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This is because our society has conflated education with acquiring skills which can be used to create value. What do we tell our young people? “Get good grades,

by nthj 12y ago

This is because our society has conflated education with acquiring skills which can be used to create value. What do we tell our young people? “Get good grades, so you can go to college, get a degree, and get a good job.” Now, don't get me wrong: being well educated has many benefits to both society as a whole and to any given individual. A great education is a wonderful thing to acquire and very valuable. But when we tell our young people, “just get the best grades you can and stick it out until you have a piece of paper”—we shouldn't be surprised when they don't have skills they can trade in the free market for the income they want. (You can argue whether this /should/ be the case, but I'm not arguing what should be, only what reality currently is.) I was fortunate enough to realize this several years ago, in large part thanks to Hacker News, PG's writings on creating wealth, and Jason Fried's Inc Magazine article on making money [1]. But I only found these resources indirectly because I happened to be excited by programming while in high school—not because my school counselors, parents, or society as a whole was pushing me in this direction. Living life well requires balancing many things: work, family, learning, hobbies, helping others. I don't have an easy answer to that. But I do think we need to stop glossing over the whole making-money-is-a-skill thing. It's not doing our young people any good. They need to spend their early years both acquiring a great education, and learning marketable skills. And we need to ask them those hard questions before they turn 25, graduate, and suddenly wonder how they're going make it in the real world. Otherwise, the trend outlined in the article will only continue. [1] http://www.inc.com/magazine/20110301/making-money-small-business-advice-from-jason-fried.html http://www.inc.com/magazine/20110301/making-money-small-busi...

vladtalto 12y ago
So you what your indirectly saying is that instead of telling everyone to go to school and get good grades they should all aspire to be programmers?
- jp555 12y ago
  I read it as: Aspire to make things people want. the things you're interested making may require extensive education, but that should always subordinate to making things people want.
- jjoonathan 12y ago
  Perhaps, but at the very least nthj is postulating the existence of good jobs for everyone if only they would train effectively for them. I take serious issue with this assumption: even if you found a more effective way to get drowning people out of the water and into lifeboats, how do you know that you won't just sink the lifeboats? The usual response from those with more faith in the free market than I is that "increased employment will stimulate demand in a virtuous cycle." It's a nice theory and certainly true to a degree, I just don't see any reason why we should expect this virtuous cycle to converge at more-or-less total employment. What I do see is an overabundance of evidence that it does not converge at total employment. I also see a number of disturbing trends that suggest the problem will get worse before it gets better.
- rm445 12y ago
  There are other professions that make money. But it's possible to get educated in all kinds of fields where either there isn't much demand for work, or the work intrinsically breeds a few stars and others in the field get nothing. Not that there's necessarily anything wrong with pursuing those fields anyway; the question is, are the people going into them properly informed?
  - gaius 12y ago
    14% of CS grads in the UK are unemployed. Tony Blair told a generation, don't learn a trade, get a degree. Now we have graduates making coffee, and we import all our skilled labour from Eastern Europe, because no Brits know how to be plumbers, electricians and carpenters anymore.
rahimnathwani 12y ago
> This is because our society has conflated education with acquiring skills which can be used to create value. It's even worse than this. Society has conflated credentials with education. It's not necessary that someone learns 'marketable skills' during an undergraduate degree. However, it _is_ important that they develop their ability to think and to learn. Those in themselves are not marketable skills, but help greatly in acquiring marketable skills later.

by nthj 12y ago

vladtalto 12y ago

So you what your indirectly saying is that instead of telling everyone to go to school and get good grades they should all aspire to be programmers?

jp555 12y ago
I read it as: Aspire to make things people want. the things you're interested making may require extensive education, but that should always subordinate to making things people want.
jjoonathan 12y ago
Perhaps, but at the very least nthj is postulating the existence of good jobs for everyone if only they would train effectively for them. I take serious issue with this assumption: even if you found a more effective way to get drowning people out of the water and into lifeboats, how do you know that you won't just sink the lifeboats? The usual response from those with more faith in the free market than I is that "increased employment will stimulate demand in a virtuous cycle." It's a nice theory and certainly true to a degree, I just don't see any reason why we should expect this virtuous cycle to converge at more-or-less total employment. What I do see is an overabundance of evidence that it does not converge at total employment. I also see a number of disturbing trends that suggest the problem will get worse before it gets better.
rm445 12y ago
There are other professions that make money. But it's possible to get educated in all kinds of fields where either there isn't much demand for work, or the work intrinsically breeds a few stars and others in the field get nothing. Not that there's necessarily anything wrong with pursuing those fields anyway; the question is, are the people going into them properly informed?
- gaius 12y ago
  14% of CS grads in the UK are unemployed. Tony Blair told a generation, don't learn a trade, get a degree. Now we have graduates making coffee, and we import all our skilled labour from Eastern Europe, because no Brits know how to be plumbers, electricians and carpenters anymore.

rahimnathwani 12y ago

> This is because our society has conflated education with acquiring skills which can be used to create value. It's even worse than this. Society has conflated credentials with education. It's not necessary that someone learns 'marketable skills' during an undergraduate degree. However, it _is_ important that they develop their ability to think and to learn. Those in themselves are not marketable skills, but help greatly in acquiring marketable skills later.