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Most jobs don't require higher education. Most jobs that do require higher education don't actually make any use of the higher education. Are people who didn'

Most jobs don't require higher education. Most jobs that do require higher education don't actually make any use of the higher education. Are people who didn't follow the author up the ivory tower all failures who just fell through the cracks? What if some people are perfectly happy working in HVAC? These articles are always so condescending. The position that all people should by default go to college and that people who don't are lesser-than and fell through the cracks, is incredibly condescending and ignorant. After interviewing and working with hundreds of people, I can't even tell the difference between people who have a degree and people who don't. I'm often surprised when I look. It definitely seems like a lot of graduates don't actually learn or retain much of anything, or the curriculum isn't applicable to anything after they graduate and quickly atrophies away. I don't think colleges are about learning or skills anymore; they're a place where you pay an ever-growing amount of money to compete for a higher position in the social hierarchy, or to obtain government-mandated paper credentials for a specialized position you want. A lot of the students I've talked to are contemptuous of the entire process, and have no moral qualms whatsoever with cheating and cramming their way through it. They see it as a series of pointless hoops they're being made to jump through. People who really want to learn or develop a skill seem to do it much more effectively elsewhere, and this seems to even be true of actively enrolled college students themselves. I don't see college as something we need more of. It's an inefficiency in our system left over from a time when technical limitations gave colleges a monopoly on knowledge. We shouldn't be trying to expand its reach, we should be trying to replace it entirely with something less costly and more accessible. The biggest hurdle are the incumbents who've already bought their status, and unfortunately they do also happen to have most of the power, so their position is safe for now. But I think people are finally starting to see through these clothes.

jacobolus 9y ago
Can you quote the part that you feel is condescending? The text of the article seems largely straightforward and factual to me. It doesn’t say that there’s anything inherently bad about not going to college, but rather that not having a college degree has made it difficult for some people to find new careers in places where many types of labor are facing declining demand because of large structural forces, and that those communities are feeling a general malaise due to drug use, high unemployment, outward migration, falling incomes, etc. (a claim supported by evidence from polls and census data). Are you saying that it is condescending for the “executive director of the Kentucky Valley Educational Cooperative” to be advising rural students to try college? Is it wrong for people from rural areas who got college degrees to spend their time advocating that other rural young people do the same? I know several people who grew up in rural places and founding college and subsequent highly technical careers very rewarding. For some, it was explicitly seen as a way to escape their (to them, stifling feeling) rural community. I also know people who grew up in a city but didn’t like it and moved to rural areas as adults. Different people have different preferences. If you are arguing that many jobs that currently require degrees shouldn’t, that seems like an orthogonal conversation not really touched on by this article; it’s not at all clear that the people profiled here would disagree with that.
- throwawayfjk 9y ago
  I would assume that the rural are rational to the same degree as anyone else, so the statistical difference mostly means they find college less beneficial relative to their opportunities. There is too much of an agenda feel to this piece, from the title to selective interviews and statistics
  - mozumder 9y ago
    > I would assume that the rural are rational to the same degree as anyone else, The rural have limited social interaction, leading to a biased worldview.
    - spiderfarmer 9y ago
      I have lived in a rural area most of my live and it's not about limited social interaction - it's the fact that international affairs don't affect us as much as it does people who live in cities. Therefore it's just not as interesting to people here.
      - randomdata 9y ago
        Not to mention that, in my experience – and the job data seems to back this up – there are often more career opportunities in rural areas (but not all rural areas). I assume this is due to the fact that the group of people competing for the jobs available are much smaller in numbers than you find in larger urban areas. While one job in the city might attract 100 applicants, one job in a small community of 100 people total might attract two applicants. This forces rural employers to be less choosy about who they hire, and enables applicants to be less special as they do not need to stand out from the crowd in the same way their big city counterparts need to. While I am not about to suggest that college is only for building careers, I find a large segment of students treat it as nothing more. When you remove the feeling that you need a college degree to get a job, as is the case for many who look for work in rural areas, that removes the reason why many want to attain a degree. Generally, education for education's sake is not something our society values. We are, I think quite unfortunately, taught from an early age that jobs are the whole reason for attending school. Few, regardless of whether they live in a major city or in the country, recognize the value beyond that.
seany 9y ago
The Case against Education - Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money. By Bryan Caplan Makes many of these same points in a longer form.
zdragnar 9y ago
It's not even just the utility of the degree, it's the cost. Investing $20-100k plus four to 8 years lost work experience (depending on number of degrees) is, for most living in rural communities, an extreme luxury. Considering the economic gap between metropolitan areas and rural communities, pretty much any degree not directly related to work preparation and placement is a luxury good that few can afford.
- huac 9y ago
  Most elite universities have income-based financial aid and going to one could easily conceivably be cheaper or at least on par with going to a state school. Of course one big problem is that rural students don't know that
  - zdragnar 9y ago
    A friend of mine chose the college we went to specifically because she was told about all the need-based financial aid that's available to students like her. You know, the kind that grew up learning to pick the mold off the bread and how awful government cheese was. Imagine her surprise when there's no such thing as a free ride, and there wasn't actually so much available. Also, if you think there's enough "elite" universities around for America's poor (rural or otherwise) you're mistaken. The real bottom line is, there's not much elite universities have to offer the rural life. Sure, there's certainly some places and jobs where it would help. For most people, and most jobs though, it's overkill. [Edit] To clarify, if you've grown up in poverty or even lower-middle class in a central midwestern state, the travel costs of going to a uni on the coast is simply prohibitive. Add on top of that things that your peers will partake in (summer in the Hamptons or whatever) that you'll never be able to identify with. You'll always be on the outside, no matter what. Unless every high school graduate in the rural parts of the country decides to move to a big city, there's a whole lot more that a local technical school has to offer someone in that position.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - 9y ago
vanilla_nut 9y ago
On the other hand, I come from a rural area and I feel that college was absolutely worth it for me, even with the huge bill that I had to pay myself. (I graduated fairly recently) College was the first time in my life when I feel like I truly took responsibility for myself, and people generally thought I was a responsible kid growing up. I finally found myself in a place where I could make friends who shared interests with me who I truly wanted to interact with, and many of those friendships evolved into mentors or mentees. TAing, challenging classwork, and living for the first time on my own really forced me to mature and take charge of my future. Of course, I could just be a late bloomer, or maybe my STEM interests and particular rural community made my situation unique. But I don't think I'm the only one in my generation who feels this way. I agree that college is probably not appropriate for your average kid, but for the kind of kids who enjoy learning, who aspire to do something challenging for a career, I think higher learning is indispensable. It's important to keep in mind that college is meant to enrich people as individuals, not explicitly prepare them for jobs. Technical/vocational schools are for job prep.
- throwaway0255 9y ago
  > It's important to keep in mind that college is meant to enrich people as individuals, not explicitly prepare them for jobs. Technical/vocational schools are for job prep. The more college is shown to be failing the job market, the more I hear this argument. Are people who don't go to college less enriched individuals? Lately, academics seem to be shifting their value proposition to the instillation of this undetectable unmeasurable X-factor. We can't see it, we can't prove that it exists, but it's there, and its value is absolutely incalculable. How convenient for the sales pitch is this. And I don't blame them. As knowledge and skills become accessible to everyone, that's the last defense they'll be left with. What else are they going to say? Our institution is completely out of touch with the job market and the economic realities of our nation, and this was all a complete waste of time? Also, a lot of arguments in favor of college make the mistake of comparing it to nothing, and I think this argument is guilty of that. I'll admit that college compares favorably to doing nothing, but people who skip college aren't just sitting alone in a room staring at a white wall while you're in your lectures. They have 1 year of life experiences for every 1 year of yours. Whatever it means to be an enriched individual, people who don't go to college can be just as enriched. They can go live on their own too. They can take on responsibility, take on challenging work, have relationships, and most of them do. College was your path there and it worked well for you, and that's great. But I also agree with you that it's not ideal for everybody (or even for most people).
tonymet 9y ago
run for president , for you I will vote
bernardino 9y ago
This comes at, I think, a critical point for me. In short, I spent four years at a community college (completing my associate degree in CS and exhausting almost all the courses I found interesting i.e. Mysticism, Writing Short Fiction, etc), and now in the fall I'm planning to attend San Francisco State University for CS. A few old high school friends, who attend Berkeley (one just graduated and is starting work in finance in SF in the summer, the other is a junior studying for med school), tell me I ought to stay another year at community college and apply to better, top-tier schools in the fall. Their argument? While college, as you mentioned, has become just a pursuit for "paper credentials for a specialized position you want", they insist that the school you graduate from plays a crucial role and there is numerous benefits which out-do the benefits of attending a low-tier school. So here's a cliche question: What do you think I should do? It seems the obvious answer, given what you said and what other commenters have said, is just finish the degree, it doesn't matter what school you attend. I suppose I'm just trying to get a bit of perspective. If it helps any, here's a brief background: first-generation student, immigrant from Mexico, parents combined make roughly 31k in a house of 6 (I have three sisters), and we live in California. Truthfully, I would just like to get my degree already and start hacking away (also: helping my parents financially, etc). I obviously do hack away now, but courses and part-time work usually take up most of my time, that I can't give attention to all the interesting and fascinating things out there to learn, build, etc, i.e. I have a spreadsheet of links to new technologies, blog posts, etc, that I would like to learn and build stuff with. So here's my plan: hack away this summer -> attend school in the fall -> study, work part-time, etc -> summer internship -> study, work part-time, etc, -> graduate -> summer internship -> entry-level job somewhere hopefully.
- skookumchuck 9y ago
  Whatever school you choose to attend, take the hard courses in your major. That's where the best professors will be, and the best students, and hence your best opportunity to learn the most.
- leetcrew 9y ago
  only you can decide, but since you asked, I will give you my input. a bachelor's degree helps a lot to get pretty much any white-collar, entry-level job. in some fields it's barely enough, but in ours, having a BS with a decent GPA and a couple internships basically guarantees you a job. you might not be able to work at FAANG type companies, but someone will definitely be willing to compensate you well for your work. a degree from a prestigious school is better than a degree from most state schools, but if it takes you another year or two to start collecting that salary and build real work experience, it could ultimately be a wash. sounds like you already know what path you want to take, and I bet it will work out just fine.
skookumchuck 9y ago
> cheating I've noticed a strong correlation between college cheaters and those who do the minimum work possible, and people who later complain that their jobs were outsourced.
austincheney 9y ago
> Most jobs that do require higher education don't actually make any use of the higher education. This is a serious misunderstanding of what education is or is for. Higher education doesn't exist to provide a skill. That is what trade schools are for. I know this is largely disagreeable for many people on here who learned to program in a university CS program. Higher education exists to provide the educational background necessary to function in a professional, often corporate, setting. This means things like communications skills, following complex directions, and problem solving. It is a difference between a job of solving for implied tasks versus a job where everything is a directed task and nothing more is expected.
- gilgoomesh 9y ago
  I know that's what everyone claims but it's an insidious trope that encourages people to trust in a system that lacks measurable benefit. "Don't worry that you'll never use this information. Trust us: we've prepared you in nebulous ways that can't be measured or critiqued."
  - mulmen 9y ago
    I was continually measured and critiqued in college. It was called grading.
    - randomdata 9y ago
      He is referring to measuring you in your time after college to see how what you gained from the experience has actually shaped your life, and if it matches what was expected from the onset. But given that you don't have a perfect clone that is in every way equal except for having gone to college, it is understandably difficult to measure. It seems, at best, we have people trying to compare the worlds best prodigies with people who suffer from severe disabilities that prevent them from going to college and conclude that because the prodigies breezed through college that college is the reason for them being more successful people, but that is obviously a horribly flawed methodology.
scottlocklin 9y ago
I don't think college matters much as "job training" for the reasons you say. The social hierarchy stuff is important though. If none of the credentialist ninnies running the country have ever lived in rural or working class places, well, there's eventually going to be a big disconnect. Wasn't always so; guys like George Kennan were from humble people and places.
forapurpose 9y ago
These claims appear on many HN threads but I have yet to see much support for them, only assertions, anecdotes and Internet-style rants. They wouldn't stand up in an undergraduate college class.
kayoone 9y ago
With an education system where you have to pay (in my mind) ridiculous amounts of money to obtain a degree, i agree fully. It is different in countries where education is essentially free, here i actually would recommend anyone to get the best education they possibly can, it can just benefit society as a whole even if most people don't retain many details of learned material.
meuk 9y ago
Agreed. College/university is more of a party experience for most, it doesn't necessarily help you doing your job (although it may help you do your job, since many employers require you to some degree).
walshemj 9y ago
The problem that the good jobs that don't require a university education are going or have gone away it's not like back in the day when Springsteen sings: "And for my nineteenth birthday I got a union card and a wedding coat." Nowadays jobs (junior bank staff) where you could join as school leaver at 16 or 18 and work your way up require a degree.
emodendroket 9y ago
People who manage to get white-collar jobs without ever having attended college are exceptional, so the filtering has already happened before you meet them.
grigjd3 9y ago
I really didn't get the impression the author was viewing those without a college degree as inferior. I got the impression the author was noting the relative underrepresentation of rural students in college and examining causes.
rweba 9y ago
(1) Your sentiment is common on HN and I do agree that a college degree is overemphasized as a universal panacea, but it's also absolutely true that lots of people benefit from a university education. Comments like yours make it sound like every individual student would be better off if they skipped college. I don't think that's true. (2) Going to college is like joining a gym. Some people go to the gym every day, seek out the in-house trainers for free tips, study fitness YouTube videos in their spare time, maybe even make a ton of friends at the gym. Other people pay the same monthly fee but can never seem to find the time to actually go to the gym yet they find plenty of time to play video games and eat junk food. My point is that you can't blame the gym if you don't get in shape. Students have to actively participate in the process if they are going to get the most out of it and unfortunately many do not. I don't think that's entirely the responsibility of the college.
- tr0ut 9y ago
  So either you're not from the States or you were well funded in your own educational pursuits. Both are fine this, is not a personal attack. It is not hard to find evidence that American university is outrageously expensive. And for what is the average result? You learned the theory/basics of X subject? Or you met cool people and had a good time? I think we're getting to the point that it is not worth it for a common job and certainly not for a common job in tech. (Not arguing medicine or advanced science/engineering degrees!)
  - emodendroket 9y ago
    Even in the crudest measure, lifetime earnings, going to college still looks pretty good. Getting a tech job in the first place is much easier if you have a degree. This is not to deny that some have managed without it and have done very well, but they walked a harder road to get there.
    - tr0ut 9y ago
      At what cost? $100k in debt and delayed start at life? Again if all things are equal. Uni is free, sure why not. This argument is invalid too. We can say most that go to college are better off thus the net positive results.
coldtea 9y ago
>Most jobs don't require higher education. Most jobs that do require higher education don't actually make any use of the higher education. Are people who didn't follow the author up the ivory tower all failures who just fell through the cracks? Isn't those questions irrelevant to the issue the author poses: the lack of access to higher education of people from rural backgrounds. That they can still get employed at "most jobs (that) don't require higher education" (which includes McDonalds), doesn't mean much. Do they get the better deal, or do their higher educated peers do (even if that education wasn't "really needed" by their future career)?
intopieces 9y ago
>Most jobs don’t require higher education. This is a claim about the state of the world today. Can you make this claim confidently about the job market for the next 45 years? Can anyone? In the face of such uncertainty, which do you see is the most viable hedge: settling for a specific career based on a narrow set of skills, or using the time when the brain is most absorbent to be exposed to a broad range of ideas and people? Your issues with higher education are valid. But they speak to the need to reform education, not encourage people to forgo it.
wemdyjreichert 9y ago
It's the old complaint about the schoolchild and arithmetic, "When am I actually going to use this?". Most people never need to do long-division by hand... even those who work in math-related professions use calculators. Don't teach what people don't need to learn. There are better places for everyone to expend their time, energy, and money.

jacobolus 9y ago

Can you quote the part that you feel is condescending? The text of the article seems largely straightforward and factual to me. It doesn’t say that there’s anything inherently bad about not going to college, but rather that not having a college degree has made it difficult for some people to find new careers in places where many types of labor are facing declining demand because of large structural forces, and that those communities are feeling a general malaise due to drug use, high unemployment, outward migration, falling incomes, etc. (a claim supported by evidence from polls and census data). Are you saying that it is condescending for the “executive director of the Kentucky Valley Educational Cooperative” to be advising rural students to try college? Is it wrong for people from rural areas who got college degrees to spend their time advocating that other rural young people do the same? I know several people who grew up in rural places and founding college and subsequent highly technical careers very rewarding. For some, it was explicitly seen as a way to escape their (to them, stifling feeling) rural community. I also know people who grew up in a city but didn’t like it and moved to rural areas as adults. Different people have different preferences. If you are arguing that many jobs that currently require degrees shouldn’t, that seems like an orthogonal conversation not really touched on by this article; it’s not at all clear that the people profiled here would disagree with that.

throwawayfjk 9y ago
I would assume that the rural are rational to the same degree as anyone else, so the statistical difference mostly means they find college less beneficial relative to their opportunities. There is too much of an agenda feel to this piece, from the title to selective interviews and statistics
- mozumder 9y ago
  > I would assume that the rural are rational to the same degree as anyone else, The rural have limited social interaction, leading to a biased worldview.
  - spiderfarmer 9y ago
    I have lived in a rural area most of my live and it's not about limited social interaction - it's the fact that international affairs don't affect us as much as it does people who live in cities. Therefore it's just not as interesting to people here.
    - randomdata 9y ago
      Not to mention that, in my experience – and the job data seems to back this up – there are often more career opportunities in rural areas (but not all rural areas). I assume this is due to the fact that the group of people competing for the jobs available are much smaller in numbers than you find in larger urban areas. While one job in the city might attract 100 applicants, one job in a small community of 100 people total might attract two applicants. This forces rural employers to be less choosy about who they hire, and enables applicants to be less special as they do not need to stand out from the crowd in the same way their big city counterparts need to. While I am not about to suggest that college is only for building careers, I find a large segment of students treat it as nothing more. When you remove the feeling that you need a college degree to get a job, as is the case for many who look for work in rural areas, that removes the reason why many want to attain a degree. Generally, education for education's sake is not something our society values. We are, I think quite unfortunately, taught from an early age that jobs are the whole reason for attending school. Few, regardless of whether they live in a major city or in the country, recognize the value beyond that.

seany 9y ago

The Case against Education - Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money. By Bryan Caplan Makes many of these same points in a longer form.

zdragnar 9y ago

It's not even just the utility of the degree, it's the cost. Investing $20-100k plus four to 8 years lost work experience (depending on number of degrees) is, for most living in rural communities, an extreme luxury. Considering the economic gap between metropolitan areas and rural communities, pretty much any degree not directly related to work preparation and placement is a luxury good that few can afford.

huac 9y ago
Most elite universities have income-based financial aid and going to one could easily conceivably be cheaper or at least on par with going to a state school. Of course one big problem is that rural students don't know that
- zdragnar 9y ago
  A friend of mine chose the college we went to specifically because she was told about all the need-based financial aid that's available to students like her. You know, the kind that grew up learning to pick the mold off the bread and how awful government cheese was. Imagine her surprise when there's no such thing as a free ride, and there wasn't actually so much available. Also, if you think there's enough "elite" universities around for America's poor (rural or otherwise) you're mistaken. The real bottom line is, there's not much elite universities have to offer the rural life. Sure, there's certainly some places and jobs where it would help. For most people, and most jobs though, it's overkill. [Edit] To clarify, if you've grown up in poverty or even lower-middle class in a central midwestern state, the travel costs of going to a uni on the coast is simply prohibitive. Add on top of that things that your peers will partake in (summer in the Hamptons or whatever) that you'll never be able to identify with. You'll always be on the outside, no matter what. Unless every high school graduate in the rural parts of the country decides to move to a big city, there's a whole lot more that a local technical school has to offer someone in that position.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - 9y ago

vanilla_nut 9y ago

On the other hand, I come from a rural area and I feel that college was absolutely worth it for me, even with the huge bill that I had to pay myself. (I graduated fairly recently) College was the first time in my life when I feel like I truly took responsibility for myself, and people generally thought I was a responsible kid growing up. I finally found myself in a place where I could make friends who shared interests with me who I truly wanted to interact with, and many of those friendships evolved into mentors or mentees. TAing, challenging classwork, and living for the first time on my own really forced me to mature and take charge of my future. Of course, I could just be a late bloomer, or maybe my STEM interests and particular rural community made my situation unique. But I don't think I'm the only one in my generation who feels this way. I agree that college is probably not appropriate for your average kid, but for the kind of kids who enjoy learning, who aspire to do something challenging for a career, I think higher learning is indispensable. It's important to keep in mind that college is meant to enrich people as individuals, not explicitly prepare them for jobs. Technical/vocational schools are for job prep.

throwaway0255 9y ago
> It's important to keep in mind that college is meant to enrich people as individuals, not explicitly prepare them for jobs. Technical/vocational schools are for job prep. The more college is shown to be failing the job market, the more I hear this argument. Are people who don't go to college less enriched individuals? Lately, academics seem to be shifting their value proposition to the instillation of this undetectable unmeasurable X-factor. We can't see it, we can't prove that it exists, but it's there, and its value is absolutely incalculable. How convenient for the sales pitch is this. And I don't blame them. As knowledge and skills become accessible to everyone, that's the last defense they'll be left with. What else are they going to say? Our institution is completely out of touch with the job market and the economic realities of our nation, and this was all a complete waste of time? Also, a lot of arguments in favor of college make the mistake of comparing it to nothing, and I think this argument is guilty of that. I'll admit that college compares favorably to doing nothing, but people who skip college aren't just sitting alone in a room staring at a white wall while you're in your lectures. They have 1 year of life experiences for every 1 year of yours. Whatever it means to be an enriched individual, people who don't go to college can be just as enriched. They can go live on their own too. They can take on responsibility, take on challenging work, have relationships, and most of them do. College was your path there and it worked well for you, and that's great. But I also agree with you that it's not ideal for everybody (or even for most people).

tonymet 9y ago

run for president , for you I will vote

bernardino 9y ago

This comes at, I think, a critical point for me. In short, I spent four years at a community college (completing my associate degree in CS and exhausting almost all the courses I found interesting i.e. Mysticism, Writing Short Fiction, etc), and now in the fall I'm planning to attend San Francisco State University for CS. A few old high school friends, who attend Berkeley (one just graduated and is starting work in finance in SF in the summer, the other is a junior studying for med school), tell me I ought to stay another year at community college and apply to better, top-tier schools in the fall. Their argument? While college, as you mentioned, has become just a pursuit for "paper credentials for a specialized position you want", they insist that the school you graduate from plays a crucial role and there is numerous benefits which out-do the benefits of attending a low-tier school. So here's a cliche question: What do you think I should do? It seems the obvious answer, given what you said and what other commenters have said, is just finish the degree, it doesn't matter what school you attend. I suppose I'm just trying to get a bit of perspective. If it helps any, here's a brief background: first-generation student, immigrant from Mexico, parents combined make roughly 31k in a house of 6 (I have three sisters), and we live in California. Truthfully, I would just like to get my degree already and start hacking away (also: helping my parents financially, etc). I obviously do hack away now, but courses and part-time work usually take up most of my time, that I can't give attention to all the interesting and fascinating things out there to learn, build, etc, i.e. I have a spreadsheet of links to new technologies, blog posts, etc, that I would like to learn and build stuff with. So here's my plan: hack away this summer -> attend school in the fall -> study, work part-time, etc -> summer internship -> study, work part-time, etc, -> graduate -> summer internship -> entry-level job somewhere hopefully.

skookumchuck 9y ago
Whatever school you choose to attend, take the hard courses in your major. That's where the best professors will be, and the best students, and hence your best opportunity to learn the most.
leetcrew 9y ago
only you can decide, but since you asked, I will give you my input. a bachelor's degree helps a lot to get pretty much any white-collar, entry-level job. in some fields it's barely enough, but in ours, having a BS with a decent GPA and a couple internships basically guarantees you a job. you might not be able to work at FAANG type companies, but someone will definitely be willing to compensate you well for your work. a degree from a prestigious school is better than a degree from most state schools, but if it takes you another year or two to start collecting that salary and build real work experience, it could ultimately be a wash. sounds like you already know what path you want to take, and I bet it will work out just fine.

skookumchuck 9y ago

> cheating I've noticed a strong correlation between college cheaters and those who do the minimum work possible, and people who later complain that their jobs were outsourced.

austincheney 9y ago

> Most jobs that do require higher education don't actually make any use of the higher education. This is a serious misunderstanding of what education is or is for. Higher education doesn't exist to provide a skill. That is what trade schools are for. I know this is largely disagreeable for many people on here who learned to program in a university CS program. Higher education exists to provide the educational background necessary to function in a professional, often corporate, setting. This means things like communications skills, following complex directions, and problem solving. It is a difference between a job of solving for implied tasks versus a job where everything is a directed task and nothing more is expected.

gilgoomesh 9y ago
I know that's what everyone claims but it's an insidious trope that encourages people to trust in a system that lacks measurable benefit. "Don't worry that you'll never use this information. Trust us: we've prepared you in nebulous ways that can't be measured or critiqued."
- mulmen 9y ago
  I was continually measured and critiqued in college. It was called grading.
  - randomdata 9y ago
    He is referring to measuring you in your time after college to see how what you gained from the experience has actually shaped your life, and if it matches what was expected from the onset. But given that you don't have a perfect clone that is in every way equal except for having gone to college, it is understandably difficult to measure. It seems, at best, we have people trying to compare the worlds best prodigies with people who suffer from severe disabilities that prevent them from going to college and conclude that because the prodigies breezed through college that college is the reason for them being more successful people, but that is obviously a horribly flawed methodology.

scottlocklin 9y ago

I don't think college matters much as "job training" for the reasons you say. The social hierarchy stuff is important though. If none of the credentialist ninnies running the country have ever lived in rural or working class places, well, there's eventually going to be a big disconnect. Wasn't always so; guys like George Kennan were from humble people and places.

forapurpose 9y ago

These claims appear on many HN threads but I have yet to see much support for them, only assertions, anecdotes and Internet-style rants. They wouldn't stand up in an undergraduate college class.

kayoone 9y ago

With an education system where you have to pay (in my mind) ridiculous amounts of money to obtain a degree, i agree fully. It is different in countries where education is essentially free, here i actually would recommend anyone to get the best education they possibly can, it can just benefit society as a whole even if most people don't retain many details of learned material.

meuk 9y ago

Agreed. College/university is more of a party experience for most, it doesn't necessarily help you doing your job (although it may help you do your job, since many employers require you to some degree).

walshemj 9y ago

The problem that the good jobs that don't require a university education are going or have gone away it's not like back in the day when Springsteen sings: "And for my nineteenth birthday I got a union card and a wedding coat." Nowadays jobs (junior bank staff) where you could join as school leaver at 16 or 18 and work your way up require a degree.

emodendroket 9y ago

People who manage to get white-collar jobs without ever having attended college are exceptional, so the filtering has already happened before you meet them.

grigjd3 9y ago

I really didn't get the impression the author was viewing those without a college degree as inferior. I got the impression the author was noting the relative underrepresentation of rural students in college and examining causes.

rweba 9y ago

(1) Your sentiment is common on HN and I do agree that a college degree is overemphasized as a universal panacea, but it's also absolutely true that lots of people benefit from a university education. Comments like yours make it sound like every individual student would be better off if they skipped college. I don't think that's true. (2) Going to college is like joining a gym. Some people go to the gym every day, seek out the in-house trainers for free tips, study fitness YouTube videos in their spare time, maybe even make a ton of friends at the gym. Other people pay the same monthly fee but can never seem to find the time to actually go to the gym yet they find plenty of time to play video games and eat junk food. My point is that you can't blame the gym if you don't get in shape. Students have to actively participate in the process if they are going to get the most out of it and unfortunately many do not. I don't think that's entirely the responsibility of the college.

tr0ut 9y ago
So either you're not from the States or you were well funded in your own educational pursuits. Both are fine this, is not a personal attack. It is not hard to find evidence that American university is outrageously expensive. And for what is the average result? You learned the theory/basics of X subject? Or you met cool people and had a good time? I think we're getting to the point that it is not worth it for a common job and certainly not for a common job in tech. (Not arguing medicine or advanced science/engineering degrees!)
- emodendroket 9y ago
  Even in the crudest measure, lifetime earnings, going to college still looks pretty good. Getting a tech job in the first place is much easier if you have a degree. This is not to deny that some have managed without it and have done very well, but they walked a harder road to get there.
  - tr0ut 9y ago
    At what cost? $100k in debt and delayed start at life? Again if all things are equal. Uni is free, sure why not. This argument is invalid too. We can say most that go to college are better off thus the net positive results.

coldtea 9y ago

>Most jobs don't require higher education. Most jobs that do require higher education don't actually make any use of the higher education. Are people who didn't follow the author up the ivory tower all failures who just fell through the cracks? Isn't those questions irrelevant to the issue the author poses: the lack of access to higher education of people from rural backgrounds. That they can still get employed at "most jobs (that) don't require higher education" (which includes McDonalds), doesn't mean much. Do they get the better deal, or do their higher educated peers do (even if that education wasn't "really needed" by their future career)?

intopieces 9y ago

>Most jobs don’t require higher education. This is a claim about the state of the world today. Can you make this claim confidently about the job market for the next 45 years? Can anyone? In the face of such uncertainty, which do you see is the most viable hedge: settling for a specific career based on a narrow set of skills, or using the time when the brain is most absorbent to be exposed to a broad range of ideas and people? Your issues with higher education are valid. But they speak to the need to reform education, not encourage people to forgo it.

wemdyjreichert 9y ago

It's the old complaint about the schoolchild and arithmetic, "When am I actually going to use this?". Most people never need to do long-division by hand... even those who work in math-related professions use calculators. Don't teach what people don't need to learn. There are better places for everyone to expend their time, energy, and money.