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Too many people are enrolling in College, and this is a problem. The end result in many cases has been lower the standards to get students to graduate. More peo

by vondur 6y ago

Too many people are enrolling in College, and this is a problem. The end result in many cases has been lower the standards to get students to graduate. More people need to be geared towards trades and manufacturing jobs. The Covid Pandemic has shown us what happens when you put all your manufacturing in one country.

lotsofpulp 6y ago
People will naturally go towards trades and manufacturing once the present value of expected future cash flow reaches equilibrium with alternatives and damage to their body. There’s a reason plumbers and electricians would rather their kid be a white collar worker. I just had a former carpenter come over to do some work and saw me in running shorts and said he wished he could still do physical activities, but the years of carpentry work have ruined his joints. He was only upper 40s.
- AdrianB1 6y ago
  The area where I grew up was a mountain region where wood work was the main occupation of most men; even for men that worked in the forest cutting down trees such health problems were very rare, carpenters working in the shops in the village had no such problems. The guy that did the plumbing in my house when I built it was over 70 years old at that time and he was still working because he wanted to be active, even if he could retire at 60 years old by the local law. I find office workers having more health problems than people with some physical activity, sedentarism is a killer.
smileysteve 6y ago
> More people need to be geared towards trades and manufacturing jobs. To this, and as we're on hacker news; and bootcamps are proving it for web developers; a bachelor's degree often doesn't prepare students for jobs (and the larger concepts, ethics, systems thinking, etc often come from corporate training just as well)
- ntsplnkv2 6y ago
  > (and the larger concepts, ethics, systems thinking, etc often come from corporate training just as well) Ethics? Really? From corporations? > and bootcamps are proving it for web developers; And, not surprisingly, web developers make less on average than other software development positions.
- tnecniv 6y ago
  > larger concepts, ethics, systems thinking, etc These are what American universities are actually well equipped for. It's common knowledge that if you graduate with a BS in some engineering topic, you won't have most of the practical skills necessary for your job --- or at least not from your curriculum. However, a good school will teach you how to analyze complicated problems from a number of different perspectives with both theoretical and practical tools. Moreover, all those liberal arts classes they make you take that people complain about will give you the social and cultural context necessary to understand ethical implications that might arise. Sure, getting a BS from a top engineering school won't tell you the best way to design web pages in 2020, but it should make you a well rounded, capable engineer.
ntsplnkv2 6y ago
> More people need to be geared towards trades and manufacturing jobs. The key is manufacturing jobs - that is what disappeared over the last half century, and most of those jobs are semi-skilled. But there are no jobs. There never will be - unless the US completely stopped importing from China. They can't - because then people will go to wal-mart and see the price increase, and get mad. And that doesn't take into account automation and technology further squeezing the need for workers.

by vondur 6y ago

lotsofpulp 6y ago

People will naturally go towards trades and manufacturing once the present value of expected future cash flow reaches equilibrium with alternatives and damage to their body. There’s a reason plumbers and electricians would rather their kid be a white collar worker. I just had a former carpenter come over to do some work and saw me in running shorts and said he wished he could still do physical activities, but the years of carpentry work have ruined his joints. He was only upper 40s.

AdrianB1 6y ago
The area where I grew up was a mountain region where wood work was the main occupation of most men; even for men that worked in the forest cutting down trees such health problems were very rare, carpenters working in the shops in the village had no such problems. The guy that did the plumbing in my house when I built it was over 70 years old at that time and he was still working because he wanted to be active, even if he could retire at 60 years old by the local law. I find office workers having more health problems than people with some physical activity, sedentarism is a killer.

smileysteve 6y ago

> More people need to be geared towards trades and manufacturing jobs. To this, and as we're on hacker news; and bootcamps are proving it for web developers; a bachelor's degree often doesn't prepare students for jobs (and the larger concepts, ethics, systems thinking, etc often come from corporate training just as well)

ntsplnkv2 6y ago
> (and the larger concepts, ethics, systems thinking, etc often come from corporate training just as well) Ethics? Really? From corporations? > and bootcamps are proving it for web developers; And, not surprisingly, web developers make less on average than other software development positions.
tnecniv 6y ago
> larger concepts, ethics, systems thinking, etc These are what American universities are actually well equipped for. It's common knowledge that if you graduate with a BS in some engineering topic, you won't have most of the practical skills necessary for your job --- or at least not from your curriculum. However, a good school will teach you how to analyze complicated problems from a number of different perspectives with both theoretical and practical tools. Moreover, all those liberal arts classes they make you take that people complain about will give you the social and cultural context necessary to understand ethical implications that might arise. Sure, getting a BS from a top engineering school won't tell you the best way to design web pages in 2020, but it should make you a well rounded, capable engineer.

ntsplnkv2 6y ago

> More people need to be geared towards trades and manufacturing jobs. The key is manufacturing jobs - that is what disappeared over the last half century, and most of those jobs are semi-skilled. But there are no jobs. There never will be - unless the US completely stopped importing from China. They can't - because then people will go to wal-mart and see the price increase, and get mad. And that doesn't take into account automation and technology further squeezing the need for workers.