8 ms·

Remove the social stigma of not going to college. Hardly any tv shows that show young non college grads as positive.

by bruceb 9y ago

jrs95 9y ago
I dunno, I thought The Wire was good. And the only guy who went to college in Game of Thrones is sort of a dork. Seriously though, while this is part of the problem, I think the motivations behind this sort of thing are typically not really about what’s in the best interest of the working class. It has more to do with increasing political polarization of universities and a desire to reduce public spending on education, especially public education. The more straightforward solution is to ensure people can afford higher education if they want it. But if you’re more concerned about the short term bottom line, it’s easier to just let people either borrow absurd amounts of money for it or give up on that and go to a trade school.
- Retric 9y ago
  I see Jobs that could be done with a high school diploma that now request a masters degree. This creates an insane hurdle for someone to get into the upper middle class. Having people enter the workforce 4+ years sooner not only reduces debt it also allows them to be productive generating a lot of wealth. Consider what it means if doctors skip an undergrad degree, it's not only less debt, but also more working years.
  - jstewartmobile 9y ago
    My sister had to get a masters in library science to be a librarian. It is insane, and there's almost a Stockholm syndrome around it. No one could possibly exercise literacy, problem solving, and rational thought without going for at least another $20k+ of student loan debt!
  - s0rce 9y ago
    Yup, and many STEM jobs that once provided on the job training and needed a bachelors now require a PhD.
    - AstralStorm 9y ago
      Thus we get garbage doctorates. A doctorate was supposed to be the culmination of a scientific career.
      - s0rce 9y ago
        Not just garbage doctorates, even PhDs from top 10/20 schools in STEM fields that did reasonable interesting research go off to be process engineers or other non-scientist positions that likely don't need a PhD.
toomuchtodo 9y ago
Social stigma is not the problem. Employers requiring degrees for jobs that don’t require a degree are the problem. They force the cost on the student, and with demand for college education then bring inelastic, colleges have all of the pricing power to charge whatever they want.
- coredog64 9y ago
  I've said it before and I'll say it again: Degree requirements are the last bastion of socially acceptable racism.
  - GhostVII 9y ago
    How is a degree requirement racist?
    - berbec 9y ago
      "The 6-year national college graduation rate is 59% for White students, 51% for Hispanic students, 46% for Black females, and 35% for Black males."[1] 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_achievement_gap_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_achievement_gap_in_the_...
      - GhostVII 9y ago
        There are racial differences with pretty much everything in the US. Are benefits for poor people racist because they disproportionally help black people? Is having a required entrance average for universities racist because black people have statistically lower grades/graduation rates? Sure, if you are choosing to filter applicants based on criteria where the only effect of the filtering is changing the racial distribution, it may be racist, but that certainly isn't the case when you are filtering based on whether or not a person has a degree.
        EADGBE 9y ago
        I wonder what those numbers look like without race and with income brackets.
Apocryphon 9y ago
Maybe frame it in a positive way. Remove the stigma of going into the trades and becoming a skilled "blue collar" craftsman.
InclinedPlane 9y ago
Improve the quality of average public high schools so that a high school diploma is a guarantee of basic literacy, science knowledge, basic schools, etc.
- barry-cotter 9y ago
  Politically impossible. Any plausible alternative has to pay a weirdness tax too because if you’re smart enough to go to college, why wouldn’t you? That makes high school irrelevant. And the UC system, among others, is working on making just having a Bachelor’s a poorer signal of literacy and numeracy.
- rlanday 9y ago
  College degrees only work as a selection tool for employers since not everyone has one. High school degrees are currently nearly worthless as such a tool since nearly everyone (the current high school graduate rate in the US is about 83%) has one. You still need to get one, of course, since if you don’t have one, people will assume you dropped out either because you got addicted to drugs, or because you’re well below average in intelligence and/or conscientiousness. College degrees are eventually going to suffer the same fate as the high school diploma due to all the pressure on people to go to college. And eventually, there will be political pressure in the US to make the government pay for universal college the same way it pays for K-12 education. Eventually, we’ll be encouraging extremely marginal students to spend eight years getting a bachelor’s degree and however long it takes such a student to get a master’s degree, and Social Security will collapse since no one will actually be working.
  - InclinedPlane 9y ago
    College degrees are not merely used as a selection tool for higher skilled jobs. In many instances they are used as a basic competency filter for literacy, ability to work in an office environment, etc. Indeed, many jobs merely require "some college" as a credential, not even a degree. That alone is enough of a filter. This means that jobs that require skills that any high school graduate should have are today out of reach for those people because they've been given a sub-standard education with a degraded market value. Which means that in order to be in any way competitive in the job market, even to get an entry level office job, often requires expending additional time and money, saddling oneself with college loan debt, and so forth. Today entering the job market from the bottom is a lot more difficult and more costly than it used to be, with significant deleterious effects on career/wealth advancement through life.
aphextron 9y ago
>Remove the social stigma of not going to college. Hardly any tv shows that show young non college grads as positive. Or just make college useful and accessible. Give people the option of a European style undergrad where there is no liberal arts breadth, only technical courses. If we had accredited colleges doing 3 year bachelor degrees in STEM, the system would be much more efficient.
- flukus 9y ago
  > Or just make college useful and accessible. Give people the option of a European style undergrad where there is no liberal arts breadth, only technical courses So just turn college into a trade school? All that would do is make trade schools more expensive.
  - dagw 9y ago
    I wouldn't call a "European style undergrad" a trade school. The only difference is that for example a math 'major' in Europe spends 90-95% of their time taking math courses, while in the US they might spend maybe 60-70% of their time on math courses. Thus you can get through the same 'relevant' course load in 3 years instead of 4.
- barry-cotter 9y ago
  If you think credentialism is bad now, wait until the only thing stopping people getting Master’s and doctorates is their parents’ willingness to pay their living expenses. Separate college’s education and credentialism functions. If the US government says it will recognise anyone who passes X test as having a Bachelor’s degree in X, for some value of X, there will be a reasonable number of people getting four year degrees in three, two or one.
- austenallred 9y ago
  Honestly we'd be fine with 1-year degrees for most things.
  - roel_v 9y ago
sandworm101 9y ago
>> Hardly any tv shows that show young non college grads as positive. Really? See Friends. And looking at a list of top current Sitcoms, RickAndMorty, Bobs Burgers, OrangeIsTheNewBlack, TheGoldbergs, KevinCanWait, even TheBigBangTheory has a leading character without any college education. The setup of the educated character being one-upped or taken down a peg by the more socially aware character is a standard sitcom trope.
- thaumasiotes 9y ago
  > Really? See Friends. > The setup of the educated character being one-upped or taken down a peg by the more socially aware character is a standard sitcom trope. That trope is common on Friends. But out of the cast of six, there are four college graduates and two non-graduates, and the non-graduates are depicted as raging idiots.
romanovcode 9y ago
Same with the stigma that trading-schools are somehow worse then college. Pretty sure it comes from elitism that people in colleges have towards non-college grads.

Remove the social stigma of not going to college. Hardly any tv shows that show young non college grads as positive.

by bruceb 9y ago

Remove the social stigma of not going to college. Hardly any tv shows that show young non college grads as positive.

I dunno, I thought The Wire was good. And the only guy who went to college in Game of Thrones is sort of a dork. Seriously though, while this is part of the problem, I think the motivations behind this sort of thing are typically not really about what’s in the best interest of the working class. It has more to do with increasing political polarization of universities and a desire to reduce public spending on education, especially public education. The more straightforward solution is to ensure people can afford higher education if they want it. But if you’re more concerned about the short term bottom line, it’s easier to just let people either borrow absurd amounts of money for it or give up on that and go to a trade school.

Retric 9y ago
I see Jobs that could be done with a high school diploma that now request a masters degree. This creates an insane hurdle for someone to get into the upper middle class. Having people enter the workforce 4+ years sooner not only reduces debt it also allows them to be productive generating a lot of wealth. Consider what it means if doctors skip an undergrad degree, it's not only less debt, but also more working years.
- jstewartmobile 9y ago
  My sister had to get a masters in library science to be a librarian. It is insane, and there's almost a Stockholm syndrome around it. No one could possibly exercise literacy, problem solving, and rational thought without going for at least another $20k+ of student loan debt!
- s0rce 9y ago
  Yup, and many STEM jobs that once provided on the job training and needed a bachelors now require a PhD.
  - AstralStorm 9y ago
    Thus we get garbage doctorates. A doctorate was supposed to be the culmination of a scientific career.
    - s0rce 9y ago
      Not just garbage doctorates, even PhDs from top 10/20 schools in STEM fields that did reasonable interesting research go off to be process engineers or other non-scientist positions that likely don't need a PhD.

toomuchtodo 9y ago

Social stigma is not the problem. Employers requiring degrees for jobs that don’t require a degree are the problem. They force the cost on the student, and with demand for college education then bring inelastic, colleges have all of the pricing power to charge whatever they want.

coredog64 9y ago
I've said it before and I'll say it again: Degree requirements are the last bastion of socially acceptable racism.
- GhostVII 9y ago
  How is a degree requirement racist?
  - berbec 9y ago
    "The 6-year national college graduation rate is 59% for White students, 51% for Hispanic students, 46% for Black females, and 35% for Black males."[1] 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_achievement_gap_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_achievement_gap_in_the_...
    - GhostVII 9y ago
      There are racial differences with pretty much everything in the US. Are benefits for poor people racist because they disproportionally help black people? Is having a required entrance average for universities racist because black people have statistically lower grades/graduation rates? Sure, if you are choosing to filter applicants based on criteria where the only effect of the filtering is changing the racial distribution, it may be racist, but that certainly isn't the case when you are filtering based on whether or not a person has a degree.
      - EADGBE 9y ago
        I wonder what those numbers look like without race and with income brackets.

Apocryphon 9y ago

Maybe frame it in a positive way. Remove the stigma of going into the trades and becoming a skilled "blue collar" craftsman.

InclinedPlane 9y ago

Improve the quality of average public high schools so that a high school diploma is a guarantee of basic literacy, science knowledge, basic schools, etc.

barry-cotter 9y ago
Politically impossible. Any plausible alternative has to pay a weirdness tax too because if you’re smart enough to go to college, why wouldn’t you? That makes high school irrelevant. And the UC system, among others, is working on making just having a Bachelor’s a poorer signal of literacy and numeracy.
rlanday 9y ago
College degrees only work as a selection tool for employers since not everyone has one. High school degrees are currently nearly worthless as such a tool since nearly everyone (the current high school graduate rate in the US is about 83%) has one. You still need to get one, of course, since if you don’t have one, people will assume you dropped out either because you got addicted to drugs, or because you’re well below average in intelligence and/or conscientiousness. College degrees are eventually going to suffer the same fate as the high school diploma due to all the pressure on people to go to college. And eventually, there will be political pressure in the US to make the government pay for universal college the same way it pays for K-12 education. Eventually, we’ll be encouraging extremely marginal students to spend eight years getting a bachelor’s degree and however long it takes such a student to get a master’s degree, and Social Security will collapse since no one will actually be working.
- InclinedPlane 9y ago
  College degrees are not merely used as a selection tool for higher skilled jobs. In many instances they are used as a basic competency filter for literacy, ability to work in an office environment, etc. Indeed, many jobs merely require "some college" as a credential, not even a degree. That alone is enough of a filter. This means that jobs that require skills that any high school graduate should have are today out of reach for those people because they've been given a sub-standard education with a degraded market value. Which means that in order to be in any way competitive in the job market, even to get an entry level office job, often requires expending additional time and money, saddling oneself with college loan debt, and so forth. Today entering the job market from the bottom is a lot more difficult and more costly than it used to be, with significant deleterious effects on career/wealth advancement through life.

aphextron 9y ago

>Remove the social stigma of not going to college. Hardly any tv shows that show young non college grads as positive. Or just make college useful and accessible. Give people the option of a European style undergrad where there is no liberal arts breadth, only technical courses. If we had accredited colleges doing 3 year bachelor degrees in STEM, the system would be much more efficient.

flukus 9y ago
> Or just make college useful and accessible. Give people the option of a European style undergrad where there is no liberal arts breadth, only technical courses So just turn college into a trade school? All that would do is make trade schools more expensive.
- dagw 9y ago
  I wouldn't call a "European style undergrad" a trade school. The only difference is that for example a math 'major' in Europe spends 90-95% of their time taking math courses, while in the US they might spend maybe 60-70% of their time on math courses. Thus you can get through the same 'relevant' course load in 3 years instead of 4.
barry-cotter 9y ago
If you think credentialism is bad now, wait until the only thing stopping people getting Master’s and doctorates is their parents’ willingness to pay their living expenses. Separate college’s education and credentialism functions. If the US government says it will recognise anyone who passes X test as having a Bachelor’s degree in X, for some value of X, there will be a reasonable number of people getting four year degrees in three, two or one.
austenallred 9y ago
Honestly we'd be fine with 1-year degrees for most things.
- roel_v 9y ago

sandworm101 9y ago

>> Hardly any tv shows that show young non college grads as positive. Really? See Friends. And looking at a list of top current Sitcoms, RickAndMorty, Bobs Burgers, OrangeIsTheNewBlack, TheGoldbergs, KevinCanWait, even TheBigBangTheory has a leading character without any college education. The setup of the educated character being one-upped or taken down a peg by the more socially aware character is a standard sitcom trope.

thaumasiotes 9y ago
> Really? See Friends. > The setup of the educated character being one-upped or taken down a peg by the more socially aware character is a standard sitcom trope. That trope is common on Friends. But out of the cast of six, there are four college graduates and two non-graduates, and the non-graduates are depicted as raging idiots.

romanovcode 9y ago

Same with the stigma that trading-schools are somehow worse then college. Pretty sure it comes from elitism that people in colleges have towards non-college grads.