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More apprenticeships would be better but there's also a tendency to overestimate their ability to solve economic problems that colleges failed at. First the go

by jasode 9y ago

More apprenticeships would be better but there's also a tendency to overestimate their ability to solve economic problems that colleges failed at. First the good: if we just look at apprenticeship in isolation for its curriculum content, this will be superior for many students because they learn material that's more closely tied to the jobs they will do. The apprenticeships will probably cost much less that 4-year colleges. (I asked my heating-air-conditioning technician how much his "apprentice" schooling cost and he said $15k. He's age 25 and still paying back the school loan.) Then there's the bad: the overestimation of positive effects to the employment economy. There are 2 separate factors: (1) zero-sum game of job opportunities mapped to job seekers, and (2) social rank I previously commented about (1).[1] Basically, there's an underlying tendency for humans to "rank" other humans and whether you make "college available to everyone for free" or "emphasize apprenticeships over college", it doesn't change that underlying sorting mechanism. There will always be a gradient from the very desirable apprenticeship programs down to the low-end apprenticeships that people only take because they don't want to clean toilets. Those unequal preferences forces a sorting mechanism on society. I also previously commented about (2).[2] Essentially, the new apprenticeships will not command the same social prestige as traditional colleges. But that said, if we ignore (1) and (2), apprenticeships may be an overall net gain for society. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10561911 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10561911 [2] my 3 replies explains Jeffrey J. Selingo proposed remapping of "degree" to "apprenticeship": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13520826 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13520826 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13521075 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13521075

jseliger 9y ago
> More apprenticeships would be better but there's also a tendency to overestimate their ability to solve economic problems that colleges failed at. I'm the original writer and I definitely agree that they're not a panacea. But I would argue that they're a movement in the right direction, especially in the "college for everyone" world: Apprenticeships are also an obviously good idea from the perspective of academia; anyone who teaches college students at schools below the most elite level knows that a large number of students really shouldn’t be in college. This was most obvious to me at the University of Arizona, but it happens across the academic landscape. I’ve been teaching undergrads for ten years, and it’s clear that many undergrads don’t know why they’re in college, don’t care about school, and are floundering in an academic milieu. The debt students take to get degrees of dubious value, or, worse, to drop out after two years, is staggering.

by jasode 9y ago

jseliger 9y ago

> More apprenticeships would be better but there's also a tendency to overestimate their ability to solve economic problems that colleges failed at. I'm the original writer and I definitely agree that they're not a panacea. But I would argue that they're a movement in the right direction, especially in the "college for everyone" world: Apprenticeships are also an obviously good idea from the perspective of academia; anyone who teaches college students at schools below the most elite level knows that a large number of students really shouldn’t be in college. This was most obvious to me at the University of Arizona, but it happens across the academic landscape. I’ve been teaching undergrads for ten years, and it’s clear that many undergrads don’t know why they’re in college, don’t care about school, and are floundering in an academic milieu. The debt students take to get degrees of dubious value, or, worse, to drop out after two years, is staggering.