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The percentages of university graduates for an age cohort are growing yearly in Germany as well. 25.5% in 2008, 31.5 in 2018. The US is just further ahead in th

by est31 6y ago

The percentages of university graduates for an age cohort are growing yearly in Germany as well. 25.5% in 2008, 31.5 in 2018. The US is just further ahead in this trend. It has similar effects in Germany. Brace yourself, Akademikerproletariat is coming :). https://www.datenportal.bmbf.de/portal/de/Tabelle-1.9.5.html https://www.datenportal.bmbf.de/portal/de/Tabelle-1.9.5.html

ruph123 6y ago
That is true, but you cannot say that this will lead to the same situation as in the US. The apprenticeship system is well established and it it just not feasible for everyone to take the time and money to study. Apprenticeships are payed. I just cannot see a baker with a M.Sc. :) To add to that: This trend only shows that people do not want to do low-pay hands-on jobs anymore. It does not mean that universities compete with apprenticeships. Although this certainly causes the rise of bullshit study programs.
- tpetry 6y ago
  It is happening the same in germany too, you have many in germany now too which had been an Ausbildung before: Touristik, Agrarwirtschaft, Osteopathie ...
looping__lui 6y ago
Tricky question - because the entire discussion about social “fairness” and “stepping up in social ladder” in Germany happens around “likelihood to have a university degree”. Now, pragmatically speaking: the apprenticeship and university system in Germany allows people to flexibly qualify themselves for (well) paying jobs at minimal cost. There is another truth to that people rather want “not to be spoke out”: not everybody has the “right” qualifications for completing an apprenticeship or university degree. Having taught at an applied science university it sometimes was beyond my comprehension how Germany tries to “bump up university graduates at all costs”. But to be fair: I don’t think many of those people would have succeeded at an apprenticeship either... I personally know several(!) instances where “the smart and brilliant sibling” went for university, the “quiet one went for an apprenticeship” - and the pay off has been substantially more beneficial for the people taking the apprenticeship road even though the “college siblings” didn’t exactly fail or end up unemployed... I know it’s anecdotical. But in Germany, they seem to push a rather weird political agenda in this direction which doesn’t help anybody.
- Traubenfuchs 6y ago
  > the “college siblings” didn’t exactly fail or end up unemployed... I know it’s anecdotical. Since there are financially unwise college degrees (social work) and on the other end those with a mostly guaranteed, very decent minimal guaranteed income and incredible potential (medicine), this is an unfair comparison.
  - C1sc0cat 6y ago
    Your not going to get a job in social work without a degree
    - johnminter 6y ago
      That would not surprise me. One might be able to recover the cost of the education at a state university. I suspect the return on investment would significantly lower at a private school with higher tuition. My daughter teaches at a high school with many students from lower income households. One of the exercizes the class did was to have each student pick a career that interested them. They had to find the cost of the degree and the median salary. Next they were to make a budget that for their living expenses based on that median salary, including repayment of the student loans. It was an eye-opening experience for these students. Higher education can be a ticket to a great career. It can be a cost it takes a lifetime to repay, especially if penalties and interest accrues.
  - looping__lui 6y ago
    Sure. But one studied business (and got a decent paying job) and the other one went for a PhD in chemistry. Now: two siblings were female and the one going for “becoming a secretary at a large automotive company” like literally did not know what to spend all the bonuses and salary on - she was living at home until getting married and saved rent as well. She can always work part-time in her job, probably has a “large house-down-payment” on her bank account and is in a really relaxed situation. Studying 5 years (paying rent, not having income,...) and the fact that university graduates “have a harder time getting into that large company and even get less paid than factory workers” was not exactly obvious at the beginning. Due to the workplace protection in place and pretty strong union representation in “blue collar jobs” it often doesn’t make much sense for women to pursue a university degree from a financial perspective. I am very frustrated about that. Second example - well, the PhD postdoc survives 2-year contract over 2-year contract while his younger brother just loads just more cash than he can carry. This does not hold everywhere - both “younger siblings” work at a large industrial company that pays well. It’s just 100x easier to get a job that is paying well with mediocre grades and an uncle than with an engineering, business or science “summa cum laude” university degree. Really crazy how that turned out. Many more similar stories from my siblings and their class-mates.
rjzzleep 6y ago
There's actually a fundamental difference between the anglosaxon system, US/UK(Canada?) and basically all the others though which I kind of like. In the US and UK you're considered educated once you go through school. So you can go another two years to University and become a lawyer(same with medicine, provided you can afford it). In Germany you're kind of set for life. Engineers are not considered business people, business people can't be considered engineers. But one of my favorite startups back in the days(Basho the makers of Riak) two absolutely fantastic engineering managers I met were an english literature grad and an business school grad. Both just had a lot of interest in Computer Science. Of course the other extreme of the equation is people that found the Fyre Festival or Theranos.
watwut 6y ago
College in Germany is significantly cheaper.
fock 6y ago
though, with a suitable focus on the applied science universities (where you have to work at least 1/7 of your education in a suitable position) and dual study programs, I think, we could avoid the worst (and are I actually think). I think some of the commerce chambers/etc. have brought this onto themselves by pushing the advantage of their paying members who have effectively turned most trades and crafts into guilds, where your only chance at getting a good job (aka being self employed) is inheriting machines and the company rolodex. [And no, you generally can't pull it off on your own, because you have to actually pay for studying to be allowed to open a business, so you are 30 years old, have no money and have to get a 200k loan for your non-hyperscaling business, while you have to pay rent or want to buy a house] Capitalism solves the resulting supply shortage of "qualified" plumbers, carpenters et. al. by providing cheap, eastern european, DIY-style "I can do everything"-craftsmen (actually, my grandfathers both had similar sidegigs (ok, one built his and his friend's homes with them) during the "Wirtschaftswunder" and retired). Nearly everyone who is sufficiently intelligent to pass the necessary exams then moves to university to study in the hope to get a "nice, comfortable" job. Even if they really liked their vocation. But working your ass off in the lower 10%-income bracket, while your boss buys a Porsche a year from profits you earned in a 5-person company he inherited from his father kind of sucks.
- ChuckNorris89 6y ago
  >Capitalism solves the resulting supply shortage of "qualified" plumbers, carpenters et. al. by providing cheap, eastern european, DIY-style "I can do everything"-craftsmen You can say the same thing about software engineering. The push for easy immigration has solved the fake shortage in Germany and kept the salaries low enough to keep companies very profitable.
  - fock 6y ago
    Given the typical scope (e.g. burning VC money) of the companies going through the effort to hire/immigrate people, there is definitely no real supply shortage for software engineers. While for plumbers, there is, even with the influx of the aforementioned service people.
animationwill 6y ago
There are different levels of nursing in the United States. Not all of them require uni education, but they also do tasks most people would not want to do

by est31 6y ago

ruph123 6y ago

That is true, but you cannot say that this will lead to the same situation as in the US. The apprenticeship system is well established and it it just not feasible for everyone to take the time and money to study. Apprenticeships are payed. I just cannot see a baker with a M.Sc. :) To add to that: This trend only shows that people do not want to do low-pay hands-on jobs anymore. It does not mean that universities compete with apprenticeships. Although this certainly causes the rise of bullshit study programs.

tpetry 6y ago
It is happening the same in germany too, you have many in germany now too which had been an Ausbildung before: Touristik, Agrarwirtschaft, Osteopathie ...

looping__lui 6y ago

Tricky question - because the entire discussion about social “fairness” and “stepping up in social ladder” in Germany happens around “likelihood to have a university degree”. Now, pragmatically speaking: the apprenticeship and university system in Germany allows people to flexibly qualify themselves for (well) paying jobs at minimal cost. There is another truth to that people rather want “not to be spoke out”: not everybody has the “right” qualifications for completing an apprenticeship or university degree. Having taught at an applied science university it sometimes was beyond my comprehension how Germany tries to “bump up university graduates at all costs”. But to be fair: I don’t think many of those people would have succeeded at an apprenticeship either... I personally know several(!) instances where “the smart and brilliant sibling” went for university, the “quiet one went for an apprenticeship” - and the pay off has been substantially more beneficial for the people taking the apprenticeship road even though the “college siblings” didn’t exactly fail or end up unemployed... I know it’s anecdotical. But in Germany, they seem to push a rather weird political agenda in this direction which doesn’t help anybody.

Traubenfuchs 6y ago
> the “college siblings” didn’t exactly fail or end up unemployed... I know it’s anecdotical. Since there are financially unwise college degrees (social work) and on the other end those with a mostly guaranteed, very decent minimal guaranteed income and incredible potential (medicine), this is an unfair comparison.
- C1sc0cat 6y ago
  Your not going to get a job in social work without a degree
  - johnminter 6y ago
    That would not surprise me. One might be able to recover the cost of the education at a state university. I suspect the return on investment would significantly lower at a private school with higher tuition. My daughter teaches at a high school with many students from lower income households. One of the exercizes the class did was to have each student pick a career that interested them. They had to find the cost of the degree and the median salary. Next they were to make a budget that for their living expenses based on that median salary, including repayment of the student loans. It was an eye-opening experience for these students. Higher education can be a ticket to a great career. It can be a cost it takes a lifetime to repay, especially if penalties and interest accrues.
- looping__lui 6y ago
  Sure. But one studied business (and got a decent paying job) and the other one went for a PhD in chemistry. Now: two siblings were female and the one going for “becoming a secretary at a large automotive company” like literally did not know what to spend all the bonuses and salary on - she was living at home until getting married and saved rent as well. She can always work part-time in her job, probably has a “large house-down-payment” on her bank account and is in a really relaxed situation. Studying 5 years (paying rent, not having income,...) and the fact that university graduates “have a harder time getting into that large company and even get less paid than factory workers” was not exactly obvious at the beginning. Due to the workplace protection in place and pretty strong union representation in “blue collar jobs” it often doesn’t make much sense for women to pursue a university degree from a financial perspective. I am very frustrated about that. Second example - well, the PhD postdoc survives 2-year contract over 2-year contract while his younger brother just loads just more cash than he can carry. This does not hold everywhere - both “younger siblings” work at a large industrial company that pays well. It’s just 100x easier to get a job that is paying well with mediocre grades and an uncle than with an engineering, business or science “summa cum laude” university degree. Really crazy how that turned out. Many more similar stories from my siblings and their class-mates.

rjzzleep 6y ago

There's actually a fundamental difference between the anglosaxon system, US/UK(Canada?) and basically all the others though which I kind of like. In the US and UK you're considered educated once you go through school. So you can go another two years to University and become a lawyer(same with medicine, provided you can afford it). In Germany you're kind of set for life. Engineers are not considered business people, business people can't be considered engineers. But one of my favorite startups back in the days(Basho the makers of Riak) two absolutely fantastic engineering managers I met were an english literature grad and an business school grad. Both just had a lot of interest in Computer Science. Of course the other extreme of the equation is people that found the Fyre Festival or Theranos.

watwut 6y ago

College in Germany is significantly cheaper.

fock 6y ago

though, with a suitable focus on the applied science universities (where you have to work at least 1/7 of your education in a suitable position) and dual study programs, I think, we could avoid the worst (and are I actually think). I think some of the commerce chambers/etc. have brought this onto themselves by pushing the advantage of their paying members who have effectively turned most trades and crafts into guilds, where your only chance at getting a good job (aka being self employed) is inheriting machines and the company rolodex. [And no, you generally can't pull it off on your own, because you have to actually pay for studying to be allowed to open a business, so you are 30 years old, have no money and have to get a 200k loan for your non-hyperscaling business, while you have to pay rent or want to buy a house] Capitalism solves the resulting supply shortage of "qualified" plumbers, carpenters et. al. by providing cheap, eastern european, DIY-style "I can do everything"-craftsmen (actually, my grandfathers both had similar sidegigs (ok, one built his and his friend's homes with them) during the "Wirtschaftswunder" and retired). Nearly everyone who is sufficiently intelligent to pass the necessary exams then moves to university to study in the hope to get a "nice, comfortable" job. Even if they really liked their vocation. But working your ass off in the lower 10%-income bracket, while your boss buys a Porsche a year from profits you earned in a 5-person company he inherited from his father kind of sucks.

ChuckNorris89 6y ago
>Capitalism solves the resulting supply shortage of "qualified" plumbers, carpenters et. al. by providing cheap, eastern european, DIY-style "I can do everything"-craftsmen You can say the same thing about software engineering. The push for easy immigration has solved the fake shortage in Germany and kept the salaries low enough to keep companies very profitable.
- fock 6y ago
  Given the typical scope (e.g. burning VC money) of the companies going through the effort to hire/immigrate people, there is definitely no real supply shortage for software engineers. While for plumbers, there is, even with the influx of the aforementioned service people.

animationwill 6y ago

There are different levels of nursing in the United States. Not all of them require uni education, but they also do tasks most people would not want to do