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> "America does not have enough people with those skills." Seriously, I feel the US has a big education problem, with part of it being cultural I think. Seems

> "America does not have enough people with those skills." Seriously, I feel the US has a big education problem, with part of it being cultural I think. Seems being educated, knowledgeable, having expertise, learning about science and technology, medicine and law, just isn't valued anymore, in fact it's almost being denigrated and shamed. What I see instead is people pushing for anti-intellectualism and valuing the "college dropouts". There's also just the quality and access to education seems it's getting worse and worse. I don't know, but it frustrates me that the truth is the US doesn't have the know how that its companies require anymore, and has to either outsource the work or import workers who do from elsewhere.

nichos 6y ago
There's a lot of "follow your heart", "live your dreams" stuff going on around there. I say work a job that pays, and that you can tolerate, then do what you enjoy in your free time.
- ekianjo 6y ago
  > I say work a job that pays, and that you can tolerate, then do what you enjoy in your free time. That's not what kids want to hear these days. They want life to be easy, and a big government ready to issue a wide safety net for them if they make bad choices in life. Perpetual childhood.
  - ausbah 6y ago
    older generations always think younger generations are completely rotten for some reason
    - ekianjo 6y ago
      Well I know me and my peers were not asking for that when we were 20. Culture changes.
  - untog 6y ago
    Give me a break. “Kids these days” have their eyes wide open. Just a few decades ago you used to have access to an affordable college education with good jobs on graduation. With a modest level of saving you’d have enough for the deposit on a house within a few years. None of that is true now. It’s drilled into high school kids that they must take on a punishingly expensive college education or they’ll never amount to anything. Then when they graduate they discover an awful jobs market. As for buying a house... better wait for a relative to die and hope they were generous to you in the will because there’s no other way you’re ever going to make that deposit. The idea that young people today and spoiled and rely on handouts is a nonsensical meme.
    - unishark 6y ago
      > “Kids these days” have their eyes wide open. Just a few decades ago you used to have access to an affordable college education with good jobs on graduation. With a modest level of saving you’d have enough for the deposit on a house within a few years. Except if those kids would get degrees in the right areas (like the thread is complaining they aren't), they would absolutely be able to get excellent jobs upon graduation. The unemployment rate in engineering has been almost nil for years. Even fields like civil and biomedical engineering, previously at the bottom of engineering in terms of prospects and pay, are now a lock for jobs, with employers desperate to hire anyone they can get. And of course computer science is now doing even better than all of them despite being much easier, frankly.
      - reducesuffering 6y ago
        Further, GP notes > "they must take on a punishingly expensive college education or they’ll never amount to anything." Except that high school graduates have the option to do 2 years of community college (~5k) and 2 years at a state school (~13k). Generally possible to most while living at home for no additional rent. CS jobs are in high supply and 100k+ out of college. The college cost would be paid off in a year. Then there's the fact that many positions are not requiring a college education at all.
        6y ago
softwaredoug 6y ago
The fact is it’s extremely valued, in the economy[1]. And that value - the resentment thereof - is why many without the education purposely elect buffoonish leaders that choose to be proud of ignorance 1 - 61% of US population above 25 has “some college” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_the_United_States#General_attainment_of_degrees/diplomas https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_th...
- creato 6y ago
  Is it really? FAANG jobs are outliers. Some professional fields seem to do OK (medical), but others are atrocious on average (law). Most people see science/engineering jobs as a path to a cubicle for a while with an OK salary before being laid off at 40. And for the most part, they're right.
  - softwaredoug 6y ago
    “Most people” - pretty sure children of educated parents are focused heavily on education and being steered to jobs that require that education. That’s 40-60% of the US population. They weren’t teaching coding to grade schoolers at scale 10 years ago.
ekianjo 6y ago
> There's also just the quality and access to education seems it's getting worse and worse. I don't know about access in other countries, but the quality of education is dropping like a stone pretty much in every developed country right now. (And it's not a recent trend, it's been years in the making)
- unishark 6y ago
  What do you mean by quality here? I'd say the quality of the teaching has been going up as the quality of the students has been going down (precisely because access is going up). The focus is increasingly on the lowest common denominator which requires a lot more effort from teachers.
  - sjy 6y ago
    I imagine the situation is country-specific and I’m not aware of any good studies that try to measure it. But anecdotally, as a university student around 2010, I noticed that the standards expected of undergraduates in old textbooks, exam papers and theses seemed higher. Maybe it’s just that these sources gave me the false impression of an ideal student, but a lot has changed in recent decades. As well as the growth in the student population, by 2010 it was pretty common for “full-time” students to work part-time as well. Hannah Arendt was probably an exceptional professor in 1955, but I wonder how this compares to a final exam for a first-year political science class at an exceptionally good university today? https://twitter.com/Samantharhill/status/1297545059466907650 https://twitter.com/Samantharhill/status/1297545059466907650
- thrwysense 6y ago
  Some thoughts: * Inflation of people with college degrees. From 5% in 1940 to 35% in 2019. This dilutes the quality of both the student pool and of the professorial pool. * Distance from the last major war, all the way back in 1945. Educate like your life depends on it has long faded from memory. In medicine, in engineering, in hard sciences. * The mismatch between skills taught in academia and job market skills. By now everyone is jaded at the notion that the main point of education is the diploma, seen as a key to unlock the job market. Of second importance, networking, get into an Ivy to rub elbows with the right crowd. Knowledge and critical thinking come as a distant last. * Or perhaps, even simpler, the dilution of the male spirit which sees competitiveness in excellence as an inherent moral good. Our forebears wore educational attainment as a peacock plumage. These days peacocks are outright vilified.
WrtCdEvrydy 6y ago
It's because people being educated has become 'being elite'. Even in our own profession, I find it difficult to communicate with smart people who lack foundational knowledge, falter, ask for help and then ask me how I knew the right answer. I've had more than person tell me that there's no way this was taught at a university (threading, OS knowledge)
- joe_the_user 6y ago
  The US has always had a big regional divide in skill levels as well as respect for knowledge, with the out-of-the-way places having a problem with both. The problem is political dynamics meant that the attitudes of the backward parts of the country have actually set policy for quite a while. That benefited American corporations in the short term - lots of CEO probably think for-profit, student-loan-driven education is a great idea. But it's harmed the US and even US corporations as these policies show their longer term results.
  - dehrmann 6y ago
    > The US has always had a big regional divide in skill levels as well as respect for knowledge, with the out-of-the-way places having a problem with both. There are a lot of really good schools in flyover states. Looking at the top 10 engineering schools in the US, depending on your definition of "flyover," there's CMU, Michigan, Purdue, Illinois, and UT.
    - joe_the_user 6y ago
      Yeah, even Alabama has high rated universities. But it also has a broad problem of lack of quality of high school level education. Maybe a few good suburban school but the average is terrible. Tuscaloosa is education center of Alabama, having the university of Alabama but secondary education is bad enough stop companies locating there. "Around the late 1980s/early 1990s Saturn chose not to locate a plant in Tuscaloosa because of the performance of the public schools, and by 1993 the city leadership wanted Mercedes-Benz to build a plant there." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuscaloosa_City_Schools https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuscaloosa_City_Schools
Spooky23 6y ago
In many ways they are right. It’s much easier to make money in trades or similar things these days than in most bachelor degree fields.
fiblye 6y ago
> in fact it's almost being denigrated and shamed. "Almost" really isn't necessary there anymore. There's a growing group that believes virtually all doctors, scientists, and professionals within certain fields are "in on it" and part of some big conspiracy to do some vague, undefined thing that'll take down America and corrupt their children. These used to just be a fringe group. Now it feels like about half the people I know are buying into that stuff. Even some college-educated professionals think only their field is valid, and everyone else is part of "them."
- mycall 6y ago
  The best I can think besides the usual suspects is a more rare one: "the more you know, the more you know you don't know" which is being read incorrectly as "why bother learning when everything is always wrong [describes 20 major problems with human race]". At that point, it is hard to follow.
  - lotsofpulp 6y ago
    I prefer the phrasing "the more you learn, the less you know".
- natmaka 6y ago
  Isn't it an effect of a feeling caused by governments using experts in a way letting (too often and a too large part of) the public think that they, at worst, are all (gov & experts alike) pushing their own short-termed and only self-beneficial agendas or, at best, nearly always devise some "Grand Plan" which then appears to cost much more than budgeted, gives less than promised and has unwanted unexpected side-effects? There is a fair part of subjectivity in those opinions, for example most of us tend to forget/neglect granted benefits and focus on unwanted side-effects. It seems to me that a growing opinion is that governments less and less understand what is going on, and therefore cannot efficiently adequately assess and plan. This is especially true when it comes to managing innovation, which is intrinsically full of new concepts and uncertainty.
  - Qwertious 6y ago
nine_zeros 6y ago
Part of it is inability to access higher education financially without getting into debt. Part of it is structural because we have forgotten to innovate in education by offering apprenticeship. Another big part of this is ego. We, collectively, have this massive Murica number 1 ego that we are unable to accept that we actually collectively have started sucking hard. We have elected numbnuts who don't have any desire to improve society and make it an engine of innovation instead of a society divided by issues of the last century.
roenxi 6y ago
I don't understand China's educational strategy (no information), but their manufacturing strategy was highly decentralised. Shenzhen for example had a substantially independent government system with a modified tax code. They've been running a lot of independent experiments everywhere I looked, figuring out how to prosper. That might carry over to education. The biggest mistake the US seems to be making is centralising and standardising a whole bunch of functions (education, healthcare, etc) at the federal level. Then if the anything goes wrong there is no escape. And the US federal government doesn't seem to be up to the task on a good day. The US has always had a big ignorant population dragged along by a small core of ingenious, often foreign, visionaries. That doesn't seem to have changed recently.
- techbio 6y ago
  A big part of the Chinese education strategy has been to send lots of students to US universities to get advanced degrees and take that knowledge back to build China.
  - donw 6y ago
    And to ensure that manufacturing moved to China! Or at the very least, proximate to its geographical sphere of influence. Honestly, it was a brilliant move on their part. Everybody seems to focus on university, but there is a lot of very hard-won know-how at the technician level of the manufacturing sector. Most of this is difficult-to-impossible to codify, and tends to pass both cohort-to-cohort, and via professional networks.
    - pvaldes 6y ago
      > A big part of the Chinese education strategy has been to send lots of students to US universities to get advanced degrees and take that knowledge back to build China. >> And to ensure that manufacturing moved to China! Of course they did. But, to be fair: 1) Those students were not educated for free. They paid big money for it, and the universities were happy to grab the money fast 2) Some of this people were forced to go after their student visa expired. They could not work in US without a permit and were forced to exit. How to blame them for using their degree or creating a company in their own country later? They shouldn't be seen as neither serfs nor slaves; technically they don't owe anything to US.
eanzenberg 6y ago
Not surprising considering big public school districts are dropping gifted education to support equality through lowest common denominator learning.
millbraebart 6y ago
I love reading these pretentious responses, which amount to: "Oh why don't these silly midwesterners just listen to us with our prestigious degrees". You fail to see your own bias, by worshipping at the classist alter of institutionalized "higher education", while snubbing your nose at anyone that didn't attend your elitist universities.
searchableguy 6y ago
China’s funding for science and research to reach 2.5 per cent of GDP in 2019: https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/2189427/chinas-funding-science-and-research-reach-25-cent-gdp-2019 https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/2189427/chin... A documentary by WIRED UK done in 2016 explains many cultural and legal reasons: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGJ5cZnoodY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGJ5cZnoodY China has hardware industries that work similar to how open source software works. An article on effects of expiring patents on 3D printing (2013): https://qz.com/106483/3d-printing-will-explode-in-2014-thanks-to-the-expiration-of-key-patents/ https://qz.com/106483/3d-printing-will-explode-in-2014-thank... 90 Minutes a Day, Until 10 P.M.: China Sets Rules for Young Gamers: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/06/business/china-video-game-ban-young.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/06/business/china-video-game... Many Asian countries have already taken strong steps for digital addiction (which will be the next important problem to tackle after covid, I bet). China’s sustainable urban transport revolution: https://dialogochino.net/en/infrastructure/11025-chinas-sustainable-urban-transport-revolution/ https://dialogochino.net/en/infrastructure/11025-chinas-sust... https://www.citymetric.com/transport/no-hong-kong-has-best-transport-system-world-mtr-trams-boats-4148 https://www.citymetric.com/transport/no-hong-kong-has-best-t... > Overall, 79% of people between the ages of 12 and 24 in Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Mexico, Nigeria, and Russia say they feel optimistic about the direction of the world, compared to only about half of those in far more well-off places like Australia, France, Germany, Great Britain, and Sweden. In the United States, the number is 63%. https://www.fastcompany.com/90241302/where-in-the-world-are-kids-most-optimistic-about-the-future https://www.fastcompany.com/90241302/where-in-the-world-are-... > Of the top countries on our survey, China has developers that are the most optimistic, believing that people born today will have a better life than their parents. Developers in Western European countries like France and Germany are among the least optimistic about the future. https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2019 https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2019 China is also much larger country than US. It has 3x more people than US. Those individuals are going to be at par with people in west at some point. There are so many interesting things to discuss and question.
- petre 6y ago
  The optimism or lack thereof is mainly due to news and social media. Climate change, wars, criminality, cops shooting people of color, economic inequality etc. I've lived in a communist country and all the official news was boring propaganda in the lines of "our beloved leader went to <country> to visit his omologue, <name> where they deliberated about world peace". Then I saw a Gulf News newspaper from the UAE: only positive news, obviously propaganda. I'm not saying we shouldn't discuss these issues but western news has an overy negative tone, it keeps parroting the same issues and competes for our attention. Social media is even worse than news. My so keeps scrolling at insta posts and voices discontent about certain travel influencers going on vacation all the time while she has to work overtime and take a pay cut.
hliyan 6y ago
My hypothesis is that the US is a victim of its own success: several generations of living in a prosperous, stable society reduces the need for the average citizen to develop survival skills. Here I use the term 'survival skills' very generally: it includes specialized education and expertise in some area, financial planning and risk management skills, inter-personnel and conflict resolution skills, emotional resilience etc. I suspect that the education problem may be on the demand side (due to the above reason) rather than on the supply side (even though the prohibitive higher education costs do play a big role).
- vlovich123 6y ago
  I think that’s an insane answer. We’ve divested in public schools over a prolonged period of time, plain and simple. The public schools that have not experienced that magically are in the wealthy “rich” neighborhoods. The system is working as intended. You want an educated population? Make sure schools have the proper investments. None of this 30 kids per classroom bullshit. Do 10-15 and see what kind of students you churn out.
  - missedthecue 6y ago
    Public education spending as a percentage of GDP is at an all time high. I dont think people appreciate the cost of public schooling in the US. According to data provided by the federal government, public schools in the US spend on average $15,500 per child per year. That is an enormous amount of money and it is only climbing ever higher year after year.
    - asdff 6y ago
      It depends on the area. It's been particularly divested in California, which falls short of the average per child spend despite having the highest GDP. In CA, per child spend has fallen 15% from 1970-1997. https://www.kqed.org/news/11701044/how-proposition-13-transformed-neighborhood-public-schools-throughout-california https://www.kqed.org/news/11701044/how-proposition-13-transf...
jacobwilliamroy 6y ago
Having a dumb population means you can make lots of money for very little effort. Pet rocks? Million dollar idea. Water? As long as it's .00000000000000001% poison, it's a homeopathic remedy you can sell for $500 a vial. Add more water to make it more expensive. Ever think about using the equity in your home to consolidate your credit cards and other debts? Dumb dumbs spend more and expect less. Bad education is good for the economy.
- missedthecue 6y ago
  I don't think this is a very good take. There is a very clear correlation between GNP and education level in nations.
  - jacobwilliamroy 6y ago
    The U.S. is the exception, not the rule. We have a global, neoliberal economy. We don't need skilled americans. What we need is more useless watchamacallits! Would you like to buy some bottled water? It comes from a spring, I promise! Or maybe another smart phone? Probably been awhile since you bought one of those. Why not buy one again?
deleted 6y ago
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arvinsim 6y ago
> Seriously, I feel the US has a big education problem, with part of it being cultural I think. Seems being educated, knowledgeable, having expertise, learning about science and technology, medicine and law, just isn't valued anymore, in fact it's almost being denigrated and shamed. > What I see instead is people pushing for anti-intellectualism and valuing the "college dropouts". It's because outside of a few exceptions(tech in particular), you would earn more money being a businessman than being employed, academic or professional. People always say that we should value teachers, nurses, etc. But it's all just lip service. Money and salary are what society uses to indicate how much they truly value you.
- asdff 6y ago
  Imagine how we'd operate if people were truly free to do their calling, and all the scientists and poets and musicians posing as businessmen and HR reps came out of the woodwork. We'd be commenting in this thread from Mars by now.
throwaway189262 6y ago
The US has a very capitalistic economy, maybe too much even. In general, in the US, whenever you hear "there's not enough people to do X" it means "there's not enough people willing to do X for what I want to pay" The truth is, in the US there's a ton of different well-paying careers. CS isn't like medical in US with artificial limits on the number of doctors that graduate every year. The only thing stopping more people from doing CS is money. If they offer enough money they will have a practically unlimited talent pool. Tech CEO's are always whining about lack of tech workers so they can abuse H1B visas to get employees below market rates. Since they're basically indentured servants to their employers for years to decades until they can get a green card. The lack of government money in CS research I think everyone in the tech field agrees with
thewhitetulip 6y ago
This anti intellectual push is seen in India as well. The ruling party has worked over time to blame experts and mocking intellectuals on everything The reason is very simple, ruling party gets vores by fooling people. They announce the same monetary package year after year without actually giving the package and their media i.e. entire right wing funded media starts praising the package and hailing our supreme leader.
akira2501 6y ago
> Seriously, I feel the US has a big education problem, with part of it being cultural I think I think a lot of it is pricing and the debt model we use to fund it. > Seems being educated, knowledgeable, having expertise, learning about science and technology, medicine and law, just isn't valued anymore The returns on that investment just aren't as good as they used to be, couple that with the required debt above, and stagnant wage growth in these industries and I'd say it's clear they aren't valued anymore. > and has to either outsource the work or import workers who do from elsewhere. That's actually seems more like part of the reasons for the above issues than it is something that follows from it. Combine all this with the fact that total self-employment and other measures of entrepreneurship have been trending downwards lately while the level of corporate integration and mergers have been increasing and it's a recipe for the destruction of middle to middle-upper class incomes and careers. > What I see instead is people pushing for anti-intellectualism and valuing the "college dropouts". This is a symptom of a sick system, and when the system is sick, it's inhabitants become sick as well.
innagadadavida 6y ago
One other issue here is the disparity of salaries of finance/software folks make vs other engineers. This has caused a lot of folks to not pursue careers in aerospace, chemical, mechanical etc and just get software or finance jobs. It’s hard to justify not working for a FANG and taking a pay cut.
deleted 6y ago
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oivey 6y ago
Part of the story here, too, is that relatively few Americans make up the populations of top graduate programs. An undergraduate degree or less might be sufficient to build a great advertising business, but it's unlikely to be enough to make major advancements in AI, quantum computing, semiconductors/photovoltaics, superconductors, etc.
barry-cotter 6y ago
> Seriously, I feel the US has a big education problem, with part of it being cultural I think. Could be true but it’s far less important than the brute fact that advanced study is a loser, monetarily. A very big loser. If you can get a doctorate you can get an MBA or a JD in less time and earn a lot more money. Less likely to damage your mental health, far less likely to end in failure and drop out, job market is either better or much, much better.

nichos 6y ago

There's a lot of "follow your heart", "live your dreams" stuff going on around there. I say work a job that pays, and that you can tolerate, then do what you enjoy in your free time.

ekianjo 6y ago
> I say work a job that pays, and that you can tolerate, then do what you enjoy in your free time. That's not what kids want to hear these days. They want life to be easy, and a big government ready to issue a wide safety net for them if they make bad choices in life. Perpetual childhood.
- ausbah 6y ago
  older generations always think younger generations are completely rotten for some reason
  - ekianjo 6y ago
    Well I know me and my peers were not asking for that when we were 20. Culture changes.
- untog 6y ago
  Give me a break. “Kids these days” have their eyes wide open. Just a few decades ago you used to have access to an affordable college education with good jobs on graduation. With a modest level of saving you’d have enough for the deposit on a house within a few years. None of that is true now. It’s drilled into high school kids that they must take on a punishingly expensive college education or they’ll never amount to anything. Then when they graduate they discover an awful jobs market. As for buying a house... better wait for a relative to die and hope they were generous to you in the will because there’s no other way you’re ever going to make that deposit. The idea that young people today and spoiled and rely on handouts is a nonsensical meme.
  - unishark 6y ago
    > “Kids these days” have their eyes wide open. Just a few decades ago you used to have access to an affordable college education with good jobs on graduation. With a modest level of saving you’d have enough for the deposit on a house within a few years. Except if those kids would get degrees in the right areas (like the thread is complaining they aren't), they would absolutely be able to get excellent jobs upon graduation. The unemployment rate in engineering has been almost nil for years. Even fields like civil and biomedical engineering, previously at the bottom of engineering in terms of prospects and pay, are now a lock for jobs, with employers desperate to hire anyone they can get. And of course computer science is now doing even better than all of them despite being much easier, frankly.
    - reducesuffering 6y ago
      Further, GP notes > "they must take on a punishingly expensive college education or they’ll never amount to anything." Except that high school graduates have the option to do 2 years of community college (~5k) and 2 years at a state school (~13k). Generally possible to most while living at home for no additional rent. CS jobs are in high supply and 100k+ out of college. The college cost would be paid off in a year. Then there's the fact that many positions are not requiring a college education at all.
      - 6y ago

softwaredoug 6y ago

The fact is it’s extremely valued, in the economy[1]. And that value - the resentment thereof - is why many without the education purposely elect buffoonish leaders that choose to be proud of ignorance 1 - 61% of US population above 25 has “some college” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_the_United_States#General_attainment_of_degrees/diplomas https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_th...

creato 6y ago
Is it really? FAANG jobs are outliers. Some professional fields seem to do OK (medical), but others are atrocious on average (law). Most people see science/engineering jobs as a path to a cubicle for a while with an OK salary before being laid off at 40. And for the most part, they're right.
- softwaredoug 6y ago
  “Most people” - pretty sure children of educated parents are focused heavily on education and being steered to jobs that require that education. That’s 40-60% of the US population. They weren’t teaching coding to grade schoolers at scale 10 years ago.

ekianjo 6y ago

> There's also just the quality and access to education seems it's getting worse and worse. I don't know about access in other countries, but the quality of education is dropping like a stone pretty much in every developed country right now. (And it's not a recent trend, it's been years in the making)

unishark 6y ago
What do you mean by quality here? I'd say the quality of the teaching has been going up as the quality of the students has been going down (precisely because access is going up). The focus is increasingly on the lowest common denominator which requires a lot more effort from teachers.
- sjy 6y ago
  I imagine the situation is country-specific and I’m not aware of any good studies that try to measure it. But anecdotally, as a university student around 2010, I noticed that the standards expected of undergraduates in old textbooks, exam papers and theses seemed higher. Maybe it’s just that these sources gave me the false impression of an ideal student, but a lot has changed in recent decades. As well as the growth in the student population, by 2010 it was pretty common for “full-time” students to work part-time as well. Hannah Arendt was probably an exceptional professor in 1955, but I wonder how this compares to a final exam for a first-year political science class at an exceptionally good university today? https://twitter.com/Samantharhill/status/1297545059466907650 https://twitter.com/Samantharhill/status/1297545059466907650
thrwysense 6y ago
Some thoughts: * Inflation of people with college degrees. From 5% in 1940 to 35% in 2019. This dilutes the quality of both the student pool and of the professorial pool. * Distance from the last major war, all the way back in 1945. Educate like your life depends on it has long faded from memory. In medicine, in engineering, in hard sciences. * The mismatch between skills taught in academia and job market skills. By now everyone is jaded at the notion that the main point of education is the diploma, seen as a key to unlock the job market. Of second importance, networking, get into an Ivy to rub elbows with the right crowd. Knowledge and critical thinking come as a distant last. * Or perhaps, even simpler, the dilution of the male spirit which sees competitiveness in excellence as an inherent moral good. Our forebears wore educational attainment as a peacock plumage. These days peacocks are outright vilified.

WrtCdEvrydy 6y ago

It's because people being educated has become 'being elite'. Even in our own profession, I find it difficult to communicate with smart people who lack foundational knowledge, falter, ask for help and then ask me how I knew the right answer. I've had more than person tell me that there's no way this was taught at a university (threading, OS knowledge)

joe_the_user 6y ago
The US has always had a big regional divide in skill levels as well as respect for knowledge, with the out-of-the-way places having a problem with both. The problem is political dynamics meant that the attitudes of the backward parts of the country have actually set policy for quite a while. That benefited American corporations in the short term - lots of CEO probably think for-profit, student-loan-driven education is a great idea. But it's harmed the US and even US corporations as these policies show their longer term results.
- dehrmann 6y ago
  > The US has always had a big regional divide in skill levels as well as respect for knowledge, with the out-of-the-way places having a problem with both. There are a lot of really good schools in flyover states. Looking at the top 10 engineering schools in the US, depending on your definition of "flyover," there's CMU, Michigan, Purdue, Illinois, and UT.
  - joe_the_user 6y ago
    Yeah, even Alabama has high rated universities. But it also has a broad problem of lack of quality of high school level education. Maybe a few good suburban school but the average is terrible. Tuscaloosa is education center of Alabama, having the university of Alabama but secondary education is bad enough stop companies locating there. "Around the late 1980s/early 1990s Saturn chose not to locate a plant in Tuscaloosa because of the performance of the public schools, and by 1993 the city leadership wanted Mercedes-Benz to build a plant there." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuscaloosa_City_Schools https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuscaloosa_City_Schools

Spooky23 6y ago

In many ways they are right. It’s much easier to make money in trades or similar things these days than in most bachelor degree fields.

fiblye 6y ago

> in fact it's almost being denigrated and shamed. "Almost" really isn't necessary there anymore. There's a growing group that believes virtually all doctors, scientists, and professionals within certain fields are "in on it" and part of some big conspiracy to do some vague, undefined thing that'll take down America and corrupt their children. These used to just be a fringe group. Now it feels like about half the people I know are buying into that stuff. Even some college-educated professionals think only their field is valid, and everyone else is part of "them."

mycall 6y ago
The best I can think besides the usual suspects is a more rare one: "the more you know, the more you know you don't know" which is being read incorrectly as "why bother learning when everything is always wrong [describes 20 major problems with human race]". At that point, it is hard to follow.
- lotsofpulp 6y ago
  I prefer the phrasing "the more you learn, the less you know".
natmaka 6y ago
Isn't it an effect of a feeling caused by governments using experts in a way letting (too often and a too large part of) the public think that they, at worst, are all (gov & experts alike) pushing their own short-termed and only self-beneficial agendas or, at best, nearly always devise some "Grand Plan" which then appears to cost much more than budgeted, gives less than promised and has unwanted unexpected side-effects? There is a fair part of subjectivity in those opinions, for example most of us tend to forget/neglect granted benefits and focus on unwanted side-effects. It seems to me that a growing opinion is that governments less and less understand what is going on, and therefore cannot efficiently adequately assess and plan. This is especially true when it comes to managing innovation, which is intrinsically full of new concepts and uncertainty.
- Qwertious 6y ago

nine_zeros 6y ago

Part of it is inability to access higher education financially without getting into debt. Part of it is structural because we have forgotten to innovate in education by offering apprenticeship. Another big part of this is ego. We, collectively, have this massive Murica number 1 ego that we are unable to accept that we actually collectively have started sucking hard. We have elected numbnuts who don't have any desire to improve society and make it an engine of innovation instead of a society divided by issues of the last century.

roenxi 6y ago

I don't understand China's educational strategy (no information), but their manufacturing strategy was highly decentralised. Shenzhen for example had a substantially independent government system with a modified tax code. They've been running a lot of independent experiments everywhere I looked, figuring out how to prosper. That might carry over to education. The biggest mistake the US seems to be making is centralising and standardising a whole bunch of functions (education, healthcare, etc) at the federal level. Then if the anything goes wrong there is no escape. And the US federal government doesn't seem to be up to the task on a good day. The US has always had a big ignorant population dragged along by a small core of ingenious, often foreign, visionaries. That doesn't seem to have changed recently.

techbio 6y ago
A big part of the Chinese education strategy has been to send lots of students to US universities to get advanced degrees and take that knowledge back to build China.
- donw 6y ago
  And to ensure that manufacturing moved to China! Or at the very least, proximate to its geographical sphere of influence. Honestly, it was a brilliant move on their part. Everybody seems to focus on university, but there is a lot of very hard-won know-how at the technician level of the manufacturing sector. Most of this is difficult-to-impossible to codify, and tends to pass both cohort-to-cohort, and via professional networks.
  - pvaldes 6y ago
    > A big part of the Chinese education strategy has been to send lots of students to US universities to get advanced degrees and take that knowledge back to build China. >> And to ensure that manufacturing moved to China! Of course they did. But, to be fair: 1) Those students were not educated for free. They paid big money for it, and the universities were happy to grab the money fast 2) Some of this people were forced to go after their student visa expired. They could not work in US without a permit and were forced to exit. How to blame them for using their degree or creating a company in their own country later? They shouldn't be seen as neither serfs nor slaves; technically they don't owe anything to US.

eanzenberg 6y ago

Not surprising considering big public school districts are dropping gifted education to support equality through lowest common denominator learning.

millbraebart 6y ago

I love reading these pretentious responses, which amount to: "Oh why don't these silly midwesterners just listen to us with our prestigious degrees". You fail to see your own bias, by worshipping at the classist alter of institutionalized "higher education", while snubbing your nose at anyone that didn't attend your elitist universities.

searchableguy 6y ago

China’s funding for science and research to reach 2.5 per cent of GDP in 2019: https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/2189427/chinas-funding-science-and-research-reach-25-cent-gdp-2019 https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/2189427/chin... A documentary by WIRED UK done in 2016 explains many cultural and legal reasons: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGJ5cZnoodY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGJ5cZnoodY China has hardware industries that work similar to how open source software works. An article on effects of expiring patents on 3D printing (2013): https://qz.com/106483/3d-printing-will-explode-in-2014-thanks-to-the-expiration-of-key-patents/ https://qz.com/106483/3d-printing-will-explode-in-2014-thank... 90 Minutes a Day, Until 10 P.M.: China Sets Rules for Young Gamers: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/06/business/china-video-game-ban-young.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/06/business/china-video-game... Many Asian countries have already taken strong steps for digital addiction (which will be the next important problem to tackle after covid, I bet). China’s sustainable urban transport revolution: https://dialogochino.net/en/infrastructure/11025-chinas-sustainable-urban-transport-revolution/ https://dialogochino.net/en/infrastructure/11025-chinas-sust... https://www.citymetric.com/transport/no-hong-kong-has-best-transport-system-world-mtr-trams-boats-4148 https://www.citymetric.com/transport/no-hong-kong-has-best-t... > Overall, 79% of people between the ages of 12 and 24 in Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Mexico, Nigeria, and Russia say they feel optimistic about the direction of the world, compared to only about half of those in far more well-off places like Australia, France, Germany, Great Britain, and Sweden. In the United States, the number is 63%. https://www.fastcompany.com/90241302/where-in-the-world-are-kids-most-optimistic-about-the-future https://www.fastcompany.com/90241302/where-in-the-world-are-... > Of the top countries on our survey, China has developers that are the most optimistic, believing that people born today will have a better life than their parents. Developers in Western European countries like France and Germany are among the least optimistic about the future. https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2019 https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2019 China is also much larger country than US. It has 3x more people than US. Those individuals are going to be at par with people in west at some point. There are so many interesting things to discuss and question.

petre 6y ago
The optimism or lack thereof is mainly due to news and social media. Climate change, wars, criminality, cops shooting people of color, economic inequality etc. I've lived in a communist country and all the official news was boring propaganda in the lines of "our beloved leader went to <country> to visit his omologue, <name> where they deliberated about world peace". Then I saw a Gulf News newspaper from the UAE: only positive news, obviously propaganda. I'm not saying we shouldn't discuss these issues but western news has an overy negative tone, it keeps parroting the same issues and competes for our attention. Social media is even worse than news. My so keeps scrolling at insta posts and voices discontent about certain travel influencers going on vacation all the time while she has to work overtime and take a pay cut.

hliyan 6y ago

My hypothesis is that the US is a victim of its own success: several generations of living in a prosperous, stable society reduces the need for the average citizen to develop survival skills. Here I use the term 'survival skills' very generally: it includes specialized education and expertise in some area, financial planning and risk management skills, inter-personnel and conflict resolution skills, emotional resilience etc. I suspect that the education problem may be on the demand side (due to the above reason) rather than on the supply side (even though the prohibitive higher education costs do play a big role).

vlovich123 6y ago
I think that’s an insane answer. We’ve divested in public schools over a prolonged period of time, plain and simple. The public schools that have not experienced that magically are in the wealthy “rich” neighborhoods. The system is working as intended. You want an educated population? Make sure schools have the proper investments. None of this 30 kids per classroom bullshit. Do 10-15 and see what kind of students you churn out.
- missedthecue 6y ago
  Public education spending as a percentage of GDP is at an all time high. I dont think people appreciate the cost of public schooling in the US. According to data provided by the federal government, public schools in the US spend on average $15,500 per child per year. That is an enormous amount of money and it is only climbing ever higher year after year.
  - asdff 6y ago
    It depends on the area. It's been particularly divested in California, which falls short of the average per child spend despite having the highest GDP. In CA, per child spend has fallen 15% from 1970-1997. https://www.kqed.org/news/11701044/how-proposition-13-transformed-neighborhood-public-schools-throughout-california https://www.kqed.org/news/11701044/how-proposition-13-transf...

jacobwilliamroy 6y ago

Having a dumb population means you can make lots of money for very little effort. Pet rocks? Million dollar idea. Water? As long as it's .00000000000000001% poison, it's a homeopathic remedy you can sell for $500 a vial. Add more water to make it more expensive. Ever think about using the equity in your home to consolidate your credit cards and other debts? Dumb dumbs spend more and expect less. Bad education is good for the economy.

missedthecue 6y ago
I don't think this is a very good take. There is a very clear correlation between GNP and education level in nations.
- jacobwilliamroy 6y ago
  The U.S. is the exception, not the rule. We have a global, neoliberal economy. We don't need skilled americans. What we need is more useless watchamacallits! Would you like to buy some bottled water? It comes from a spring, I promise! Or maybe another smart phone? Probably been awhile since you bought one of those. Why not buy one again?

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arvinsim 6y ago

> Seriously, I feel the US has a big education problem, with part of it being cultural I think. Seems being educated, knowledgeable, having expertise, learning about science and technology, medicine and law, just isn't valued anymore, in fact it's almost being denigrated and shamed. > What I see instead is people pushing for anti-intellectualism and valuing the "college dropouts". It's because outside of a few exceptions(tech in particular), you would earn more money being a businessman than being employed, academic or professional. People always say that we should value teachers, nurses, etc. But it's all just lip service. Money and salary are what society uses to indicate how much they truly value you.

asdff 6y ago
Imagine how we'd operate if people were truly free to do their calling, and all the scientists and poets and musicians posing as businessmen and HR reps came out of the woodwork. We'd be commenting in this thread from Mars by now.

throwaway189262 6y ago

The US has a very capitalistic economy, maybe too much even. In general, in the US, whenever you hear "there's not enough people to do X" it means "there's not enough people willing to do X for what I want to pay" The truth is, in the US there's a ton of different well-paying careers. CS isn't like medical in US with artificial limits on the number of doctors that graduate every year. The only thing stopping more people from doing CS is money. If they offer enough money they will have a practically unlimited talent pool. Tech CEO's are always whining about lack of tech workers so they can abuse H1B visas to get employees below market rates. Since they're basically indentured servants to their employers for years to decades until they can get a green card. The lack of government money in CS research I think everyone in the tech field agrees with

thewhitetulip 6y ago

This anti intellectual push is seen in India as well. The ruling party has worked over time to blame experts and mocking intellectuals on everything The reason is very simple, ruling party gets vores by fooling people. They announce the same monetary package year after year without actually giving the package and their media i.e. entire right wing funded media starts praising the package and hailing our supreme leader.

akira2501 6y ago

> Seriously, I feel the US has a big education problem, with part of it being cultural I think I think a lot of it is pricing and the debt model we use to fund it. > Seems being educated, knowledgeable, having expertise, learning about science and technology, medicine and law, just isn't valued anymore The returns on that investment just aren't as good as they used to be, couple that with the required debt above, and stagnant wage growth in these industries and I'd say it's clear they aren't valued anymore. > and has to either outsource the work or import workers who do from elsewhere. That's actually seems more like part of the reasons for the above issues than it is something that follows from it. Combine all this with the fact that total self-employment and other measures of entrepreneurship have been trending downwards lately while the level of corporate integration and mergers have been increasing and it's a recipe for the destruction of middle to middle-upper class incomes and careers. > What I see instead is people pushing for anti-intellectualism and valuing the "college dropouts". This is a symptom of a sick system, and when the system is sick, it's inhabitants become sick as well.

innagadadavida 6y ago

One other issue here is the disparity of salaries of finance/software folks make vs other engineers. This has caused a lot of folks to not pursue careers in aerospace, chemical, mechanical etc and just get software or finance jobs. It’s hard to justify not working for a FANG and taking a pay cut.

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oivey 6y ago

Part of the story here, too, is that relatively few Americans make up the populations of top graduate programs. An undergraduate degree or less might be sufficient to build a great advertising business, but it's unlikely to be enough to make major advancements in AI, quantum computing, semiconductors/photovoltaics, superconductors, etc.

barry-cotter 6y ago

> Seriously, I feel the US has a big education problem, with part of it being cultural I think. Could be true but it’s far less important than the brute fact that advanced study is a loser, monetarily. A very big loser. If you can get a doctorate you can get an MBA or a JD in less time and earn a lot more money. Less likely to damage your mental health, far less likely to end in failure and drop out, job market is either better or much, much better.