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College-educated workers are taking over the American factory floor

• troughway 7y ago
  What was once a blue-collar education is now undergraduate white-collar education.
  • topspin 7y ago
    Except you didn't incur a bunch of debt to get it.
  • moksly 7y ago
    Maybe in factories, but we’re seeing a real need for craftsmen in Denmark after three decades of university being the only “cool” education path. Mean while white collar students with less attractive degrees struggle to find work. I’m not sure if it’s really blue-collar if you’re a plumber, nurse or an electrician, because my English is lacking, but we need those a whole lot more, even compared to people who studied the soft-IT educations.
    • lotsofpulp 7y ago
      Blue collar basically means anything you have to physically exert effort for, as opposed to sitting in a chair and using a computer and attending meetings. Once blue collar work starts paying more than white collar work, it will become “cool” again.
    • alistairSH 7y ago
      "Blue collar" refers to the blue chambray or denim shirts often worn by factory workers and other laborers in the early 20th century. These days, it's mostly "laborer" vs "office dweller". But, there are a lot of jobs in the middle. A plumber who works for somebody else would be considered blue collar. A licensed plumber who works for themselves and can bill at high rates is in that awkward middle - they still have to do some labor, but can be highly compensated (by middle-class standards). Same for electrician. Nurses are sometimes called "pink collar" - those jobs that are traditionally held by women. Teachers, clerical, hair dressers, too. But, like electricians, they are highly trained and, in the right position, highly compensated.
      • mywittyname 7y ago
        > and, in the right position, highly compensated. Nursing is the only field on there that could be considered well compensated. There's this mystique around nursing that it's some crazy well-paying position, but it's really not. When you consider the education requirements and the work involved, it's alright. $35/hr is pretty good, except you have to maintain a license, clean up peoples' shit, be nice to assholes, and get berated by doctors. Or you can take a huge pay cut to go work in a doctors office. (source: married a nurse that couldn't make it 10 years before changing careers) Teachers make a bit more than the median wage, but most jobs require a masters degree to progress beyond a certain point. Hair dressers require licensing and a surprising amount of education (up to 1,500 hours) to work in mostly flat-rate jobs, sometimes without benefits. And clerical work is basically the lowest tier work in an office. Not listed: dental hygienists. Also a traditionally female job which has crazy education requirements for mediocre pay.
        • walshemj 7y ago
          Not sure where you are but in the Uk a lot of nursing jobs are degree level.
          • mywittyname 7y ago
            In the US, it's a minimum of two years with most hospitals requiring four years of schooling.
        • rcurry 7y ago
          Depending on your entrepreneurial skills, being a hairdresser can be a lot more profitable than you’d think. My wife’s hair dresser does exemplary work and has a terrific reputation in our area. She earns about $165 for an hour and a half worth of work, works ten hours a day, and is booked solid every day of the week three months out. This is in Texas, where the cost of living is not that high and I would guess she easily grossed around $200k+ last year alone. Yeah, if you just want to clock in and out at Great Clips and not be the best you can be, then it’s not a high paying profession, but for people that invest in their skills and learn how to market and build a solid client base, it’s actually crazy how much money some of them can make. I was very surprised by it.
    • walshemj 7y ago
      I think you are more thinking of associate professionals And back in the day the entry requirements for Advanced apprentices where high - more stringent than Nursing or direct entry to a bank
• djinnandtonic 7y ago
  http://archive.ph/cRZSn http://archive.ph/cRZSn
• myu701 7y ago
  Paywall bypass -> http://archive.ph/cRZSn http://archive.ph/cRZSn
• username90 7y ago
  > Now, we need workers who can manage the machines. Is managing a machine harder than driving a car? If not a few weeks similar to how long it takes to learn to drive should be enough education.
  • shadowgovt 7y ago
    It depends severely on how much individual corporations demand workers managing the machine be able to successfully troubleshoot and repair failure modes.
  • meddlin 7y ago
    It really depends on the machine.
  • jvanderbot 7y ago
    Yes. I know from personal experience. Some machines require programming cuts to specifications, measuring and reasoning about tolerances, and understanding the loss of precision during routine use.
  • caseysoftware 7y ago
    Is coding different than typing?
  • jdnenej 7y ago
    It doesn't take a few weeks to learn to drive a car safely. In Australia it takes 3 years and 100 hours of driving with someone else to get a license.
    • hnick 7y ago
      And, based on what I see every day, a license still doesn't always mean "drive[s] a car safely". FWIW in NSW it's 120 hours logged as a learner and nearly everyone I've asked admits to lying a bit. It was only 50 hours when I did it, and most lied back then - mostly due to just driving until they felt ready for a test without really logging, then adding it later.
• Ididntdothis 7y ago
  Stuff like this is why I have a problem questioning the value of a college degree. Even if you never need what you learned during college the degree is still an entrance ticket to a lot of jobs. If you don’t go to college you are handicapping yourself. It’s just bad advice not to go to college.
  • EpicEng 7y ago
    Or you could fix the real problem and stop the lunacy of requiring four year degrees for positions that can be taught while on the job.
    • oh_sigh 7y ago
      "Fixing the real problem" is huge - you need to get hundreds of millions of people to change their behavior. Leading your life as if you may not have the ability to materially change the world isn't a bad idea.
      • EpicEng 7y ago
        >Leading your life as if you may not have the ability to materially change the world isn't a bad idea. As if, what; this is the way things have always been? College attendance, funding, and cirriculum are akin to laws of physics? This is a relatively recent issue which began when the fed started backing student loans in the mid sixties.
        • oh_sigh 7y ago
          The fact that things change doesn't mean that a single person can expect to change things.
    • fzeroracer 7y ago
      I think higher education in general is valuable for, well, any job. Especially because of the dire state of highschool education in the US due to a combination of factors. That's partly why companies demand a college degree because it's a guarantee of a certain level of performance (and wealth, for that matter). There are only really two ways to fix this problem. 1. Make college education free. This includes trade schools for those that would want to go that route. 2. Government regulation to cut back on companies demanding higher education for blue collar work. Since this is the result of the free market (companies wouldn't demand that level of education if they couldn't get away with it) then you would have to add some restrictions on the free market to solve it.
• myu701 7y ago
  The confluence of lots of degree-holders looking for work and the decline in companies investing in internal training programs has (IMO) rendered the 'firm handshake and a job for 40 years working your way up the ladder' boomer story just about a fantasy on par with a Disney film at this point. Cynical view / hyperbolic not researched opinion ahead -> Many companies see The Perfect Employee as someone who is overqualified and will burn both ends of the candle, drink the company kool-aid wholesale, do all of their training on their own time and never ask for raises or move to another company on their own, all while doing so for peanuts. Each particular company adjusts that spectrum back towards reality just enough to hire people to meet their own staffing needs. That's why the particularly grueling companies like restaurants or entertainment venues have such trouble hiring people when the economy is doing well.
  • alchemism 7y ago
    Its an old American tradition, the Perfect Employee: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indentured_servitude_in_the_Americas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indentured_servitude_in_the_Am... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartleby,_the_Scrivener https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartleby,_the_Scrivener
• Gusen 7y ago
  The President, Sect'y of State & Defense, FBI Director, US Atty General, Supreme Court Justice, House Speaker, Senators, Governors, Mayors, and local police have all been bribed to protect and or be child rapists. WTF do we do now, sir? Here is all of the unequivocal proof to put them all away. Discussion \\Who arrests high profile and ranking criminals, such as the President, when the FBI Deputy Director, Attorney General, all the way down from Senator to Governor, to Mayor, to local police, have all been bribed? Download the video/audio file, put on headphones and turn up the volume. You will hear these people committing these crimes. Audio was broadcast into my apartment by outdated surveillance equipment illegally embedded witihin my walls. This very same technology was being used to broadcast me to the internet for five years without my consent. I own this footage. Please use this to prosecute all found within. Note: I am obliviously speaking throughout the video, and it can be quite loud at times relative to the desired content. The are dozens more links, including these, that can be found in this PDF last updated 7Dec2019 132 pages: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Sj9EN_pHmicKS6rFQlmk67knMdJc9cGk/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Sj9EN_pHmicKS6rFQlmk67knMdJ... Members of the "Illuminati"; "...an underground organization of homosexuals and child rapists..." (page 26 - Obama, Dorsey). President Donald Trump: Accepts a four billion dollar bribe here at 10:18am 4Jan2019: 3JanCh3_900-1100.avi https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Grdr8xF2psKNsuYlEnl9dIRV-77YG0Vr/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Grdr8xF2psKNsuYlEnl9dIRV-77... 3JanCh2_900-1100.avi https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LUmVygl_q0XVs8h2cWr8jZl-24fY0vBB/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LUmVygl_q0XVs8h2cWr8jZl-24f... 3JanCh4_1000-1100.mp3 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZpP1pJbJakBgg-y-MWNozTxp3wJojHge/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZpP1pJbJakBgg-y-MWNozTxp3wJ... Rapes and kills a dozen boys, including five in a who can rape 5 boys to death the fastest' game: 14JanCh3_600.mp3 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ufPmglde9Mep0m6xYMJ9c4TWTjj258zB/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ufPmglde9Mep0m6xYMJ9c4TWTjj... 14JanCh2_600-700.mp3 https://drive.google.com/file/d/136qLJdEn8eCs9tI4QtIxl4opW_Lw_gCF/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/136qLJdEn8eCs9tI4QtIxl4opW_L... Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi: Accepts a $3 billion dollar bribe at 10:33am 17Jan2019 to ensure Asian boys can get through the border undocumented to be raped: 17JanCh3_949-1100.avi https://drive.google.com/file/d/1eodHu4o5Cm3xEWhDqipSuTj-M1CZUvmE/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1eodHu4o5Cm3xEWhDqipSuTj-M1C... 17JanCh4_1017-1100.avi https://drive.google.com/file/d/1y-nWEQbempkVZSz230j9wTyduZNjDmnk/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1y-nWEQbempkVZSz230j9wTyduZN... Also "preps" boys with First Lady Melania Trump, as in she performs oral sex on the boys’ penis and anus, as a child rapist like Henry Porter would, while trying to remove fecal matter from the boy prior to handing them over to be raped and subsequently murdered, for Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, who decides he would rather just have ten billion dollars instead. US Attorney for Western New York James Kennedy rapes these boys instead: 12JanCh3_1533-1638.mp3 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1AgFkDsbPbI4b5Xd3Wbz2EVNNx25kW2Oz/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1AgFkDsbPbI4b5Xd3Wbz2EVNNx25... Attorney General William Barr & FBI Deputy Director Christopher Wray rape and kill boys for billions in bribes in Buffalo, NY on 17Jan2019 7:50am: 18JanCh4_700.mp3 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UIdZkS5ZVksZdHYsnHk2t5losi0N0Bp7/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UIdZkS5ZVksZdHYsnHk2t5losi0... 18JanCh2_700.mp3 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DFK8IAxm5pQVqZv9L518nfgP7_odB2Um/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DFK8IAxm5pQVqZv9L518nfgP7_o... 18JanCh3_725-.Mp3 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DG5ej59Ic8RT9UhbyMdwT0BDcKIifGGm/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DG5ej59Ic8RT9UhbyMdwT0BDcKI... Secretary of State Michael Pompeo and Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan rape and kill boys 5Jan2019 17:39 for billions in bribes: 5JanCh3_1600-1800.mp3 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ghgmNrQvJ8WfJ2TsDVx1ruDU36hrhx6S/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ghgmNrQvJ8WfJ2TsDVx1ruDU36h... 5JanCh2_1721-1818.mp3 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1eSlD4otX4KZqWXboQM92Mu-6J02Mjwrg/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1eSlD4otX4KZqWXboQM92Mu-6J02... 17Jan - 5:30am - Pompeo returns for more rape and an additional $5 billion dollars. 18JanCh3_529-.mp3 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1beDDNVl0EuU-a9UNi_GwwFhpC8IQIZuZ/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1beDDNVl0EuU-a9UNi_GwwFhpC8I... 18JanCh2_529-.mp3 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1irgCdGoCfinlDfKrIP1vaGVWnzLEULkk/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1irgCdGoCfinlDfKrIP1vaGVWnzL... New York Governor Andrew Cuomo rapes and kills boys at a "rape party" in Buffalo on 14Jan2019 starting at 22:09: 14JanCh3_2100-2300.avi https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yolCgVtY5b8d8YDcshwb-Yd3kS0Jg-Bk/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yolCgVtY5b8d8YDcshwb-Yd3kS0... Leaders of the "impeachment" effort Jerrold Nadler, Robert Mueller, and Adam Schiff all rape boys between 11:20pm and 1:10am: 14JanCh4_2300-0000.mp3 - Nadler starts at about 20 minutes in. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Kuvv2Zmbw5Jw7onbRI2hCZ0M8FU66GuU/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Kuvv2Zmbw5Jw7onbRI2hCZ0M8FU... 14JanCh2_2304-2359.mp3 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nofp5xF-aXXcCSgQVwj30KlzE9WLr1x1/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nofp5xF-aXXcCSgQVwj30KlzE9W... Mueller around 12:25am, Schiff 12:55ish: 15JanCh2_000-100.mp3 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1EsmHfguwBuo2PbavJ1WYyhiML62tgCkj/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1EsmHfguwBuo2PbavJ1WYyhiML62... 15JanCh2_100-200.mp3 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NZnWRnBryalNQu2yJmfJUdS2pA_rGSFH/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NZnWRnBryalNQu2yJmfJUdS2pA_... 15JanCh4_000-100.mp3 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZEDJR6jb6ARpcNnWJTokBUKb2J2OQnwZ/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZEDJR6jb6ARpcNnWJTokBUKb2J2... 15JanCh4_100-200.mp3 https://drive.google.com/file/d/173aYWvWHH4VGht1h_2nM0IMdw746LeCL/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/173aYWvWHH4VGht1h_2nM0IMdw74... A big reason this has not been reported by the major news networks is right here. Lester Holt of NBC Nightly News, apparently a member of the Illuminati since the 1980's, along with ABC Nightly News lead anchor David Muir, stop over to the Porter studio in Buffalo on January 14th, 2019 at 5:00am. They both rape and kill about two dozen boys by 6:00am. Muir starts around 5:15am, then Holt about 5:38am. Multi-billionaire Rupert Murdoch, owner of News Corp & Fox Corporation, takes his turn after Holt. Video links below: 14JanCh3_500-601.avi https://drive.google.com/file/d/1i7NKepeyG_FfdQRrM7KsnFOZOOX3o7UL/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1i7NKepeyG_FfdQRrM7KsnFOZOOX... 14JanCh2_530-600.avi https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NZzgN5ilI7ToroU5cfqMaL4o2u1RwidV/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NZzgN5ilI7ToroU5cfqMaL4o2u1... Adding to the media protection, CBS & Viacom owner Sumner Redstone and Leslie Moonves rape boys following the President. 14JanCh3_700.avi https://drive.google.com/file/d/10XDw6x3ldnnQiq7oIjpdYVENyXaB4aI0/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/10XDw6x3ldnnQiq7oIjpdYVENyXa... 14JanCh2_700-800.avi https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NS_e6AzEZ05wnfljkGMETGU5CWYKfRDp/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NS_e6AzEZ05wnfljkGMETGU5CWY... Buffalo Police Commissioner Byron Lockwood rapes and kills boys starting 3:25am. US Attorney for Western New York James Kennedy starts right after at about 3:31am. Both rape multiple boys to death on January 17, 2019. Erie County Social Services Special Invesigator Keith Pelky rapes four boys to death starting about 2:45am. FBI supervisory special agent Andrew Abromowitz rapes and kills seven boys at 2:53am onward. WGRZ Channel 2 News in Buffalo lead anchor Scott Levin begins about 3:00am. 17Jan - 3:38am+ - Buffalo FBI Special Agent in Charge Gary Loeffert - does not rape or prep boys but requests $100 million dollar bribe to let it go. FBI Supervisory Special Agent Jeremy Bell present as well. WGRZ Channel 2 News anchor Kate Welshofer is apparently raped. 17JanCh3_200-300.avi https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uzXPvnyDz_tm25MbeW5oKseH-jrckFsS/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uzXPvnyDz_tm25MbeW5oKseH-jr... 17JanCh3_300-445.avi https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gTDU4Eris8a3QO1llI3gCRmr11zrSdjk/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gTDU4Eris8a3QO1llI3gCRmr11z... 17JanCh4_230-430.avi https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZoJNJwlTRlDf2PD-IV5jTAqnYPEWjFnC/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZoJNJwlTRlDf2PD-IV5jTAqnYPE... Erie County Commissioner of Social Services Marie Cannon, “preps” boys for rape by these men u/2:53am. This means she performs oral sex on the boys’ penis and anus, as a child rapist like Henry Porter would, while trying to remove fecal matter from the boy prior to handing them over to be raped and subsequently murdered. These acts expected of female (full) members of the Illuminati. See update from 22 November(pages 121-124) for further info on the significance. I have been broke & homeless for 7 months, no bed, no shower, no welfare, in an effort to silence this. I was illegally removed from my apartment on 18Jan2019 by the Buffalo Police. Cam4_18Jan2019_KnockToEnd.avi https://drive.google.com/file/d/1N2mozGdPD7HMWELjRhvIZ94eBLjXEAVX/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1N2mozGdPD7HMWELjRhvIZ94eBLj... NVR@ch3@main.avi https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JNMZn6JxYTCBULkC58AQtXa75hzjPVlr/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JNMZn6JxYTCBULkC58AQtXa75hz... Transcript of the event: https://drive.google.com/file/d/192B7tZa3b23Ab0UkSLGqNuLBUrDqOaAr/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/192B7tZa3b23Ab0UkSLGqNuLBUrD... Bribed and or involved from top to bottom. This looks more and more like a soft takeover of the US government, many more wealthy and high ranking/profile individuals are involved. The governoing body of the "Illuminati" boasts $7 trillion in assests, led by Charles Koch, George Soros, Henry Porter, Donald Reeves, among others. Are you going to do anything about it?
• littlestymaar 7y ago
  Related: in my town in France, I once saw a job offer at a temporary employment agency with the following requirements: - undergraduate degree - ability to carry heavy weights Which struck me as antithetical, but it looks like it's now the norm.
  • u10 7y ago
    physical fitness should be the standard regardless of education, if only for the health benefits
    • littlestymaar 7y ago
      By french laws, “carrying heavy weight” («port de charges lourdes») means “up to 55kg” (for male workers). Doing so on a regular basis is way above “physical fitness” and constitute a serious health hazard in the long run.
    • P_I_Staker 7y ago
      Health, in my opinion, should not be a criterion for employment. As in completely illegal, not just discouraged.
      • u10 7y ago
        that's rather specious. For example, if an individual can't fireman carry an average male, they certainly should not be a fireman.
        • littlestymaar 7y ago
          While I agree with your point, firemen are a particularly bad example here since in France most of them are volunteers and there is no such restrictions on physical abilities.
          • kube-system 7y ago
            65% of US firefighters are volunteer too -- requirements vary by state, but many do have physical and training requirements.
• TimTheTinker 7y ago
  I think homeschooling is an excellent hack given the current constraints of the system. Homeschooled students can move at their own pace (which can be much quicker than the standard curriculum schedule) and take courses at community colleges that double as high school and college credit (or just college credit - but that’s still time and money saved). I’ve seen smart homeschool students graduate high school years early with GE college credits already earned. Another interesting hack is to go to Europe for college/grad school. My wife got a Master’s degree in 1 year in England, and could have spent only 2 more for a Ph.D. (And college there is often only 2 years.) Modern university-as-business institutions try to keep students enrolled for as long/late as possible, so any approach that potentially counters that is interesting.
  • fzeroracer 7y ago
    Homeschooling as a 'hack' requires your family to be able to afford having one person become a teacher at home as their full time job essentially. For families working two full time jobs, this isn't really an option. In general that sort of thing would probably be better served going to highschool and taking community college classes on the side, which is what I did when I was growing up.
    • duelingjello 7y ago
      Yes. This usually only works in an US household where one parent earns six-figures or more. Most people simply are too indentured to five-figure jobs (money and healthcare) to pull this off. What also works with theis having a city "efficiency" (tiny) dwelling for the working parent and a cheaper house/homestead in a suburban/rural area to raise a family. Preferably, in the office area on weekdays/commuting home for weekends and 50% telecommuting/50% office for 1 or 2 weeks at a time. For these folks who don't make $300k+, living in a big city full time would be unwise. For almost everyone, Commuting long distances in an ICE solo-occupant vehicle is unwise.
    • cosmotic 7y ago
      Public schools employ eachers that teach at more-or-less the speed of the slowest student, where the time of the teacher is divided n-ways. If a student can learn more quickly than that of the slowest student in the public school or with anything-but-the-least-divided-attention, then the home-schooling adult would not need to be 'full-time'.
• jvanderbot 7y ago
  TFA mentions associate degrees as "white collar" which is a bit off. To be a machinist often requires a 2 year cert. I think some of this should be a certification/licensure process rather than a degree.
• duxup 7y ago
  I always wonder about qualifications and if anyone is paying attention what is really required to do a job. I worked for a tech company that was acquired by some big valley tech company. They couldn't find any of the fancy CS degree folks they were looking for in the valley so they decided to "try" bringing a few of us over from this nobody company (that they had picked up just to absorb customers, we were just the folks left over after the layoffs because they didn't want to deal with supporting those customers themselves). I didn't finish college, and I was warned that this was high tech stuff and they usually hire some pretty smart people to do it. So out to the valley they fly me and some others and first day i'm absolutely overwhelmed ... by how simple a job it was they were doing, and some pretty poorly. They were so invested in their resumes and being in the valley I don't think they really understood that day to day the job was basic troubleshooting. At one point one of them showing me how things worked asked "What do people do in Minnesota for work?" I told him "The same thing you're doing..." He found that hard to belive. In about 6 months a handful of us from nobody company were churning through work at twice the rate of the other folks and with higher customer satisfaction scores (it was basically technical support)... and engineering was asking that critical cases be transferred to us "for efficiency". Ultimately the job was customer support some mild technical skills / ability to learn / take good notes / ask good questions / the ability to formulate a theory, test it, and so on. I knew dozens of people who could do that job at a third the cost, but they'd never hire them. Years later I change careers and I sit through interviews where they hum and haw about my lack of CS degree again ... for a job maintaining their wonky CRUD app.
  • commandlinefan 7y ago
    > by how simple a job it was they were doing There’s a world of difference between a college degree with no experience and no college degree also with no experience. There’s a significantly smaller difference between a college degree with ten years experience and no college degree with ten years experience.
    • noir_lord 7y ago
      I’m a techlead who is in charge of mentoring the juniors on my team, most of who have a CS degree. There is a world of difference between work and a degree, particularly in the UK where a CS degree varies widely. It’s a surreal experience to be teaching people who on paper blow me away on academic qualifications on the other hand I’ve decades of producing code that produces value, experience with business side of things and knowing how to get stuff done mostly on time and mostly on budget which by the standards of our industry is pretty good. Not the only one at my company either, the senior dev/tech lead side of things is about 50/50 degrees/no degree depending. The CTO and Head of Software Engineering are firmly on the a CS degree is only a weak signal at best that someone will make an effective commercial developer. Not like we are doing crud of the week either, we have VR division, are solving complex problems and have about 4K employees (only about 100 devs though).
• nimbius 7y ago
  Reading the first few lines of the paywall makes it seem like the WSJ is trying to have its cake and eat it too. >New manufacturing jobs that require more advanced skills are driving up the education level of factory workers who in past generations could get by without higher education, an analysis of federal data by The Wall Street Journal found. Considering the 1.5 trillion dollar student loan crisis, it seems natural to tap unemployed grads for manufacturing work, however this isnt happening anytime soon. You dont take 50 years of denigrating trade jobs like ironwork, machining, and manufacturing and expect to hire a college kid whos been told tradework is the devils black hand. It also implies college begets manufacturing education when in most cases it does not. Statistical Process Control, C(pk) ratios, and center process math can be learned on the job just as easily as it can be learned in college. Trade schools teach this stuff, but for fifty years they too have received a scornful rebuke from boomers pushing collegiate success to every kid, come hell or high water. It means someone who might have been a damn good welder wound up with a philosophy degree and enough debt to sink a city council. And what of apprenticeships? Well if you have a good union (International Association of Machinists is amazing) you'll get on the job paid training and a rewarding career. On the other, more common hand, unscrupulous profiteers running auto body shops and HVAC will often tell you to "wait for a slot to open" for your apprenticeship. Until then you're mixing paint, buffing wheels, and basically never intended to advance beyond your hopes and dreams. This might be the tradesman in me, but perhaps its wishful thinking...perhaps this is just a generation of older managers and directors hoping against hope that they can create meaning and worthiness for the college education again if they just demand it in every single hire. That somehow the blunder of turning your higher education system into a profit center will smooth out if you just make sure no one questions the validity of an underwater crochet degree. Or perhaps this is an increasingly terrified old-guard. Boomers who see what theyve done, and are willing to sweep an entire class of workers out the door just to make sure their college graduate kids have something, anything left, before they shuffle off.
• rb808 7y ago
  Ironically the managers in the factory are probably baby boomers who started working their way up from the factory floor straight after high school. Which is the way it should be today.
• JimboOmega 7y ago
  College is only partially about getting educated directly - it's also about proving you can adult on some level. Can you get to classes on time and manage a schedule that's more complex than "be at this building for 6 hours a day"? Of course that's a very poor proxy (some people live at home while getting 4 year degrees, etc), and often times college becomes more about signaling you're part of a certain socioeconomic background (with all the subtle discrimination that entails). Either way, even if the things you learned are entirely irrelevant to the actual job, a lot of employers look to it as a very rough signal for "had things together", and have a set of beliefs about people who have them.
  • TrackerFF 7y ago
    Tbh, there's so much variance between colleges / unis - hell, even between classes at those school - to use it as any meaningful predictor for such things. At my Uni (my major, that is), there were exactly zero classes with compulsory attendance. What would happen was this: First 2-3 weeks were packed with students, then it would thin out, and two thirds into the semester you'd sometimes have only a dozen of students. Come last lectures and class review, lectures would be packed. That is even more relevant today, with video / streamed lectures.
    • tedajax 7y ago
      To echo this sentiment, I probably only attended ~45% of my classes throughout all of college. With some notable exceptions the classroom experience was pretty poor and all of the information and resources were readily available on the internet. And if you're not the best autodidact there were plenty of study groups were students got together and figured things out just fine. That said, I still think self-directing yourself through that kind of environment takes a lot of agency and skill, agency and skill that companies require for jobs where neither ageny or skill of that magnitude will be required.
      • BlueTemplar 7y ago
        Thing is, a single of those "notable exceptions" might completely change your life...
• Animats 7y ago
  "On a recent morning, Pioneer workers inspected parts that the automated equipment had made on their own overnight." That's why.
  • frockington1 7y ago
    I really liked the graph at the end showing output rising as total numbers of employees decreases. To me it was a good logical illustration of why you would need more specialized/educated workers
  • redisman 7y ago
    True. Bringing back manufacturing jobs looks a lot different than what your average person might imagine. You won't have 100 low-skilled but highly paid people manning an assembly line, it'll be 5 engineers and robots.
• viburnum 7y ago
  Workers need a broad labor movement to stand up to this nonsense.
  • duelingjello 7y ago
    Exactly. Like IG Metal instead of AFL-CIO. Organized labor pushback is the only way to get fair pay, benefits and conditions. Furthermore, workers need to be members on the Board of Directors, as in most advanced economies. Finally, if you want to have a really good company where people care about their job, quality and the company, make it a co-op to where workers attain ownership and profits too.
    • walshemj 7y ago
      Um sorry to play devils advocate ver.di isn't exactly doing a lot in Germany - not that recruiting in tech is easy.
      • duelingjello 7y ago
        Okay, if you have first-hand knowledge. The universal problem might be most tech workers stereotypically can't see the "big picture" of the value/power of solidarity, especially when many assume they're being well-compensated, when if fact they're being cheated along with everyone else except the owners and the extremely rich. Most people will normalize and accept their current situation, including slavery, and keep doing the same thing while believing nothing can be done about it (learned helplessness).
• Cougher 7y ago
  Old guy trying to put things together ahead: I think that this mentality may have started as a result of the Griggs vs Duke Power Co case from 1970. Griggs was a black man who was turned down a promotion because he failed a company aptitude test, which was later determined to be racially biased against him . . . something to that effect. Companies were hesitant to continue using such tests, so they started requiring college degrees instead. Higher demand for higher education led to higher costs.
  • chadlavi 7y ago
    ... requiring college degrees, of course, being a nice way to wash your hands of any controversy while still effectively enjoying the same biased applicant filtering
    • wu_tang_chris 7y ago
      ikr? thanks god there was a workaround
  • alfromspace 7y ago
    Important to note it was only determined to be biased on the basis of disparate impact, which I think is a baloney concept. In other words, if one group of people doesn't do as well on something as another group on average, the thing can be considered a violation of the 14th amendment. The NY City fire department recently had to shell out millions to people who weren't hired because of a similar ruling. No discrimination found other than that black people didn't do as well on a test as white people.
    • pault 7y ago
      I think the problem is that there's no way to tell if it's just an unintended correlation or if the test was chosen intentionally because it favors the racial majority. In that case, the only way to prevent the latter is to ban all of them.
    • Infinitesimus 7y ago
      > which I think is a baloney concept Understandable but we cannot ignore how history plays into these decisions you know? > No discrimination found other than that black people didn't do as well on a test as white people. I don't know the details of this case but there are a lot of systemic effects if the history of racism in the US that have lingering effects in society today. Consider how practices like redlining significantly affected finance and education access. Jail sentence time disparity and a lot of other often invisible ripples of what happened in the early years of this country. It's very hard to know what causes some of these disparities and sometimes a society tries to deal with it by using equal/similar outcomes as an admittedly flawed proxy for equal treatment while we try to address the underlying factors ( better schools, representation, access, etc.)
• arduinomancer 7y ago
  Could some of this be due to increased amount of automation meaning the factory floor jobs are actually more technical because you're fixing/troubleshooting robots, rather than doing manual labour?
• ryanmercer 7y ago
  Just about everything is require a 4-year degree or 5-10 years of experience for entry level work anymore. As someone without a degree, it sucks. I saw an administrative assistant at a medical practice wanting 10-15 years of experience AND a 4 year degree and it was like 15$ an hour, similarly I've seen jobs requesting a phd AND experience with a starting hourly pay of 15-16$ an hour. The world has gone insane.
  • frockington1 7y ago
    When you have a dime a dozen ______ Studies majors it makes it pretty easy to find. And having a _____ Studies degree is a good indicator of someone who is willing to sit and do administrative level work for at least 4 years without getting bores
• Merrill 7y ago
  60 years ago you could hire plenty of bright, talented high school graduates, especially those with poor English/History grades but good Math/Shop grades. Now the high school counselors push all of the bright, talented students and then some to go on to college. So you have to wait a few years and hire then after college. It's a result of a much higher proportion of HS graduating classes going on to college.
  • walshemj 7y ago
    Yes its the cohort like me who a generation ago would have gone the vocational route now jump to University.
• BucketSort 7y ago
  It's criminal. They are forcing working class people to take on student loans. We are being forced to become slaves to the Government. We are all sharecroppers now. We can't recover from this level of exploitation. The US is dead. Edit: Hackernews has manipulated the title from "American Factories Demand White-Collar Education for Blue-Collar Work" to "College-educated workers are taking over the American factory floor." Can you guys be any more lame in your attempt to shape the narrative? Truly disgusting.
  • dang 7y ago
    Maybe so, but please don't post unsubstantive comments here.
    • BucketSort 7y ago
      The people of this country are on the verge of going to war. I think it is quite substantive to express the sentiment that requiring college degrees for jobs that do not require a degree is an exploitative practice that is bringing us closer to a complete meltdown in this nation. People need to stop pussyfooting around the issues. The people of this nation will not be turned into slaves by any convoluted schemes. If you want to push comments like this under the rug, fine. It will end up in your face eventually.
      • GeorgeTirebiter 7y ago
        I don't agree that America is getting ready for Civil War 2.0 -- but there is a huge problem of 'Despair' in the US. There are, it seems, more and more 'roadblocks' to achieving the Good Life (tm). Working hard -- by itself -- is not enough. A lot of folks -- for whatever reasons -- will not get college degrees. Should that mean they are forever unemployed and unemployable? Or be stuck in dead-end jobs? If so, that's damning those folks to a life filled with Despair and Uncertainty - who may turn to drugs and liquor to mollify the pain. I've not seen a single viable solution to this problem so far. It is this unsolved problem that is mostly the cause of strife in the USA today -- and, unless solved, will indeed shred the fabric of society in the USA.
• habosa 7y ago
  This mentality keeps on going right up through high-paid white collar work. All job postings inflate the minimum requirements and everybody wants someone else to train their employees. All junior software engineering jobs that could be filled by recent CS grads or bootcamp grads want 2-3 years of professional experience. The next level up that should require 2-3 years wants 5-10. The unemployment numbers are crap. Ask anyone who has a middle of the road white-collar job how confident they'd be in quitting and getting a new one and they will laugh at you. Nobody is really hiring on fair terms. Everybody wants a new senior employee for the price of a junior one.
  • cactus2093 7y ago
    Isn't that true of any market though? Everyone wants to pay less for everything, and will shop around and haggle and negotiate to find the best deal. I don't see how that alone is a problem, if you get an offer and the salary is lower than you want to work for, don't take it. > Ask anyone who has a middle of the road white-collar job how confident they'd be in quitting and getting a new one and they will laugh at you. Again, I'm not sure what to make of this. That could mean the job market is weak, or it could also just mean that transaction costs are too high (not the same thing), or maybe they're just perceived to be very high and scary. If we instead look at what people actually do instead of what they'd tell you they feel like doing, we arrive at the definition of the unemployment rate - number of people who are looking for a job and can't find one. And that is quite low. Now I can't say for sure that you're wrong, but I have to say I find the traditional unemployment rate methodology a lot more compelling than your method.
    • threwawasy1228 7y ago
      I mean, if you can't see that there is something different about the current market space we are in now vs the one in the 70s/80s I don't know what to tell you other than to read more or talk to people who lived through it. My father got hired on as a machine maintenance person almost immediately after he dropped out of college, with no previous training or experience whatsoever, and then bought his first house within two years. They trained him and he worked his way up on the job and held it for over 30+ years. Lets look to a quick Indeed listing typing in that same job title today and read a few off the top listing together that don't have 'senior' in the title. Applicant must have 3 to 5 years’ experience Three (3) years equivalent work experience required or a machinist/technical degree. Technical degree/machinist certification or 4-6 years equivalent work experience required. I mean if you are going to argue that this is the same way the market has always been, that is just completely incorrect, both anecdotally and statistically.
• neonate 7y ago
  http://archive.is/cRZSn http://archive.is/cRZSn
• mjfl 7y ago
  when will the reverse happen? College seems to have very little value added these days, so you would expect people with blue-collar educations to be able to take over white collar jobs.
• m0zg 7y ago
  Take this from a hiring manager: college degree alone is not worth the paper it's written on. What counts is what you've actually learned. Easily 8 out of 10 people who nominally have "CS degrees" can't implement fizzbuzz on a sheet of paper. It's nuts. I don't get how they even graduated.
• iooi 7y ago
  Speaking as a college dropout, the grass is always greener. On the one hand, I've never had my lack of a degree be an issue in tech, especially startups. Some founders even place a weird bonus on being a dropout and see you as more of a hustler than degree-holding employees. On the other hand, there are some opportunities that are closed off to me unless I decide to finish my degree. For example, I would have liked to get an MBA or go to law school for fun, but those options are completely closed off. You absolutely must have a four-year degree. Another one that came up recently, I've been thinking of taking a break from tech and going into public service, all the jobs I saw in the three-letter agency I was interested in also had a hard requirement on a four-year degree. A degree isn't necessary for everyone, it certainly wasn't for me and it's nice that I had almost two years as a head start on my career in tech. However, I wouldn't encourage people to drop out. Having a degree gives you options. You're better off with those options than without. You don't _have_ to take out 200k in loans. There's fantastic public education systems like CUNY that you can take advantage of.
  • 52-6F-62 7y ago
    I’m in very much the same boat as you except in Canada. You can’t join most public service jobs, police... though I think CSIS and CSEC recently changed their requirements but you have to be damned good. Don’t quote me on that, however. Anyway my conclusion is the same as yours. I’d even planned on going back part time as there were some adult grants offered but they were largely removed by our most recent provincial government in the course of a large number of education cuts.
  • redisman 7y ago
    When did you drop out? I went straight into the workforce rather than college 11 years ago but I feel like especially in the US the situation today might be pretty different for entry-level positions. Your average hiring manager might just put you at the bottom of a long pile of CS grads.
  • WalterBright 7y ago
    > You don't _have_ to take out 200k in loans. The University of Washington is a well-regarded school, and it costs about $30K/year including room, board, and books. Although it isn't an elite school, you can get an elite education there with careful selection of courses.
• baked_ziti 7y ago
  I have seen nearly zero job postings for positions that could be filled by new college grads. There are numerous postings seeking interns. There are quite a few require 1-3 years experience. There are many seeking qualified professionals. I have seen almost nothing that would permit a new college grad to gain a position. This leaves me wondering several things. One, how did business manage to offload the cost of absorbing the educated but inexperienced into the profession back onto the people. You can listen to people in hiring or executive positions bemoan the costs of training new software engineers, but how did we get to a point where literally everyone other than business is expected to bear every cost of doing business. And two, how do new college graduates find work without either creatively interpreting the meaning of "experience" (that is, lying), or just ignoring the requirements portion of the job postings to which they reply.
  • AdrianB1 7y ago
    We hired about 5 new people in the past 2 years, some were still in college. The roles are junior developers or application managers. 2 were interns. At the same time, I cannot fill in 2 positions of qualified DBA's for almost one year. That makes the posting for experienced DBA's to stay longer on sites, giving the impression that we hire a lot of experienced people and no freshmen. Not true at all.
  • Mkulfan 7y ago
    I don't think is really true, literally go to Google jobs/LinkedIn and type in new grad software engineer. There are thousands of open positions, all exclusively for new college graduates.
    • baked_ziti 7y ago
      I don't know about google search results, which I wouldn't trust for something like this. But I just logged back into indeed, searched 'new graduate software engineer' and the vast majority, as in nearly every ad, was a thinly veiled recruiter ad, or an internship, or was an irrelevant result; 7+ years experience required in the first 3 results and many more in successive results. This has been my experience on similar job boards.
• supernova87a 7y ago
  The issue here is just like how when a country gets older and wealthier, everything starts to cost more. It's not surprising. We created a country where education started to be widely available and financially supported for a large fraction of the people. What do you expect would happen as more people get educated then? Companies wouldn't use a commonly available criterion to weed out who they want? Or develop technology that takes advantage of large numbers of educated workers? In the evolution of our demography and economic history too, this is no surprise. We're no longer in a post-war growth phase where any warm body was suitable for filling the basic jobs necessary to fuel our growing economy. Other countries are in that phase, we are not. We have low growth, and for someone to stand out and get hired is now a higher bar. Our labor is expensive, so complicated equipment and automation gets used. And there's an educated workforce to operate it. What company wouldn't use some available criterion to choose people of with more productive/reliable attributes? College degree is available, it's a not unreasonable proxy. It's inevitable.
  • twoflower9 7y ago
    You're only addressing a few variables in a complex equation here. One of the big problems is the economic model that demands constant growth. A part of the problem with this model is that it requires constant population growth, especially to support the retirement of the baby boomers. This population growth comes at a cost to the proletariat. More competition for jobs means downward pressure on wage growth. More consumers means upwards pressure on cost of living. This creates a general movement of wealth in an upward direction. Sure the whole economy would collapse if we tried to move off this model, but perhaps this is what needs to happen. It's an unhealthy unsustainable model anyway. Another issue is that employees jump around companies these days making companies less likely to invest in employees. People used to be lifetime employees and thus companies were more willing to invest in them with training and education.
    • flybyair2038 7y ago
      > Another issue is that employees jump around companies these days making companies less likely to invest in employees. Alvin and Heidi Toffler predicted this with profound accuracy in their 1970 book Future Shock. I highly recommend reading the chapter on Adhocracy, or for a TLDR: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adhocracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adhocracy
• romaaeterna 7y ago
  37% of the American population between 25 to 34 has a Bachelor's degree now. The subset of people who are literate and conscientious, but do not have a degree has become vanishingly small in recent decades. This is a horrible and vicious feedback loop, but it's hard to blame the employers, who are actually being fairly rational about their use of a BS degree as a filter (it's the new HS diploma). The blame lies at the feet of an uncontrolled government loan policy that has given the BS this new status. College is eating years of our lives and is transferring vast amounts of middle class wealth to the education sector of the economy. In the US, it's probably the greatest misallocation of resources outside of our health industry.
  • thundergolfer 7y ago
    That 37% of people really needs to be understood as bifurcated though. There is the (smaller) group that do the degrees that lead to high skills and gainful employment (medecine, engineering, finance), and the other (larger) group that are enrolled in mostly cotton-candy degrees (Communications, Business, Media) that lead just to debt. Paying for the Party is a good book that explores this modern issue.
    • imagetic 7y ago
      I think comms/broadcast degrees often are pointless. But in media, anything web/video and journalism focused was a solid career until very recently. Wages are dropping fast in that field. Social media and phones really took a chunk out of it. It feels like the collapse of newspapers all over again, especially in the TV sector.
      • burner831234 7y ago
        Its always surprising when on HN these degrees are considered non desirable and yet every time one of us starts a company we realize we need them.
        • voxl 7y ago
• davinic 7y ago
  I think that any minimum wage law should take into account the requirement of a college degree. If minimum wage were $15 nationally, then require at least a $20/hr or $25/hr minimum if the job posting requires a bachelor's degree -- not if the person has the degree, only if the employer requires it.
  • randyrand 7y ago
    Job postings would stop requiring a bachelors degree, but the market wouldn't change. They'd still go with one of the 10 people that interviewed who happened to have a degree.
• chx 7y ago
  My father was the lead of the chemical safety lab of one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in Hungary. He told me and it stuck with me, how at the start (meaning 1990) he was able to hire from trade schools but by the end (early 2010s) he needed everyone to have a university degree because that's how complex every instrument became.
• aaron695 7y ago
  The premise of the article is simple, due to the evolution of factories, to get factory work you now require a degree unlike the past where the work was more repetitive and unthinking. They are not making the case there are to many college degrees etc. It also raises the interesting case women (who get more degrees but have less physic strength) now have factory work opened to them. The implication I read is the massive amounts of men who can't get degrees are in trouble and so are their families, since people marry at similar levels their wives will not have high paid jobs if any at all. New double income families now will become even richer, single income families poorer.
• moosey 7y ago
  IMO, the failure in the US here is the fact that money can no longer flow towards innovation because far too much of it is trapped in the hands of a very small elite that are fearful of taking _real_ risk. Freeing up those cash flows, some of which would flow into government (which can take huge risks that the free market simply can't, since the profit motive doesn't exist: example: educating _everyone_), and also would put more money into the hands of recent college graduates, who are definitely more in touch with the current technological trends of the day than I am with my 20 yo comp sci degree, and probably more so than those who have captured the vast majority of wealth and power and are now just sitting on it, or use it to prevent advancements in society, energy, and scientific endeavors. The inertia that this has created frustrates me deeply. Of course there is value to a broad liberal education that includes STEM, philosophy and art. That should be obvious. The fact that our economic system cannot reward the great effort that people go through to get them is a failure of the economic system, not of the education system (edit: there is plenty to condemn in the education system, for instance the cost, and the fact that many college degrees are only job preparation programs now, and the general free market/business take over of education). The "employers" are at fault. Until we can release the stagnation of monetary flows in the US, we are going to have these issues. Unfortunately, based on the current state of regulation, I imagine that the monetary flows that are most likely to occur will be the allowance of those already wealthy to take their money elsewhere. Reading Foreign Policy magazine has made me aware of what it will mean to live in a waning US, and this is obviously a symptom.
  • germinalphrase 7y ago
    In your opinion, what will it mean?
    • moosey 7y ago
      It doesn't mean anything. It just is. My primary concern is human welfare, and I always try to argue, as logically as possible, in defense of human welfare, or at least the way it will best be achieved, which is an opinion. It means nothing other than I have a specific view on human compassion that I believe the Western world could have achieved. Regardless, widespread education is of tantamount importance. It will give our society greater meaning.
• swiley 7y ago
  We should just give up and do the UBS thing. The people who actually want to learn would congregate around something that could be used as a decent measure for that and the party people could party and everyone would be happy. We’re near this (if not, we’ve reached it.) if you look at our GDP and what most people are doing for work it makes sense.
• rosseloh 7y ago
  I haven't yet read the article, but just from the name it brings to mind something I've been seriously considering lately: I've been thinking about leaving my job fixing computers, networks, and servers at an MSP-like business, and getting a basic factory job. Why? Because in my town, factory workers are making more per hour than I do, they get overtime, and they get full benefits and good vacation packages. Meanwhile I'm overtime exempt for a decent wage (but compared to what these "simple" factory jobs are paying, it's peanuts), no benefits at all except a small stipend to help with health insurance, and a shitty vacation policy (normal-ish by american standards, however). Sure, they work 12 hour shifts, yeah that sounds hard. But: I work 10 hour shifts so it's not that big of a difference.... and they also work four days a week where I work my ten hours M-F plus an extra 5 every other Saturday (running a storefront with a small number of employees sucks). The exception is when they're in crunch mode and working overtime, but they're getting beaucoup bucks for those overtime hours where I get zilch extra. The kicker here is that this is all something I could do without leaving where I live. To get a better paying IT job, I'd have to move, which at this exact moment, I'm not able to do.
  • ladberg 7y ago
    Would you mind letting us know where you are? I just curious what area has that level of imbalance between factory and IT workers.
    • rosseloh 7y ago
      Rural South Dakota; not one of the small farming towns but not a huge city, either (one of the larger ones in the state, but that doesn't mean much). That's about as detailed as I'd like to go at the moment.
    • non-entity 7y ago
      I'd guess smaller or even larger towns that are isolated from any metropolitan area
  • jpgleeson 7y ago
    This really just sounds like you need to unionise. The conditions of the factory workers were hard fought for and they display an understanding of the value that they bring to their company. This is absolutely something IT workers around the world need to recognise and begin to organise for for when the market isn't quite so good for IT workers.
• notlukesky 7y ago
  It’s also a legal way of screening out certain ethnicities. Many Police and Fire Departments famously used testing as a legal screening method -against black applicants at the times- for what is a purely physical blue collar job.
• emsign 7y ago
  I came to the conclusion that the USA has become a society which goal it is to keep every single citizen below a certain annual salary in debt until their death.
  • Gibbon1 7y ago
    The over class doesn't want their mediocre children to have to compete with smart upper middle class people. Thus most jobs and situations are engineered so you don't have enough disposable income to get a head. And if you do manage the tax system punishes you for it.
• DoreenMichele 7y ago
  Off the top of my head, when Lincoln was president, most women were homemakers and had a second to fourth grade education. His wife had a twelfth grade education and was considered "difficult" and her own son stuck her in an asylum. An eighth grade education used to be very normal. In the Deep South, Blacks used to be essentially unable to attend high school. A lot of Black families moved to northern cities -- or sent children to stay with relatives -- so they could attend high school. The US military invented the GED to give credit to literate members because it used to be very common for people to grow up on a farm and not finish high school. Now even the military treats GED holders like second-class citizens. If the world doesn't have some kind of serious crash, demographically or in other ways, I imagine it will become increasingly common for people to have advanced degrees and "ordinary" jobs. With 7 billion people on the planet, more information is how you stretch limited physical resources and also how you constructively occupy the masses.
  • nradov 7y ago
    There are a surprisingly high number of military enlisted personnel with Master's degrees.
    • DoreenMichele 7y ago
      My dad was career army. He was born in the 1920s and fought in WW2. He was a high school drop out who taught ROTC at a college as one of his duty assignments. It actually got him out of fighting in the front lines of the Korean conflict. He was the only guy in the battalion with all the necessary military schools. His bags were packed. He was supposed to ship out to Korea the next day when he got the call. My ex was also career army. He was a high school graduate taking college classes while enlisted to try to stay competitive.
• Proven 7y ago
  if you have to pay 15/hr you might as well hire a college graduate albeit with a social sciences degree
• t0ddbonzalez 7y ago
  It's funny reading comments from Americans on the perceived lack of value of a college degree. I've never heard this nonsense repeated in any other country on the planet. Then again, I don't think any other country on the planet shackles its young to such huge levels of debt in the name of education. Is there a 'fox and the grapes'-type situation going on, where people are hating on something they can't have? Having a Bachelor's degree or higher means that you're less likely to be unemployed, you earn more money, you have better health outcomes, you're more involved in your children's education, and perhaps most importantly, society benefits from your education. And the people who say "I don't have a degree and I make $150k per year at Google"? You're a statistical anomaly. The average salary for a high school graduate is $37k per year. (https://smartschoolsusa.org/blog/the-average-salary-by-education-level-2019-2020 https://smartschoolsusa.org/blog/the-average-salary-by-educa...)
  • AngryData 7y ago
    It is probably because of the immense costs of many US colleges. I wouldn't consider my college years wasted if I wasn't saddled with tens of thousands of dollars of debt from it, and im not even one of the worst off.
    • t0ddbonzalez 7y ago
      Using the figures in the link I posted, a graduate with a Bachelor's degree will make $61k per year on average. So yeah, you may need to get into debt to get a degree, but you also earn more money with which to pay off the debt. Being a naive European, I think education should be free just like universal healthcare - both of these things benefit society immensely. The sad thing is that those who have paid (or are currently paying) for the privilege of education or healthcare seems to be determined to maintain the status quo. Free stuff for other people is tantamount to communism in some people's eyes.
      • ryanmercer 7y ago
        >Using the figures in the link I posted, a graduate with a Bachelor's degree will make $61k per year on average Ha! Here in Indy a 4-year degree will get you 13-16$ an hour to start.
• Cougher 7y ago
  Would I be the first here to say that I like that idea that there even IS such a thing as an American factory floor in 2019?
• HocusLocus 7y ago
  I am a "high school graduate" (GED) on paper. But owing to a life of experience and a early start in reading and general awareness of surroundings, I'd gladly go toe to toe with anyone with a paper college diploma for essential skills. And in any reasonable work situation, such as one where I could have several weeks or a month of lead time to get up to speed on the specific requirements of the job... I could score even on their own turf. The current trend in HR seems to be using the Internet to remove human judgement and "the interview" from the front line of the hiring process. In its place, a machine-like contact involving websites, a sterile distillation process that relegates people like me to the "no callback, not even interested" queue. It's Evolution in Action. For they not I.
  • bumby 7y ago
    What positions are you envisioning in this statement? I'm curious mostly about your statement that "several weeks or a month of lead time" is sufficient for requisite skills (unless, of course, you are implying it's a position that's substantially related to your existing skill set).