, who did general contracting, had to have both knees and both hips replaced because of the physical tolls. All of them suffer daily physical pain far beyond simple aging. Not to mention the boom and bust cycle of construction with the economy means unpredictable income in many cases. Not to mention the 20 years or so each of them have shaved off their life span.
Trades is a good job in your 20s, probably your 30s, but once you start getting to your 40s or above and your body stops performing and healing as it once did then it becomes a problem. How many trade workers never get to enjoy their retirement because their bodies have failed them?
The pay is decent, but in most cases it isn't good enough. If we started clearly putting a price tag on years of peoples lifespans and quality of life, trade jobs are no longer as attractive, and I think that is being reflected in peoples hesitation to join a trade, especially if they are a personal witness to a trade worker with failing health.
As for myself, I started trades myself doing carpentry, I was happy, then I got into an accident, another not uncommon occurrence in trades, after I recovered and tried to start again from a weaker state it became blindingly obvious how hard even just 10 years of real physical labor had done to my body. Yeah it became less noticeable once I got back to full strength, but I realized that it was just me ignoring the very real damage I was doing to my body on a daily basis. Today the only work ill even consider doing for public hire at market rate is high-end cabinetry. I still use my skills in my normal life, but im not going on some strangers roof for a paltry raise over a cashier. Im not going to breath in the chemical fumes and material dusts and pretend it isn't a problem. Im not going to lay brick for even a 20% raise. I plan on being able to actually enjoy my retirement rather than being confined to a lesser physical state full of pains and ailments.
I'm definitely considering recommending trade schools to my kids, after a life as a software engineer and scientist. More importantly, I wish schools taught more DIY home improvement in general, so people could maintain their houses without needing to depend on expensive repairpeople all the time!
Yeah it makes sense to maybe make this move I consistently get asked to do 140 hours for 40 hours pay in software being an electrician is easier work even if it has some hazards doing that much overtime is also hazardous probably more so than the job risks ofan electrician or welder
But with the current demand in software you don't really have to say yes to working 140 hours, much less without being paid for it.
At least that's what I've been doing here in Spain for the last 8 years.
The moment I'm asked to work longer hours than I want to I just say no and start looking for another job. It's quite easy to find another one and eventually you find a place where you are not demanded to do such a thing.
This is one of the reasons 'free college' cannot happen. College jobs generally pay more, we cannot artificially remove associated costs or there will be an even bigger gap between degreed students and pupils of skilled trades.
The world needs plumbers, electricians, machinists, etc. We need to pay them well. Kids need to recognize the opportunities presented.
With free college, more students from wider backgrounds could affort it. That would increase supply in college graduates while decreasing supply in workers of skilled trades. Thus, the latter would get to demand higher incomes (while the former would see theirs decreased).
I think it was Ron Paul who said in a debate something along the lines of "The rule is: anytime you subsidize something you get more of it."
I don't know where I stand on that as it comes to education. Sure, a more educated populous is desirable but college no longer has a monopoly on higher education. The question to me is, do we need more of the type of graduates college is turning out? And if so, will subsidies further exacerbate the college tuition problem when college becomes "free"? It seems like distancing the payer and consumer leads to more unuseful consumption (one can look to healthcare or even college textbooks for examples)
Well, the college educated also control the legislature - which is why we get the push for free college in the first place - and so makes sure that a college degree is legally required for all important jobs.
"increase supply in college graduates while decreasing supply in workers of skilled trades. Thus, the latter would get to demand higher incomes (while the former would see theirs decreased)."
Even today some people are making the argument that college grads can't find good jobs. Wouldn't more grads make the problem worse?
I think some of those college grads should find their way into skilled trades. The trades may lack some of the sizzle, but they definitely result in jobs that serve a purpose.
I'm almost thirty with a degree in philosophy. College was easily the worst financial decision I've ever made. It's scary to reflect on how I made that mistake as a teenager. The people I've met that were able to successfully leverage the advantages of a college degree fall roughly into two categories: 1) people whose parents had the money to support them financially but also the sense to guide them with respect to a career; and 2) highly ambitious people with a plan. The problem is that there was a generation of students (myself included) that thought a university education led to a well-paying job. I know how incredibly naive that sounds. But it was also the understanding of many parents without formal education encouraging their children to attend. But I think in general there's an increasing awareness that this isn't the case and now we're having these anti-college conversations.
> The problem is that there was a generation of students (myself included) that thought a university education led to a well-paying job. I know how incredibly naive that sounds
I hear this all the time from people in their 20s and early 30s, earnestly complaining that they were tricked into believing this, and I think it's somewhat true.
But at the same time, I got my double major in Philosophy (primary was Computer Science), so I know that if you major in Philosophy (or Art, or Sociology, or--this will really get them going--Gender Studies), there will be people crawling out of the woodwork and lining up to tell you your degree is useless and that you should study engineering.
After seeing Yet Another Non-CS Major Software Engineer, I recently joked that we should send a letter to all Freshman and tell them "Just study CS--it's what you're going to end up doing anyway."
My coworker, a software engineer with an art degree, turned to me and said "UT sent me that letter when I started college. I ignored it."
So....we're sending mixed signals to teens. I think you're right that it's starting to turn around and get less mixed. More pro-trade school stuff is appearing on Facebook, for one (though maybe it's that my friend group is shifting).
I'm have a master is philosophy and don't regret it for a second. Helped shape my thinking in so many ways and was probably one of the largest contributors to my ongoing success as in software development. I've known a surprising number of philosophy majors in software, so I don't think it's an accident that it helped me. Seems like philosophy may be one of the better areas of study to help get your brain working in ways that are conducive to software.
I used to hate Philosophy and think it's something people who can't do anything do. My vision changed lately and I think Philosophy and theoretical thinking is important.
However, abstract theoretical thinking without an adjacent skill (like software development), is probably useless in the market today. This is probably why the OP didn't find financial success.
Suggesting a philosophy career is then a bad idea. Suggesting a CS + Philosophy career might be a decent one though.
Oh, for sure. Philosophy has pretty much 1 career path, acedemics, and it is pretty cutthroat and pays poorly. I figured out that didn't appeal to me in time to pivot into software development.
I wouldn’t be too hard on yourself. I have met some great technically minded program managers who majored in philosophy. Granted you may not get far in SV (don’t know - I don’t live there) but in other big Corp and fed govt you can find people who appreciate a well rounded candidate. Try sales engineering, product owner or program manager if you’re looking for tech jobs.
It’s too bad that we have such blinders on as an industry. There’s more to tech work than knowing the big-O notation of a given algorithm off the top of your head.
I have a philosophy degree (strictly speaking History and Philosophy of Science) and I'm a staff software engineer at Google.
I've been doing this professionally for 25 years, and definitely my career had a slow start, it took a good nine months out of college to find my first job, which essentially served as an apprenticeship. I've certainly never had a problem with being insufficiently technical, if you can work your way through Gödels incompleteness theorem then you can work your way through PAXOS or an algorithms text book
As a philosophy major, at my university we do so in our "Advanced Symbolic Logic" class. However, the depth with which you engage with Gödel's theorem depends on the professor teaching it and their interests when designing the course (we have 2 specializing in mathematical logic who flip back and forth iirc).
I remember, in an upper-level Philosophy class, the professor mentioning Gödel, and I'm pretty sure no one but me knew who he was. (Though, to be fair, at the time I knew him as "Go-Dell", so when he asked about "Girdle" I initially didn't recognize the name.)
That "Girdle" pronunciation is like nails on a chalkboard! The umlaut is an oo (or ue) sound. There is no "r" anywhere! As both a philosophy student and German speaker, whenever my professors pronounced it like that I shuddered in my seat.
I'm sure actual native German speakers could probably chime in, but I couldn't help but try to stop the spread of FUD around pronouncing poor ol' Gödel's name. :)
As a German speaker and (I assume) English speaker, you're likely aware that the sound represented by ö is not at all common in English. One can argue that it's not like "r", but it's a closer approximation of the mouth position and sound than others. The IPA for Gödel is /ˈɡɜːrdəl/ : the symbols don't map one-to-one with English orthography (then again, what does), but it's no accident that there's an r in there. And then there's the question of whether or not to pronounce names closer to how they're pronounced in their native tongue, or how they're more properly understood, or some other rational.
Thanks for the reply! I didn't know the standardized IPA was in fact with an "r." Strange though, because to me the umlauted-o sound is probably one of the easiest German pronunciations to do for an English speaker. Also, good point on the compiled/interpreted (using a programming analogy) divide in pronunciation of borrowed words. I do suppose there is plenty of evidence of butchered French terms already, so why not ruin some other language's beautiful sounds too! groaning laughter
Though, I should not be all that surprised. For my entire life in the U.S. people have pronounced my last name of "Wiese" as either "Wise" or "Why-se," both of which are totally incorrect (my family says "Weese" when anglicized). I much prefer the German pronunciation of my last name, though; too bad it's too much of a pain to explain the discrepancy between how it's spelt and what it sounds like to native English speakers. :P
I have no idea. We mostly glossed over it in class, but I had been given a copy of Gödel Escher Bach at some point so I dove a little deeper. My personal preference is Nagel's book which is short and clear (and you can probably find a digital version)
This was very much a theme of the way we were taught, there is no possible way to go into anything in depth in a lecture, if something sparked interest then we were supposed to read up on it, write a paper, and get criticized. Some classes had reading lists with well over a hundred books on them
I was so afraid of debt I religiously avoided it. But I had another friend who racked up major debt in undergrad and then law school. When I asked him about paying it off, he said he could just get out of it through bankruptcy. Apparently the law student hadn't checked the law on that.
I attended a grad program for just one semester (since I was able to get the first semester as a free trial - but the rest of the degree would have cost $150K and the program was ranked #1 in the US News scam rankings and yet the school refused to give any statistics on employment of graduates. No problem for the women, who all got the entire $180K paid by corporations. A couple of the guys, though, as I feared, were unemployed for over two years... after $180K debt for a program ranked #1 with an acceptance rate well under 5%! One girl needed a job in less than a week to stay in the US, so her boyfriend hired her as a programmer though she had absolutely no knowledge or experience and so she just started getting paid to study CS. By then, I had about completed a CS program at another school but couldn't get a single job offer.
Several of the guys told me their plan to pay off the $180K was to get Bernie Sanders elected so he'd just forgive it. In fact, that's the most common plan I've heard. Very few people want to pay back student loans unless they quickly get a lucrative job and I dunno if I've found anyone (in person) other than me who felt at least a possible moral obligation to pay if I decided to take out the loan.
Really brings into question what type of law education that guy was getting if he didn't know student loans couldn't be bankrupted...I think I learned that from high school...
> a university education led to a well-paying job. I know how incredibly naive that sounds
That was the god honest trust for about 40 years, so it wasn't naive. The market conditions changed drastically and abruptly, but the same advice was being given.
Is this really true? I have my doubts there was ever a time where an English or philosophy or art history undergrad degree had very much value in the job market. And if there was, what specifically has changed to make that no longer the case?
Very true. Circa 1980 there were lots of management trainee programs with large companies open to any degree. A friend with a BA in history joined one of the large rental car companies. After a six month training program became a manager of a local office. A few years later he was a regional manager, then a few years later left for a better position with a competitor.
Absolutely agree. A big part of this problem, which is still being perpetuated today, is this idea that if you go to college and study ANYTHING then it will get you that coveted 50k/year salary job upon graduation. This idea was mainly perpetuated by elementary, middle and high school teachers, as well as parents who honestly should not have even been giving career advice to begin with.
Also you are by far not the only one in this situation. I have friends on my facebook that I look back at and see them still working the same job they worked while in college (making roughly 23k/year in Southern California!). They have degrees in sociology, psychology, philosophy, communications etc. Their degree has made them worse off because now they have student loans to repay on a degree which simply cannot support the repayment of such loans. Likewise, the degree did not increase their income at all. It is hard to believe but in reality, they would have been better off not going to college at all.
First, the proposed educational experiences sound like more silly adventures for kids with money (or debt) to burn. You could learn more about life and yourself by working at McDonald's for a year.
Second, it fucking annoys the shit out of me that when articles like this talk about "the liberal arts" they really mean humanities. I have yet to meet someone who espouses the merits of a liberal arts education who realizes that it technically includes math and the natural sciences. How many English majors takes statistics? How many History majors take discrete math or more than the most basic math requirements needed to graduate? Bet it is less than 1%.
I am all for a liberal arts education as long as it has equal helpings of math and the natural sciences along w/ English, philosophy, etc.
Have you really "learned to think" from your humanities education if you have no understanding of calculus, probability, statistics, or physics? If you have never learned how to design and conduct an experiment?
A "good" university education is simple and not sexy. High quality courses taught by passionate teachers. Nothing else. No student unions, no sports teams, no academic or emotional counseling, no beautiful buildings, no study abroad or fucking trips to Alaska. Which basically describes university studies in central Europe and Israel.
Not very sexy so no NYT articles about it.
I actually attended a pricey "liberal arts" college where I majored in computer science. I am currently in the OMSCS program at Georgia Tech and the quality of education I am receiving through it is much better at less than a tenth of the cost. We have better discussions on Slack than I did sitting in seminars w/ a bunch of rich kids 20 years ago. No picturesque campus to stroll through though :)
Your second point seems really overblown. Language evolves, embrace and accept that. People seem to be using the words humanities and liberal arts to mean the same thing these days.
Good. But on that note, there are ample opportunities to get an affordable education in the US. You just have to make 2 simultaneous decisions. 1) Go to a public school, 2) Stay in-state.
Why the hell are so many people choosing non-public and out of state schools? Do people really think that double the cost gets you double the returns?
There is a robust thesis to be made that the only value of university in the current environment is in its exclusivity (expressed as selectivity for social value + wealth). Education received is not largely relevant.
More people choosing state schools won't make the mean or median degree cheaper, it will just make state schools more expensive with lower admittance rates.
People do not know how to evaluate the quality of education. The 'real' quality of the education also doesn't matter because it is not actual ability that governs success but ability to play well the game that has arisen from elementary school through new-grad hires.
If you take out the mechanics of the game which are arbitrary you get an economy where there are far more people who are able to be educated and who have been educated for any particular field than there are jobs and success becomes a lottery. (Success is already a lottery hidden behind the game mechanics)
This is expressed in The Case Against Education, which strengthens it's argument by convincing the reader that university is really only useful as a finishing school.
Are there any more extensive writings on the game mechanics of education and successfully joining the workforce?
Not only in-state, also overseas. Finland, Germany (and sometimes Denmark) offer free tuition and stipend for international students. Hong Kong University also (postgrad, AFAIK). There are probably more. English language is the language of 'instruction'.
Every one of the (ex-)overseas(ish) graduates that I know from these countries' universities have had nothing but praise and thanks for the opportunity, have loyalty, promote in their home countries, and live (and earn, and pay tax) there for several years, and if returning home will gladly return / switch between countries.
If any high schoolers reading this thread have not considered this option, take a chance to take a look.
I'm in state and in a public school and I'm in huge debt. Family used to make a lot of money. Drugs and situation ruined my family just as I was going to college. FAFSA only takes "$year -2" income into account so my $0/month income family was being given the support that a 6-figure family got. Had to take out a 30k loan at >20% APR since no one could co-sign for me except my mom and she'd been evicted 2 times, stopped paying her bills, and had no income so it's all i could find from Sallie Mae.
"Just do x" doesn't help when the game is rigged from the start.
I'm doing everything right:
1. Work during school (on campus & industry)
2. Getting good grades
3. Applying for FAFS
4. In state
5. Engineering progression (IT)
6. Not dorming (except first year because of family situation)
7. No meal plan
I'm levereged over $100k in this degree. Hoping to finish soon. I know my situation is nonstandard but this misinformation is just polluting the dialogue on this topic and it's something that really hurts people like me.
APR of >20% is criminal. And from Sallie Mae.. my mind boggles. You're in a major in a state school with good grades that provides solid employment options, I'm sure there's an opportunity here for someone browsing this thread to compete in student loans.
Get it paid off as quickly as you can (sure, you know this). Best wishes.
I acknowledge that in my comment. I'm trying to say that you can do all of the traditionally "correct" things and still end up with an unacceptable amount of debt. This to me signals that the traditional wisdom in this area is not the full story and limiting our conversation to "Just stay in state and go to a public school" full stop is not a helpful method of introspection.
If I was reviewing code of a junior developer and found a very specific case that would break the code they submitted I'd ask them to go back an fix that bug. If they came back, providing a solution similar to yours, it would look something like this:
if (input == null) {
return;
}
doWork(input);
I would still refuse to accept this situation. Hacking out the error case isn't fixing the root problem. This is similar to this discussion.
The conventional wisdom used to be correct. You used to be able to avoid massive debt by staying in state and attending a public college. This is not the case anymore. I know plenty of people who aren't in as bad of a situation as I am and received similarly low financial support from the government and the university I attend.
Focusing the conversation on "what to do" is not helpful. Focusing on "why do you have to" is helpful.
Why do you have to pay ~30k/year, minimum, to live on campus with the most basic meal plan at a state run college?
The out of state tuition for my college (NJIT) was $6,214 [0] in 1998, the year after I was born. This year the out of state tuition is $32,750. This does not count living expenses or textbooks. The college also mandates you have a laptop with some hardware requirements. Using chronicle's "Adjust for Inflation" tool it seems that my college's tuition grew at a rate of >300% above inflation.
I'm not going to make any comments here as to why I think this is, though I do have opinions, but I will state that "just stay in state" ignores this. This is a trend common to most public colleges. If this trend continues for NJIT (of add ~$1k/year to the tuition for in and out of state) in 18 years, when the next gravypod comes around, they'll be even more screwed.
Yes it is. Full stop. Local community colleges are vastly cheaper than many universities, and the credits match up 1:1. Working full time, getting an AS, transferring to a university to earn a BS is still a very viable path.
Following this path it's not only possible, but expected that one walks away completely debt free with their BS at the end of four years.
Just because you didn't do the right things (or even if you did and still got very unlucky) doesn't mean the rest of us can't have a fruitful conversation about how things will work out for the vast majority of people.
You need to understand this, or you'll forever be trapped making terrible coding analogies on the Internet, not being understood. Literally none of the numbers or situations you cited are relevant to this conversation.
I was extremely frugal with my college decisions and effectively optimized for cheapest option. This is what I did.
1. In high school I took as many AP courses as I could possibly take and realistically pass. I ended up passing 6 of these exams. These exams cost $80 and get you the equivalent of "one course" worth 3 credits. My US history exam gave me 6 credits for 2 full courses! So in total I got 21 units. In effect, I paid $480 to complete 17.5% of my college education!
2. After graduation, I did not go directly into college. Instead, I skipped one semester and then used CLEP exams to knock out an additional 5 exams. These are exactly the same as AP exams but you basically self-study for the subject. The subjects you study are basically general education subjects like sociology or psychology. I got an additional 15 units from these exams for a total cost of about $500. At this point. I have completed 30% of college education for a cost of $980.
3. I apply to a community college and am subsequently accepted. All of my AP + CLEP exam credits are accepted. I then complete another 24 units at the community for a total cost of about $2,400. I don't fully recall what the cost was but this was on the high end estimate. At this point, I am basically 50% done with my college for a total cost of $3,380.
4. I apply to a state university which I am accepted to and then complete the last 60 units for my BA degree. I don't recall fully what the cost is completely but I would estimate it to be about $3,000 per semester. So estimated total cost for my BA degree was $15,380.
These numbers are just for the tuition and books. I lived at home the entire time, commuting to school. I also was working full time the entire time and paid cash for everything. Never had any student loans. When I graduated it took me about 4 months to find a job paying 52k per year. Major was accounting and I live in Southern California.
Most important thing is to make sure to use the resources that are available to you. AP and CLEP are EXTREMELY value resources to you. It just boggles my mind when I talk to people who complain about their student loans then I ask them if they took AP or CLEP exams. Some of them say they never even heard of these programs....are you kidding me?
I did this and have regretted it most of my life. Things are pretty great 10 years later, so I can’t complain too much, but I needed to get out of my home state to thrive.
The difference between my life there and my life when I said fuck this place and moved somewhere cool, outdoorsy, and away from all the baggage is night and day.
I've seen this in practice, but I don't think it's that you have to leave home to thrive. In my experience there are many places where the economy is just not strong enough for beginning a career, or there are too many applicants and not enough jobs.
I grew up in Southern California, and I don't know anyone that stayed there that is "thriving". All have college degrees, still living with parents, not making enough money for me to even consider them "living".
I would say it's a very wise decision to try and move to somewhere with a booming economy as soon as possible.
> I did this and have regretted it most of my life.
I think I can tell from context, but, just to be clear, is the 'this' you did "(1) Go to a public school, and (2) Stay in-state", or "choosing non-public and out of state schools"?
For networking mostly. People feel if you go to an elite college you will network with the elite, and this will come in handy. If you are going to a public state school, then people feel they will just be networking with cheap chumps and nobodies. It’s horrible.
The mainstream college culture needs to die, no question. It's my opinion, however, that "hippie wilderness getaway for upper middle class kids to find themselves" is just profiteering from disenchantment.
>They will take on 15 to 20 hours a week of manual labor in Sitka
>all at an affordable price
>found the program in order to give young people a taste of the education he received at an older countercultural experiment, Deep Springs College
>Deep Springs — a tuition-free, highly selective two-year liberal arts college
>Our goal is to make our credits transferable to four-year institutions upon accreditation
So in order to further the spirit of a tuition-free liberal arts college, is charging "students" an as-yet unrevealed fee, working them for four hours a day covering almost every single non-management job at the Sheldon Jackson Campus, with absolutely no set curriculum or accreditation or transferable credits.
This is by the far the most transparent scam I've ever seen make it to HN.
Luckily I'm from a country where university is still reasonably affordable .. in fact, since I left, they've made it so fees are government-funded for the first few years. Even though I did have a student loan, it was at least interest-free.
I think university education should be seen as an extension of all earlier education. If you start thinking in terms of "is this financially a good idea", you'll start wondering if people should be leaving school at 14 or something, because they're basically able to work at that age .. right?
Personally, I think the time I had at university was massively useful to my educational development. Even though a lot of what I learnt during that time I consider to be "self-taught", the university environment seemed much more conducive to self learning than the working environment, where you do what your company wants for 8 hours a day then spend the rest of the day trying to defocus.
Just like primary and secondary education, it seems insane to me to just think about tertiary education as some concrete monetary investment. If you give everyone the opportunity to spend a short amount of time (like 3 or 4 years, out of a career period of 45 years) focusing on a particular field of their choosing, surely there must be a massive benefit there to society.
Edit: Also, it should probably be pointed out that a lot of research that happens at universities is used in industry, so if the university system continues to be undermined, you can expect these gains to be lost. We're probably mostly programmers, right? Try pointing to a significant feature of any programming language (old or new) that isn't taken straight from academia.
> If you start thinking in terms of "is this financially a good idea", you'll start wondering if people should be leaving school at 14 or something, because they're basically able to work at that age .. right?
Yes, this age is something we should wonder and re-wonder often over time. Is all the delayed adolescence of the current state desirable? Do all people need 4 years of high school? Do all degrees need to take 4 years for wildly different fields? Would many people benefit from a "work study" version of high school instead? Etc.
I really dislike the idea of providing a monetary incentive for kids to stop going to school. People who are not well-off are going to be pressured into taking this path, causing a further arbitrary wealth gap within the population.
But the alternative path is not necessarily one of less learning. Many people, both gifted and not, detest academics and feel school is a kind of prison or CAFO. This would give them more options. It would give bullied kids more options too, or kids looking to get away from gang activity in their (bad) school.
> But the alternative path is not necessarily one of less learning
The problem is this still doesn't solve the wage gap. Businesses look for concrete ways to determine someone's skill, and a Diploma/GED and college education provide them easy standards to set for who can even get to the interview process. Not many CS jobs will take anyone who only lists "self-taught", even if they have some amazing code work linked (this is especially true for recruiters).
I can relate- as a 16-year-old teenager with soldering abilities, knowledge of OS X, Windows, and Linux (including data recovery) it was quite saddening / depressing (I honesly don't know the right word to describe it) to hear that I couldn't get a job, or even an apprenticeship at any of the local computer repair shops because I wasn't old enough.
This isn't a 1:1 comparison, because being young is a legal problem, but I definitely feel your pain- and the pain of others in that situation- it's a serious downer and quite demoralizing for someone to say no just because you don't have a certificate (in this case, a DL). It's honestly really hard to get someone to take a chance on you.
That's why I don't mention being self taught anywhere in a resume. If it comes up in a phone screen or interview I'll explain, but other that, I hope "out of site, out of mind" will come into play
How many people in the US have come across the Open University? They do distance learning courses in a range of subjects, and has a reputation built over the last 50 years. Costs money but nothing like a private US degree.
>And choose a field that does not require a degree to work
The problem with this is, more and more employers are wanting a 4-year degree for ANY job, even basic office work because 1/3 of the country has at least a 4-year degree.
Specifically, employers look for a degree when the market for a particular line of work is saturated. Practically speaking, an employer can only evaluate a handful of people who are vying for a job, so filtering out everyone without a degree is a quick, and legally accepted, way to cull applicants down to smaller numbers.
The problem is that if you are trying to compete in a saturated market, you are already going to lose as there is always someone who is better, faster, and willing to work for less money, leaving the degree to be of no great benefit to you, with respect to getting a job.
College will already be made free in due time but it won't be from a government funded university. It will simply be from a private organization making the courses on their own and putting them online for free. People won't believe this but the technology already exists for it to occur. Most of college is simply organized textbook reading, with lectures, homework, exams etc. All of which can be digitized and delivered over the internet. Homework and exams can be digitally graded. Final exams can be proctored at a testing center like prometric. This system will deliver essentially the same results as a traditional university.
Seems like right now, the benefit of the education we're providing is waning. Making it free will deal with the student loan crisis, but won't make the education worth more.
Seems like, in terms of income/job prospects, you're better off studying to be an electrician or plumber (which is relatively cheap) than getting a BA in liberal arts or the humanities (which is relatively expensive). If this is the case, solution definitely isn't to encourage more people to do the latter.
Done right, educating people should lead to them being more productive and producing a richer society. Done right, it's an investment that produces more wealth than it costs.
Somewhere there's a point where it costs more than it produces, dependent on how much time the person will spend being a more-educated person before they die, and I expect also dependent on the precise education being imparted, but I'd be surprised if that line was where the free education cut-off currently is.
> Done right, educating people should lead to them being more productive and producing a richer society.
Define done right. General education does have positive externalities and we provide that for everyone up to the end of high school. However, college and beyond is about specializing. There are many majors that have way to many students majoring in them only to end up getting a job out of college that does not use any of the skills they learned in college. I do not see how subsidizing those students would be beneficial.
In this particular case, it is a somewhat circular argument. Identify education that would benefit society. Give it away for free. Watch society become more wealthy. Everybody wins. I'm not convinced that the list of "education that would benefit society" is as limited as the current STEM obsessives would have us believe, but it's a starting point; it also doesn't have to be just university education. Nationwide shortage of electricians, for example? No worries. Free electrician education ahoy.
The only problem is that this practical, pragmatic approach violates some people's morals. Similarly to how the US could have a far cheaper, far more effective corrections system, but that be morally objectionable for too many people.
On a personal note, I'm not convinced that the end of high school is the correct cut-off point for free education (particularly given that the US has become a far more technological society and economy over the last century), but I don't have any evidence for that. It would seem something of a suspicious coincidence.
Done right there'd be a quota on professions which have negative ROI, i.e. for English majors and philosophers. Until that's in place, "free" college will not have the results you desire and will be a money sink on a truly staggering scale. Besides, even if college is free, room and board is most certainly not free.
What do you know what's right? To know what is right you need to see the future and I highly doubt anyone can. Let people decide by themselves. If they get in debt to study some "useless" degree it's their fault. The rest of the tax payers shouldn't be forced to pay for their mistakes.
I'd like to see more public spending on education in the US, but I think this explains why college is getting more expensive. 40-50 years ago, investing in education carried huge returns, because cheaper college made people more likely to choose that path than to get a decent job right out of high school. Today, there's not as much need for public investment in education because the work force is already nearly over-educated, at least in terms of the numbers of people available for many jobs that have specific education requirements.
We should make it real cheap to get educated as a doctor or nurse though (and most other medical stuff). Sure, they have great personal returns on their education now, but that's exactly what we want to erode, by flooding the market.
Do you mean we want to erode doctor/nurse pay because that's what's causing high healthcare costs?
It's been awhile since I worked in healthcare but I don't think primary care provider pay is high on the list of most impactful cost cutting improvements
My experience is that doctors are not the primary bottleneck but the system is rather inefficient in many other aspects.
I think if you add more people to a bad system you tend to make things worse. Better to fix the process rather than throw more (poorly managed) resources at it
It seems like a lot of the excess value will be captured by the person who attended college, if that's true aren't they the very person to pay for it? If it isn't why bother with it at all?
Done right, they produce more wealth and some of that wealth goes to society. It's not just that they pay more tax; they also simply produce more wealth, which is not a zero sum game. Over a lifetime, society benefits and the person benefits. Everyone wins. Done right.
Stretching the discussion a little, we could ask the same question about all education. Why is any of it free? But the benefits to the United States (for example) of almost everyone being able to read and write (for example) are incredible. If a large proportion of the US population had dropped out of school before being able to read and write (because of the cost), the US would be extraordinarily less wealthy. Everyone would lose out.
This isn't the kind of value they could use to build a big castle and cut themselves off from society. Education isn't like giving someone money - they still have to go out and use that education to make money. It's the society at large that reaps benefits of an educated person - through more specialized work being done, and through better social interactions.
Name the last time an aircraft carrier won a battle, stopped an attack, etc. Gerald R. Ford class aircraft carriers cost 13~ billion dollars to construct and the bill for operating a carrier group: $2.5 million a day (based on a quick Google query).
13 billion is 325,000 degrees at 40k each or 260,000 at 50k each.
21 B-2 stealth bombers from Northrop Grumman in the 1980s and 1990s at a price of more than $2 billion each. 2 billion in 1990 is equal to 9.8 billion dollars today. That's 4-5 million 4-year degrees for what those 21 aircraft cost!!!
Also if you educate 100 people, the majority of them will provide benefit to the economy via any number of ways. The government already throws tons of money at educational institutions, but as research grants for military/defense research, why not educate the populace? For that matter, why not create government educational institutions that cut out all of the fluff and in upon completion of a program you enter into an income share agreement for 5-10 years at 10-5%.
> Name the last time an aircraft carrier won a battle, stopped an attack, etc.
The primary benefit of a large conventional military is to deter such an event from even happening. That said, the air support provided from carriers definitely helped a great deal to curb and reverse the spread of ISIS.
> Also if you educate 100 people, the majority of them will provide benefit to the economy via any number of ways.
If this were true, then it would be economically advantageous for those 100 people to borrow the money themselves (perhaps with the help of a government subsidy). And they do.
>The primary benefit of a large conventional military is to deter such an event from even happening. That said, the air support provided from carriers definitely helped a great deal to curb and reverse the spread of ISIS.
I'd believe that, a decade or two ago. The Global Hawk drone has a declassified record of 33.1 hours of flight time at 60,000 feet though for surveillance and doesn't have pilot fatigue as swapping out a pilot is as simple as "hey Greg,your shift is about over, stand up whenever you're ready and I'll take over watching the monitors".
UCAVs (unnamed combat aerial vehicles) are possessed by more than 20 confirmed countries. The United States as 2 publcily known variants, the MQ-1 since 1995 and the MQ-9 since 2001. The MQ-9 costs about 16 million dollars, can carry 750lbs of payload to 50,000 feet and fly for 30 hours or carry considerably more (like Hellifre, JDAM, laser guided bombs etc) for much shorter periods. These can take off from any sufficiently long flat surface, can be transported anywhere in the world in C-17s and honestly it wouldn't surprise me if they've devised a way to launch them out of C-17s.
As ISIS doesn't have fighter jets, there's no need to have fighter jets ready to take off to engage them. Aerial combat as a whole is effectively a thing of yesteryear.
Having a giant floating city in the ocean six-thousand persons simply isn't necessary anymore. Yes, we need certain types of ships for guarding ports and trade routes by aircraft carriers are gross overkill and largely the money-giving beast of lobbyists, politicians and defense contractors.
>If this were true, then it would be economically advantageous for those 100 people to borrow the money themselves
Except for the part where college tuition is outrageous, many many people do not qualify for government subsidized loans and interest rates on private loans can be outrageous and you could easily be servicing the loans for DECADES unless you want to live in a van with 3 other people.
> Having a giant floating city in the ocean six-thousand persons simply isn't necessary anymore. Yes, we need certain types of ships for guarding ports and trade routes by aircraft carriers are gross overkill and largely the money-giving beast of lobbyists, politicians and defense contractors.
The same could be said about traditional universities, especially now that, as you point out, they're so expensive that the cost is ruinous on a per-capita basis. I see no reason that this would change if the cost was borne by the federal government any more than the cost of the Navy would change.
God no. We subsidized the shit out of college last century. On average it's not any better (the tech it uses is, but the university systems themselves are stagnant), yet it's much much more costly. Making it free would only continue this trend.
I'm an academic so I'm biased. Administration is out of control but I think there would be some real benefits to free or drastically cheaper college education in the USA. There are studies that have shown that the more educated you are the less likely you are to commit crime (of course there is the old correlation vs causation question) and other issues so it would benefit society to offer cheaper education.
But the problem is when we make college more affordable it's value decreases meanwhile the product doesn't get any better. You're absolutely right about administration, but there are a myriad of other money suckers that have arisen.
I think part of the solution if you truly want cheaper education is remove all but core classes from the required curriculum so students aren't laying for bs classes majority of them retain none of. Then allow any student to sit in on any class they have personal interest in and allow generic automatic testing so the student can get a general feel for if they learned well enough (though my opinions on testing are low overall, I know many students still like the benchmark).
I don't think value will decrease, just more weight will be put on what school you were able to get into. Let in state college be free and let these state schools take the same # of students they take now (very near maximum dorm capacity anywhere), and acceptance rates will just plummet. College is hard to scale, you need to build and hire from a very limited labor pool to grow and it would probably take decades as a result.
Free college would just lower acceptance rates at good state schools and allow more people to complete degrees in community colleges. If anything it will make state school degrees even more valuable; roughly the same number of people will graduate from the same school but the cohort will be academically stronger.
IDK what you were imagining exactly with that last bit, but at my old uni you could test out of basically any class by paying $60 and taking essentially the final in the testing center; if you got >70% iirc you got credit for the course and could advance to the next but no a grade.
It's going to decrease value for the average student. It'll be ever more where you go than what you know.
If anything it will increase value? Don't buy it. What's your reasoning? Look at the value of college today on avg compared to that of 30 years ago and adjust inflation. People pay much more for what they get now than they did then, because of the saturation.
With the last bit - if you major in chemistry you don't have to take art or anything not chemistry. If you're art you take art. It's a sham that you're required to take all those other classes. They do very little for the vast majority, and if you want the knowledge you can take the classes as you'd like.
As the school becomes more selective due to a larger applicant pool, the degree becomes more prestigious and valuable, because it signals the school takes the very best applicants and therefore has the very best students in the ranks.
School shouldn't be job training only. I majored in a stem field and my favorite classes where the ones where I dove into classical literature, believe it or not. Sure, the degree got me my job, but it also exposed me to the liberal arts in a way that would have been impossible if I tried to study it on my own, because it actively challenged me to step into another field for a minute and reach out to unfamiliar sources to build understanding. There's value in being a well rounded, educated citizen, in my book. The academies of ancient Greece weren't training better farmers or builders, they were training better thinkers and therefore better citizens. That's what modern colleges try to do when they make you take liberal arts classes for an engineering degree. And a chemist who's taken time to learn to read, study, and write well is going to be a better professional chemist than someone who's just done grunt work in the lab and slogged through the chem series, because not only has that better scientist also done that, they've polished their intangibles through liberal arts classes.
> I think part of the solution if you truly want cheaper education is remove all but core classes from the required curriculum
Why not remove the fat then? If you cut classes, this won't make institutional parasites disappear, as they'll invent other things to justify their existence. I feel the ballooning overhead surrounding the core mission (here: education and scientific research) needs to be addressed directly.
I do not believe this is true on an absolute, inflation-adjusted level. This may be true relative to the increasing costs, but it's not like those costs have provided a proportional benefit anyway.
You are right. Overall funding of education is up across the board, but down per-student as Universities try to grow like businesses (bigger and bigger classes every year). Enrollment balloons, so spending per student goes down despite increasing investments in education.
Ballooning enrollment leads to more money spent on facilities and administration, which means even less money goes directly toward educating students.
At least in California, state funding to the UC system has definitely decreased if adjusted for inflation and population growth. Adjusted only for inflation, it's decreased in some time frames and is flat in other time frames. Here are a few years, all in inflation-adjusted 2019$:
So in the inflation-adjusted numbers, there's been a decrease since 2000 (and 1990), but flat compared to 1980. The state population has increased from 24 million in 1980 to 39 million today though, and state law mandates that UC expand in line with population growth (they're required to accept the top 12.5% of California high school graduates). So per-student funding has declined by more than $10k in 2019$, compared to 1980. In-state tuition has risen by about the same amount over the same period, making up the difference.
People I have worked with who have graduate level education (masters or doctorate) are extremely well prepared when performing as a software developer. The education can be in any academic discipline.
People who have a bachelors degree are less prepared to work as a software developer. Counter intuitively this lack of preparation is magnified for those with a computer science degree. Most of my computer science coworkers have historically had weaker communications skill, such as describing details with precision objectively or documenting a simplified set of instructions. I am so under whelmed that basic reading and writing are something I would test for in a job interview.
In addition to weak communication skills I have also observed less flexibility or willingness to learn unfamiliar skills from computer science skills undergraduates. It’s as though these students believe they know all they need and the employer should adapt to the set of techniques these employees were taught. I have had heard somebody on HN describe this as lame duck syndrome. I have observed this enough that it biases me in opposition to job candidates with a comp sci education.
Those little quirks can be eliminated through proper employment screening. You can implement personality screening, skills verification exams and so on. Assuming the screening is effective, these undesirable candidates can be eliminated quickly.
I graduated from high school in 2006 and was determined to study computer science when I went to college but by the time I had graduated I decided to just go with accounting because I had heard so many horror stories about how there were no jobs in tech anymore. I viewed accounting as something that might not pays much as a programmer but it would surely get me a job because every company needs accountants. Nowadays, being employed in accounting, I kinda regret it because my true passion was computer science.
In 2000 I went back to college to get my MS degree. I remember in 2001 people were begging the college to admit them because they were laid off right around the admissions cutoff.
I went and failed school programs several times as an adult, in a country where those programs are free. The last 2 programs I went to were 1 year programs. I already have programming skills yet they did not give me the "degree" because they might have perceived a lack of motivation. Those programs were web oriented and I'm more focused on industrial programming.
I tend to dislike higher education as a general rule because it's more a process of fitting in and obeying a teacher, instead of focusing on the subject matter. I don't care that much actually because I know I'm already skilled at programming. I might not be an excellent programmer, but I can do a lot of what's required.
While education is important, I have put a lot of personal time to learn more and more programming skills after the year I failed one, 8 year ago. Yet the job market is constantly focused on "the degree", while everybody knows that self-teaching is more important in programming. I don't get hired and it's always a matter of trusting a new guy who doesn't have professional experience and can only talk about his skills.
Personally I don't have a lot of faith into the market and the market doesn't have faith in me. So yes, I have plenty of reasons to say that people going into higher education are lucky, privileged or just obedient people who are not yet capable of learning new things, or did not have to waste so much resources to learn things they could do at home.
In the end, you will either have large companies with normative, schooled people, or start ups, who will always struggle to start products because they have no resources.
I'd say that higher education can be bad because normalization slow downs innovation, so in the end, degrees become privileges. People who are taught skills but don't use them to improve society and constantly encourage obedience are a brake on society. In an age of inequality, degrees are seen as rent seeking. People get degrees for comfort. Other people won't seek degrees because they don't want to obey to a system they see as lame and evil.
I feel the same way. I went straight into the workforce with 17. Now 5 years later I feel like I absolutely need that degree to advance my career or to simply avoid my resume being thrown out. So I went back to school and I bet you can already guess what happens. Now that I have to spend at least 25 hours a week studying I barely have time to work on my software skills. I used to learn stuff like writing compilers, work with FPGAs, read up on machine learning, etc... You can argue that maybe I focused too much on individual topics and a CS degree covers many more but at the same time the lack of a degree isn't what's hindering me from working in these areas. I'll finally be done with school soon and then I can go to college next year and I definitively am going to specialize in topics that I am unfamiliar with such as robotics. However, I bet the end result will be that I will work on the same trivial web applications as I am doing right now but with a pay bump and more opportunities during the job hunt.
> I feel the same way. I went straight into the workforce with 17. Now 5 years later I feel like I absolutely need that degree to advance my career or to simply avoid my resume being thrown out.
> However, I bet the end result will be that I will work on the same trivial web applications as I am doing right now but with a pay bump and more opportunities during the job hunt.
I started working in the field professionally around 18 or 19, and I'm begging to fear this same thing. If I do decide to go back to school, it'd be in hopes that I can escape subfields that bore me to death, but I feel the reality is that there just really isn't any real job market for the things I'm interested in.
This is nothing new, St John's College in Annapolis, Maryland has been educating this way for years (tutorials and no grades). The only question is if it will become more widespread in the face of the erosion of the quality of higher education.
It’s not about blue collar vs white collar. It’s about working for yourself or being an employee. Corporate culture is ‘anti human’, anti-planet, and anti-social. When you have to use energy to demonstrate your ‘adherence to policy’ that is waste. Furthermore, corporations make you spend that energy from your private store.
No it isn't? It is necessary for some high paying careers, like working in medicine. But, I am certainly a software developer, for a very large company, pretty happy with my paycheck, and I have no degree. Nobody even ever asked me about it.
Whether or not it helps is another story, I am not claiming a degree is literally useless. I am however a little rubbed the wrong way by claims that you need a degree to ever have a job that pays good, that seems false.
Not surprising. If Target has that power in the market to demand that, why not? They are doing $60M/year in sales per store, plus employing 50+ in each store, so it makes sense they want the highest skilled workers to manage so much responsibility. Not saying you learn the necessary skills to do this job in undergrad though.
I know a SWE at Google who is <20 and does not have a degree. So it certainly is possible, and it implies that you don't need 10+ years of experience to break into FAANG without a bachelor's.
Totally agree, nothing in my comment suggested otherwise
I feel like you're pulling the HN staple "anti anecdata" card when my point wasn't "you're wrong because I exist" & was instead "you're wrong because your metric says people who skip post secondary, collect a meagre salary initially, & eventually end up at FAANG by age 30 should've paid thousands of dollars to attend post secondary until their mid twenties to end up there instead."
At the best paying FAANG-type firms, the vast majority of developers have a degree. The employees there that don't have a degree typically had to spend a large part of their career working at crappier shops building their resume before becoming employable at a more desirable company, whereas the college graduates could get the cushy jobs right out of school.
Not having a degree in CS certainly limits how far up the ladder you can go. For most jobs at FAANG companies the #1 requirement is a degree. You can be the highest level senior developer at a company but you'll never make director or vp without a degree.
This is completely false. If you have the strategic insight, networking, management, and communication skills to become a director or VP at a FAANG, I promise you no one in the C-Suite is saying, "Gee I don't know, they didn't finish their bachelor's degree." People who grow into those roles do so by establishing a track record over 10+ years. At that point no one cares what they were doing when they were 21.
The people who went to MIT didn't need to spend 10+ years "establishing a track record" before getting a desirable job, people took them seriously right out of college.
It isn’t a criteria for the promotion ladder at Google. True, it may be a hard requirement for VP, I can neither confirm nor deny, and I don’t care either. But this is moving the goal posts; I don’t know by what definition my job would not be considered high paying. Certainly pays good enough for me.
Those companies generally have a technical ladder that runs parallel to the management ladder.
High-level engineers can have more influence within the company and often earn more than directors and VPs, and most developers who want to move up the ladder don't aspire to become a director or VP -- they'd rather be a Distinguished Engineer, Fellow, etc.
Gates (and Zuckerberg) went to Harvard, and would probably have had a much harder time getting venture capitalists to take them seriously if they did not have Harvard on their resume. They aren't proof that college doesn't matter, they are proof that an elite college matters a lot, but graduating matters a lot less simply than attending and getting access to the network.
I agree with you on Zuckerberg since he was chosen as the winner among a lot of competitors by the VCs. I am not sure what criteria the VCs used.
Microsoft was generating cash by writing interpretors before they brought a VC on board. They only brought in a VC for advice and not money - so they still count. Although Gates' mother also had a lot of contacts in the Seattle upper crust. I doubt Gates needed Harvard outside of finding Ballmer.
Apple got VC funding though contacts made on the job not at school. Jobs went to a Liberal Arts college for less than a year. The Homebrew Club also had a big impact on early Apple. Several members of the Homebrew Club founded companies and they all kept track of each other.
Similarly with Oracle and Larry Ellison. Ellison spent some time at two Chicago universities but his contacts and training were largely on the job.
After thinking about this over night I do believe that the difference between Zuckerberg and Gates is telling.
It used to be that having Harvard on your resume did not mean much in tech since it was not considered a tech school. The feel of the valley changed when John Sculley took over Apple since he was not at all a tech guy. This is just based on my gut, but I saw more Harvard alums after Sculley then before Sculley.
So I looked up the top schools for tech CEOs. This is the ranking of schools with the most CEOs with first round of funding. There were a few surprises for me.
1. Stanford
2. UC Berkeley
3. U of Pennsylvania
4. Harvard
5. MIT
6. Cornell
7. U of Michigan
8. U of Texas
9. Carnagie Mellon
10. IIT
Stanford and Berkeley were not a surprise since I have worked at a bunch of companies founded by Stanford and Berkeley alumni. IIT and MIT were also not surprises.
One thing that skews the results is that a bunch of schools provide masters programs to already successful professionals - so it is not clear that they actually contributed to the success of the alumni.
Yes, but the dirty secret is the earning potential of a college student is bimodal - yet people often use averages to discuss the benefits of a college degree. The $30,000 in additional earnings figure is propped up heavily by those making six+ figure salaries. Those who just barely scraped by do not earn more on average than those who only went to high school.
If you have the aptitude college will absolutely help. But for those who do not pushing them into college is just saddling them with debt for little benefit.
Some of the people without six figure salaries were interested in a subject that just simply did not pay at a high rate. They, or some of them anyway, may be glad they learned about the subject. (Of course, we are talking about lots of people so many may not be glad about what they did.)
My point is just that there are payoffs other than monetary ones. Nothing wrong with monetary, but nothing wrong with the others if that drives you.
> My point is just that there are payoffs other than monetary ones. Nothing wrong with monetary, but nothing wrong with the others if that drives you.
The issue is that college imposes a very real and life changing monetary cost on people attending. If you fail to achieve a high paying job after college you will be far behind your peers who never went, and dramatically more limited in your life choices. College debt is the closest we have to indentured servitude in the modern world.
For those who just want to learn, continuing education or course auditing is the better solution. I do wish colleges would expand upon these programs.
That's a myopic view of the situation. Under income based repayment most students' loans will actually increase despite the payments. The massive debt will prevent common middle class milestones like getting a mortgage. Further loan forgiveness comes with a balloon payment in the form of taxes - forgiven debt is income according to the IRS. After allowing it to grow unchecked for 20 years the amount forgiven will be substantial.
IBR operates very similar to welfare - including the embarrassing intrusion and analysis of your private life by your lenders. It is a last resort option and not something we should be encouraging.
Lenders look at monthly payments when calculating debt to income. $150 a month in student loans won't prevent you from getting a mortgage unless $150 is all that's preventing you from affording the mortgage.
Cancelled debt is only taxable up to the point of solvency meaning that most people who have a substantial amount of debt cancelled won't owe anything.
>IBR operates very similar to welfare - including the embarrassing intrusion and analysis of your private life by your lenders. It is a last resort option and not something we should be encouraging.
I've done it. You provide your tax return. They don't care about anything but income. It's by no means intrusive and shouldn't bhe thought of as a last resort.
The problem is the degree in a topic you are interested in but pays very little costs the same amount. The debate around college is the return on investment, which if you go to college for something you are interested in rather than something you want to market, you don't care about. I can study underwater basket weaving and get a degree in it, but being happy about learning doesn't offset the ~$80k in student loans that will make me very unhappy for a long time.
>They, or some of them anyway, may be glad they learned about the subject.
What percentage of college subjects don’t have readily available high-quality material across the Internet for free? Libgen is free. SciHub is free. Whole semesters worth of lectures are available for free on YouTube.
It would be stupid to take out loans for a degree that will never break even, when more knowledge is out there for free than ever before in human history.
> What percentage of college subjects don’t have readily available high-quality material across the Internet for free? Libgen is free.
I trained in a field that might be classed under "areal studies" more generally for a certain stretch of Eurasia. (And not a "useless" humanities subject, but something that does bring desirable job prospects.) The vast majority of literature in that subject is not available online. More recent publications might be created in PDF format, but for the most part students will need to hit the library shelves, even at the undergraduate level.
Sure, I have scanned and uploaded a great deal to Libgen myself, but I appear to be the only volunteer doing so for this entire field. Most volunteers on LibGen or r/Scholar don’t want to undertake any more effort than downloading already-digitized materials from behind paywalls and then uploading them to Libgen, they don’t want to do the hard work of scanning thousands of pages. I suspect there are a lot of academic fields where it would take decades for the handful of Libgen volunteers to adequately upload the standard publications in that field.
And hard science, like mathematics or physics relies on teacher helping you get unstuck. Learning the same thing from books takes significantly more time.
Most people dont know they exist. I surely did not just a few months ago about libgen.io.
More importantly, while I can use thesearch to learn something I know quite a lot about already, I would not know where to start in things I know nothing about. And let's not start about things that I don't know they exist (which my school covered).
All true, but you can also learn about subjects that interest you in more settings than just college. Many of them more engaging, many of them cheaper. People go to college almost entirely for the piece of paper that you can't get just by being passionate about something and exploring it on your own terms.
Maybe jobs that require college degrees pay higher on average, but it's just not true that for a high paying job you need a college degree. I was making over 100k before I finished my bachelor's doing computer programming. I've known people who own plumbing, welding, or electrical businesses that have a license that are millionaires that don't have college degrees. Maybe those aren't "jobs", but the highest paying jobs often don't follow the beaten path.
If that's the case why not do a degree you actually enjoy instead of a vocational degree? If you're a millionaire plumber, then paying tuition for an art history degree or whatever should be easy.
Actually I'd say it is the other way around. If you're a millionaire plumber then keeping up with other people with a similar level of wealth will reduce the worth of your money massively. At that point you're no longer ahead of 90% of people in the USA. You're at the bottom of your friends circle at least in terms of wealth.
Or invest in a prime developable area near a large metropolis.
Or look at the bank account and smile occasionally.
Class privilege comes with baggage. Better to focus on making the world a better place, starting with your own world -- which often keeps one from putting their nose up too high.
That's sometimes the case. One of my friends who owned a share in a construction/hvac business (he had the master plumber's license) cashed out and got a degree in counseling. He's now a full-time counselor and enjoys helping people and donates a lot of time and resources doing service projects.
His brothers just enjoy what they do, so they still own the business.
Not everyone enjoys college. I'm one that would much rather learn on my own than through a classroom. I enjoy having learned the things I did in college and felt I needed the piece of paper (and am now working on a master's to change fields), but as far as I've seen, there's no such thing as a degree I would enjoy. Just work or books I would enjoy.
Yes, to me this is the very worst version of counter-culture. This isn't challenging the elite instititutions, it's even one step up the ladder, like some 70s hippie experiment of the privileged who roleplay as workers in some retreat in the mountains reading Plato. Gender segregation and overly strict "no alcohol" policies included. it's rebel roleplaying.
If people want practical experience and physical work the organisers of these institutions should go to Switzerland, learn how the apprenticeship system works and bring it back to America so people can be set on a viable career path.
Joe Biden said it himself, he didn't like how elitist America is becoming. I couldn't agree more and couldn't be happier to see people choosing a career in the trades. They can be high paying and stable.
I don't think the gimmicky travel to Alaska, take a gap year, or having "a way to talk about one’s higher purpose in the world" is important at all. What is important is having cheap tuition and solid courses.
As much as people bash on college, it's still important. I don't have a college degree and it's been impossible for me to find a 'real job', though some of that may be due to my age. This is despite having a decent amount of programming and freelance experience. Overall college is important if you want to go down the traditional job path smoothly, I think these people are focusing on the wrong thing.
Completely agree - having solid courses that teach relevant theory/skills is extremely valuable. We simply need to make the means by which we take such courses more efficient and therefore lower cost.
The bigger issue here is that employers have gravitated far too much towards the college degree as a signal device for a quality employee which effectively shuts out alternate forms of education. Employers need to be willing to hire people who are smart but don't have a college degree. If someone self-studied all the subjects on their own and it is clear they are on the same level as a college grad then they should not be excluded from the hiring process.
It is almost like we need some sort of "SAT" for various subjects. That way if someone is really smart then they can just take this SAT in whatever subject to evaluate their knowledge. We sort of have this already for certificates but it seems like employers don't place much value on them compared to a college degree. There are exceptions but they are mostly outliers IMO.
It is basically illegal by federal law to test potential employees for their overall intelligence. It is considered racist, the term being 'adverse impact' in this case.
Corporations effectively outsource intelligence testing to colleges, as they have no other choice to obtain info about their future employees' abilities.
I would argue that obtaining a high quality education and developing meaningful life philosophy are two separate areas. Colleges need to move away from the teaching life philosophy to everyone. If people already know what they want to do with their life then just let them take the essential courses to get valuable skills/education. If people want to learn about meaningful life philosophy then they can do that on their own.
And then they end up with vapid, shallow, self-obsessed life philosophies - see, every self-help guru peddling individualistic nonsense.
Part of the purpose of teaching philosophy is you get rigour from actually testing those ideas out in a place where people are going to scrutinise the ideas. That’s why philosophy exists, and history, and a whole load of other humanities subjects.
In my experience, the people that latch onto self help gurus, preachers of weird beliefs, and peddlers of odd lifestyles, are usually graduates of college. They were taught to be skeptics by how education is done now. So they reject traditional things and yearn for yogis and the like.
>> I don't have a college degree and it's been impossible for me to find a 'real job'
More and more people are becoming like me in this market and not overweighting degrees. I don't care about your formal education and I actively blind resume submissions for it through an assistant. I care about what you've done and what you're passionate about.
On the way to hiring 100 people pretty soon here and growth is solid. Leads to a lot of diversity of thought and background, which is a good thing.
After all, I'm a dropout nobody, too. Someone's gotta look out for us.
Tech is just an overall outlier since the demand is so high in that field that employers are willing to hire people who just have the skills to do the job. In more traditional career paths, like engineering, a college degree is absolutely required to even be considered for the position. No degree = no interview. Lots of other professional careers are like this as well like accounting.
As a whole nearly 50% of all people in SV have a B.S. or higher and over 70% have some college experience; it's the third most educated place in the country.
Trade school cannot continue to be a four letter word in american households. HVAC, plumbers, machinists, welders and electricians are all facing massive shortages and offer a skilled, well paying job with benefits. These are all 1-2 year with an apprenticeship and the opportunity to build something you can be proud of.