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Good, that means more people are getting an education. I’ve seen too many hot takes online from people who attended college and vastly benefited from college wh

Good, that means more people are getting an education. I’ve seen too many hot takes online from people who attended college and vastly benefited from college who tell others that university isn’t as great as you think, go to trade school and learn something practical, etc…with a complete and utter lack of self-awareness or sense of irony.

paulpauper 3y ago
Yeah exactly. Do as I say, not as I do. Look at all those reddit FIRE/investing subs. Everyone with those 6-fig salaries has degrees. No tradespeople. It's obvious where the $ is, student debt notwithstanding. If the goal is to make $, and you have the aptitude to finish, its hard to beat the 4-year degree.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- hotpotamus 3y ago
  On the one hand, that's a selected group of people who sit at desks and can chat on a web forum during the day at their jobs (as I am right now), so I wouldn't take them as representative. On the other hand, the trades fucking suck - there are posters here who I will generously interpret as being a bit... touched perhaps? when it comes to the realities of work and particularly pay that the average tradesman must face. I'm sure somewhere, some tradesperson in the world is making a couple hundred thousand a year, but statistically speaking, basically none of them are. There's a reason they want their kids to go into a different line of work.
- OJFord 3y ago
  There are plenty of them earning six figures, short term (not including the degree years) some trades are probably reliably better - the median anyway, not compared to FANG. There's just perhaps not that much overlap with those circles.
corethree 3y ago
It usually isn't. They're right. They benefit usually because of a name brand school. The name brand is the benefit, the education less so. What people do on the job has overwhelmingly no relation to what they learned in school. Only like at most 5 percent applies in most cases.
- kibwen 3y ago
  Attending university is unbelievably useful, but it's not really because of the subjects that you take. I can't remember half the things I learned in class, but my persisting friend groups and life opportunities can all be traced back to my time in university. (Which isn't to say that the subjects were useless; they provided a solid foundation in math and computer science. But to say they prepared me to become a professional programmer would be a baldfaced lie (conveniently, a lie that my first employer seemed to believe without me needing to tell it)).
  - corethree 3y ago
    Attending university is useful for making friends? That's not what I would classify as useful. You can get friend from many many places. Attending university for friends is not a valid reason to attend imo.
    - kibwen 3y ago
      It's not exactly a hot take that networking in general is one of the advantages of attending university. Likewise, if one's opinion is that the point of university is to get an education, you could just as equally counter with "well, you can get an education from many places". And frankly, it's much easier to recreate the educational aspects of a university than the social aspects. I was a hopeless teenager coasting apathetically through life, and attending university got me to break out of my mold and learn how to socialize, set life goals, and be a functioning human being. I wouldn't trade that time for anything.
  - linuxftw 3y ago
    I also have friends and am a professional programmer. I did not attend a university. It sounds like you got swindled.
epolanski 3y ago
Because you're cherrypicking people to whom a college education in a certain country and field has been highly beneficial. And actually in large parts of the world, trade schools pay much better indeed. Reality is that while our society got much more educated the ratio of blue vs white collars hasn't shifted significantly in many decades in most of the world. Now we find the reality when we need our car adjusted or a plumber at home and we find that the hourly rate is insanely higher than that of an average college graduate. But I guess on HN where most people have STEM degrees and have found great jobs indeed with their education this does not resonate. But an average lawyer in France or Italy will never make the money of the average plumber (but stats show that a bit less because those trades often avoid paying taxes entirely) till late in his career (at which point the plumber has built more wealth).
- ksplicer 3y ago
  Plumbers can make a significant amount, but it's not that easy to get into either. How many students go to tradeschool and then can't find a position where they want to live?
  - linuxftw 3y ago
    Plumbers? Pretty much find work anywhere, at least in the US. Developing nations probably a different story. Large plumbing companies will hire people with no experience, trade school not required. Other trades don't pay enough for the hassle.
- mp05 3y ago
  Yeah well, plumbing is hard work that you couldn't pay me enough to do as a career. God bless tradespeople.
- keenmaster 3y ago
  “average lawyer in France or Italy will never make the money of the average plumber” My disbelief requires more suspension than the Golden Gate Bridge. Most reputable sources will disprove this. Also, it’s not a given that the bottom 30% of lawyers (who pull down the average) would be good plumbers - I have a hard time imagining a worse population to pull from to work with their hands on piping and lug around tools in their pickup truck. I think these “facts” come from blue collar cosplaying. A survey asking “On a scale of 0-100, how much do you want to be a plumber?” would have a disproportionately massive mode at 0.
bitzun 3y ago
I describe it to the youth like this: Getting a degree might not be the fastest way to riches for the exceptionally entrepreneurial/resourceful (who are few,) but it's still by far the most reliable way to reach financially comfort or affluence in the US if you weren't born into it (or if you're entrepreneurial it amplifies what you can do.) I did a few years of college and got an associate's before dropping out, didn't finish my degree until quite a few years later. I've been fortunate and have privilege, but I most likely would have done better financially if I'd finished a STEM degree from a state school earlier.
- bitzun 3y ago
  It's also way harder in the US to go back to school as a working professional. Most people can succeed in university, but the window to do it with the least struggle closes after you're adulting hard, have a family, etc.
  - NotSuspicious 3y ago
    For most people I can understand why this would be true, especially if you have a family. For me, however, it was the exact opposite. When I first went to college I was abysmal at it and soon dropped out. After a few years of work experience, however, I went back and finished my degree while working full-time. Despite having much more to juggle I did vastly better at college my second go-around. I think having better time-management skills, being emotionally more mature and intuitively knowing that I needed that degree in order to get a better job all worked "against" it being more of a struggle, in my opinion.
blitz_skull 3y ago
One of those online folks here. I tell people this all the time. College was largely a huge waste of my time. It got me interested in CS which has become my career, but I probably would’ve stumbled into it anyway. If you can manage to do it without debt, hell yeah—do it. Otherwise it’s just not worth the financial burden unless you’re doing something that only college people do like operating on brains or practicing law. Otherwise there’s much better paths with less wasted time and less debt. To be honest though I’m not sure college really changes the trajectory of people’s lives most of the time. If you get into a ton of debt, you’ll probably be alright in general. If you take the shortcut of not going to college, you’ll also probably be alright.
tgv 3y ago
IMO, you reach the wrong conclusion. It is: academic jobs are overpaid. There's really no point in giving the whole population an academic degree. University should raise researchers (applied or fundamental). Jobs that don't require academic research skills should not require academic credentials.
solatic 3y ago
> that means more people are getting an education What you think you mean: more people should get a college education. What you probably actually mean: high school educations, which we provide free of cost in order to educate the citizenry, are no longer effectual enough at producing an "educated" citizenry, and therefore we should reform high school education.
chaxor 3y ago
A portion of that argument is probably rooted in a very good intention: the Gini coefficient is far too high right now. One good way go reduce the Gini coefficient is to reduce the praise for roles like CEO, manager, physician, etc and reclaim more respect the technicians of the world. University doesn't really connect anyone with "remarkable" people, but if you come from a rural or low populated area, it does help to let you interact with a more diverse (many professions and ideas) set of people. You're correct that universities don't really have high IQ people (even the grad students, PIs, and professors likely do not have a high IQ these days), but the incentive structure isn't there anymore to allow for this. The publish-or-perish paradigm has basically annihilated the incentive structure for intelligence and now the focus is much more on 'doing' (without much thought). It's pretty simple to see that when looking at the choices in grad students and faculty at places like Harvard, MIT, Stanford, etc. They're not chosen for drive for novelty, or their cleverness, they're chosen for tirelessly working towards very incremental adjustments to ideas that are then marketed as highly impactful and novel - but the biggest determining factor here is being a "hard worker", not intelligence.
newZWhoDis 3y ago
Universal college has been a disaster, one I look forward to us correcting. It has caused untold damage to the millennial and gen X generations. Zoomers have started to adapt but the early ones got swept along with millennials. For the overwhelming majority of people and majors college is a scam, one that robs you of some of your most productive work years and puts you into massive debt.
- antisthenes 3y ago
  > most productive work years Yeah, no. The 18-22 years may be years where you have a ton of energy, but that doesn't mean they're the most productive. American 18-year old high school graduates are basically children in all but body size and have no experience in doing complex things that the modern economy requires. They still would have to spend 3-5 years learning skills (whether they do it in college or outside of college is less relevant)
snapplebobapple 3y ago
Does it really mean that though? If that increase in dumber people going to university also shifted the programming to fit dumber people better then have we actually given more people a university education, or have we made university the new highschool? Also, we jacked the cost of education through the roof to build the supply for all these people, which diminished the net benefit of university dramatically for many fields

paulpauper 3y ago

Yeah exactly. Do as I say, not as I do. Look at all those reddit FIRE/investing subs. Everyone with those 6-fig salaries has degrees. No tradespeople. It's obvious where the $ is, student debt notwithstanding. If the goal is to make $, and you have the aptitude to finish, its hard to beat the 4-year degree.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
hotpotamus 3y ago
On the one hand, that's a selected group of people who sit at desks and can chat on a web forum during the day at their jobs (as I am right now), so I wouldn't take them as representative. On the other hand, the trades fucking suck - there are posters here who I will generously interpret as being a bit... touched perhaps? when it comes to the realities of work and particularly pay that the average tradesman must face. I'm sure somewhere, some tradesperson in the world is making a couple hundred thousand a year, but statistically speaking, basically none of them are. There's a reason they want their kids to go into a different line of work.
OJFord 3y ago
There are plenty of them earning six figures, short term (not including the degree years) some trades are probably reliably better - the median anyway, not compared to FANG. There's just perhaps not that much overlap with those circles.

corethree 3y ago

It usually isn't. They're right. They benefit usually because of a name brand school. The name brand is the benefit, the education less so. What people do on the job has overwhelmingly no relation to what they learned in school. Only like at most 5 percent applies in most cases.

kibwen 3y ago
Attending university is unbelievably useful, but it's not really because of the subjects that you take. I can't remember half the things I learned in class, but my persisting friend groups and life opportunities can all be traced back to my time in university. (Which isn't to say that the subjects were useless; they provided a solid foundation in math and computer science. But to say they prepared me to become a professional programmer would be a baldfaced lie (conveniently, a lie that my first employer seemed to believe without me needing to tell it)).
- corethree 3y ago
  Attending university is useful for making friends? That's not what I would classify as useful. You can get friend from many many places. Attending university for friends is not a valid reason to attend imo.
  - kibwen 3y ago
    It's not exactly a hot take that networking in general is one of the advantages of attending university. Likewise, if one's opinion is that the point of university is to get an education, you could just as equally counter with "well, you can get an education from many places". And frankly, it's much easier to recreate the educational aspects of a university than the social aspects. I was a hopeless teenager coasting apathetically through life, and attending university got me to break out of my mold and learn how to socialize, set life goals, and be a functioning human being. I wouldn't trade that time for anything.
- linuxftw 3y ago
  I also have friends and am a professional programmer. I did not attend a university. It sounds like you got swindled.

epolanski 3y ago

Because you're cherrypicking people to whom a college education in a certain country and field has been highly beneficial. And actually in large parts of the world, trade schools pay much better indeed. Reality is that while our society got much more educated the ratio of blue vs white collars hasn't shifted significantly in many decades in most of the world. Now we find the reality when we need our car adjusted or a plumber at home and we find that the hourly rate is insanely higher than that of an average college graduate. But I guess on HN where most people have STEM degrees and have found great jobs indeed with their education this does not resonate. But an average lawyer in France or Italy will never make the money of the average plumber (but stats show that a bit less because those trades often avoid paying taxes entirely) till late in his career (at which point the plumber has built more wealth).

ksplicer 3y ago
Plumbers can make a significant amount, but it's not that easy to get into either. How many students go to tradeschool and then can't find a position where they want to live?
- linuxftw 3y ago
  Plumbers? Pretty much find work anywhere, at least in the US. Developing nations probably a different story. Large plumbing companies will hire people with no experience, trade school not required. Other trades don't pay enough for the hassle.
mp05 3y ago
Yeah well, plumbing is hard work that you couldn't pay me enough to do as a career. God bless tradespeople.
keenmaster 3y ago
“average lawyer in France or Italy will never make the money of the average plumber” My disbelief requires more suspension than the Golden Gate Bridge. Most reputable sources will disprove this. Also, it’s not a given that the bottom 30% of lawyers (who pull down the average) would be good plumbers - I have a hard time imagining a worse population to pull from to work with their hands on piping and lug around tools in their pickup truck. I think these “facts” come from blue collar cosplaying. A survey asking “On a scale of 0-100, how much do you want to be a plumber?” would have a disproportionately massive mode at 0.

bitzun 3y ago

I describe it to the youth like this: Getting a degree might not be the fastest way to riches for the exceptionally entrepreneurial/resourceful (who are few,) but it's still by far the most reliable way to reach financially comfort or affluence in the US if you weren't born into it (or if you're entrepreneurial it amplifies what you can do.) I did a few years of college and got an associate's before dropping out, didn't finish my degree until quite a few years later. I've been fortunate and have privilege, but I most likely would have done better financially if I'd finished a STEM degree from a state school earlier.

bitzun 3y ago
It's also way harder in the US to go back to school as a working professional. Most people can succeed in university, but the window to do it with the least struggle closes after you're adulting hard, have a family, etc.
- NotSuspicious 3y ago
  For most people I can understand why this would be true, especially if you have a family. For me, however, it was the exact opposite. When I first went to college I was abysmal at it and soon dropped out. After a few years of work experience, however, I went back and finished my degree while working full-time. Despite having much more to juggle I did vastly better at college my second go-around. I think having better time-management skills, being emotionally more mature and intuitively knowing that I needed that degree in order to get a better job all worked "against" it being more of a struggle, in my opinion.

blitz_skull 3y ago

One of those online folks here. I tell people this all the time. College was largely a huge waste of my time. It got me interested in CS which has become my career, but I probably would’ve stumbled into it anyway. If you can manage to do it without debt, hell yeah—do it. Otherwise it’s just not worth the financial burden unless you’re doing something that only college people do like operating on brains or practicing law. Otherwise there’s much better paths with less wasted time and less debt. To be honest though I’m not sure college really changes the trajectory of people’s lives most of the time. If you get into a ton of debt, you’ll probably be alright in general. If you take the shortcut of not going to college, you’ll also probably be alright.

tgv 3y ago

IMO, you reach the wrong conclusion. It is: academic jobs are overpaid. There's really no point in giving the whole population an academic degree. University should raise researchers (applied or fundamental). Jobs that don't require academic research skills should not require academic credentials.

solatic 3y ago

> that means more people are getting an education What you think you mean: more people should get a college education. What you probably actually mean: high school educations, which we provide free of cost in order to educate the citizenry, are no longer effectual enough at producing an "educated" citizenry, and therefore we should reform high school education.

chaxor 3y ago

A portion of that argument is probably rooted in a very good intention: the Gini coefficient is far too high right now. One good way go reduce the Gini coefficient is to reduce the praise for roles like CEO, manager, physician, etc and reclaim more respect the technicians of the world. University doesn't really connect anyone with "remarkable" people, but if you come from a rural or low populated area, it does help to let you interact with a more diverse (many professions and ideas) set of people. You're correct that universities don't really have high IQ people (even the grad students, PIs, and professors likely do not have a high IQ these days), but the incentive structure isn't there anymore to allow for this. The publish-or-perish paradigm has basically annihilated the incentive structure for intelligence and now the focus is much more on 'doing' (without much thought). It's pretty simple to see that when looking at the choices in grad students and faculty at places like Harvard, MIT, Stanford, etc. They're not chosen for drive for novelty, or their cleverness, they're chosen for tirelessly working towards very incremental adjustments to ideas that are then marketed as highly impactful and novel - but the biggest determining factor here is being a "hard worker", not intelligence.

newZWhoDis 3y ago

Universal college has been a disaster, one I look forward to us correcting. It has caused untold damage to the millennial and gen X generations. Zoomers have started to adapt but the early ones got swept along with millennials. For the overwhelming majority of people and majors college is a scam, one that robs you of some of your most productive work years and puts you into massive debt.

antisthenes 3y ago
> most productive work years Yeah, no. The 18-22 years may be years where you have a ton of energy, but that doesn't mean they're the most productive. American 18-year old high school graduates are basically children in all but body size and have no experience in doing complex things that the modern economy requires. They still would have to spend 3-5 years learning skills (whether they do it in college or outside of college is less relevant)

snapplebobapple 3y ago

Does it really mean that though? If that increase in dumber people going to university also shifted the programming to fit dumber people better then have we actually given more people a university education, or have we made university the new highschool? Also, we jacked the cost of education through the roof to build the supply for all these people, which diminished the net benefit of university dramatically for many fields