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A lot of this is driven by narratives—A narrative that college isn’t worth it anymore. A narrative that (white) men are uniformly privileged and life is just ea

A lot of this is driven by narratives—A narrative that college isn’t worth it anymore. A narrative that (white) men are uniformly privileged and life is just easy for them. And a narrative that those men aren’t wanted by society any more. I’m not convinced that all those men need to go to college, but they clearly need something. They need to feel like they’re part of society. Nothing good can come of an entire generation that feels lost, without purpose, and unwanted.

smitty1e 5y ago
My brother in law is an electrician. I had enough EE in college to change a light switch without burning the house down. However, that book-learnin' fell apart when confronted with troubleshooting a strangely wired room, and I got very polite while asking him over to bail me out. These fellows eschewing the ivory tower, where being of European extraction and bearing a Y-chromosome on the college campus is an indictment, are going to trade schools and will make fat piles of cash repairing plumbing. Hopefully, they are gracious with all the Grievance Studies majors who are standing by to condescend in their direction.
- deleted 5y ago
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- atoav 5y ago
  I am a certified EE and have a MA of fine Arts (film). Living in Europe where I had to pay 350 Euros per semester (which included a public transport ticket for the whole province), I didn't have to make a choice between the two. I did both because I was interested in both. After university I was well equiped to do freelancer work in my field and earned well. I don't think this "you have to be hard or else you won't survive"-mentality in the US is very beneficial to its society as a whole. Ideally you want to live in a society where everybody is well educated, healthy, happy, friendly and so on. Maybe it is a naive idea, but I think this is more achievable if there is collective investment into those goals rather than internal economical warfare where everybody is a army of one, except for the big corporations who will happily milk a atomized, divided population. Yet I am constantly amazed by how much some of you guys endure. I just wish you wouldn't have to.
  - ceilingcorner 5y ago
    > "you have to be hard or else you won't survive"-mentality Europeans often have this opinion but I don't think it's an accurate reading of the issue. The issue is not that Americans work too hard, it's that this hard work is no longer actually amounting to anything. In the past, you could pay for college by working summers at the local restaurant. Today the average debt is $30K and you still won't get a decent job. The article (and others) just show that American men are starting to put their efforts into places that do reward them; namely, the trades and entrepreneurship.
    - atoav 5y ago
      > The article (and others) just show that American men are starting to put their efforts into places that do reward them; namely, the trades and entrepreneurship. Good point. I did not intend to argue otherwise. To go into trade is not an irrational reaction on an individual level — quite the opposite in fact. What I did argue however, was that making it hard for people to get a higher education is not a good thing for a society. Not good in the short term, because educated societes will make more informed decisions, and at the same time not a sustainable strategy for any western society that wants to play any role in the next century. Having an educated society should be in the national interest just like having public roads or drinkable water is. > accurate reading of the issue. The issue is not that Americans work too hard, it's that this hard work is no longer actually amounting to anything. That was the American dream. This is a nice model to keep big numbers of people playing the lottery and bear a ton of stress, because they have the hope that one day they might win and then everything will pay off. But even of you are one of the few lucky ones that wins you still live in a society where 90% are struggling and crushed. There may be people that enjoy being on top while everybody else suffers, but I personally would prefer being middle class in a society where nobody is poor over being a billionaire in a society where everybody is crushed. Maybe this is empathy, but maybe it is also just egoistic: I like to walk through my city and not see suffering, I like to walk through my country without having to fear being robbed, shot or angrily screamed at. I simply prefer living in a healthy, happy society where people help each other over living in one where everybody has to kick down to stay on top. Not that that any nation achieved that goal, but there are certainly observable differences in tone between the industrial nations.
- WalterBright 5y ago
  EE programs tend to focus on electronics, not electrical systems. But learning how house wiring works is a simple book away. But be careful - unlike electronics, house electrics can kill you. On the other hand, electricians have weird gaps in their knowledge. If I ask them to do something slightly out of the ordinary, this becomes apparent. For example, none of them understand inductive coupling, or even know what it is. When I ask them to do certain things to avoid inductive coupling, they give me this indulgent smile, and do what I ask, although it's clear they don't understand why. I eventually wound up doing the low voltage wiring myself, because I simply couldn't explain to them why you don't run low voltage wires through the same holes as the A/C wires. One of them tried to run a 12VDC wire in 25 feet of conduit with a 120VAC wire. They also simply did not understand how generators worked, and botched up the wiring for mine. It's the same with roofers. They have no idea what galvanic corrosion is, and will invariably use the wrong nails for anything metal.
  - blueblisters 5y ago
    That's the thing with vocationals skills - they make you really good at understanding how something works or how to fix something without breaking something else, but beyond that range of problems and solutions, you need to talk to an engineer. Not that vocational jobs are not important - clearly they add value and create employment.
    - WalterBright 5y ago
      I'm not so sure they understand how it works, though. BTW, if you ever see an EE with a card that has printed on it: V = I*R I = V/R R = V/I it's a sure sign he's a formula-plugger, and has no idea how it works. He doesn't even understand algebra. https://testguy.net/content/266-Ohm-s-Law-Watt-s-Law-Cheat-Sheet https://testguy.net/content/266-Ohm-s-Law-Watt-s-Law-Cheat-S... A definite no-hire :-/
      - hellbannedguy 5y ago
        There's a book called, Everytjing I should have learned in Engineering School, but didn't. I had no idea there were EE's walking around who were rusty with basic electrical formulas.
- xattt 5y ago
  The piles of cash come at the expense of physical health. I can’t imagine being a labourer at 55. I’m a registered nurse which is a weird hybrid of university-level knowledge (understanding pharm and patho) but also it is a physical trade (turning patients, providing personal cares, mental resilience). It has roots in being vocational with a push in the last 50 years to provide an academic background to turn it into a profession. Floor nursing is the bread and butter of the profession, but it burns you quick. Older nurses, particularly in medical-surgical nursing, tend to take on less stressful 8 hour day shifts, end up as spinsters, or have a terrible home life that they’ve resigned into accepting. I moved into a desk position in my mid 30s and can’t possibly imagine going back to the physicality of it all.
  - symlinkk 5y ago
    I can’t imagine it can be better for you physically or mentally to hunch over a desk for 8 hours a day in dead silence vs being on your feet, walking and talking to people.
    - xattt 5y ago
      There is a trade-off indeed. My overall quality of life improved. I wore a fitness tracker then and now. I averaged about 10 km in a given shift, where as my daily total now is now closer to 5 or 6. However, now I have time and energy at the end of the day to do an actual physical activity instead of coming home like a limp noodle and taking the next day to recover. Mentally, there is comradery that I absolutely miss. This is something really hard to explain unless you’re in it. When things got tough, the dark humour got us through. We took care of each others’ loved ones (at their family’s request). We demanded excellence from each other, and (rightfully) called out unsafe practice and supported staff as needed. However, my home life suffered. It was fine at first as my partner is also a nurse so there was a mutual understanding. However, it started to wear on me when I had kids. I’d come home and my kids would be asleep/at school/daycare, so I’d have missed out on a day’s interaction. I realized that they’re only little once and no job in the world is worth missing out on them.
- lordnacho 5y ago
  A colleague of mine had a physics degree and decided to become an electrician. Took very little time to learn. That's not to condescend on electricians, they clearly have a useful skill. And being able to certify a house pays a good few hundred pounds a day, nothing to sniff at. But if you're used to looking at physical models, learning a few conventions and adding another model won't be terribly difficult. I think a lot of people are actually better off doing that kind of work. There's a tangible output that is much easier to connect to purposefulness than if your job is mainly in the ideas realm. A cousin of mine that I grew up with is a carpenter and seems to cheerful all the time, now that he knows what his thing is. I grew up with him and it wasn't always so.
- hellbannedguy 5y ago
  I've was a union electrician for a few years. Get in early. Get in a union. 25-30 years to retirement in most unions. You don't want to be 60, and still in construction. The test is easy, but figure 1000-2000 guys are taking the test too, so you need to get most of the questions right to get in. An oral interview counts for 1/2 the hiring process. Just say you love working with your hands--love unions, but understand the needs of the contractors too. Remember it's construction. You're around guys all day long. It's brainless work, and you will never have to act cheery when the owner's spoiled kid comes to work. I do not recommend non-union construction at all. Then again---hide in school for a long time. I loved college. It was cheaper 25 years ago though, and not that fun, but much better than any job I've had. Your interest will change as you age.
  - thehappypm 5y ago
    This sounds like a lot of advice that boomers give, "do exactly what I did".
- znpy 5y ago
  > These fellows eschewing the ivory tower [...] are going to trade schools and will make fat piles of cash repairing plumbing. I read somewhere that (ironocally) plumbing it the less likely thing to be "automated" via an AI or something.
- pessimizer 5y ago
  > These fellows eschewing the ivory tower, where being of European extraction and bearing a Y-chromosome on the college campus is an indictment I hate to have to mention this, but not all American men are white.
  - inkblotuniverse 5y ago
    What does that have to do with the quoted sentence?
- tchaffee 5y ago
  > I got very polite while asking him over to bail me out. > all the Grievance Studies majors So you're polite to those you find useful and insulting to people majoring in something you presumably disagree with? And assuming they will all be condescending to a plumber or electrician for some reason? Perhaps you don't have to look quite so far away if you're looking to reduce the amount of condescending happening in the room you're standing in?
- michaelcampbell 5y ago
  > However, that book-learnin' fell apart when confronted with troubleshooting a strangely wired room, and I got very polite while asking him over to bail me out. This feels very much like the "astronomy/telescope" argument.
- baron_harkonnen 5y ago
  > all the Grievance Studies major Area, ethnic, cultural, gender, and group studies (I'm assuming "Grievance Studies" falls under this category), at least in the US, have been in steady decline since 2008, and even at their peak only accounted for 0.5% of majors (now just 0.3%). Even if you want to add in humanities in general that has gone from 3% to just above 2% The idea that college campuses are ever more filled with people studying "useless" majors is a fiction. The largest areas of major concentration are business, biology, health professions, and engineering and all of these have been more or less growing for years. There is this pervasive myth that most students in undergrad are having trouble transitioning to industry because they wasted their time studying their non-practical passion, but the data[0] clearly shows that the trends for the last decade have been increasing focus on career oriented practical majors. [0] https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d19/tables/dt19_322.10.asp https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d19/tables/dt19_322.10.a...
  - hintymad 5y ago
    I really appreciate this kind of discussion: data driven, narrative free. I'm very sad to see that giving up facts for narratives accelerates the decline of the US.
  - staysafeanon 5y ago
    I don't see where in your source the data paints that picture? Social sciences and history is 8%, family and human sciences is another few percent, journalism is also listed out separately, as is liberal arts and humanities... Maybe there are better sources that break things down per major so we can see the growth?
- anm89 5y ago
  The irony is that this will be viewed as a new form of of privilege. Its schrodingers privilege. the privilege was being so priveleged that you were pushed out of the traditional credentialing system.
happythen 5y ago
No way. Being white is definitely a leg up. Well, at least for me, a white guy, no college degree. Life is much easier. I don't think there is any support missing for us, that actually sounds hilarious. We need to work on lifting others up.
- SunlightEdge 5y ago
  Yeah. I think its really difficult (impossible?) to know what its like for the other gender/other ethnicities - even if there is more cultural outputs/conversations out there about different groups its still really hard/impossible to know what its like for others. Having said that working class (poor) white males are known to have amongst the worst educational performance in the UK. This is different from employment. If I had my time back I would seriously consider not going to uni/get a masters and just become a plumber/electrician. I reckon I would be as happy/if not happier then doing an office job.
- icare_1er 5y ago
  Based on the number of "affirmative-action" initiatives that I see all over the US, in many tech-companies (I don't know about other fields), I'd say that being a women, or black, is definitely a huge plus to get your foot through the door, with many recruitment programs blatantly saying they are only for minorities, which sounds to me like pretty much segregation in reverse, but that indeed seems to be the agenda of some leftists.
  - circlefavshape 5y ago
    > with many recruitment programs blatantly saying they are only for minorities Really? I understood that it was illegal to discriminate based on gender, race, etc in the US
    - icare_1er 5y ago
      It is widespread in big-tech. This is an-ex Google engineer talking about one he saw and created a video about: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pizXzR7ZQ8Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pizXzR7ZQ8Q
kace91 5y ago
"Narrative" makes it sound like there's nothing behind. The extreme cost of college - and living in general, rents/home ownership, etc - and the decreasing edge it gives to owners of degrees isn't a fabrication by any stretch. It's easier to think people are being misled than to think people are taking different decisions because their reality is actually different.
throwtheworld 5y ago
> A narrative that (white) men are uniformly privileged and life is just easy for them. This is very perspective dependent. I’m a black college student now and every conversation with friends back home includes some mention of dropping out because it’s not for us as well. When you see people with equivalent resumes already coasting by in the job market because they could get their last names and LinkedIn photos past the screening and into an interview it’s hard to believe that’ll change post-graduation. And most of us are already in planning on entrepreneurship because we know we’re not what companies are looking for even with fancy CS degrees. It’s like if I’ll have to sell sneakers to make ends meet after college anyways I might as well drop out and use that money bootstrapping this inventory SaaS. Innovation out of desperation, I guess. It’s no way to live. But I think we’re approaching an inflection point.
- spoonjim 5y ago
  You must have bad information because FAANG companies compete over hiring black software engineers. They want to get their numbers up and there aren’t many to hire.
  - tchaffee 5y ago
    How many FAANG companies are there? I guess five from the name. Does every black applicant with a CS degree get a job if they apply? It's a free pass? Your sample size of five elite companies can't be taken as a serious attempt to describe the actual experience of black CS grads applying for jobs.
    - throwaway556677 5y ago
      A charitable (and, I think, reasonable) reading would be that the poster used FAANG as a representation of the overall trend in tech. FAANG are what the rest of the industry aspires to be, after all.
      - tchaffee 5y ago
        How many CS jobs are even in the "the industry" though? Home Depot, Walmart, and Nestle are examples of massive companies that do not aspire to be Facebook or anything like it, but who hire lots of software engineers. Most companies are not tech companies, although a handful of tech giants have done very well.
zapnuk 5y ago
I wonder how woman feel reading such comments. Men dominated better paying jobs and positions of power since forever. It took 50+ years between equal rights before the law to equal opportunities in the labour market and education. Men still have every opportunity a woman has. In addition, they are still recognized more for leading positions. They also dominate about every trade related job. Yet, they are 'left without a purpose', when all they need it to do is do whatever they want.
- WalterBright 5y ago
  My grandmother worked as a mechanic for the phone company in the nine-teens. Her sister did whatever she wanted, she started and ran her own business.
  - umanwizard 5y ago
    What are the “nine-teens”?
    - selimthegrim 5y ago
      Given he went to Caltech in the 80s, probably the 1910s
    - WalterBright 5y ago
      1910-1920
- notanzaiiswear 5y ago
  Women didn't and don't need well paying jobs to start a family. What "equal right" do you mean, that "equaled opportunities in the labor market and education"? Also you seem to miss on the fact that men get worse grades in school (which some say is because of discrimination), which makes it harder for them to enter university.
  - s5300 5y ago
    Why is it that you default to the idea that women want to start a family? It's a big ass cool world we have going on, and starting a family effectively ties you down from being able to explore it. Good grief.
tchaffee 5y ago
Is it a "narrative" that college isn't it worth it anymore or is that largely based in fact in the US? Especially when it comes to specific degrees that don't have a demand in the workplace. The cost of higher education in the US has financially crippled millions. And trade jobs pay well for far less education costs. Doing a cost / benefit analysis would seem the wisest choice. The bigger problem to me is that with such a high cost for university education, our future electricians won't have one. Whereas in Europe they very possibly might. I know which society I prefer to live in and it's not the one where people are less educated. What narrative about uniform privilege? Can you give some sources? I've also never heard privilege explained as making life "just easy". I've heard just for example that life can still be hard but your skin color is not one of the things making your life hard. I'd be interested in reading these narratives that are so different from the narratives I've read about privilege.
- bluecalm 5y ago
  I don't know. I think living in a society where most people don't do any meaningful work and are exposed to just theoretical academic style education till they are 24-25 isn't good either. I don't think it's a good use of anyone's time to sit in a chair and look at the whiteboard for 15-16 best years of your life.
- Zababa 5y ago
  > Is it a "narrative" that college isn't it worth it anymore or is that largely based in fact in the US? It is. In France college is 400€ a year.
mercy_dude 5y ago
> A narrative that college isn’t worth it anymore Is it entirely false though? What benefit does a college degree in sociology does to a person (and even broader society) when the person will likely be in over 100k+ debt?
- ajuc 5y ago
  The right question is - why does it have to cost so much when it's possible to teach the same exact thing for ~3k USD in eastern Europe :) And then these developers come to USA or western Europe and it doesn't seem that they are performing badly :)
gumby 5y ago
> A lot of this is driven by narratives… You give three examples but only tie the last to the admissions issue. Could you expand on the others and how they might be relevant to this issue?
bmj 5y ago
I’m not convinced that all those men need to go to college, but they clearly need something. This. We are seeing the results of what was reported in the book Boys Adrift. My older son just graduated high school. He has no interest in college at the moment, and has shown a gift for working with his hands. He is currently doing a carpentry apprenticeship with an acquaintance that runs a renovation and design company. He loves the work, loves the people he works with[0], and comes home and wants to build more stuff. He's making pretty decent money as an 18 year old, and is part of something that very much embodied. [0] His crew is run by Swedish woman who was trained as a metal worker, so it isn't just a bunch of dudes, which is also great.
- dgb23 5y ago
  I very much struggled with discipline and motivation at university and eventually dropped out. It was not until I started working when I became a highly motivated self-driven learner. Now I love studying and learning (and teaching), but I do it at my own pace and I choose the things that matter for my work or are just plain fun. Looking back a decade later, it would have been very beneficial if I didn't go to university but instead did an apprenticeship and developed from there, built up confidence and independence incrementally and forming my path iteratively. Most of my friends and family actually went (are going) on such a path, from apprenticeship/trade-school to working and eventually advanced training or university later in life. In Switzerland this model is widely appreciated and seems to be the default (I didn't look at numbers). Newly the (first) apprenticeship is called "Erstausbildung" (initial education), implying that it is the first of many steps in our education, revisited/expanded at later stages in life. In many other (OECD) countries this seems not to be the case and college/university is regarded as the default or thing to aspire to for everyone. I personally don't agree with that notion and have become more and more convinced of a more continuous and flexible education that isn't necessarily tied to academics.
  - sadfev 5y ago
    I think that’s a better approach. I hope some of the implicit stigma around older undergrads goes away too. Not everyone is motivated or gifted enough at 18 to grind through 4 years while maximizing social interactions and general happiness. I really do believe university education is very beneficial to most people but at different stages of their lives and one solution fits all is not good.
LightG 5y ago
"And a narrative that those men aren’t wanted by society any more." Citation needed. (Edit: I assume this is getting downvoted by men with self-esteem issues. There are ways you can work on that. Good luck).
- apples_oranges 5y ago
  I think your assumption is wrong. Your comment simply added no or not enough value.
  - LightG 5y ago
    Thank you for your thoughts. Fascinating. For your delectation and learning: https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=self%20esteem%20training%20for%20adults https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=self%20esteem%20traini...
- postsantum 5y ago
  Didn't downvote, but there are many people annoyed by endless asking for citations in response to an opinion piece
fredgrott 5y ago
It's more accurate to say that Universities and Colleges are extinct so the story should be what is taking its place and what are the consequences... Its just like the Ed loan program.. Many don't realize its a teaching goal tool, those that get that they need to form a business around their brand to pay off the loan win and those that do not lose and society loses. We should not bet on society losing this time around such as the elites did in the US!
Miner49er 5y ago
> A narrative that (white) men are uniformly privileged and life is just easy for them. I doubt this has anything to do with it. What is the argument here? They hear this and believe it so they don't think they need school? I grew up in a white, working class community, and in my experience nobody paid attention to liberals on Twitter calling them privelaged. Certainly not enough to decide not to go to college over it.
- Ensorceled 5y ago
  It's weirder; the claim is that young white men hear that it's easier for young white men so they give up entirely. Like the claim that all those people that joined the extreme right wing groups because the "libs said they were Nazis so why not".
teekert 5y ago
...an entire generation that feels lost, without purpose, and unwanted. I'd argue that it is largely up to the parents to instill a feeling of worth and help kids/young adults find intrinsic motivation, not the educational system.
- stemlord 5y ago
  It isn't necessarily just the educational system that's leaving this impression, it is a culture at large, for example on social media, and in various fields including the arts. Parents can influence all they want but the outside world needs to support these influences to an extent or they fall flat.
  - teekert 5y ago
    Yeah, I suppose that's true, you do need some resilience to peer/societal pressure. I could be a struggle.
- mint2 5y ago
  But what are the parents to do when they weren’t taught to do that by their own parents? There needs to be an intervention to break the cycle.
pelasaco 5y ago
I think that's exactly how racism works right? You segregate people by how they look like and you make them believe that because how they look like and their origins they are less important then the others. Kind of funny how we humans think: "let's correct a mistake repeating it over and over again".
- nemo44x 5y ago
  When one of progressives guiding philosophies is “The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.” then this is exactly the plan. It’s all in their texts and one only has to read them to see plainly the type of policy they work towards.
  - kendisaidit 5y ago
    Why is this guy being downvoted for quoting Ibram X Kendi, author of How to Be an Antiracist?
    - commandlinefan 5y ago
      Inconvenient truth.
  - nomoreplease 5y ago
    Where are these texts? I didn’t know that this is actually written down
    - nemo44x 5y ago
      https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/1118351/how-to-be-an-antiracist/9781847925992.html https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/1118351/how-to-be-an-antirac...
  - harimau777 5y ago
    I don't think that's actually something progressives generally believe. Do you have any evidence?
aklemm 5y ago
Before any of that, I’d blame the disappearance of the sense of service. One’s general mindset should be on what one can contribute, and the rest will follow.
ransom1538 5y ago
I would like to bring up a point often missed with blue collar housing work (plumber, electrician, dry wall, etc). It is EASY to start your own thing. Once you are licensed and bonded you can quickly buy your own truck, hire an apprentice, setup yelp, setup an online receptionist and be overbooked. Right now plumbers are hard to get and electricians are months out. The plumbers I work with cannot keep up with the work and make over $80 per hour (no where florida). If "Bobs orlando plumbing" runs out of work, they just park the truck. There is NO overhead. If you contrast to an attorney or doctor -- those firms/practices are extremely challenging to start and operate on your own. The salaries of your employees are high at best, marketing is extremely expensive, and insurance can wipe out a firm/practice.
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  > It is EASY to start your own thing. Not withstanding restrictive licensing systems that require you to put in X years working crap jobs for crap pay under someone who already has the license to ensure that you've "paid enough dues" you're not gonna go around undercutting everyone once you get your license.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
CountDrewku 5y ago
They need options. I feel our current school system isn't set up for young men at all. A lot would prefer hands on work as opposed to classroom learning. Promotion of trades schools as alternatives that aren't "lesser" would help a lot.
mint2 5y ago
Being a white male, anecdotally there is more peer and cultural pressure to care about sports, cars, tv, eating tons of meat, and drinking then there is to succeed at school. And for a few decades now a major political party has been bolstering anti-science and anti college messages. It is unsurprising less men are finishing college in the face of that culture. While there’s going to be many causes, the aforementioned seem more important than a message of privilege.
rejectedandsad 5y ago
> A narrative that (white) men are uniformly privileged and life is just easy for them. And a narrative that those men aren’t wanted by society any more. As a brown person I think the former is definitely still true. The latter is definitely not true, at least looking at the average white man's number of tinder matches compared to mine.
fennecfoxy 5y ago
I am definitely glad to be gay. I think it allows me to see things from outside the bubble of "get a wife, be a defender, raise your children, stay strong and never cry, man up and if you can't provide, you're useless, you can't cry because men don't cry." that heterosexuality seems to favour (both men and women perpetuate this). Men who fail to provide or "fit in" to their "role" in society become depressed, and then they kill themselves. :/

smitty1e 5y ago

My brother in law is an electrician. I had enough EE in college to change a light switch without burning the house down. However, that book-learnin' fell apart when confronted with troubleshooting a strangely wired room, and I got very polite while asking him over to bail me out. These fellows eschewing the ivory tower, where being of European extraction and bearing a Y-chromosome on the college campus is an indictment, are going to trade schools and will make fat piles of cash repairing plumbing. Hopefully, they are gracious with all the Grievance Studies majors who are standing by to condescend in their direction.

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atoav 5y ago
I am a certified EE and have a MA of fine Arts (film). Living in Europe where I had to pay 350 Euros per semester (which included a public transport ticket for the whole province), I didn't have to make a choice between the two. I did both because I was interested in both. After university I was well equiped to do freelancer work in my field and earned well. I don't think this "you have to be hard or else you won't survive"-mentality in the US is very beneficial to its society as a whole. Ideally you want to live in a society where everybody is well educated, healthy, happy, friendly and so on. Maybe it is a naive idea, but I think this is more achievable if there is collective investment into those goals rather than internal economical warfare where everybody is a army of one, except for the big corporations who will happily milk a atomized, divided population. Yet I am constantly amazed by how much some of you guys endure. I just wish you wouldn't have to.
- ceilingcorner 5y ago
  > "you have to be hard or else you won't survive"-mentality Europeans often have this opinion but I don't think it's an accurate reading of the issue. The issue is not that Americans work too hard, it's that this hard work is no longer actually amounting to anything. In the past, you could pay for college by working summers at the local restaurant. Today the average debt is $30K and you still won't get a decent job. The article (and others) just show that American men are starting to put their efforts into places that do reward them; namely, the trades and entrepreneurship.
  - atoav 5y ago
    > The article (and others) just show that American men are starting to put their efforts into places that do reward them; namely, the trades and entrepreneurship. Good point. I did not intend to argue otherwise. To go into trade is not an irrational reaction on an individual level — quite the opposite in fact. What I did argue however, was that making it hard for people to get a higher education is not a good thing for a society. Not good in the short term, because educated societes will make more informed decisions, and at the same time not a sustainable strategy for any western society that wants to play any role in the next century. Having an educated society should be in the national interest just like having public roads or drinkable water is. > accurate reading of the issue. The issue is not that Americans work too hard, it's that this hard work is no longer actually amounting to anything. That was the American dream. This is a nice model to keep big numbers of people playing the lottery and bear a ton of stress, because they have the hope that one day they might win and then everything will pay off. But even of you are one of the few lucky ones that wins you still live in a society where 90% are struggling and crushed. There may be people that enjoy being on top while everybody else suffers, but I personally would prefer being middle class in a society where nobody is poor over being a billionaire in a society where everybody is crushed. Maybe this is empathy, but maybe it is also just egoistic: I like to walk through my city and not see suffering, I like to walk through my country without having to fear being robbed, shot or angrily screamed at. I simply prefer living in a healthy, happy society where people help each other over living in one where everybody has to kick down to stay on top. Not that that any nation achieved that goal, but there are certainly observable differences in tone between the industrial nations.
WalterBright 5y ago
EE programs tend to focus on electronics, not electrical systems. But learning how house wiring works is a simple book away. But be careful - unlike electronics, house electrics can kill you. On the other hand, electricians have weird gaps in their knowledge. If I ask them to do something slightly out of the ordinary, this becomes apparent. For example, none of them understand inductive coupling, or even know what it is. When I ask them to do certain things to avoid inductive coupling, they give me this indulgent smile, and do what I ask, although it's clear they don't understand why. I eventually wound up doing the low voltage wiring myself, because I simply couldn't explain to them why you don't run low voltage wires through the same holes as the A/C wires. One of them tried to run a 12VDC wire in 25 feet of conduit with a 120VAC wire. They also simply did not understand how generators worked, and botched up the wiring for mine. It's the same with roofers. They have no idea what galvanic corrosion is, and will invariably use the wrong nails for anything metal.
- blueblisters 5y ago
  That's the thing with vocationals skills - they make you really good at understanding how something works or how to fix something without breaking something else, but beyond that range of problems and solutions, you need to talk to an engineer. Not that vocational jobs are not important - clearly they add value and create employment.
  - WalterBright 5y ago
    I'm not so sure they understand how it works, though. BTW, if you ever see an EE with a card that has printed on it: V = I*R I = V/R R = V/I it's a sure sign he's a formula-plugger, and has no idea how it works. He doesn't even understand algebra. https://testguy.net/content/266-Ohm-s-Law-Watt-s-Law-Cheat-Sheet https://testguy.net/content/266-Ohm-s-Law-Watt-s-Law-Cheat-S... A definite no-hire :-/
    - hellbannedguy 5y ago
      There's a book called, Everytjing I should have learned in Engineering School, but didn't. I had no idea there were EE's walking around who were rusty with basic electrical formulas.
xattt 5y ago
The piles of cash come at the expense of physical health. I can’t imagine being a labourer at 55. I’m a registered nurse which is a weird hybrid of university-level knowledge (understanding pharm and patho) but also it is a physical trade (turning patients, providing personal cares, mental resilience). It has roots in being vocational with a push in the last 50 years to provide an academic background to turn it into a profession. Floor nursing is the bread and butter of the profession, but it burns you quick. Older nurses, particularly in medical-surgical nursing, tend to take on less stressful 8 hour day shifts, end up as spinsters, or have a terrible home life that they’ve resigned into accepting. I moved into a desk position in my mid 30s and can’t possibly imagine going back to the physicality of it all.
- symlinkk 5y ago
  I can’t imagine it can be better for you physically or mentally to hunch over a desk for 8 hours a day in dead silence vs being on your feet, walking and talking to people.
  - xattt 5y ago
    There is a trade-off indeed. My overall quality of life improved. I wore a fitness tracker then and now. I averaged about 10 km in a given shift, where as my daily total now is now closer to 5 or 6. However, now I have time and energy at the end of the day to do an actual physical activity instead of coming home like a limp noodle and taking the next day to recover. Mentally, there is comradery that I absolutely miss. This is something really hard to explain unless you’re in it. When things got tough, the dark humour got us through. We took care of each others’ loved ones (at their family’s request). We demanded excellence from each other, and (rightfully) called out unsafe practice and supported staff as needed. However, my home life suffered. It was fine at first as my partner is also a nurse so there was a mutual understanding. However, it started to wear on me when I had kids. I’d come home and my kids would be asleep/at school/daycare, so I’d have missed out on a day’s interaction. I realized that they’re only little once and no job in the world is worth missing out on them.
lordnacho 5y ago
A colleague of mine had a physics degree and decided to become an electrician. Took very little time to learn. That's not to condescend on electricians, they clearly have a useful skill. And being able to certify a house pays a good few hundred pounds a day, nothing to sniff at. But if you're used to looking at physical models, learning a few conventions and adding another model won't be terribly difficult. I think a lot of people are actually better off doing that kind of work. There's a tangible output that is much easier to connect to purposefulness than if your job is mainly in the ideas realm. A cousin of mine that I grew up with is a carpenter and seems to cheerful all the time, now that he knows what his thing is. I grew up with him and it wasn't always so.
hellbannedguy 5y ago
I've was a union electrician for a few years. Get in early. Get in a union. 25-30 years to retirement in most unions. You don't want to be 60, and still in construction. The test is easy, but figure 1000-2000 guys are taking the test too, so you need to get most of the questions right to get in. An oral interview counts for 1/2 the hiring process. Just say you love working with your hands--love unions, but understand the needs of the contractors too. Remember it's construction. You're around guys all day long. It's brainless work, and you will never have to act cheery when the owner's spoiled kid comes to work. I do not recommend non-union construction at all. Then again---hide in school for a long time. I loved college. It was cheaper 25 years ago though, and not that fun, but much better than any job I've had. Your interest will change as you age.
- thehappypm 5y ago
  This sounds like a lot of advice that boomers give, "do exactly what I did".
znpy 5y ago
> These fellows eschewing the ivory tower [...] are going to trade schools and will make fat piles of cash repairing plumbing. I read somewhere that (ironocally) plumbing it the less likely thing to be "automated" via an AI or something.
pessimizer 5y ago
> These fellows eschewing the ivory tower, where being of European extraction and bearing a Y-chromosome on the college campus is an indictment I hate to have to mention this, but not all American men are white.
- inkblotuniverse 5y ago
  What does that have to do with the quoted sentence?
tchaffee 5y ago
> I got very polite while asking him over to bail me out. > all the Grievance Studies majors So you're polite to those you find useful and insulting to people majoring in something you presumably disagree with? And assuming they will all be condescending to a plumber or electrician for some reason? Perhaps you don't have to look quite so far away if you're looking to reduce the amount of condescending happening in the room you're standing in?
michaelcampbell 5y ago
> However, that book-learnin' fell apart when confronted with troubleshooting a strangely wired room, and I got very polite while asking him over to bail me out. This feels very much like the "astronomy/telescope" argument.
baron_harkonnen 5y ago
> all the Grievance Studies major Area, ethnic, cultural, gender, and group studies (I'm assuming "Grievance Studies" falls under this category), at least in the US, have been in steady decline since 2008, and even at their peak only accounted for 0.5% of majors (now just 0.3%). Even if you want to add in humanities in general that has gone from 3% to just above 2% The idea that college campuses are ever more filled with people studying "useless" majors is a fiction. The largest areas of major concentration are business, biology, health professions, and engineering and all of these have been more or less growing for years. There is this pervasive myth that most students in undergrad are having trouble transitioning to industry because they wasted their time studying their non-practical passion, but the data[0] clearly shows that the trends for the last decade have been increasing focus on career oriented practical majors. [0] https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d19/tables/dt19_322.10.asp https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d19/tables/dt19_322.10.a...
- hintymad 5y ago
  I really appreciate this kind of discussion: data driven, narrative free. I'm very sad to see that giving up facts for narratives accelerates the decline of the US.
- staysafeanon 5y ago
  I don't see where in your source the data paints that picture? Social sciences and history is 8%, family and human sciences is another few percent, journalism is also listed out separately, as is liberal arts and humanities... Maybe there are better sources that break things down per major so we can see the growth?
anm89 5y ago
The irony is that this will be viewed as a new form of of privilege. Its schrodingers privilege. the privilege was being so priveleged that you were pushed out of the traditional credentialing system.

happythen 5y ago

No way. Being white is definitely a leg up. Well, at least for me, a white guy, no college degree. Life is much easier. I don't think there is any support missing for us, that actually sounds hilarious. We need to work on lifting others up.

SunlightEdge 5y ago
Yeah. I think its really difficult (impossible?) to know what its like for the other gender/other ethnicities - even if there is more cultural outputs/conversations out there about different groups its still really hard/impossible to know what its like for others. Having said that working class (poor) white males are known to have amongst the worst educational performance in the UK. This is different from employment. If I had my time back I would seriously consider not going to uni/get a masters and just become a plumber/electrician. I reckon I would be as happy/if not happier then doing an office job.
icare_1er 5y ago
Based on the number of "affirmative-action" initiatives that I see all over the US, in many tech-companies (I don't know about other fields), I'd say that being a women, or black, is definitely a huge plus to get your foot through the door, with many recruitment programs blatantly saying they are only for minorities, which sounds to me like pretty much segregation in reverse, but that indeed seems to be the agenda of some leftists.
- circlefavshape 5y ago
  > with many recruitment programs blatantly saying they are only for minorities Really? I understood that it was illegal to discriminate based on gender, race, etc in the US
  - icare_1er 5y ago
    It is widespread in big-tech. This is an-ex Google engineer talking about one he saw and created a video about: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pizXzR7ZQ8Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pizXzR7ZQ8Q

kace91 5y ago

"Narrative" makes it sound like there's nothing behind. The extreme cost of college - and living in general, rents/home ownership, etc - and the decreasing edge it gives to owners of degrees isn't a fabrication by any stretch. It's easier to think people are being misled than to think people are taking different decisions because their reality is actually different.

throwtheworld 5y ago

> A narrative that (white) men are uniformly privileged and life is just easy for them. This is very perspective dependent. I’m a black college student now and every conversation with friends back home includes some mention of dropping out because it’s not for us as well. When you see people with equivalent resumes already coasting by in the job market because they could get their last names and LinkedIn photos past the screening and into an interview it’s hard to believe that’ll change post-graduation. And most of us are already in planning on entrepreneurship because we know we’re not what companies are looking for even with fancy CS degrees. It’s like if I’ll have to sell sneakers to make ends meet after college anyways I might as well drop out and use that money bootstrapping this inventory SaaS. Innovation out of desperation, I guess. It’s no way to live. But I think we’re approaching an inflection point.

spoonjim 5y ago
You must have bad information because FAANG companies compete over hiring black software engineers. They want to get their numbers up and there aren’t many to hire.
- tchaffee 5y ago
  How many FAANG companies are there? I guess five from the name. Does every black applicant with a CS degree get a job if they apply? It's a free pass? Your sample size of five elite companies can't be taken as a serious attempt to describe the actual experience of black CS grads applying for jobs.
  - throwaway556677 5y ago
    A charitable (and, I think, reasonable) reading would be that the poster used FAANG as a representation of the overall trend in tech. FAANG are what the rest of the industry aspires to be, after all.
    - tchaffee 5y ago
      How many CS jobs are even in the "the industry" though? Home Depot, Walmart, and Nestle are examples of massive companies that do not aspire to be Facebook or anything like it, but who hire lots of software engineers. Most companies are not tech companies, although a handful of tech giants have done very well.

zapnuk 5y ago

I wonder how woman feel reading such comments. Men dominated better paying jobs and positions of power since forever. It took 50+ years between equal rights before the law to equal opportunities in the labour market and education. Men still have every opportunity a woman has. In addition, they are still recognized more for leading positions. They also dominate about every trade related job. Yet, they are 'left without a purpose', when all they need it to do is do whatever they want.

WalterBright 5y ago
My grandmother worked as a mechanic for the phone company in the nine-teens. Her sister did whatever she wanted, she started and ran her own business.
- umanwizard 5y ago
  What are the “nine-teens”?
  - selimthegrim 5y ago
    Given he went to Caltech in the 80s, probably the 1910s
  - WalterBright 5y ago
    1910-1920
notanzaiiswear 5y ago
Women didn't and don't need well paying jobs to start a family. What "equal right" do you mean, that "equaled opportunities in the labor market and education"? Also you seem to miss on the fact that men get worse grades in school (which some say is because of discrimination), which makes it harder for them to enter university.
- s5300 5y ago
  Why is it that you default to the idea that women want to start a family? It's a big ass cool world we have going on, and starting a family effectively ties you down from being able to explore it. Good grief.

tchaffee 5y ago

Is it a "narrative" that college isn't it worth it anymore or is that largely based in fact in the US? Especially when it comes to specific degrees that don't have a demand in the workplace. The cost of higher education in the US has financially crippled millions. And trade jobs pay well for far less education costs. Doing a cost / benefit analysis would seem the wisest choice. The bigger problem to me is that with such a high cost for university education, our future electricians won't have one. Whereas in Europe they very possibly might. I know which society I prefer to live in and it's not the one where people are less educated. What narrative about uniform privilege? Can you give some sources? I've also never heard privilege explained as making life "just easy". I've heard just for example that life can still be hard but your skin color is not one of the things making your life hard. I'd be interested in reading these narratives that are so different from the narratives I've read about privilege.

bluecalm 5y ago
I don't know. I think living in a society where most people don't do any meaningful work and are exposed to just theoretical academic style education till they are 24-25 isn't good either. I don't think it's a good use of anyone's time to sit in a chair and look at the whiteboard for 15-16 best years of your life.
Zababa 5y ago
> Is it a "narrative" that college isn't it worth it anymore or is that largely based in fact in the US? It is. In France college is 400€ a year.

mercy_dude 5y ago

> A narrative that college isn’t worth it anymore Is it entirely false though? What benefit does a college degree in sociology does to a person (and even broader society) when the person will likely be in over 100k+ debt?

ajuc 5y ago
The right question is - why does it have to cost so much when it's possible to teach the same exact thing for ~3k USD in eastern Europe :) And then these developers come to USA or western Europe and it doesn't seem that they are performing badly :)

gumby 5y ago

> A lot of this is driven by narratives… You give three examples but only tie the last to the admissions issue. Could you expand on the others and how they might be relevant to this issue?

bmj 5y ago

I’m not convinced that all those men need to go to college, but they clearly need something. This. We are seeing the results of what was reported in the book Boys Adrift. My older son just graduated high school. He has no interest in college at the moment, and has shown a gift for working with his hands. He is currently doing a carpentry apprenticeship with an acquaintance that runs a renovation and design company. He loves the work, loves the people he works with[0], and comes home and wants to build more stuff. He's making pretty decent money as an 18 year old, and is part of something that very much embodied. [0] His crew is run by Swedish woman who was trained as a metal worker, so it isn't just a bunch of dudes, which is also great.

dgb23 5y ago
I very much struggled with discipline and motivation at university and eventually dropped out. It was not until I started working when I became a highly motivated self-driven learner. Now I love studying and learning (and teaching), but I do it at my own pace and I choose the things that matter for my work or are just plain fun. Looking back a decade later, it would have been very beneficial if I didn't go to university but instead did an apprenticeship and developed from there, built up confidence and independence incrementally and forming my path iteratively. Most of my friends and family actually went (are going) on such a path, from apprenticeship/trade-school to working and eventually advanced training or university later in life. In Switzerland this model is widely appreciated and seems to be the default (I didn't look at numbers). Newly the (first) apprenticeship is called "Erstausbildung" (initial education), implying that it is the first of many steps in our education, revisited/expanded at later stages in life. In many other (OECD) countries this seems not to be the case and college/university is regarded as the default or thing to aspire to for everyone. I personally don't agree with that notion and have become more and more convinced of a more continuous and flexible education that isn't necessarily tied to academics.
- sadfev 5y ago
  I think that’s a better approach. I hope some of the implicit stigma around older undergrads goes away too. Not everyone is motivated or gifted enough at 18 to grind through 4 years while maximizing social interactions and general happiness. I really do believe university education is very beneficial to most people but at different stages of their lives and one solution fits all is not good.

LightG 5y ago

"And a narrative that those men aren’t wanted by society any more." Citation needed. (Edit: I assume this is getting downvoted by men with self-esteem issues. There are ways you can work on that. Good luck).

apples_oranges 5y ago
I think your assumption is wrong. Your comment simply added no or not enough value.
- LightG 5y ago
  Thank you for your thoughts. Fascinating. For your delectation and learning: https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=self%20esteem%20training%20for%20adults https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=self%20esteem%20traini...
postsantum 5y ago
Didn't downvote, but there are many people annoyed by endless asking for citations in response to an opinion piece

fredgrott 5y ago

It's more accurate to say that Universities and Colleges are extinct so the story should be what is taking its place and what are the consequences... Its just like the Ed loan program.. Many don't realize its a teaching goal tool, those that get that they need to form a business around their brand to pay off the loan win and those that do not lose and society loses. We should not bet on society losing this time around such as the elites did in the US!

Miner49er 5y ago

> A narrative that (white) men are uniformly privileged and life is just easy for them. I doubt this has anything to do with it. What is the argument here? They hear this and believe it so they don't think they need school? I grew up in a white, working class community, and in my experience nobody paid attention to liberals on Twitter calling them privelaged. Certainly not enough to decide not to go to college over it.

Ensorceled 5y ago
It's weirder; the claim is that young white men hear that it's easier for young white men so they give up entirely. Like the claim that all those people that joined the extreme right wing groups because the "libs said they were Nazis so why not".

teekert 5y ago

...an entire generation that feels lost, without purpose, and unwanted. I'd argue that it is largely up to the parents to instill a feeling of worth and help kids/young adults find intrinsic motivation, not the educational system.

stemlord 5y ago
It isn't necessarily just the educational system that's leaving this impression, it is a culture at large, for example on social media, and in various fields including the arts. Parents can influence all they want but the outside world needs to support these influences to an extent or they fall flat.
- teekert 5y ago
  Yeah, I suppose that's true, you do need some resilience to peer/societal pressure. I could be a struggle.
mint2 5y ago
But what are the parents to do when they weren’t taught to do that by their own parents? There needs to be an intervention to break the cycle.

pelasaco 5y ago

I think that's exactly how racism works right? You segregate people by how they look like and you make them believe that because how they look like and their origins they are less important then the others. Kind of funny how we humans think: "let's correct a mistake repeating it over and over again".

nemo44x 5y ago
When one of progressives guiding philosophies is “The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.” then this is exactly the plan. It’s all in their texts and one only has to read them to see plainly the type of policy they work towards.
- kendisaidit 5y ago
  Why is this guy being downvoted for quoting Ibram X Kendi, author of How to Be an Antiracist?
  - commandlinefan 5y ago
    Inconvenient truth.
- nomoreplease 5y ago
  Where are these texts? I didn’t know that this is actually written down
  - nemo44x 5y ago
    https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/1118351/how-to-be-an-antiracist/9781847925992.html https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/1118351/how-to-be-an-antirac...
- harimau777 5y ago
  I don't think that's actually something progressives generally believe. Do you have any evidence?

aklemm 5y ago

Before any of that, I’d blame the disappearance of the sense of service. One’s general mindset should be on what one can contribute, and the rest will follow.

ransom1538 5y ago

I would like to bring up a point often missed with blue collar housing work (plumber, electrician, dry wall, etc). It is EASY to start your own thing. Once you are licensed and bonded you can quickly buy your own truck, hire an apprentice, setup yelp, setup an online receptionist and be overbooked. Right now plumbers are hard to get and electricians are months out. The plumbers I work with cannot keep up with the work and make over $80 per hour (no where florida). If "Bobs orlando plumbing" runs out of work, they just park the truck. There is NO overhead. If you contrast to an attorney or doctor -- those firms/practices are extremely challenging to start and operate on your own. The salaries of your employees are high at best, marketing is extremely expensive, and insurance can wipe out a firm/practice.

throwaway0a5e 5y ago
> It is EASY to start your own thing. Not withstanding restrictive licensing systems that require you to put in X years working crap jobs for crap pay under someone who already has the license to ensure that you've "paid enough dues" you're not gonna go around undercutting everyone once you get your license.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

CountDrewku 5y ago

They need options. I feel our current school system isn't set up for young men at all. A lot would prefer hands on work as opposed to classroom learning. Promotion of trades schools as alternatives that aren't "lesser" would help a lot.

mint2 5y ago

Being a white male, anecdotally there is more peer and cultural pressure to care about sports, cars, tv, eating tons of meat, and drinking then there is to succeed at school. And for a few decades now a major political party has been bolstering anti-science and anti college messages. It is unsurprising less men are finishing college in the face of that culture. While there’s going to be many causes, the aforementioned seem more important than a message of privilege.

rejectedandsad 5y ago

> A narrative that (white) men are uniformly privileged and life is just easy for them. And a narrative that those men aren’t wanted by society any more. As a brown person I think the former is definitely still true. The latter is definitely not true, at least looking at the average white man's number of tinder matches compared to mine.

fennecfoxy 5y ago

I am definitely glad to be gay. I think it allows me to see things from outside the bubble of "get a wife, be a defender, raise your children, stay strong and never cry, man up and if you can't provide, you're useless, you can't cry because men don't cry." that heterosexuality seems to favour (both men and women perpetuate this). Men who fail to provide or "fit in" to their "role" in society become depressed, and then they kill themselves. :/