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40% of high school students don't go to college (of any type). Of those, only a tiny portion are focused on elite universities. Many are just going to Long Beac

40% of high school students don't go to college (of any type). Of those, only a tiny portion are focused on elite universities. Many are just going to Long Beach State, University of Redlands and other 4 year schools that you've never heard of. They have lax admissions. Among adult Americans, only a third have bachelors degrees. Certainly the high pressure scholastic environment of certain high schools is not common.

thatfrenchguy 4y ago
You’re going to get a bias in here because a lot of folks are STEM focused / high achieving high anxiety types :)
- mouse_ 4y ago
  I guarantee most of these "high achieving high anxiety types" live with significantly less anxiety than customer service reps/bag handlers/food service workers.
  - tdesilva 4y ago
    Why do you think that?
    - rfrey 4y ago
      Because most of us can afford food for our families, even in the last week of the month.
      - WarOnPrivacy 4y ago
        Yeah. I did a decade where that wasn't the case. Poverty is longer and harder in southern states.
    - mrguyorama 4y ago
      None of them make six figures while browsing HN
      - ipaddr 4y ago
        Those browsing HN still have sprint deadlines. Browsing HN creates more stress. Or keep online 24 hours or spend the night mentally trying to solve an abstract issue. At 5pm they are done. Different stresses / pressures. How many are learning a new language in their freetime just to keep employed. How many people create side projects to land employment at a coffee shop? To compare employment how many coffee shops test if an employee can make a cup during the interview? How many people are excluded from an interview because they only made starbucks coffee at a previous position.. no way they can figure out McDonalds coffee machines.. How many are asked to go through a take home coffee making task? None..
        panzagl 4y ago
        How many developers clock out then go to the second job they need to make rent?
        ipaddr 4y ago
        Many developers work two jobs. Many jobs prevent employees from doing this. Many employees work on free open source. Many companies try to prevent or control this. Some do it for rent, child payments, mortgage or car payments. I made minimum wage at my first job. Didn't cross the poverty line until my 3rd or 4th job years later. Things might be different now, I started after the .com crash.
  - jahsome 4y ago
    Do you honestly see value in comparing scars? Does that matter in any meaningful way? The worst stress of someone's life is the worst stress of their life. It's unproductive and petty to bicker about who has it worse. If life is stressful for anyone, regardless of status, title, age, etc. there's a good chance it's undeserved. The takeaway is to treat people better, not dismiss their stressors as less significant.
    - mouse_ 4y ago
      Do you honestly not see how your own narrative could be seen as dismissive to the vast majority of the world? And yes, I do see value in comparing scars, as do most people who do not reside in the high tower. I understand the social rift between you and I is comparable to living on a different planet, and I forgive you for not getting that, but others may not. Please just understand that our current situation is particularly perilous and likely will not last long. I hope you are prepared and able to cope with greater stressors.
      - antihipocrat 4y ago
        The physical experience and effects of enduring a stressful environment is the same for everyone regardless of who they are, where they're from, or what they are doing. An equivalent high stress environment can occur whether working in an executive office, working in a call center or selling bracelets on the street. Learning to overcome high stress experiences is a transferrable skill regardless of the context in which it was learned.
        lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 4y ago
        > An equivalent high stress environment can occur whether working in an executive office, working in a call center or selling bracelets on the street. This doesn't necessarily mean an equivalent high-stress life. The call center employee has fewer or worse options for dealing with stressors outside their job which they share with the executive. > I need to eat. > I need to travel. > I need somewhere to live. By and large these things cost money and the person who doesn't have to worry about having enough money for such things is going to have less stress in their life.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - tanseydavid 4y ago
    You are talking in terms of externalities. Anxiety is an internal response that can be expected to be different for different individuals under the same circumstances. Trying to judge whether or not another individual "ought to" experience anxiety in a given situation is a matter of opinion and it has no bearing on what the other person is experiencing.
  - matwood 4y ago
    I've done waiting/service type jobs. For me, the stress during the work period was way higher than anything in my software/business jobs. But, every night when I got off work, the stress was immediately gone. That shift was over, and the tomorrow really was new day. With my office jobs the max stress is lower, but it also never really goes away.
    - officeplant 4y ago
      This is it. I never took home stress from any previous job until I got an office job. (AutoCAD Draftsman for Fire/Gas Industrial systems). My life as a radioshack wage slave began and ended when I clocked in and out. If something was fucked when we left the previous night that was tomorrows problem. It's retail, no one is being paid enough to truly care. Doing contract work for engineers who are willfully ignorant of fire code causes me lasting stress in my soul. Either way the biggest stress is still financial and I'll stop stressing about that when I'm dead.
    - datavirtue 4y ago
      I ran entire kitchens of high volume restaurants...sometimes single handedly. I loved it. I wasn't happy unless I was getting crushed. Some of my best memories are from working mothersday and getting absolutely blitzed. Compared to being a developer, I wish every god damned day I could be back in a kitchen. But the pay is absolute shite.
  - derefr 4y ago
    Taboo the word "anxiety" here — you're using it to mean "environmental stressors" while the GP is using it to mean "a psychological trait of not dealing well with such stressors, due to a higher baseline feeling of stress, and/or a magnified experience of stressors." Compare/contrast: "living in exurban Detroit is depressing" (= has many environmental depressors) vs "poets are usually depressives" (= depressive disorders being common among people who choose to become poets.) We use different words (most of the time) for these two things when speaking of depression, but often aren't so careful with anxiety.
  - api 4y ago
    Nurses. Lots of people around here would be in tears after attempting that job for a day.
  - atlgator 4y ago
    As someone who got started as a bag handler at Winn Dixie, I can tell you I'm a lot more stressed out now managing a career than I ever was working a "job."
    - DiggyJohnson 4y ago
      Winn Dixie cashier here - my first job. I’ve never counted the clock so hard, but I’m pretty sure I forgot the content of my shift the moment I walked out.
      - atlgator 4y ago
        Ditto. When I left work, I really left work. Didn't think about it at all. Even the 15 minute breaks were enjoyable. I'd buy a package of Little Debbie pinwheels and flip through the damaged magazines in the breakroom. Didn't own a phone then.
  - lubesGordi 4y ago
    As this sort of argument always boils down to privilege, I'll throw my two cents in and say probably the biggest privilege (for a regular ass middle class person) is having a parent who knows math.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- carabiner 4y ago
  Yeah, exactly. There are tons of schools outside of this that still shape kids into productive members of society, even if non-elite. Places like University of New Haven (acceptance rate 94%, founded 1920), Central Washington University (88%, 1891), Western Washington University (96%, 1886), Stetson University in Florida... The list goes on. The vast of US college students attend these decent and non-selective schools.
  - com2kid 4y ago
    When I went to Western in early 00s, the CS department's theory seemed to be to allow anyone to attempt to join, and then just ruthlessly fail people in the first year. Between Ada, Scheme, C, and C++, class sizes shrunk fast. IMHO this is more fair than making the department hard to get into. Let everyone have a go at it.
    - intelVISA 4y ago
      > Between Ada, Scheme, C, and C++, class sizes shrunk fast. Sounds legitimately fun. I wish more CS depts kept a tasteful blend of Haskell/C/Lisp instead of forcefeeding you a vile mix of "using std; C++03" and overly-OOP Java.
      - dcow 4y ago
        It is! We did Scheme (the media scheme distribution), C, Java, Python and then implemented Scheme in Scheme. The theory was that students need to learn the science of algorithmic thinking before worrying about dirty machine representation and limited resource engineering problems. The downside was listening to the incessant complaints from the other sciences students "I just want to take an intro CS class that can teach me what I need to know to succeed at being a script kiddy". Well sorry, our department teaches computer science, not how to script R and how to read DNA sequencer strings in Python.
      - com2kid 4y ago
        It was. After that series of courses most classes had students complete assignments in any language of their choosing, with the exception of obvious ones like the Java OO class or the C based networking class which was a direct successor to the initial C based class on *nix programming. Related: Implementing networking stuff using raw sockets is fun! I ended up with C, Ada, C++, Scheme, Java, C#, and PHP on my resume by the time I graduated. Started my career on a compiler team! (see https://meanderingthoughts.hashnode.dev/how-microsoft-tested-compilers-circa-2006 https://meanderingthoughts.hashnode.dev/how-microsoft-tested... for more info on my first job out of college!)
- fsckboy 4y ago
  > You’re going to get a bias in here because a lot of folks are STEM focused / high achieving high anxiety types :) yeah, but you'd expect STEM types to know how to analyze data and realize they aren't the majority and that these studies are not representative of them. I am disappoint.
  - ido 4y ago
    This is very a common & a very hard to completely avoid bias your entire life. I had tenured (internationally renowned) math professors at university that would sometimes intuitively react like that to stuff in everyday life. Cut people some slack.
    - fsckboy 4y ago
      > Cut people some slack. yes, I agree, that's what I was advocating: HNers with a personal anecdotal axe to grind frequently throw away the value of good posts because they have just have to grind their axe axe again. Whether social media is harming children's development is an interesting and important question and of a scientific nature, so people here should cut the researchers some slack and at least read the evidence at face value
nluken 4y ago
A good point that exposes some major bias behind my anecdote. With that said, if these expectations start at elite schools and slowly trickle down, would that not cause a rise in the aggregate across all teenagers over time?
- imbnwa 4y ago
  > and slowly trickle down Seems like a strong assumption that it necessarily does splash damage beyond a certain cohort. I went to a public HS of 4K in the 00s only AP Juniors/Seniors were concerned with this kind of thing and AP kids were only friends with other AP kids (for obvious reasons); I'd doubt that've changed by 2012.
  - asdffdsa 4y ago
    I think this is mistaken; there was a lot of pressure in the 10s for AP classes
    - Matticus_Rex 4y ago
      At your school, sure. Not at the one I taught at in the 10s. And from knowing other teachers then, I'd guess the pressure was high at only one, maybe two, of the six high schools in the area.
  - Khelavaster 4y ago
    Many badly-envisioned schools restrict access to AP classes or even AP tests, instead of letting kids follow their passions and meeting demand.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - imbnwa 4y ago
      Well that's not surprising, urban public schools, at least in the major American city I'm from, are about figuring out who's a good pencil-pusher as early as possible then segregating them from the rest of the riff-raff until they graduate HS. Most of the cohort I'm talking about likely got invited to a 'gifted' elementary school somewhere around 5th or 6th grade or a 7th/8th grade program attached to one of the top HSs. I only know this cohort well enough because I was on the debate team which most've them used as an extra-curricular for their college application CV but weren't serious about winning.
magicalist 4y ago
> 40% of high school students don't go to college (of any type). > Among adult Americans, only a third have bachelors degrees So clearly things have been changing in recent decades. I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss this as a factor.
- LarryMullins 4y ago
  Going to college is not the same as graduating with a degree. A ton of people go to college for a time and leave with little more than a mountain of debt. Also, a bachelors degree is not even the least degree you can get from a university.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - magicalist 4y ago
    Fair point, but that's not an argument that things aren't changing, just that they might not be. From a quick search: Between 2011 and 2021, the percentage of people age 25 and older who had completed a bachelor's degree or higher increased by 7.5 percentage points from 30.4% to 37.9%[1]. It would be helpful to get an attainment by age by year breakdown. And this still doesn't address the OP's hypothesis that part of the increase in mental health issues is due to increasing admissions pressure over the years, which many people have brought up anecdotally. Whether or not the majority of high schoolers experience that pressure doesn't imply that it still couldn't be part of the problem (which also, incidentally, isn't experienced by a majority of high schoolers). [1] https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2022/educational-attainment.html https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2022/educatio...
    - datavirtue 4y ago
      That was because of the great recession. Those numbers are petering out and will soon drop off a cliff. There is a bitch slap of boomers and beleaguered birth rate around the corner. The meager birth rate and dying boomers are real world paychecks and tax revenue drying up. Society is going to change drastically, and it will seem all at once. All the corps are going to have to pull back when those boomers stop spending and there aren't enough feeders to replace them.
sizzle 4y ago
Most Cal States fit this criteria, but a lot end up at top companies. It’s really all on the student and going to get advanced degrees helps.
bachmeier 4y ago
Hate to be that guy[1], but this does not refute the comment you're replying to. 1. There may be more than one important explanation. 2. Your data doesn't provide any information relevant to the evaluation of the hypothesis. 3. Many of the students at non-elite universities, however you define that term, are the ones that were not successful in their quest to go to an elite university. That's why the acceptance rate is so low. Those students would be the most likely to be affected by changes in the competitiveness of college admissions in the wake of the Great Recession, not the ones that were successful. 4. "Certainly the high pressure scholastic environment of certain high schools is not common." This is conjecture. It does not seem plausible that it is "not common". [1] Not really, but I'm supposed to say that.
eikenberry 4y ago
You forget the cost of "just" those state universities still requires many students to get scholarships to afford. So the pressure is not just about getting into a good university, for many it is being able to go at all.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
loeg 4y ago
> Among adult Americans, only a third have bachelors degrees Sure, but this is very skewed by older Americans having low rates of degrees. A lot more than 33% of current American 24 year-olds have Bachelors degrees. And that more accurately reflects the expectations on teenagers than low rates of degrees among Boomers.
- MisterPea 4y ago
  For 4-year college, the enrollment number is 31% for 2020. Total enrollment including 2-year is 40%. The total number of actual graduates is probably slightly less than this. https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cpb/college-enrollment-rate https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cpb/college-enrol...
- hector_vasquez 4y ago
  In the U.S., around 86% of kids graduate high school[1], around 63% of high school graduates go to 4-year colleges[2], and around 64% of them graduate within 6 years[3]. By that logic around 35% of 24-year-old Americans have bachelor degrees. More than a third, but not by much. [1] https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/coi/high-school-graduation-rates https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/coi/high-school-g... [2] https://educationdata.org/college-enrollment-statistics https://educationdata.org/college-enrollment-statistics [3] https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=40 https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=40
  - loeg 4y ago
    You don't have to reverse engineer it from first principles; the rate is rising over time, lead by under 29s (i.e., current youth): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Educational_Attainment_in_the_United_States_2009.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Educational_Attainment_in...
marmetio 4y ago
You can probably generalize and say that most teens stress about competing or despair about their prospects. I'd nitpick your use of stats, but I don't want to miss the forest for the trees.
harimau777 4y ago
Even if someone isn't going to an elite university, they may need to compete for scholarships, admission to selective programs (e.g. nursing), etc. It is also possible that some people competed for selective programs but failed to get in. Finally, it's possible that even people who didn't realistically need or want to get into a selective program still feel a social expectation that they keep up with those who do.
nebula8804 4y ago
Where did this 40% come from and is it lumping in all generations or just Gen-Z? I found this source that may or many not be authoritative that says 57% of Gen-Z is attending college, furthermore I have heard from the grapevine that Gen Z has been pushed more into STEM than any other generation. [1]:https://timely.md/blog/generation-z-college-students/#:~:text=Generation%20Z%20students%20are%20on,Gen%20Xers%20at%20similar%20ages https://timely.md/blog/generation-z-college-students/#:~:tex.... [2]:https://thejournal.com/articles/2022/06/21/stem-fields-are-top-choice-for-students-according-to-new-nshss-survey.aspx https://thejournal.com/articles/2022/06/21/stem-fields-are-t... Personally as a developer that is overseeing hiring, I see more and more Gen-Z people coming into the pipeline in greater numbers. Looking at my alma mater(public state level engineering college) the CS dept is exploding. When I attended in 06, it was more of a snoozefest. But this is one datapoint and probably biased. It just seems like every Gen-Z I encounter(im a millenial) seems very pragmatic and cynical in their choices and that may be leading to more practical career choices like STEM.
TuringNYC 4y ago
Difference groups in the US face different pressures. Few people have it easy. I think it would be difficult to come to one answers. Some thoughts: GROUP A - growing population, roughly same number of "top" universities, resulting in ridiculous competition and pressure to succeed. Getting into Harvard 2012 <> Getting into Harvard 1972. GROUP B - working class. super hard. income barely grows but rents and costs grow faster. You're squeezed between two walls and it gets tighter each year. You work more only to stay afloat. Eventually you can only work 24hrs a day. Feels like my parents' life in 1980. GROUP C - already doing well because dad is a CEO. But because of income earning potential inequality, the top 0.01% makes 20x as much as 0.1%, hence brutal pressure to make it into upper-upper-echelon. Cry me a river, i get it. GROUP D - Immigrant. immigration is harder. lines are longer. there is nationalism and racism. You work hard, but feel trapped by the system, even if you're doing OK income-wise. GROUP E...F...G...
fumar 4y ago
This is accurate. I barely passed high school with heavy help from the counseling team. Then I went to a community college for a few years with low stress and learned how to study before transferring to a liberal arts college. I count myself lucky that I ended up in tech with an average career given my lack of guidance and motivation in my younger years. I wasn't anxious until more recently when I started building a house.
woodruffw 4y ago
You’re right, although I’ll point out that this doesn’t directly contradict what the GP said: it’s possible to both stress over your future and go to a less prominent school (or no school at all).
brailsafe 4y ago
> Among adult Americans, only a third have bachelors degrees. I don't really see how this services the argument very well. Adult Americans seems like a set of people that wouldn't be relevant for measuring anything.
gwbas1c 4y ago
I don't know where you got those numbers. For the past 20ish years or so, the rallying cry in American politics is that everyone needs to go to college in order to have a job. It's only recent that the left is pushing for jobs that don't require college degrees.
- derangedHorse 4y ago
  It’s closer to 40% now but it’s still not close to a majority. https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2022/educational-attainment.html https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2022/educatio... I also haven’t heard of a change in the narrative where jobs that don’t require degrees are pushed by the left. If anything I see people calling for higher washes for low end jobs but that’s a separate issue entirely.
  - gwbas1c 4y ago
    Biden was promoting them in his state of the Union on Tuesday

thatfrenchguy 4y ago

You’re going to get a bias in here because a lot of folks are STEM focused / high achieving high anxiety types :)

mouse_ 4y ago
I guarantee most of these "high achieving high anxiety types" live with significantly less anxiety than customer service reps/bag handlers/food service workers.
- tdesilva 4y ago
  Why do you think that?
  - rfrey 4y ago
    Because most of us can afford food for our families, even in the last week of the month.
    - WarOnPrivacy 4y ago
      Yeah. I did a decade where that wasn't the case. Poverty is longer and harder in southern states.
  - mrguyorama 4y ago
    None of them make six figures while browsing HN
    - ipaddr 4y ago
      Those browsing HN still have sprint deadlines. Browsing HN creates more stress. Or keep online 24 hours or spend the night mentally trying to solve an abstract issue. At 5pm they are done. Different stresses / pressures. How many are learning a new language in their freetime just to keep employed. How many people create side projects to land employment at a coffee shop? To compare employment how many coffee shops test if an employee can make a cup during the interview? How many people are excluded from an interview because they only made starbucks coffee at a previous position.. no way they can figure out McDonalds coffee machines.. How many are asked to go through a take home coffee making task? None..
      - panzagl 4y ago
        How many developers clock out then go to the second job they need to make rent?
        ipaddr 4y ago
        Many developers work two jobs. Many jobs prevent employees from doing this. Many employees work on free open source. Many companies try to prevent or control this. Some do it for rent, child payments, mortgage or car payments. I made minimum wage at my first job. Didn't cross the poverty line until my 3rd or 4th job years later. Things might be different now, I started after the .com crash.
- jahsome 4y ago
  Do you honestly see value in comparing scars? Does that matter in any meaningful way? The worst stress of someone's life is the worst stress of their life. It's unproductive and petty to bicker about who has it worse. If life is stressful for anyone, regardless of status, title, age, etc. there's a good chance it's undeserved. The takeaway is to treat people better, not dismiss their stressors as less significant.
  - mouse_ 4y ago
    Do you honestly not see how your own narrative could be seen as dismissive to the vast majority of the world? And yes, I do see value in comparing scars, as do most people who do not reside in the high tower. I understand the social rift between you and I is comparable to living on a different planet, and I forgive you for not getting that, but others may not. Please just understand that our current situation is particularly perilous and likely will not last long. I hope you are prepared and able to cope with greater stressors.
    - antihipocrat 4y ago
      The physical experience and effects of enduring a stressful environment is the same for everyone regardless of who they are, where they're from, or what they are doing. An equivalent high stress environment can occur whether working in an executive office, working in a call center or selling bracelets on the street. Learning to overcome high stress experiences is a transferrable skill regardless of the context in which it was learned.
      - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 4y ago
        > An equivalent high stress environment can occur whether working in an executive office, working in a call center or selling bracelets on the street. This doesn't necessarily mean an equivalent high-stress life. The call center employee has fewer or worse options for dealing with stressors outside their job which they share with the executive. > I need to eat. > I need to travel. > I need somewhere to live. By and large these things cost money and the person who doesn't have to worry about having enough money for such things is going to have less stress in their life.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- tanseydavid 4y ago
  You are talking in terms of externalities. Anxiety is an internal response that can be expected to be different for different individuals under the same circumstances. Trying to judge whether or not another individual "ought to" experience anxiety in a given situation is a matter of opinion and it has no bearing on what the other person is experiencing.
- matwood 4y ago
  I've done waiting/service type jobs. For me, the stress during the work period was way higher than anything in my software/business jobs. But, every night when I got off work, the stress was immediately gone. That shift was over, and the tomorrow really was new day. With my office jobs the max stress is lower, but it also never really goes away.
  - officeplant 4y ago
    This is it. I never took home stress from any previous job until I got an office job. (AutoCAD Draftsman for Fire/Gas Industrial systems). My life as a radioshack wage slave began and ended when I clocked in and out. If something was fucked when we left the previous night that was tomorrows problem. It's retail, no one is being paid enough to truly care. Doing contract work for engineers who are willfully ignorant of fire code causes me lasting stress in my soul. Either way the biggest stress is still financial and I'll stop stressing about that when I'm dead.
  - datavirtue 4y ago
    I ran entire kitchens of high volume restaurants...sometimes single handedly. I loved it. I wasn't happy unless I was getting crushed. Some of my best memories are from working mothersday and getting absolutely blitzed. Compared to being a developer, I wish every god damned day I could be back in a kitchen. But the pay is absolute shite.
- derefr 4y ago
  Taboo the word "anxiety" here — you're using it to mean "environmental stressors" while the GP is using it to mean "a psychological trait of not dealing well with such stressors, due to a higher baseline feeling of stress, and/or a magnified experience of stressors." Compare/contrast: "living in exurban Detroit is depressing" (= has many environmental depressors) vs "poets are usually depressives" (= depressive disorders being common among people who choose to become poets.) We use different words (most of the time) for these two things when speaking of depression, but often aren't so careful with anxiety.
- api 4y ago
  Nurses. Lots of people around here would be in tears after attempting that job for a day.
- atlgator 4y ago
  As someone who got started as a bag handler at Winn Dixie, I can tell you I'm a lot more stressed out now managing a career than I ever was working a "job."
  - DiggyJohnson 4y ago
    Winn Dixie cashier here - my first job. I’ve never counted the clock so hard, but I’m pretty sure I forgot the content of my shift the moment I walked out.
    - atlgator 4y ago
      Ditto. When I left work, I really left work. Didn't think about it at all. Even the 15 minute breaks were enjoyable. I'd buy a package of Little Debbie pinwheels and flip through the damaged magazines in the breakroom. Didn't own a phone then.
- lubesGordi 4y ago
  As this sort of argument always boils down to privilege, I'll throw my two cents in and say probably the biggest privilege (for a regular ass middle class person) is having a parent who knows math.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
carabiner 4y ago
Yeah, exactly. There are tons of schools outside of this that still shape kids into productive members of society, even if non-elite. Places like University of New Haven (acceptance rate 94%, founded 1920), Central Washington University (88%, 1891), Western Washington University (96%, 1886), Stetson University in Florida... The list goes on. The vast of US college students attend these decent and non-selective schools.
- com2kid 4y ago
  When I went to Western in early 00s, the CS department's theory seemed to be to allow anyone to attempt to join, and then just ruthlessly fail people in the first year. Between Ada, Scheme, C, and C++, class sizes shrunk fast. IMHO this is more fair than making the department hard to get into. Let everyone have a go at it.
  - intelVISA 4y ago
    > Between Ada, Scheme, C, and C++, class sizes shrunk fast. Sounds legitimately fun. I wish more CS depts kept a tasteful blend of Haskell/C/Lisp instead of forcefeeding you a vile mix of "using std; C++03" and overly-OOP Java.
    - dcow 4y ago
      It is! We did Scheme (the media scheme distribution), C, Java, Python and then implemented Scheme in Scheme. The theory was that students need to learn the science of algorithmic thinking before worrying about dirty machine representation and limited resource engineering problems. The downside was listening to the incessant complaints from the other sciences students "I just want to take an intro CS class that can teach me what I need to know to succeed at being a script kiddy". Well sorry, our department teaches computer science, not how to script R and how to read DNA sequencer strings in Python.
    - com2kid 4y ago
      It was. After that series of courses most classes had students complete assignments in any language of their choosing, with the exception of obvious ones like the Java OO class or the C based networking class which was a direct successor to the initial C based class on *nix programming. Related: Implementing networking stuff using raw sockets is fun! I ended up with C, Ada, C++, Scheme, Java, C#, and PHP on my resume by the time I graduated. Started my career on a compiler team! (see https://meanderingthoughts.hashnode.dev/how-microsoft-tested-compilers-circa-2006 https://meanderingthoughts.hashnode.dev/how-microsoft-tested... for more info on my first job out of college!)
fsckboy 4y ago
> You’re going to get a bias in here because a lot of folks are STEM focused / high achieving high anxiety types :) yeah, but you'd expect STEM types to know how to analyze data and realize they aren't the majority and that these studies are not representative of them. I am disappoint.
- ido 4y ago
  This is very a common & a very hard to completely avoid bias your entire life. I had tenured (internationally renowned) math professors at university that would sometimes intuitively react like that to stuff in everyday life. Cut people some slack.
  - fsckboy 4y ago
    > Cut people some slack. yes, I agree, that's what I was advocating: HNers with a personal anecdotal axe to grind frequently throw away the value of good posts because they have just have to grind their axe axe again. Whether social media is harming children's development is an interesting and important question and of a scientific nature, so people here should cut the researchers some slack and at least read the evidence at face value

nluken 4y ago

A good point that exposes some major bias behind my anecdote. With that said, if these expectations start at elite schools and slowly trickle down, would that not cause a rise in the aggregate across all teenagers over time?

imbnwa 4y ago
> and slowly trickle down Seems like a strong assumption that it necessarily does splash damage beyond a certain cohort. I went to a public HS of 4K in the 00s only AP Juniors/Seniors were concerned with this kind of thing and AP kids were only friends with other AP kids (for obvious reasons); I'd doubt that've changed by 2012.
- asdffdsa 4y ago
  I think this is mistaken; there was a lot of pressure in the 10s for AP classes
  - Matticus_Rex 4y ago
    At your school, sure. Not at the one I taught at in the 10s. And from knowing other teachers then, I'd guess the pressure was high at only one, maybe two, of the six high schools in the area.
- Khelavaster 4y ago
  Many badly-envisioned schools restrict access to AP classes or even AP tests, instead of letting kids follow their passions and meeting demand.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - imbnwa 4y ago
    Well that's not surprising, urban public schools, at least in the major American city I'm from, are about figuring out who's a good pencil-pusher as early as possible then segregating them from the rest of the riff-raff until they graduate HS. Most of the cohort I'm talking about likely got invited to a 'gifted' elementary school somewhere around 5th or 6th grade or a 7th/8th grade program attached to one of the top HSs. I only know this cohort well enough because I was on the debate team which most've them used as an extra-curricular for their college application CV but weren't serious about winning.

magicalist 4y ago

> 40% of high school students don't go to college (of any type). > Among adult Americans, only a third have bachelors degrees So clearly things have been changing in recent decades. I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss this as a factor.

LarryMullins 4y ago
Going to college is not the same as graduating with a degree. A ton of people go to college for a time and leave with little more than a mountain of debt. Also, a bachelors degree is not even the least degree you can get from a university.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- magicalist 4y ago
  Fair point, but that's not an argument that things aren't changing, just that they might not be. From a quick search: Between 2011 and 2021, the percentage of people age 25 and older who had completed a bachelor's degree or higher increased by 7.5 percentage points from 30.4% to 37.9%[1]. It would be helpful to get an attainment by age by year breakdown. And this still doesn't address the OP's hypothesis that part of the increase in mental health issues is due to increasing admissions pressure over the years, which many people have brought up anecdotally. Whether or not the majority of high schoolers experience that pressure doesn't imply that it still couldn't be part of the problem (which also, incidentally, isn't experienced by a majority of high schoolers). [1] https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2022/educational-attainment.html https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2022/educatio...
  - datavirtue 4y ago
    That was because of the great recession. Those numbers are petering out and will soon drop off a cliff. There is a bitch slap of boomers and beleaguered birth rate around the corner. The meager birth rate and dying boomers are real world paychecks and tax revenue drying up. Society is going to change drastically, and it will seem all at once. All the corps are going to have to pull back when those boomers stop spending and there aren't enough feeders to replace them.

sizzle 4y ago

Most Cal States fit this criteria, but a lot end up at top companies. It’s really all on the student and going to get advanced degrees helps.

bachmeier 4y ago

Hate to be that guy[1], but this does not refute the comment you're replying to. 1. There may be more than one important explanation. 2. Your data doesn't provide any information relevant to the evaluation of the hypothesis. 3. Many of the students at non-elite universities, however you define that term, are the ones that were not successful in their quest to go to an elite university. That's why the acceptance rate is so low. Those students would be the most likely to be affected by changes in the competitiveness of college admissions in the wake of the Great Recession, not the ones that were successful. 4. "Certainly the high pressure scholastic environment of certain high schools is not common." This is conjecture. It does not seem plausible that it is "not common". [1] Not really, but I'm supposed to say that.

eikenberry 4y ago

You forget the cost of "just" those state universities still requires many students to get scholarships to afford. So the pressure is not just about getting into a good university, for many it is being able to go at all.

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loeg 4y ago

> Among adult Americans, only a third have bachelors degrees Sure, but this is very skewed by older Americans having low rates of degrees. A lot more than 33% of current American 24 year-olds have Bachelors degrees. And that more accurately reflects the expectations on teenagers than low rates of degrees among Boomers.

MisterPea 4y ago
For 4-year college, the enrollment number is 31% for 2020. Total enrollment including 2-year is 40%. The total number of actual graduates is probably slightly less than this. https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cpb/college-enrollment-rate https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cpb/college-enrol...
hector_vasquez 4y ago
In the U.S., around 86% of kids graduate high school[1], around 63% of high school graduates go to 4-year colleges[2], and around 64% of them graduate within 6 years[3]. By that logic around 35% of 24-year-old Americans have bachelor degrees. More than a third, but not by much. [1] https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/coi/high-school-graduation-rates https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/coi/high-school-g... [2] https://educationdata.org/college-enrollment-statistics https://educationdata.org/college-enrollment-statistics [3] https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=40 https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=40
- loeg 4y ago
  You don't have to reverse engineer it from first principles; the rate is rising over time, lead by under 29s (i.e., current youth): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Educational_Attainment_in_the_United_States_2009.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Educational_Attainment_in...

marmetio 4y ago

You can probably generalize and say that most teens stress about competing or despair about their prospects. I'd nitpick your use of stats, but I don't want to miss the forest for the trees.

harimau777 4y ago

Even if someone isn't going to an elite university, they may need to compete for scholarships, admission to selective programs (e.g. nursing), etc. It is also possible that some people competed for selective programs but failed to get in. Finally, it's possible that even people who didn't realistically need or want to get into a selective program still feel a social expectation that they keep up with those who do.

nebula8804 4y ago

Where did this 40% come from and is it lumping in all generations or just Gen-Z? I found this source that may or many not be authoritative that says 57% of Gen-Z is attending college, furthermore I have heard from the grapevine that Gen Z has been pushed more into STEM than any other generation. [1]:https://timely.md/blog/generation-z-college-students/#:~:text=Generation%20Z%20students%20are%20on,Gen%20Xers%20at%20similar%20ages https://timely.md/blog/generation-z-college-students/#:~:tex.... [2]:https://thejournal.com/articles/2022/06/21/stem-fields-are-top-choice-for-students-according-to-new-nshss-survey.aspx https://thejournal.com/articles/2022/06/21/stem-fields-are-t... Personally as a developer that is overseeing hiring, I see more and more Gen-Z people coming into the pipeline in greater numbers. Looking at my alma mater(public state level engineering college) the CS dept is exploding. When I attended in 06, it was more of a snoozefest. But this is one datapoint and probably biased. It just seems like every Gen-Z I encounter(im a millenial) seems very pragmatic and cynical in their choices and that may be leading to more practical career choices like STEM.

TuringNYC 4y ago

Difference groups in the US face different pressures. Few people have it easy. I think it would be difficult to come to one answers. Some thoughts: GROUP A - growing population, roughly same number of "top" universities, resulting in ridiculous competition and pressure to succeed. Getting into Harvard 2012 <> Getting into Harvard 1972. GROUP B - working class. super hard. income barely grows but rents and costs grow faster. You're squeezed between two walls and it gets tighter each year. You work more only to stay afloat. Eventually you can only work 24hrs a day. Feels like my parents' life in 1980. GROUP C - already doing well because dad is a CEO. But because of income earning potential inequality, the top 0.01% makes 20x as much as 0.1%, hence brutal pressure to make it into upper-upper-echelon. Cry me a river, i get it. GROUP D - Immigrant. immigration is harder. lines are longer. there is nationalism and racism. You work hard, but feel trapped by the system, even if you're doing OK income-wise. GROUP E...F...G...

fumar 4y ago

This is accurate. I barely passed high school with heavy help from the counseling team. Then I went to a community college for a few years with low stress and learned how to study before transferring to a liberal arts college. I count myself lucky that I ended up in tech with an average career given my lack of guidance and motivation in my younger years. I wasn't anxious until more recently when I started building a house.

woodruffw 4y ago

You’re right, although I’ll point out that this doesn’t directly contradict what the GP said: it’s possible to both stress over your future and go to a less prominent school (or no school at all).

brailsafe 4y ago

> Among adult Americans, only a third have bachelors degrees. I don't really see how this services the argument very well. Adult Americans seems like a set of people that wouldn't be relevant for measuring anything.

gwbas1c 4y ago

I don't know where you got those numbers. For the past 20ish years or so, the rallying cry in American politics is that everyone needs to go to college in order to have a job. It's only recent that the left is pushing for jobs that don't require college degrees.

derangedHorse 4y ago
It’s closer to 40% now but it’s still not close to a majority. https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2022/educational-attainment.html https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2022/educatio... I also haven’t heard of a change in the narrative where jobs that don’t require degrees are pushed by the left. If anything I see people calling for higher washes for low end jobs but that’s a separate issue entirely.
- gwbas1c 4y ago
  Biden was promoting them in his state of the Union on Tuesday