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Maybe there's another part that leads to this. The world is rapidly growing in complexity, so people may not know exactly what to do after finishing high school

Maybe there's another part that leads to this. The world is rapidly growing in complexity, so people may not know exactly what to do after finishing high school. Anecdotally, I found that to be the case in germany. We get state-funded universities and people often start over in a different subject after realizing they didn't pick the correct one the first time around. I did that too. My and my friends' parents said this was very uncommon in their time, usually due to financial considerations. I could definitely imagine that there's a similar situation in the US. You get to pick once and if you pick wrong, it's worse than not going to college at all. Any other input on that? Mine is purely anecdotal and I didn't find any hard data to support or disprove my theory.

FirmwareBurner 3y ago
>The world is rapidly growing in complexity Only if you work in stuff like tech, but the world still needs many other jobs like plumbers, police officers, etc. who's jobs don't change that fast.
- hef19898 3y ago
  Even tech, software and hardware, unless you develop said tech, the use for said tech didn't really change fundamentally since social media came around. And that arguably only affected media and advertizing. What is posing problems now is the necessary transition from our old "system" (Western OEMs using Asian suppliers and burning fossil fuels, to oversimplify it) to something different (politically, socially, economically and technologically). Seems somewhere between 25 and just shy of 50 percent of any given population have serious problems accepting and adapting to that.
- com2kid 3y ago
  Have you seen modern plumbing? Solar heaters for water, grey water reclamation systems, hydronic heating, smart controllers for garden sprinklers. I've talked to quite a few very smart plumbers. The ones at the top of the field (earning good $) work with complex setups.
  - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
    Majority of plumbing work (which also pays well) is still just fixing legacy pipework from old building that's decaying and needing repairs or replacements, not installing the latest heat-pump powered 'Butt-Squirter 2000', which still uses the same plumbing concepts of the last 100 years.
    - dagw 3y ago
      Majority of plumbing work (which also pays well) Does it? Last time I had major plumbing work done, a guy showed up in a very nice car (he no doubt earned very well) looked at what needed to be done and gave us quote. The two guys who barely spoke English and where on site 8-10 hours a day for a week actually doing the actual work probably earned considerably less.
      - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
        >The two guys who barely spoke English and where on site 8-10 hours a day for a week actually doing the actual work probably earned considerably less. US might be a different beast. I live in western Europe where qualified plumbers earn well because it's a credentialed job and labor exploitation of migrants in credentialed Jobs is less of an issue (but still does happen). You can't just hire some migrants off the street and send them off to do plumbing for you. A plumber in Denmark can sometimes earn more than a SW developer.
    - com2kid 3y ago
      > Majority of plumbing work (which also pays well) is still just fixing legacy pipework from old building that's decaying and needing repairs or replacements, not installing the latest heat-pump powered 'Butt-Squirter 2000', which still uses the same plumbing concepts of the last 100 years. This describes software engineering as well, it is just that this site is biased towards people building new stuff rather than engineers who do maintenance work! FWIW the plumbers I know live in nice custom houses and enjoy learning about new things all the time.
- ReptileMan 3y ago
  But then the western europe governments policy of porous borders and Gastarbeiter imports make sure that there can never really be a shortage of semi skilled labor so it is not clear if those trades can bring you to the middle class
  - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
    That's how the "free market" works. If you can't afford a house anymore because it got too expensive, then sorry mate, you're out of luck, that's the fair price of the "free market" supply/demand. Nothing we can do about it, try being less poor next time. But if a company can't find cheap labor for the price it's willing to pay (aka labor shortage), then they can import as many workers as possible with the help of the government, until the price of labor comes down to the level they deem "fair".
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
- sparrowInHand 3y ago
  .. and spanish translators.. for now..
hef19898 3y ago
In Germany you also have the issue of an increased number of studies to choose from, roughly 15 years ago you had some specialozation added on top of your general studies. Now some of those are standalone studies. Switching once is totally fine, after all you only what a given field looks like once you started. Maybe even twice. But by then one should now which field and degree to pursue.
- CalRobert 3y ago
  How do you switch mid-career?
  - hef19898 3y ago
    I talked about mid-studies, preferably early so. Mid-career is harder, but doable. It largly depends on your field of study and experience. The more you are working at the interface between disciplines / industries / technologies, the easier it to switch between those. That's a career choice so, you can try to be more generalistic, and make career switches easier, or become specialized. Both are valod choices. That is one reason why I think education should be as generic as possible, if you already specialize a lot durong your studies, being young and having zero job exoerience, carries the risk of making your career a bit harder.
    - CalRobert 3y ago
      I realize you were discussing mid-studies, I just was trying to illustrate that one of the problems with the German system is lock-in.
      - hef19898 3y ago
        Depends, I think there is as much lock-in, whatever that means when it comes to education, then anywhere else.
CalRobert 3y ago
I moved from the US to Europe (first Ireland, now Netherlands) and one thing I really, really miss is junior colleges. Sure there's a few post-leaving-cert or adult education classes but in California I could just go to www.smc.edu/, sign up for stuff that looked interesting (Android dev, Assembly, and German in the last semester I was there for reference), pay nominal tuition and keep my career going, and go lean cool stuff. Want to learn welding, calculus, and philosophy this year? Knock yourself out! There was no pressure to build towards a degree and the mix of students was broad.
- freilanzer 3y ago
  That sounds great and much more like the concept that a university should be than what we have in Germany. I couldn't deviate from my courses in the slightest way, even when they didn't make any sense: mathematical logic held by a linguist because no one else was available. Wanted to take statistics, which would be highly relevant, instead? Well, you can't.
  - throwaway_7d1f 3y ago
    I went to a university in my country (Nordic country) at the end of the 90s. At that time you could actually just sign up to anything you wanted. You could follow a course in database theory at the same time as a course in ancient Greek history. If you wanted a specific degree (like "system development") you were free to compose your own plan, so long as they met certain requirements I know several people who took a class out of curiosity and changed their career when they found their true calling. One effect of this was that you got a much broader set of people than the typical "nerdy guy". CS stole a lot of people who originally intended to focus on studies like sociology, law, economics, psychology and philosophy, but fell in love with CS. It was also much easier to combine work and studies when you could register for classes without committing to a full 3/5 year program. Today, the same university focus on full time students who "bind" themselves to a specific program. I feel bad for the students today who are forced to follow a much more strict program. They still have some freedom, but it's much more limited and it's harder to "cross over" if you want to follow a class that belongs to a different program. I'm not surprised that many decide to drop out.
dagw 3y ago
I could definitely imagine that there's a similar situation in the US. The one interesting 'feature' of US education is that you don't really pick a subject before the 2nd or even 3rd year. It is quite possible (and common) to spend the first 2 years studying much a wider variety of subjects than you would at most European universities and then spending your final 2 years really focusing in on what you decide to be your core are of focus.
- johnnyanmac 3y ago
  [delayed]
iLoveOncall 3y ago
You can easily switch majors in the US too, so this is a non-issue. You can even do both a major and a minor, or two majors, if you're unsure.

FirmwareBurner 3y ago

>The world is rapidly growing in complexity Only if you work in stuff like tech, but the world still needs many other jobs like plumbers, police officers, etc. who's jobs don't change that fast.

hef19898 3y ago
Even tech, software and hardware, unless you develop said tech, the use for said tech didn't really change fundamentally since social media came around. And that arguably only affected media and advertizing. What is posing problems now is the necessary transition from our old "system" (Western OEMs using Asian suppliers and burning fossil fuels, to oversimplify it) to something different (politically, socially, economically and technologically). Seems somewhere between 25 and just shy of 50 percent of any given population have serious problems accepting and adapting to that.
com2kid 3y ago
Have you seen modern plumbing? Solar heaters for water, grey water reclamation systems, hydronic heating, smart controllers for garden sprinklers. I've talked to quite a few very smart plumbers. The ones at the top of the field (earning good $) work with complex setups.
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago
  Majority of plumbing work (which also pays well) is still just fixing legacy pipework from old building that's decaying and needing repairs or replacements, not installing the latest heat-pump powered 'Butt-Squirter 2000', which still uses the same plumbing concepts of the last 100 years.
  - dagw 3y ago
    Majority of plumbing work (which also pays well) Does it? Last time I had major plumbing work done, a guy showed up in a very nice car (he no doubt earned very well) looked at what needed to be done and gave us quote. The two guys who barely spoke English and where on site 8-10 hours a day for a week actually doing the actual work probably earned considerably less.
    - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
      >The two guys who barely spoke English and where on site 8-10 hours a day for a week actually doing the actual work probably earned considerably less. US might be a different beast. I live in western Europe where qualified plumbers earn well because it's a credentialed job and labor exploitation of migrants in credentialed Jobs is less of an issue (but still does happen). You can't just hire some migrants off the street and send them off to do plumbing for you. A plumber in Denmark can sometimes earn more than a SW developer.
  - com2kid 3y ago
    > Majority of plumbing work (which also pays well) is still just fixing legacy pipework from old building that's decaying and needing repairs or replacements, not installing the latest heat-pump powered 'Butt-Squirter 2000', which still uses the same plumbing concepts of the last 100 years. This describes software engineering as well, it is just that this site is biased towards people building new stuff rather than engineers who do maintenance work! FWIW the plumbers I know live in nice custom houses and enjoy learning about new things all the time.
ReptileMan 3y ago
But then the western europe governments policy of porous borders and Gastarbeiter imports make sure that there can never really be a shortage of semi skilled labor so it is not clear if those trades can bring you to the middle class
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago
  That's how the "free market" works. If you can't afford a house anymore because it got too expensive, then sorry mate, you're out of luck, that's the fair price of the "free market" supply/demand. Nothing we can do about it, try being less poor next time. But if a company can't find cheap labor for the price it's willing to pay (aka labor shortage), then they can import as many workers as possible with the help of the government, until the price of labor comes down to the level they deem "fair".
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
sparrowInHand 3y ago
.. and spanish translators.. for now..

hef19898 3y ago

In Germany you also have the issue of an increased number of studies to choose from, roughly 15 years ago you had some specialozation added on top of your general studies. Now some of those are standalone studies. Switching once is totally fine, after all you only what a given field looks like once you started. Maybe even twice. But by then one should now which field and degree to pursue.

CalRobert 3y ago
How do you switch mid-career?
- hef19898 3y ago
  I talked about mid-studies, preferably early so. Mid-career is harder, but doable. It largly depends on your field of study and experience. The more you are working at the interface between disciplines / industries / technologies, the easier it to switch between those. That's a career choice so, you can try to be more generalistic, and make career switches easier, or become specialized. Both are valod choices. That is one reason why I think education should be as generic as possible, if you already specialize a lot durong your studies, being young and having zero job exoerience, carries the risk of making your career a bit harder.
  - CalRobert 3y ago
    I realize you were discussing mid-studies, I just was trying to illustrate that one of the problems with the German system is lock-in.
    - hef19898 3y ago
      Depends, I think there is as much lock-in, whatever that means when it comes to education, then anywhere else.

CalRobert 3y ago

I moved from the US to Europe (first Ireland, now Netherlands) and one thing I really, really miss is junior colleges. Sure there's a few post-leaving-cert or adult education classes but in California I could just go to www.smc.edu/, sign up for stuff that looked interesting (Android dev, Assembly, and German in the last semester I was there for reference), pay nominal tuition and keep my career going, and go lean cool stuff. Want to learn welding, calculus, and philosophy this year? Knock yourself out! There was no pressure to build towards a degree and the mix of students was broad.

freilanzer 3y ago
That sounds great and much more like the concept that a university should be than what we have in Germany. I couldn't deviate from my courses in the slightest way, even when they didn't make any sense: mathematical logic held by a linguist because no one else was available. Wanted to take statistics, which would be highly relevant, instead? Well, you can't.
- throwaway_7d1f 3y ago
  I went to a university in my country (Nordic country) at the end of the 90s. At that time you could actually just sign up to anything you wanted. You could follow a course in database theory at the same time as a course in ancient Greek history. If you wanted a specific degree (like "system development") you were free to compose your own plan, so long as they met certain requirements I know several people who took a class out of curiosity and changed their career when they found their true calling. One effect of this was that you got a much broader set of people than the typical "nerdy guy". CS stole a lot of people who originally intended to focus on studies like sociology, law, economics, psychology and philosophy, but fell in love with CS. It was also much easier to combine work and studies when you could register for classes without committing to a full 3/5 year program. Today, the same university focus on full time students who "bind" themselves to a specific program. I feel bad for the students today who are forced to follow a much more strict program. They still have some freedom, but it's much more limited and it's harder to "cross over" if you want to follow a class that belongs to a different program. I'm not surprised that many decide to drop out.

dagw 3y ago

I could definitely imagine that there's a similar situation in the US. The one interesting 'feature' of US education is that you don't really pick a subject before the 2nd or even 3rd year. It is quite possible (and common) to spend the first 2 years studying much a wider variety of subjects than you would at most European universities and then spending your final 2 years really focusing in on what you decide to be your core are of focus.

johnnyanmac 3y ago
[delayed]

iLoveOncall 3y ago

You can easily switch majors in the US too, so this is a non-issue. You can even do both a major and a minor, or two majors, if you're unsure.