Quite the contrary. Welders, carpenters, or heavy equipment operators in my
country enjoy a decent pay, yet there is a shortage. For some weird reasons
those who studied so sought-after political studies or literature can't be
bothered with a job that consists of physical work and doesn't require
a degree.
In the UK, plumbers and electricians can make more than developers do.
It depends where they work - London and the SE pay a lot better than the run down cities in the North - and how good their network is.
I used to know someone with a well-paid City job who retrained as a plumber. He earns almost as much as he did and is considerably less stressed. The only downside is occasional snobbery.
Say you have a small factory ,employing 50 older welders doing a risky job at relatively little pay.
Say you need 10 more welders - but those guys really don't like risk so they would need a big increase in the salary, maybe 50%-100%. But you know that than the word will get out and the older workers will demand similar salaries.
So it's a big jump in total labor-costs per work-unit. And let's not forget - revenue per employee can be quite limited in many places. So maybe paying low is the better state for the business.
some real abuse of psychological terminology here. most clinically autistic people don't hold down jobs, certainly not professional roles, even if they have a high IQ
This used to be a really damaging stereotype and a de facto standpoint of psychology (and psychiatry) for years. I've personally met experts who wouldn't diagnose ASD in people who managed to get married or get a job. I've personally been dismissed because I "look normal" (whatever that means). I've been given several bogus diagnoses because ASD has been repeatedly ruled out based on nothing but presumptions and prejudices.
There are no family, job, or looks criteria in DSM-IV. I know ASD folks who hold jobs, have families and are more than successful in life. From the outside, they seem pretty normal, maybe a bit quirky or eccentric. From the inside? The way they arranged their lives to work around the social/sensory problems is something to applaud.
The important part? They don't "look" autistic, so most laypeople don't correlate autism with "a possibility for a successful life". Just because you don't see it doesn't mean it's not there.
So, for the record, this is completely not true. You probably pass autistic people on the street every day.
Autism is a broad spectrum. I have hypersensitivity issues, even if loud noises don't make me fall down screaming. I tend towards obsessing over specific things, even if I don't block out all other stimuli for hours on end. I'm not naturally good at reading people, but I've been able to teach myself a fair bit over many years, so human emotions are no longer a closed book. I can look at a low-functioning autistic and understand what's going on in their head, as a magnification of what's going on in mine. And I've got a degree and a 13-year career as a coder.
I don't understand why so many people think that autism universally means needing help dressing yourself.
working conditions in all of those industries are terrible compared to almost all software jobs. and the work in finance and law is tedious. you're dreaming.
or instead of this parade of bullshit, they could decide admission on a truly meritocratic basis as is still done in the UK, EU and most countries around the world. you score high enough in the relevant exam and you gain entry.
anyway, the real scandal of ivy league admissions is the insane discrimination against asian americans. if you're from the preferred ethnic groups, you already get an enormous effective boost to your test scores.
You can't really base admissions on merits when all the applicants have essentially maxed out those merits. They're all valedictorians with SAT scores that are nearly perfect.
I agree affirmative action is not ideal. Priority acceptance should be based on family income, not race. But the end result would be nearly the same as it is now.
I grew up in an upper class suburb (though not an upper class family myself) and saw tons of wealthy minority students that performed worse in school but got accepted at places their white friends weren't. They also got to do stuff like apply to scholarships for hispanic Americans when their families were of middle-eastern region ethnicity. No one was going to risk calling them out and being labeled a racist.
All this assumes a rationing of college admissions. Whereas in America there are more than enough college positions to go around.
There are limited Ivy League seats, but that's all marketing. They use the same textbooks as your state U; you sit in similar 300-person halls to hear Intro-To-Whatever lectures.
I'm not so sure we need to shake up admissions processes to suit these self-appointed 'best schools'.
I think it's the other way round: most employers are subject blind, only a few need you to have specific degrees: Medicine, Law, Accountancy, Actuary, etc.
Technical jobs like coding require you to demonstrate ability, and therefore many people who have a not-quite right degree (physics degree to be a coder) or even no degree can get the job.
"Technical jobs like coding require you to demonstrate ability".
Yet they test you on an hour and a half online "coding challenge", which is completely irrelevant to day to day work. I have been looking for a senior level job recently and only one place has actually asked me questions that I consider relevant. In another I had to calculate the inersection of two rectangles for a Django job. I managed it, but it has nothing to do with my coding ability, knowledge of Pythonic / Django ways of doing things or anything that I would be doing on a day to day basis.
Yes, there's a high false negative rate incurred by doing it this way. I know what you mean, I actually did the same question not long ago (given the 4 corners, return the intersection area), and I too think it's irrelevant.
But it is definitely the case that someone who can't code could not possibly pass this test.
> for technical jobs you still need a technical degree
(EDIT: not sure if you were talking just about Germany. Below is for UK)
That's not 100% true. For prestigious technical jobs it might be. I've not exactly worked at Google etc but only about 70% of my colleagues/managers had degrees.
indeed. people like to imagine an idealised world of highly able, motivated and disciplined students. why design an education system for a set of students that doesn't really exist?
