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More students are turning away from college and toward apprenticeships

• photochemsyn 4y ago
  I'd break college programs down into undergraduate and graduate divisions, and divide schools up based on admission price tag. Some issues: 1. The more expensive the school, the more likely it is to be something like a British public school for the inherited wealth class. Interestingly graduate programs are often somewhat neglected at such institutions, and they're not generally great research centers. Basically it's about hobnobbing so you can get a job at your pal's parent's hedge fund or whatever. (#2 on your list) 2. The cutting-edge research universities have inverted that model. Undergraduates are packed into huge auditoriums and taught by adjunct professors with the help of overworked grad students whose professors can't afford to pay them as a lab tech / research assistant. Here it's all about getting the big grant and publishing new research. Students who can negotiate this system successfully can get excellent technical education and experience at the upper-level undergrad / grad student level in fields like CS, biotech, engineering etc.(BS/MS). That's #1 on your list. 3. There's another category of student that benefits from the cheaper state schools, and that's due to high schools in the USA being woefully poor at providing a basic education. These schools - community colleges and state schools - generally have a two-year progam that does little more than revisit material that high schools failed to teach, like reading and algebra and introductory calculus and programming. The fact this is needed just reflects the poor quality of K-12 in so many places. The little secret that the big research universities don't want people to realize is that you can often get a better quality of instruction at most community colleges, due to small class sizes etc., then for the first two years at a big famous school. Hence it's wiser to do that and, assuming good grades, transfer in at the upper undergrad level for the courses and research lab access that small schools lack. I don't really know of any apprenticeship program that could give one the same level of experience with cutting-edge technology as something like an MS program in a quality university research program could. And for that you're going to need a college degree first, ideally avoiding massive debt along the way. As far as the struggle for professorships in the corporatized academic system, that's a complete political-bureaucratic game of chairs that doesn't really reward brilliance so much as it does Machiavellian capabilities. Trofim Lysenko would have fit right in to today's system. Try to avoid ending up in the Lysenko lab, whatever you do.
• danielvaughn 4y ago
  As someone who racked up nearly $80K in debt going to art school, I think they're making the right choice (mostly). In some cases it really makes sense to go to college, but it's a terrible model for many skills.
  • toomuchtodo 4y ago
    With there being a huge shortage in trades and other roles where they'll provide an apprenticeship, versus credential inflation and jobs requiring a bachelor's just for entry level positions, it makes sense to go where you're valued as a worker and be catered to instead of having your originated student loans extracted from you for simply a chance at a white collar job. https://www.newsweek.com/forget-college-skilled-trades-are-future-us-economy-opinion-1715361 https://www.newsweek.com/forget-college-skilled-trades-are-f... https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/despite-rising-salaries-the-skilled-labor-shortage-is-getting-worse https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/despite-rising-salaries-th...
    • throwaway6734 4y ago
      Many trades will be much more protected against AI gains as well
      • toomuchtodo 4y ago
        Indeed! LLMs ain't gonna be performing electrical, plumbing, earthwork, welding, or carpentry anytime soon. If anything, its going to flush out the bullshit jobs while the economy is in a position to reward those performing higher value work.
        • ldhough 4y ago
          I agree but according to the BLS employment numbers are as follows in the US: Electrician: 650k Plumber: 469k Earthwork: Don't see an exact match Welding: 428k Carpentry: 668k Software Devs, QA, & Testing: 1.62m Programmers: 152k Not sure how they differentiate between devs & programmers but even if we just take the 1.62m figure it is well over half the total employment in those trades. If software devs get 75-90% replaced (I don't think it'll be this bad and for my own sake as an early career dev I really hope not but I don't see it as impossible) I imagine most white collar jobs are coming with us. Will the trades pay as well when a ton of people are looking to reskill into something that still exists?
• wootland 4y ago
  I wish it were easier to get a visa and move to another country without a degree. As someone without a degree, that's been the most annoying issue. The best parts are: not having student loans and not having a mindset that grinding within "the system" leads to success.
  • rg111 4y ago
    I did my Master's degree solely for visa. Nothing else. What little I learned in Master's, I could have learned from online MIT/GaTech/Michigan/Stanford courses with much more flexibility, and for free. And a lot better quality, too. All the "network" I built that was of any value to me was made in mailing lists, Twitter, Google Groups, and later Discord.
    • tester756 4y ago
      Haha, I did the same. I've found like a week or so before deadline on applying to master's program that master's can make getting visa easier and I've decided that spending every 2nd weekend at school for 1.5 year may be worth it Unfortunately majority of the courses were just waste of time :(
  • InCityDreams 4y ago
    But where are you, where would you like to move to?
    • wootland 4y ago
      I'm in the US and sadly most places require at least a bachelor's degree to get enough "points" for almost any visa.
• newhotelowner 4y ago
  My daughter got rejected from one of the UC. They received 130+k application for 6k openings.
  • analog31 4y ago
    The acceptance ratio is a poor measure, because applying to multiple schools is easy. Likewise, I first remember skyrocketing ratios of applicants to job openings when laser printers became ubiquitous. In between college versus apprenticeship, students could apply for both and then pick the one that seems like the best deal.
  • Ericson2314 4y ago
    YIMBYism in California has been and will continue to be about expanding the schools (and not just building new ones in bumbfuck) a lot.
  • killjoywashere 4y ago
    Yeah, the UC's application system is a bit ... disingenuous is the wrong word, but it's a win-win for applicants and colleges: all the applicant has to do is check all the boxes and pay the not-terrible application fees and bam, they've applied to all the schools. This pretty much forces all the students to apply to most, if not all, of the campuses. Which gives every UC campus the maximum possible applicant pool.
    • ghaff 4y ago
      Unless evaluating the applications is centralized, I'm not sure it's a great win for schools. As someone who has been on the conference committee for quite a few events, I often think that having some friction or even strict limits to submitting a proposal isn't the worst thing in the world. In theory, you want the widest possible pool. In practice, each proposal/application takes some time to evaluate and, especially given conferences obviously don't have quantitative filters like GPA or SAT, picking the best 50 sessions out of a few hundred is generally a lot less random than picking the best 50 out of 2,000.
  • 999900000999 4y ago
• Mc91 4y ago
  I have been programming for a Fortune 500 company for four years. Not long ago, I applied for a job at another Fortune 500 company. HR really had only question for me, they saw on my resume I did not have a college degree listed, and did I have one? I said I went through most of college towards a Bachelors in Computer Science but dropped out before graduation. I did not get the job, although I don't know if that's why. Same thing has happened in the past with other HR departments. It's not completely fatal, but it's not helpful either, rather the opposite. I went to a good state school and didn't rack up any debt while going to college. In recent headier times, a BSCS was a preferred requirement. In the current environment, I can easily see job listings on Linkedin that say a BSCS is a minimum requirement. It's just another stumbling block that can be in your path. Some people don't have a problem with it in their career, and in headier times it doesn't matter, but when layoffs are happening as they are now, and companies are flooded with dozens or hundreds of resumes, an easy thing to do is just look who has a BSCS and who doesn't and put the latter in the wastebasket.
  • bluedino 4y ago
    A job opened on my team where I am working at as contractor. My boss told me to apply for the job. I got an email back right away from HR stating that I didn't meet the requirements of having a degree. Joke's on them, I already work there.
    • kcplate 4y ago
      I had a similar situation where the lack of a specific degree algorithmicly sorted me out of a job where i was not only an expert in some extremely vertical tech, but a known person within the industry for the tech and probably the only person in my metro area with the ability currently looking for new opportunities. After I got the rejection email i called their HR and asked to just lay my resume on the desk of the COO abd was told “no can do because i wasn’t qualified” I got so frustrated that their HR dept was so tone deaf, I decided the org was a bad fit for me. Later on had connected with one of the executives after I moved on to another org and an industry expo. Told him the story and he was horrified that they missed the opportunity. The moral to the story is you need to get via networking if you don’t have a degree thanks to the rigidity of HR nowadays.
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• Ericson2314 4y ago
  Tight labor markets for the win! I look forward to tuition coming down and deans and admins squirming in their seats.
• lvl102 4y ago
  Being a plumber, for example, is far more lucrative for most people. Military, police, then lawyer route is also very lucrative.
  • hotpotamus 4y ago
    One of those is not like the other in that it requires extensive college. It also happens to be the one that pays more than the others.
    • pclmulqdq 4y ago
      Being a high-end plumber doesn't take much college. I joke, but most lawyers actually don't make a ton of money. Like programming, the profession is very bimodal. By the time you get out of law school, unless that law school is a big name like Harvard or you get a good clerkship or associate job, you will be heading for a career that tops out at $200k/year if you don't burn out in the mean time. Plumbing, electrical work, and other trade work is weirdly lucrative and doesn't come with nearly as much "ladder climbing" as a legal career. Also, a mid-career trade worker can specialize (taking only very lucrative and weird jobs) or start to manage other tradespeople. Plumbing and the other trades are a lot like software engineering in that sense, and the reward for being the plumber who knows how to deal with water pumps in high-rises is similar to the reward for being the software engineer who can program GPUs (or some other niche skill). For example, I happen to have met one of the people who does the HVAC in Google NYC, and he makes the same amount as a senior SWE at Google.
      • Kon-Peki 4y ago
        The trades can be excellent careers, but it doesn’t do anyone any good to pretend that they’re an ideal path for most people. You’ll be constantly working with people making poor life decisions that look like a lot of fun, and being encouraged to join in. People with self-control issues or trouble resisting peer pressure are going to have a lot of trouble succeeding. They’ll have very little help.
        • 4y ago
• newaccount2023 4y ago
  people learning trades under an apprenticeship can start earning real money at 19 which means they can make other adult decisions not long after they're not only out-earning many college graduates, they are getting four+ years of earning and investing
• oldstrangers 4y ago
  Sounds great until you run into half the open jobs on LinkedIn requiring a degree. Very depressing.
  • celu 4y ago
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• ivansavz 4y ago
  https://archive.is/bAdmO https://archive.is/bAdmO
• pclmulqdq 4y ago
  College seems to have ~3 uses from students' perspectives: 1. A trade school for technical professionals who actually need specialist education (scientists, engineers, lawyers, doctors, etc.) 2. A finishing school for the elite 3. A blood sports arena for the brilliant to complete for professorships (almost all of whom will lose and be saddled with 6 figures of debt and 7 figures of opportunity cost) A lot of people have been tricked into going to general education and liberal arts college programs (the finishing school parts) without the money to pay in full under the guise of "becoming a lifelong learner" or something, and this completely cripples them in the future when they could otherwise have had great careers in fields that don't truly need the education you get from a college. It's good that students are turning away now. The market is correcting itself.
  • azinman2 4y ago
    It also grows the intellectual souls, exposing people to far more depth of thought. It also builds professional networks. If a person is smart enough to receive it, more education is almost always good. Of course money is a factor, and schools have gotten insanely expensive. I’m glad to hear that more people are finding alternative routes - it shouldn’t be that everyone needs college because quite frankly many career paths don’t require it and many aren’t smart enough for it (and thus the debt will be crushing). But I wouldn’t dismiss its value in being taught how to think. I wish there was a bigger focus in physics, math, and philosophy for those who didn’t know what to do - learn one of those and you can do just about anything.
    • phpisthebest 4y ago
      I think you have conflated college with education. One can get education, build professional networks, etc with out college and importantly one can go to college complete a degree program while receiving zero education. many (most) Colleges is more of a social guild than it is an educational ventures
      • azinman2 4y ago
        Very few on their own would get anywhere close to what a college gives you in terms of an education. Particularly in ways that are far broader than what you’d do professionally. Keep in mind college is 4 years of education on a daily basis.
• loeg 4y ago
  Probably a good thing! Four year degrees are oversubscribed and have been a low ROI for many students (the “please cancel student debt” crowd).
• ibn_khaldun 4y ago
  College stinks, but what will happen to “blue collar” young people who do not make it into the “white collar” apprenticeship pipeline, who would have previously achieved so through college. Oh yeah, well they can just choose college. But as this apprenticeship thing becomes more popular, what will the competition be like? Young people! The labor market is turtling…what are we going to do? Edit: I’m choosing a more tasteful description for the American labor market. Thank you for expressing your distaste with the original one.
• analog31 4y ago
  First of all, I'm optimistic about this. Apprenticeships could even trickle up. Here's what I mean. The article talks about an apprenticeship in the insurance industry where you're taking college classes while working a day job. This could expand into other areas, such as junior engineers / designers / programmers. It might not replace college, but turn college into something that blends with job training in a more explicit way, so that it's not an either-or choice. But I'm wary because we don't know the breadth of what these apprenticeships actually look like, the long term prospects of the people who go through them, or the attrition rate. Remember the private for-profit college scandals. College graduates have been studied to death, but has the same scrutiny been applied to the trades?
  • etothepii 4y ago
    Insurance is the only profession I know of where there are many senior leaders in their forties without a degree.
    • analog31 4y ago
      Traditionally, how did they get in? Did they come up through sales, or through family businesses?
      • jabroni_salad 4y ago
        There are multiple paths and different designations you need to earn to work them. The more letters you can get after your name, the better. So you don't need a degree, but there is a moat to cross. Agencies: oops, all sales! Claims Adjustment: small claims to bigger claims. These are usually independent outfits that service many carriers for their geographic area. In some jurisdictions you can get hired with no experience but you will earn more if you have any kind of background in accounting or appraisal. Quote & Bind | CSR >> assistant underwriter >> underwriter >> sr. underwriter. These are your big corpo jobs at an operations center.
        • etothepii 4y ago
• t344344 4y ago
  My friend got expelled in 5th semester after spending over $70k on education. His ex went nuclear after he dumped her, and somehow that was relevant to his education. Obviously no refunds or appeal! If you are at uni, treat is as a career. You do not shit where you eat! Big part of marketing is "socializing", but that comes with a huge risks to your future and investments. Apprenticeships do not care about your sex life!
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  • kredd 4y ago
    For every data point like this, there’s also data like mine - I met incredible people during my university years. Especially the first two years when we all lived on campus, we were basically a family. Even though we’re in different coasts of the continent, we still meet up 5-6 times a year, travel, some of us even married to each other. Socializing and making new friends in your late teens and 20s is an important part of one’s life. Downplaying common space’s (e.g. college, work and etc.) importance and looking at it from a perspective of ROI, minmaxing every aspect of it is probably not the healthiest look.
    • t344344 4y ago
      My friend is not a data point. It destroyed his life and he still has to pay his student loans. There is no chance to get any money from person that did that to him. > Downplaying common space’s (e.g. college, work I am not downplaying anything. At all those places male has to behave certain way. You do not drink at company xmass party, that is a common sense! You can have all of that without any risks. Become bartender at evenings, surf instructor or go apprentice route. College is not the only place! > For every data point like this Like 20% of women have problem [1] during their college years. That also means 20% of male students are on opposite side of this. I will not go into how data are measured and reported, but there is a huge chance to get stuck in this net as a male student! [1] https://www.campussafetymagazine.com/safety/sexual-assault-statistics-and-myths/ https://www.campussafetymagazine.com/safety/sexual-assault-s...
• theusus 4y ago
  Wish I had received apprenticeship. It's far better than academics and teaches one practical skills.
• karlkatzke 4y ago
  Good. Needs to happen. Was talking to our HVAC repair dude. He makes as much as I do with a high school education and two years of trade school. Adjusting for age, he definitely makes more than I did at 34. No reason to send kids who want to work with their hands to four year colleges and saddle them with 100k in debt when they can work through a trade school, be done at 20, and have no student loan debt.
  • clintonb 4y ago
    I assume you work in software. How hard does the HVAC guy work? I wager if you compared wages earned per hour worked (not just employed), you come out ahead. You probably beat doctors and lawyers, too. Large salaries mean nothing if you don’t account for how much effort is expended to earn the money.
    • lotsofpulp 4y ago
      I.e., pay to quality of life at work ratio (which includes volatility of pay). This is always the answer to the question “why can’t we find workers for x job”.
    • the_only_law 4y ago
      Yeah I had nurse friends who had impressive pay on paper, but we’re desperate to work in anything else because the shifts were hellish.
      • karmelapple 4y ago
        I don’t understand the hours expected of healthcare professionals in the USA. It sounds like madness and a definite route to burnout. Why don’t the professional organizations and other groups mandate serious reform for this? Have more reasonable max hour stretches, etc. Are the difficulty of hospital handoffs primarily the source for the awful hours demanded?
        • confidantlake 4y ago
• alsaaro 4y ago
  As someone who has worked two of the most intensive blue collar jobs, people should be wary of romanticizing blue collar work. Blue collar workers are expected to really work at their jobs. White collar workers can chill if there is no work to be done, or be sent home early with pay, or take a relaxation day and just browse the internet and listen to podcasts. They have perks, you see white collar workers leaving work early to attend baseball games and do fun activities with their colleagues. Indeed, some white collar workers are so "underworked" they can literally work multiple full time remote jobs. Blue collar guys can't work remote, so expect to pay for child care and endure the mourning commute. Blue collar workers aren't necessarily paid based on merit, this is formally true if you work in a union-shop where promotions are primarily based on tenue; if non-union there may be no promotion path for most workers because management has a "fresh meat for the grinder" approach to entry level staffing. From a social perspective people don't respect blue collar workers. Believe that nobody who writes think pieces praising blue collar workers wants their daughters dating a blue collar worker or wants their children becoming them.
  • briHass 4y ago
    Anyone that hasn't done manual labor really has no idea how rough it can be. I worked as an office-furniture-mover in my early 20s (Summers in college), and some days were pretty tough. Granted, that's pretty low on the manual labor skills spectrum, but even for a guy in prime physical shape, it's tiring and has elements of danger. Now that I'm double that age, the manual labor I've done like rewiring my house, installing all my own HVAC equipment, and all the yard work for a large property is much harder. I stay sore for days, and it's easy to push too hard to get something done and get injured or overwork my body to where my heart rate stays elevated for hours. There's something to be said for working with your brain. The worst days dealing with idiot product management and never-ending Jira tickets don't compare to unloading a truck in a hot warehouse or kneeling in a crawlspace for hours re-piping a sewer line.
    • jletienne 4y ago
      >The worst days dealing with idiot product management and never-ending Jira tickets don't compare to unloading a truck in a hot warehouse or kneeling in a crawlspace for hours re-piping a sewer line. damn i can only imagine
• xyzelement 4y ago
  A few posts in this thread talk about the signaling value of college and I wanted to share a thought on that. When's the last time you saw someone wear a suit? For me, most people I see in suits now days are town car drivers. Because that's who needs to signal something (reliability?) to me in a low context environment. People stopped wearing suits at work, even for interviews, because the signaling value of a suit is zero. I've read your LinkedIn way before I met you. If you are hot shit, I already know that. If you are not, the suit isn't going to change that. Likewise, back in the day the fact that you had a degree and what school that degree was from, was a huge signal - often the sole signal you can get on someone prior to meeting them or considering them for a job. Nowadays that's just not the case. Between credible certifications, blogs, gihub portfolios, open source projects, etc - I can get a TON of signal on you that would be more valuable than your college background. To be fair not everyone thinks this way but I think that's a point in time thing. The signal is there and getting stronger, it's only matter of time before it's recognized more broadly. And to the point, if you apprenticed in your field and had good results, people will selfishly value that more in hiring than you having gone to some woke school.
  • gnicholas 4y ago
    There are some industries where suits are still regularly worn, though even in these fields (law, banking) it is less common than before. In Silicon Valley, lawyers only wear suits when going to court or to depositions.
  • paulpauper 4y ago
    Yeah, outside of finance, it would seem like it's the opposite, signaling lower status and conformity. Nowadays that's just not the case. Between credible certifications, blogs, gihub portfolios, open source projects, etc - I can get a TON of signal on you that would be more valuable than your college background. But this is just a tiny subset of jobs though.
  • mtrower 4y ago
    > People stopped wearing suits at work, even for interviews, because the signaling value of a suit is zero. In fact it's become an anti-signal in software; people look at you funny. I actually failed an interview once because I wore a suit.
• papito 4y ago
  This is great news. Especially for men. It gives their lives more meaning and a sense of self-worth. Great new podcast episode from Ezra Klein about this.
  • chitowneats 4y ago
    Ezra Klein lost his credibility long ago. Sad. Vox is a rag. Anyone here remember Wonkblog? I often miss the heady days of the early 2010's. Funny how we thought we were living in tragic times back then after the 2008 financial crisis. And sure, we were. But there was so much more in store for us, wasn't there?
• sergiomattei 4y ago
  Honestly, what a disgrace. It’s almost like capitalism has an agenda to turn every living soul into a productive machine rather than a free-thinking, well-rounded individual. Education is meant to prepare you to think and live, not just prepare you to work. I’m glad I didn’t drop out in my first year to chase the Silicon Valley dream, because I’d be a much more manipulable, less capable individual if I did.
  • maxerickson 4y ago
    We very obviously aren't doing it, but that sort of education should be part of high school, at least for the students that are engaged enough to benefit from it. The current trend to water down what is available so that everyone can check the 12 year box regardless of effort or interest is a terrible waste.
  • Axsuul 4y ago
    Education doesn't prepare you to live — experience does. Instead, you're in a bubble during those years.
  • mythrwy 4y ago
    "Free thinking and well rounded" aren't things that seem to correspond with many current U.S college environments though. Colleges need to cost less. Much less. And they need to return to free inquiry with more education, and less administration and propaganda and fake studies low effort departments. Then what you say will be much more true and we will be in a better place.
    • sammalloy 4y ago
      > Colleges need to cost less. Much less. Conservatives have waged a targeted attack on US education by shifting the federal and state tax burden to students. This began with Ronald Reagan and ended with the Koch network. Conservatives intentionally did this because they believe the traditional academic system in the US produces liberals and democrats. By shifting the tax burden to students, they have disincentivized free inquiry at the local level and supplanted it with corporate-sponsored job training which promotes hard right wing political and societal values. Here is the supporting evidence: https://starvingthebeast.net/documents/ https://starvingthebeast.net/documents/
• di456 4y ago
  It's nice to see this on the white collar side. On the blue collar side, I heard from a friend in a union skilled labor role that the quality bar is very low for some skilled trades in some US regions. Showing up to work on time and sober sets someone apart a big portion of the workforce. Working hard and eagerness to learn will go a long way in the skilled trades. Lots of opportunities for people with a positive mindset.
• Eumenes 4y ago
  I didn't go to college, nor did a few of my best friends - we all work in tech/IT. Careers spanning development to sales and IT. We make good income, have little if any debt, and all own homes. Compare us to some of our peers from high school who went to college, many still live at home and have some pretty typical Fortune 500 paper pusher jobs. I think what set us apart was our general interest in nerdy/tech things from a young age. We built computers, modded video games, learned to code, worked on cars, etc. We all came from very low to middle class backgrounds too. Didn't have parents uber concerned about their legacy and if their kid was going to be a "loser" or not. Ironically, most of us made more $$ than those parents by our mid to late 20s.
• mkl95 4y ago
  Lately I have worked with many junior / mid level guys who studied CS in college. Meaning they graduated at some point in the last 3 to 5 years. All of them struggle with basic communication and tasks that involve working with other humans. It's like they spent all those years in some cave with no exposure whatsoever to the real world. I get that the goal of a CS degree is not to prepare you for the software industry, but it's the main goal of most CS students. I can see why college degrees are not as attractive as they used to.
  • Mixtape 4y ago
    Would you be willing to elaborate on what you've seen a bit? I'm on the last semester of my CS degree now and have definitely seen a lot of similar effects as a result of Zoom courses and general isolation during COVID lockdowns. There's generally less willingness to reach out to people than there used to be, and people seem to prefer dividing up tasks and working independently over collaborative work (e.g. each person in a group project having a "role" rather than working jointly on a large segment). There's also a general preference towards working at home without any external interaction whatsoever and a lack of willingness to form study groups. As I start moving into the job application phase of things, I can definitely see how these traits can be seen as off-putting to hiring managers, and I'd like to avoid falling into similar traps. Is there anything else you've noticed that would be worth avoiding?
  • nonethewiser 4y ago
    I can say the same for those in humanities and the opposite for those in CS, anecdotally. The thing about CS is it has a clearly defined path that kids can prepare for. Expectations and conventions are known ahead of time and can be studied and learned (leetcode, code review, requirements gathering, sprint planning, etc.) A history major has no idea what conventions they will need to be ready for in the work force. General communication and writing skills aren't unique to the humanities.
• cyberlurker 4y ago
  Can Americans still go to university free in other countries like Germany? Why don’t more students go to school abroad for cheaper? I’m sure it is not so simple, but I still think it is worth getting the paper just to get past HR.
• calgarymicro 4y ago
  > That 7% acceptance rate makes the program as selective as Cornell University and Dartmouth College. Oof. I wonder if we'll start seeing Applying to Apprenticeships forums/subreddits and 'Apprenticeship Decision Reaction - I got in!!!' YouTube videos.
• logicalmonster 4y ago
  I think the article ignored a massive datapoint in not talking about gender the one time it might actually be a relevant issue. Simply put: women are going to school more and more, and many men are turned off. Getting to the root of this social change would I think provide an explanation.
  • phendrenad2 4y ago
    Is it really a massive data point? It seems entirely overblown by people trying to score political points.
    • knightofmars 4y ago
      https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/10/podcasts/ezra-klein-podcast-transcript-richard-reeves.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/10/podcasts/ezra-klein-podca...
      • phendrenad2 4y ago
        Okay, I listened to it. The disparity between male/female in college is indeed overblown by people trying to score political points.
• mrtweetyhack 4y ago
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• BashiBazouk 4y ago
  I don't subscribe to college as primarily a way to pump out worker bees. People should have access to learning beyond that to which ends only in employment. Cut the bloated administration, figure out how to lower costs and tailor to different learning models and schedules. Make it affordable and not to difficult to register for those in the community who are post college or post college age to take classes. Don't be afraid to teach trades. Adapt.
• chitowneats 4y ago
  Good.
• kello 4y ago
  Over here in Germany they have well-established apprenticeship programs for many more jobs than in the US. There are apprenticeships for software developers, for bankers, for "Bürokauffrau/Bürokaufmanm" (office clerks/administrators), for media work, for all sorts of medical jobs, and so on. You name it, and there is probably an "Ausbildung" (apprenticeship) for it here. The apprenticeship programs are still somewhat not as "prestigious" as going to university, but they will get you in the door at a company for that job. Many people even combine the two, opting to do an apprenticeship and follow it up with studies, or vice-versa, or do both at the same time.
  • Version467 4y ago
    I wish we would try to bring the german apprenticeship program back to its former glory. It's such a shame that we started expecting university degrees for more and more jobs just to appear more compatible with the international job market. The german apprenticeship program was a fantastic (and unique) feature of the german economy. Not every job needs a bachelors degree. Quite the opposite actually. Many positions that hire fresh university graduates could fill the position much better with well trained people who already have lots of hands on experience. Instead we have tons of people with bachelors degrees that basically need to be trained from scratch because the education they got was waaayy too theoretical. Unfortunately the apprenticeship program is now far less prestigious than a bachelors degree (which is also heavily reflected in pay). So anyone who can go to university won't choose an apprenticeship. Such a wasted opportunity.
  • dgb23 4y ago
    Same here in Switzerland. Apprenticeships are called “Erstausbildung” (First education) now. It’s regarded as a stepping stone.
  • nonethewiser 4y ago
    Software developers also don’t make that much in Germany. You also need to get past the apprenticeship gatekeepers. No thanks.
  • alphager 4y ago
    And there's even the combination of apprenticeship and university with the "Duale Hochschule". You spend alternating 3 months working for a company and 3 months studying at university. After 3 years, you earned a bachelor's degree and have 18 months of work experience.
• jonathantf2 4y ago
  One thing these articles usually fail to mention is the fact that college/university is also a huge social experience. I'm a young person who took an apprenticeship instead of going to university - only one of my high school friends did the same as me, literally everybody else went onto university. I'm from a small town, there's not much going on and apart from when all my friends come back at Christmas and those few weeks in the summer I'm not doing much of anything other than work and sitting on my computer. I imagine if I grew up in a city this would be completely different but there's not much opportunity to make friends of my age around here and I really really really wish I had gone to university just so I wouldn't be so damn lonely, even if learning on the job works better for me. (oh and the fact that most companies don't recognise the qualification I do have, makes it pretty much useless)
  • nonethewiser 4y ago
    Other social experiences that you pay a lot for include country clubs and Scientology.
  • dudul 4y ago
    There are probably cheaper ways to make friends.
  • karmelapple 4y ago
    I must admit this was very useful for me, too. Not just for making friends, but living semi-on-your-own, having some familiar but mostly new faces, and the excitement of certain activities. Since you didn’t choose that road, don’t beat yourself up, but make friends in other ways. Do you have meetups nearby? Attend them if so. If not, create them and see who might want to attend. Even advertise at a nearby community college or other means if possible.
• Forestessential 4y ago
  most colleges are turning away from making shining stars and instead seeking to get the mass in and out, to their respective homes. Scaled grading is so the school can reliably pass students. The credential is literally worth less.
• passwordoops 4y ago
  As a PhD analytical chemist, about 15 years past graduation I now regret just not becoming a plumber in my early 20s. Basically the same skill set, but the tubes are wider. Also would have been higher life time pay, at least to this point and possibly into retirement
  • balderdash 4y ago
    Lol - I have a derivative thought in that I should have just joined my local police department (no desire to be a police officer, but six figure pay, retirement in my 40’s with huge pension/healthcare benefits, and a stressful day is someone’s mom giving you a hard time at the pharmacy lunch counter about giving their kid a speeding ticket)
• gnicholas 4y ago
  Relevant book: The Case Against Education https://www.amazon.com/Case-against-Education-System-Waste/dp/0691174652 https://www.amazon.com/Case-against-Education-System-Waste/d... Written by an economics professor, this book argues that much of the value of education is signaling, and that we greatly over-school many kids.
• jt2190 4y ago
  > Today, colleges and universities enroll about 15 million undergraduate students, while companies employ about 800,000 apprentices. In the past decade, college enrollment has declined by about 15%, while the number of apprentices has increased by more than 50%, according to federal data and Robert Lerman, a labor economist at the Urban Institute and co-founder of Apprenticeships for America. So in the last decade: Apprentices Undergraduates 2013 400,000 ~17,600,000 2023 ~800,000 15,000,000 Edit: Looking at these rough numbers, there are 2.2 million people unaccounted for, far more than increased the ranks of Apprentices. Where did they go if not into Apprenticeships?
  • mikeg8 4y ago
    Demographic shift? There could have been (probably was) larger number of 18-24 year olds ten year than today.
    • jmoak3 4y ago
      Definitely the demographics: https://www.populationpyramid.net/united-states-of-america/2023/ https://www.populationpyramid.net/united-states-of-america/2... I would hate to be fighting to join academia right now in a world where there's a solid chance the student body is shrinking: https://educationdata.org/college-enrollment-statistics https://educationdata.org/college-enrollment-statistics
• vonwoodson 4y ago
  The Wall Street Journal is just News Corp. We should not spread fake news here.
• paulpauper 4y ago
  Nah, not a fan of the trades, sorry. Worse job prospects, lower wages, and also debt too. People think trades are cheaper. They are not. You incur a cost because of training, and also opportunity cost from not finding work as easily, and time spent training, which may be unpaid. And then lower wages. You are better off with a generic 4-year degree from a mid-ranking school than trades, imho. Student loan debt has way more payment options, lower interest rates, and forgiveness compared to trades debt. I'm assuming you are able to graduate from college. Dropouts would generally be better off going into the trades.
• lapcat 4y ago
  I see some people in the comments claim that you can give yourself a good liberal arts education outside of college, using public libraries and the internet, but I'm skeptical. One commenter even repeated a quote about college being a waste of money from Good Will Hunting... which of course is a work of fiction. I attended a state university and still live relatively close to the campus, with a library card for the public library and surrounding library system; there's just no comparison: the university library has vastly, vastly more books and papers of an intellectual nature than the public library system. Moreover, university students have vastly more access to online resources of an intellectual nature than the general public. I would be extremely hard pressed now to access and re-read many of the things I read in school. It might be possible, but I'd have to buy most of them myself, probably online, for an obscene amount of money. College doesn't make you smart. I'm not sure to what extent it can teach you to think critically either. Those abilities may be innate, and I brought them with me to college. However, there are books and papers and ideas that I was exposed to in college that I never would have been exposed to if left to my own devices. I didn't even know they existed! Some of those books and papers and ideas were crucial to the development of my thinking. They influenced and changed me. This is a principal value of a college education. Your professors have spent decades reading and studying things that you've never heard of before, and they let you know about it. Even if important intellectual works were not paywalled behind a college tuition — which I admit is an unfortunate situation for the public — those works might get lost in obscurity anyway, because popular culture and market capitalism have little or no interest in promoting them to you. Students need guidance. There are a lot of people who are self-motivated, including myself, but that's not the same thing as self-guiding. You can guide yourself into a dead end if you don't already know where you're going.
• stillbourne 4y ago
  I've been saying this for almost 15 years now. Industries like Software Development need to abandon college and return to the guild system. Start as an apprentice, move to journeyman, become a master, and eventually an artisan. All the time training your juniors. I'm not saying there is no place for college but it needs to relegated to the jobs that need it, doctors, lawyers, etc.
• rr808 4y ago
  I know a bunch of kids in high school so are killing themselves trying to get into the top seletive colleges. Its nuts - the worst thing is if you get in those schools are now filled with the same people who spent their childhood jumping through college admission hoops. Where do smart normal kids go now? My employer used to hire from Ivy League schools exclusively but thanks to zoom we can cast a much wider net.
  • peanuty1 4y ago
    > Where do smart normal kids go now? The top public university in their state (i.e. UCB, UW, UT Austin, UMich, GaTech, UWisc-Madison, UNC Chapel)? Or 2nd/3rd tier private schools like NYU and Rice?
• 21eleven 4y ago
  Once upon a time if you wanted to study you went to the library. All the smart people were hanging out around libraries and Universities started to appear. Universities had classes and libraries. Now we have the internet. How does this affect the value of a University education?
• finikytou 4y ago
  American education became a joke. what used to be a beacon of light for people all over the world became a grotesque expensive joke and people don't want to pay six digits to be educated PC stuff that those uni are pushing now. especially when most of those kids are way more educated about this topics than the schools. what they want is to learn things that will help them in their professional life so that they can earn enough. Europe is same btw. no surprise asian countries edge us into STEM.
• darepublic 4y ago
  In light of the looming threat to many white collar jobs this is sensible
• dividefuel 4y ago
  As a millennial, the advice we often received was "just go to college, it'll almost always be worth it." Now, the advice I give to those younger is "go to college but only once you know what you're trying to get out of it." While colleges can let you explore subjects that you're interested in, they don't do much to help you explore careers you might be interested in. Paying for a degree before you know roughly how you want to use it costs you time and money. I'd say 3 out of 4 people in my peer group graduated college without a clear idea of what to do next, which delayed many of them several years in starting their career. About half of those 3/4s bumbled through different fields trying to find something that clicked, and some ultimately went back to school for a different, more specific career. The other half let inertia win and started grad school immediately, though many of those ultimately dropped out anyway. Even of those who stuck with grad school, few have landed anything stable even 10 years later. However, those in the 1 out of 4 with a dedicated end goal (engineer, doctor, professor, etc.) have fared much better.
  • the_only_law 4y ago
    > go to college but only once you know what you're trying to get out of it. Unfortunately by the time you figure that out, they don’t want seem to want you.
• ar9av 4y ago
  It really depends man. I joined the plumbers union and don’t regret it at all I hated school. Getting a degree these days you really gotta be careful what you pick and knowing someone getting a good job goes a long way. Also it’s expensive, some kids are very lucky and there parents get to pay college for them and don’t have to worry about being in debt paying loans for the next 10+ years. But trades isn’t for everybody, and neither is school so it depends on the person.
• ar9av 4y ago
  It depends on the job/career the person is going for. Some jobs; doctors, lawyers, psychologists… would need a book based education that can’t be taught in an apprenticeship or by just hand-on training. Other jobs like carpenter and plumbers and mechanics, people could probably learn most stuff by just hands on experience, going out and doing things and figuring out how to do it better, but would need an apprenticeship to learn how to deal with meeting building and safety codes based on where they live. I’m I network engineer for a global company, and I credit all of my knowledge to simple hands on experience and google. I learned a lot about networks just from my time in the military, used that to get civilian jobs that were more complicated and I had more to learn, and when ever I hit a point I couldn’t get past, I’d ask someone or ask google, OR just keep smacking my head into that wall until I figured it out. My B.S. degree in computer science is more of just that… bs, then the hands on experience I gained over the past 20+ years.
• pcurve 4y ago
  There's a large caveat towards the end of the article: “People get more specific skills in apprenticeship programs than they do in college and while that helps them enter the labor market with greater ease at the beginning of their careers, later in life their skills depreciate” “So at age 45 or 50 or 55, these people are less likely to stay in the labor market because their skills are less valuable.” By contrast, a college degree offers a broader, general education, which “makes people more adaptable and able to learn new skills that show up later when the economy changes,” he said.
  • throwawaysleep 4y ago
    I’d point out that all the people whining about being “left behind” and blaming Mexicans for it are the blue collar types who would have mocked college back in the day.
• neilv 4y ago
  I'm wondering how many parents are reading this in the WSJ, and thinking something like: "That's great that those people are looking at paths other than college. Of course, my kids are going to college, for the college lifestyle experience, the networking, the pedigree, and the opportunities that will open up to them, in their rightful class."
  • nonethewiser 4y ago
    I dont think you're looking at the crux of the problem. The real question is, how many people are hoping they're kids pay 40k/year for a humanities degree? Of course college isnt devoid of all value and people want the best for their kids. Of course.
• rthomas6 4y ago
  Rant: I feel like most people haven't really thought about why colleges are so expensive now. It is because of the federally guaranteed student loans. It means there's pretty much no downside to banks loaning an arbitrarily large amount, because if the student doesn't pay it back, the government will. And since most 18 year old students have pretty much zero price sensitivity, and they now have unlimited funds, colleges are free to charge whatever they need to entice students to come to their college. No expense needs to be spared. If people really cared about letting disadvantaged students go to college, they would figure out a way to give them scholarships or grants. Federally guaranteed student loans are a horrible and predatory idea and they are ruining young peoples' financial futures. If you just took away the guarantee on the loans, and made them dischargable in bankruptcy, colleges would be forced to compete on price again, and the price of college would start to drop.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • lotsofpulp 4y ago
    >It means there's pretty much no downside to banks loaning an arbitrarily large amount, because if the student doesn't pay it back, the government will. Obama administration ended this in 2010: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Family_Education_Loan_Program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Family_Education_Loan_... The problem that remained, of course, is the federal government itself lends students a blank check as long as the check is deposited at an “accredited” university.
    • nonethewiser 4y ago
      Am I crazy or did Biden just try to pay for a bunch of student loans? Legality still pending AFAIK. Just because Obama may have ended one policy doesn’t mean they aren’t backstopped by the government. Either way the point remains that the debt cannot be dispelled through bankruptcy which makes them less risky for banks.
      • lapcat 4y ago
• WarOnPrivacy 4y ago
  Father of 5 (graduated) FL k-12 kids here. FL schools needed some things more than others. - To reflect the actual economic reality of most FL kids, high schools needed less 4yr college prep and more trade/job prep. Being ready for years of employment is better than being ready for years of impossible or debt-laden college. - A school year that ends on Halloween and begins after the new year. Kids are better off in A/C during our 13 month summers and outside during our 15min of not-summer (when all the holidays are going on). - High schools that start after Elementary and Middle - to allow needed sleep (a FL rep just intro'd a bill for this!) Instead FL kids got leveraged into a culture war that they never asked for - all so Gov can select parent rights.
• doomain 4y ago
  I don't think most colleges make sense, except for the social life. I did my first university for the studies, and I didn't use any of it. Then I started a second one just for the parties and social life, and I hardly studied anything. The second one was much better...
• deleted 4y ago
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• nonethewiser 4y ago
  Colleges are failing students. They pay lip service to the mission of education while prioritizing the growth in f administration. How is it the cost of college has increased far faster than inflation yet learning outcomes haven’t improved? Student teacher ratios haven’t improved. Professor salaries haven’t improved. Real education (teachers and students) need to become the priority again.
• Scubabear68 4y ago
  College made sense for a very long time because a lot of books were hard to come by for regular folk, and the cost was reasonable. They were great places for young adults to complete the transition to “adult”, to experiment and figure how who they want to be. These days the costs seem to far outstrip the benefits, and the Internet makes so much more accessible at a young age. Parents and kids are finding it hard to justify hundreds of thousands of dollars just to “figure things out”, as we used to.
• dackdel 4y ago
  amazing news
• chernevik 4y ago
  College was by and large killed when politics confused the correlation with higher income for cause. We've since wasted a lot of time and money "educating" people who didn't want and couldn't profit from college, and in the process muddied standards so as to pretend they actually belonged. At this point college has been watered down to a huge waste of time and money. The market and society are beginning to correct and that's a very good thing.
• WarOnPrivacy 4y ago
  A key facet seems to be missing from the threads here. Most Americans can't afford a 4-year college. ref: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=study+found+percent+of+americans+cannot+afford+college https://duckduckgo.com/?q=study+found+percent+of+americans+c... Our (until recently, inexpensive) metro market requires 3-4 typical incomes to meet basic expenses. The cost of a 4-year college simply isn't available for most folks.
• pyuser583 4y ago
  I know a lot of programmers who did poorly in secondary school, but thrived in college. In the past, apprenticeships were an extension of high school, not a replacement for college. I hope they get it right this time.
• dpflan 4y ago
  Is there where ChatGPT and GPT-4 and the like can be helpful? I know a few days the discussion of AI tutors was double edged, but if we focus on the later stages of schooling / career path, can AI tutors be useful for advancing the fields where apprenticeships make sense?
• TaylorAlexander 4y ago
  Price of college is going up. Wages are stagnating. Quite unfortunately, it makes perfect sense that fewer people would think the expense is worthwhile. I wish we offered free high quality university educations. The USA can coast on its dominance for only so long before the lack of educated people sinks us.
  • carlosjobim 4y ago
    > I wish we offered free high quality university educations. You could sponsor somebody's university or college education, pay a full or part scolarship.
    • confidantlake 4y ago
      We need an army to defend our nation. You could stand at the border with a rifle.
      • carlosjobim 4y ago
        There are thousands of scholarships. What do you think they are? They are people like the parent commenter, who think other people deserve a good education, and decide to put their money where their mouth is. And yes, if somebody calls for war, they should be the first to sign up for joining the military. Everybody should put their money where their mouth is.
        • TaylorAlexander 4y ago
          Personally I find this mode of argument, where someone talks about a collective action problem and then someone else replies “well why don’t you do it then” distracting and unhelpful. Collective action problems, by definition, cannot be solved by individual actions. We must first discuss the problem and reach agreement. Pretending that collective actions can be solved by individual action seems to me only to be a tactic to defeat the efforts of those seeking collective change. I should note you never commented on the merits of free university for all. You’ve diverted the conversation in to one about individuals, successfully avoiding addressing the key point I was making.
• psaux 4y ago
  California Universities just had the most applications in history. UCLA 145k applicants, UCSD 130k applicants. Respectively they are both down now to about a 3% and 5% acceptance rate due to the spike. Might be Covid holdovers due to a gap year, or with the economy as it is, out of state applications have dropped.
  • mikeg8 4y ago
    If students are more likely to apply to multiple schools than before (I believe that to be the case as competition has increased. I also have multiple cousins currently applying to UCs, anecdotal) than the total number of applications would appear to increase while total unique applicants may be steady or reduced.
    • psaux 4y ago
      That is a great point. And the UC system does have a central database. It would be nice to see total uniques per school out of transparency, as you can apply to all the UC’s much easier. This does have an adverse effect, as relatives of mine got multiple offers and others rejected or waitlisted. Not sure what the best path is, as the top 5% probably got accepted to all, at least what I am seeing from my network. Then others are left to wait for the top 5% to choose; sometimes a month. By then, most non top 5% have to make a decision elsewhere. I am sure the UC System has it all worked out, just seems it could be done better.
  • _delirium 4y ago
    Four-year universities haven't seen much of an enrollment decline, especially not more prestigious ones like the UC system. Here is some data breaking down enrollment numbers 2017-2022 by type of institution and type of degree sought: https://nscresearchcenter.org/current-term-enrollment-estimates/ https://nscresearchcenter.org/current-term-enrollment-estima... Percentage changes in undergraduate enrollment over that 5-year period were: Seeking a bachelor's (4-yr) degree: -6% Seeking an associate's (2-yr) degree: -21% Other undergraduate students: -8%
• ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
  I just took 2 years of a redneck tech school (EET technician trade school). Didn't have much choice. I'd pretty much trashed my life, by the time I was 18, and needed to rebuild it, with limited resources. Turned out to have worked out well, for me; although the school, itself, is now long gone. It was basically one of those wrench academies that popped up, after Vietnam, to suckle from the teat of the GI Bill (many of my classmates were Vietnam vets. The GI Bill was awesome). The main thing that it taught me, was professionalism and self-discipline. It was also pretty current, for the tech (colleges tend to be a lot farther behind; at least in undergraduate). But I had to do a great deal of personal bootstrapping, after that, to do OK.
• devteambravo 4y ago
  I think we need to treat apprenticeships better. We need a stronger blue collar sector. At the same time, I'm worried about this trend towards anti-intellectualism I'm sensing these days.. It smells fascist, and that is bad.
  • confidantlake 4y ago
    I am not anti intellectual but I am anti college. It is a racket. Costs have exploded while at the same time transmitting information is as cheap as it is have ever been. It is about the signal you give from your degree rather than the education you get.
• yutijke 4y ago
  I went to undergrad in India so YMMV for the primarily North American population here. A lot of people look back at college fondly, but to me it just felt like a lot of time and money spent for skills that I had to acquire on my own any way. It was a common opinion among my friends that other non STEM majors seemed to have an easier undergrad life where they could find time to explore things rather than trying to build their profile for the cutthroat competition in the Indian tech industry. It felt very wasteful to spend hours on all that theoretical knowledge and the Leetcode rat race while knowing they will heavily atrophy from lack of use the moment you get your first job. It left you wondering if it was worth it in the end.
  • nonethewiser 4y ago
    well what would your job prospects have been with a non-STEM degree?
    • yutijke 4y ago
      Once again, keep in mind that this is an Indian perspective. YMMV for North America. Sure you will make more money than them on your first job. But how many of us are able to enjoy that money to the fullest extent? You will most likely end up being forced to work in a "Tech Hub" city like Bangalore (the American equivalent would be San Francisco and similar) All those zeros in your salary end up going into sky high rent and housing prices. Saying nothing about the traffic, poor infrastructure and pollution that you'll have to suffer from anyway. Looking at my childhood neighbours from smaller cities who are drivers/secretaries/carpenters, they may be going on fewer expensive vacations, but they are still able to afford a decent quality of life with way lesser stress. This is hard to quantify, but you don't have to ask me who I would bet on to suffer from High Blood pressure, Heart issues, etc earlier on. EDIT: Some folks may mention remote work may alleviate these issues, but companies seem hell bent on dragging their employees back into the expensive hell holes their offices are based in with Weak sauce Hybrid work that gives you none of the benefits of remote work.
  • phendrenad2 4y ago
    I spent 4 years getting a Computer Engineering degree (in the US), and learned nothing that I didn't already know. Also, they didn't even bother to teach us the most important aspect of computer engineering (signal integrity......)
• professorTuring 4y ago
  I believe it’s a good thing this shift towards apprenticeships, we don’t really need so many university graduates (I’m talking from an Spanish point of view). More and more the university is degrading its own nature, focusing on preparing “workers” instead of cultivating the arts of knowledge: research, philosophy, history… It is good that people from university goes to the private sectors, but we are doing it the wrong way, we do not need CS to go develop for Funny Startup, we need developers (technical apprentships) and probably some software architects (CS) that focus on how it should be done. Private sector is pushing universities toward work training and we are falling back in advances and knowledge. The fine art of learn to learn, the place where people that love the field go instead than the people that searches for a job and money.
• siliconc0w 4y ago
  It's clear college needs a reboot but there is also something pretty suspect about programs that just cram down the latest technology 'skills' that are likely to be soon obsolete. Changing the incentives so colleges are primarily paid from a fixed % of the first n years of salary from their graduates might be a good start rather than unbounded amounts from the government. Some level of public and employer matching probably also makes sense but if your graduates aren't earning than nether should the schools. Public money should pay for expanding the bandwidth of the school, not just adding administrators. Research and teaching probably need to be glass steagall'd. Tax-advantaged mega endowments need to be reigned in.
• EmilioMartinez 4y ago
  Just droppping this here: Why We Still Need Masters & Apprentices https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ribdRDO75Rk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ribdRDO75Rk
  • ogennadi 4y ago
    We need them for "the Transfer of implicit knowledge from a senior teacher to an apprentice"
    • EmilioMartinez 4y ago
      Implicit teaching comes to mind
• deleted 4y ago
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• foreverobama 4y ago
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• cat_plus_plus 4y ago
  Good! Teach people to support themselves and contribute something tangible to society while letting them already earn some money in the process. They will then be financially secure and in better position to discover themselves, expand their minds and pursue hobbies. I am getting a blast learning kickboxing and digital photography right now, while a coding job puts food on the table.
• Anon84 4y ago
  Today, colleges and universities enroll about 15 million undergraduate students, while companies employ about 800,000 apprentices. In the past decade, college enrollment has declined by about *15%*, while the number of apprentices has increased by more than *50%*, according to federal data and Robert Lerman, a labor economist at the Urban Institute and co-founder of Apprenticeships for America. If A drops by 2.25M and B increases by 260k, saying that people are turning away from A and toward B might be a bit of a stretch…
  • thethimble 4y ago
    How is this a stretch? As a percentage of the demographic population, A is decreasing and B is increasing. The fact that there’s fewer people in the current demographic cohort accounts for much of the “missing” ~2m students.
• Slava_Propanei 4y ago
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• shirro 4y ago
  Trades appear less vulnerable to disruption than just about any occupation as they combine locality with physical and mental dexterity that gives them a moat. We seem to be hitting an inflection point where human knowledge and creativity could become significantly devalued by emerging machine competition.
• DeathArrow 4y ago
  It's probably not a a popular opinion but I think my formal CS training in University mean a lot for what I know and what I do as a software engineer. Not having that formal education would mean a lot to of holes in my knowledge and being less able to understand and derive relationships between lots of concepts. You can learn from books, from articles, from tutorials, from MOOCS, from boot camps, from apprenticeships but my conjecture is that is not enough. You will miss a more ample view of the field and lots of concepts. And going through a formal education doesn't mean you don't have access to alternative education. Beside my CS degree program I've learned from as many sources as I could.
• formvoltron 4y ago
  smart, given that LLMs seem to duplicate a lot of college educated jobs already. then again, how many tradesmen/women can the economy support?
• sylvainkalache 4y ago
  College was designed and mostly still is designed to give people a general education. When the society sees it as a pathway to become a professional. While it does help, it is definitely not the best way to get a job. As my former job, I founded a software engineering school that was very similar to what apprenticeships provide: hands-on learning. We did not have teachers, no lectures, students were learning by working on coding projects, very easy at the beginning, reaching industry standard by the end of the program. And this type of methodology, coming from progressive education (Montessori is a spin of this) also works to become a life-long learner. In my opinion, actually way more efficient than traditional college. Apprenticeship has this bad rep of being for blue collar jobs, I hope this will shift. So many of us in the tech industry have mostly learned on our own and on the job. I think we are the leaving proof that this type of program are extremely efficient.
• black_13 4y ago
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• qikInNdOutReply 4y ago
  Stupid question, obvious question: Why not both? Why cant i learn a trade and then study, then have a half-half position? Is that a caste violation? To have something physical and switch to something mental midweek?