Yep. It’s been a big problem for going on 2 decades at this point.
I have never been convinced that getting a four-year liberal arts degree has any meaningful effect on one’s life or career track unless it’s something directly related to the profession you end up pursuing.
College vs non-college populations skew so hard along so many other obvious demographic, social, and personal axes that I have a hard time believing that there’s all that much daylight between the futures of:
- 18-year-old Jeff: a reasonably motivated and high-school educated young man who always liked computers and technology, who decides to pursue a career in IT by starting off on a helpdesk, and
- 22-year-old Jeff: a reasonably motivated, newly minted Bachelor of Music who always liked computers and technology and decides to pursue a career in IT by starting off on a helpdesk because lol Bachelor of Music, and
- 22-year-old Jeff: a reasonably motivated and high-school educated young man who always liked computers and technology, who decides to pursue a career in IT by starting off on a helpdesk after a few years faffing about with rando security/construction/temp jobs.
Now. Is college Jeff more well-rounded in his education, worldview, and such? Almost certainly. Is that worth $80,000 in debt and four years of his life?
HI. I’m Nesrie. Since you act like we’ve never discussed anything like this ever before, let me introduce myself as the person who constantly, frequently talks about soft skills as I am also the person who points out, repeatedly, like all the dang time, that certain degrees are not useless just because they are not STEM. In fact… I probably said that in this very topic, more than once.
I think you are grossly exaggerating the stereotypical idea that if you enter a trade your body will fall apart by 40. It’s just not a thing. There are several different types of trades but also… people with degrees get their hand dirty too… and people having heart attacks in their offices due to stress (also spoken about here) is not always going to be the one better off than the one working in a crawlspace.
I am not the one who has not read the rest of the conversations going on here, so kindly refrain from bullshit accusations.
And you completely overlooked, again, that we have so many people who go to college, who never complete their education and wind up with student debt, even large amounts of it, for essentially nothing. It’s not just kids who “skip” college.
We’ve been talking about the complexities here for some time now, and we haven’t even touched for-profit colleges yet.
Why bother? They’re predatory scams. Might as well debate the value of joining an MLM scheme vs getting a day job.
Why? Mostly because there were a fair amount of poor kids guided to puppy mill useless colleges and wound up with huge amounts of debt for… nothing. And once again, they and their parents were told they had to, had to go because the sky would fall if they didn’t. We’re setting some kids up to fail.
Oh sure, I’m all for educating the public about how for-profit universities are predatory scams, or better yet legislating them out of existence.
I more meant that here in this thread there’s probably not a lot to talk about since I figure everyone here is well aware of the fact that for-profit universities are predatory scams.
It’s mostly tied to this idea that you HAVE to go, not other option, BEST option in the world, for your kids to go to college. My kid isn’t doing well in school. They don’t focus. They aren’t interested in English or Math or you know, learning, so we find this ultra expensive for profit school that doesn’t care about grades, promises to make them some renown artist, get them into camera work in Hollywood! You know, whatever sounds sexy and exciting to the kids, and don’t worry, loans for everything.
But what’s really driving all this… they have to, have to, only option or their future is ruined, go to college, right now, and I mean right now…
It’s a different path, a waaay worst one, but it’s still this idea that the only way you or anyone else can be a good parents or a young person can make a good decision is this one way fits all approach which is simply not true.
The for profits didn’t create that mentality, they just decided to scam off of it.
I think you are grossly exaggerating the stereotypical idea that if you enter a trade your body will fall apart by 40. It’s just not a thing. There are several different types of trades but also… people with degrees get their hand dirty too… and people having heart attacks in their offices due to stress (also spoken about here) is not always going to be the one better off than the one working in a crawlspace.
Here is some folks on the electricians subreddit:
Its hard on your body. My fingers and hands get cut, poked, stabbed and smashed on a daily basis. I broke my foot when the scaffold broke and I fell onto the concrete below. Crawling around in tight ass crawl spaces and small attics kills your knees and back. Im sure hammering and twisting wire nuts also contributes to my carpel tunnel. Being out in the freezing cold for 8+ hrs a day in the winter can’t be good for your joints and shit. I have family members that were carpenters their whole lives and are now in their 60s and can barley lift their arms over their head.
Working with your arms above your head a lot (light fittings) takes its toll on your shoulders.
I have yet to be broken, but from my experience and observations it’s more something that accumulates. Kneeling on concrete will mess your knees up over time. Wrestling equipment into place has the potential to hurt your back. Confined spaces are hard on you because generally you’re crammed into a tight spot for hours on end. Even something as simple as wearing a retractable while on a lift the constant pull might not feel like much on day one but when day fourteen hits I bet you’ll feel it on the lower back, never mind when those fuckers lock up and you unexpectedly jam your back. Working in plants exposes you to random and often dangerous chemicals. Working long hours just increases your chances of injury, I just finished a job that ran eleven hour shifts, seven days a week for five months. There are plenty more examples.
It’s hard work and the bigger you are, muscle wise, the more heavy work you are expected to do. Someone already mentioned the extreme cold for 8+ a day in the winter. I just never met an old construction worker ( over 60) that just isn’t all torn up. Unless it’s an machine operator.
Carpel tunnel and arthritis from cutting and twisting wire and arthritis of the neck and shoulders from looking up for hours daily. And I was only in the trade for 23 years, ate right and exercised. I did smoke for part of that time, though, but stopped drinking in my mid-20s.
Adding to the above… Inhaling basement mildews, attic insulation, decaying rodents and their feces while facefirst in the hole (I get claustrophobic and try to wear a mask but it gets to be too much in a tight crawl while wearing invariably fogged-up reading glasses to even see what the fuck is closer than 5’). Inhalation of other trades’ paint, glue (esp. epoxies) , wooddust, plumbing solders that a dust-mask does nothing for. The intermittent loud noises that catch you without ear protection while the client, contractor, site supervisor or teammate is trying to communicate with you.I would love to exercise and do yoga but with what time and energy? I was doing the “army-crawl” all up in there and alternately up the ladder and on my knees all.day.long.
Glad we got that out of the way
I am not the one who has not read the rest of the conversations going on here, so kindly refrain from bullshit accusations.
Sorry, I did read the whole post, I guess I just didn’t catch every point that was made?
And you completely overlooked, again, that we have so many people who go to college, who never complete their education and wind up with student debt, even large amounts of it, for essentially nothing. It’s not just kids who “skip” college.
It is true that college is hard for first generation folks. My University identifies them before they come in, and they have extra outreach from advisors to leverage University services to ensure they can stay enrolled. It is also true that more students are completing in 5 or 6 years now. But that is because more kids are focused on completing their degree, instead of unenrolling after 3 or 4 years. Schools are trying to find ways to help with that problem. My University is boosting access to 2-year programs and trying to run more concurrent programs (which let high school students complete college credit at greatly reduced cost)
Like I said, college should be much more affordable - but that is going to require the government to go back to funding well above the 4% that we receive now.
Your 50% number includes community colleges, so that number is somewhat inaccurately skewed. That is going to be a lot of non-traditional students who have extenuating circumstances that make college hard. Some are approaching it later in life when they’re trying to balance families and jobs, for example. There also isn’t the financial risk for not completing CC. My local CC’s tuition is $3.5k, and there is no room and board… so not something that should be overly impactful in the long haul if it doesn’t work out.
We’ve been talking about the complexities here for some time now, and we haven’t even touched for-profit colleges yet.
Ooooook!
I used to hang drywall. You want to tell me how hard it is to hold your arms above your head?
I mean seriously why do you think no one else knows about these things? We’re just all a bunch of ignorant asses sitting at a keyboard? Unskilled labor is not a trade, but I know what physical work is.
Why are you so sensitive? I never called you an ignorant ass. I was simply pointing out that most trades are hard on the body over time… and for some reason you have chosen that as the hill to die on, despite all the evidence to the contrary.
If you borrow $80,000 for a four year degree and pay it off in 10 years at 4.25% interest, it’s almost $100,000. You can add to that the additional four years in workforce at whatever pay the person gets. If that’s $30,000 per year then the college degreed individual needs to earn an extra $220,000 to reach the break even point.
I think what’s frustrating to a lot of people these days is they go to college and get the degree, and then they get a job that has no bearing on their degree and in many cases they could have gotten right out of high-school. Why did I go into debt for four years to come out and work retail? To end up waiting tables in a restaurant? To go into sales?
Because some people are better off working with their hands and working physically and going from house to house and attic to attic, and working as early as a local noise ordinance allows them to work to avoid summer heat, and the people who are saying that are not saying that because they don’t know better. If you can accept that, then we can actually talk about why that is instead of you trying to convince everyone else how much we don’t know.
Not everyone should go to college, and when I say that, it’s not because I don’t understand how the rest world works.
Now dry-wall hanging is unskilled labor and anyone with a functioning body can do it. It’s not something I would ever recommend someone do forever, but if someone wanted to go into construction, they should actually look at some college course work, the requirements of the skilled labor in that industry which very likely does not include a four year degree. There are just so many options that are not laid on the table for young people, and they’re valid options.
Sending all our kid to college and watching those prices sky-rocket and more than half, more than half, drop out, is not a viable way to do it. And we know that, because we’re doing it right now.
I’m just look at the data. So yeah, I guess I can agree with you that some people are skilled enough that they never get hurt.
And awesome, we’re in agreement! I also don’t think everyone needs to college. I simply posit that college is a better choice for MOST people.
As far as your retention rates numbers… according to the study cited in your article, 60% of attendees complete and receive their degree
https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_ctr.asp
Sounds pretty bad, except that number includes private institutions, for-profit colleges, community colleges…
An accredited 4-year public institution had an average retention of 81%. There is a lot of variance within that range based on the enrollment standards for the University, with those institutions that have a less stringent enrollment requirements having lower retention rates (which makes sense). I would love to know if those institutions were far more affordable as well, considering the added risk - but who knows. Most notable 4-year schools will be 85% or above
I always hear this glibly tossed about. I have no idea why anyone thinks college provides this over any other reasonable path (including just working an ordinary job).
My father had an eighth grade education. I’d match his organization, critical thinking skills, note taking, and similar “soft skills” that are supposedly obtained in college against nearly anyone who actually went to college.
I think we’re supposed to believe that college offers some magical host of “soft skills” that you do not, for some reason, gain while otherwise spending four years of your life doing things. I went to college for four years. Then for an advanced degree for three years beyond that. I have no idea what magical “soft skills” I gained that I would not have acquired doing nearly anything else for the seven years.
I think the reality is, the types of people who traditionally did not go to college do not gain those soft skills out of college, because they have personalities and intellectual capabilities that limit their ability to acquire them. They are absent those soft skills not because they did not go to college, but because they are incapable of acquiring them.
On the other hand, I’m willing to bet that a lot of people who went to college would have gained the same set of “soft skills” as they supposedly got in college simply doing something else for the four years (including work). Because they have the personality and intellectual capability to pick up those skills.
That has at least been my experience with my friends who do not have college degrees. I see no difference between them and people with college degrees in terms of soft skills and frankly, general intelligence.
What the college degree can tell a hiring manager, or often at the large places where I have worked in the most recent past, is they committed to something, and they completed the work. With a USA based education, those are supposed to be well-rounded degrees which means everyone coming out of a reputable school should be able to do at least a large checklist number of things. One of the first things we do with new hires is go send them to get training if they don’t have it… lot of money in travel and education for someone who won’t… learn.
It’s not that you can’t get those things outside of college work, it’s just so much harder to get that information before you talk to the person. You can’t talk to 10,000 applicants if you have one hiring manager. It’s used to take a giant pile of applicants and really narrow it down.
Now I’ve said it before, it’s possible where I work not to have a degree and get hired, you might not even have one of our certifications and get a chance, but it’s hard. If you’re up against someone with a degree and those certs… well something else must have brought you to the table like a recommendation, where you worked previously, but by that point they’ve already tossed out who knows how many applicants before my team even looked at them.
I value a college education. I didn’t even do it right the first or second time but boy by the third time I hit those books and told anyone who didn’t want to work projects with me on the weekends to go pound sand because I was working and weekends were my project times. There are a lot of motivating factors to get someone through college, but sometimes working those shit jobs no one wants to work is one of them.
It’s unlikely that a potential employer could figure that out with a reasonable, implementable process. Hiring isn’t a symmetrical exercise: a potential employer is not weighing the risk of false positives and false negatives equally. It’s not the goal, nor the job, of the potential employer to give every candidate a fair shake.
Hence, the risk adverse gating requirements like a college degree. To an employer, you define your observable key metrics, and then you take the candidate that meets those. If that results in passing up a candidate that would have excelled at the job (e.g., due to difficult to assess metrics), then so be it. Another candidate will come along who meets all the observable metrics.
Obviously nothing is one size fits all and I don’t think dionisus1122 is saying that. He’s saying that, on the average, the generic individual is better off, at least measured in financial terms. I think the stats are pretty clear on that premise. The key, of course, is how to deal with individuals, specifically, rather than as a statistical average.
We’ve had these discussion in other threads: it’s damn hard to balance giving individuals the opportunity to attend college (e.g., even if they didn’t have the best high school grades) versus trying to limit incoming college students (or majors) to those more to those likely to succeed.
It’s not really about a “fair shake” to me. I’m not talking about being more intelligent, having specific trained skills, etc. I’m more than happy to admit my father could not have walked onto an engineering job, a research position at a particle collider, etc.
I’m talking about soft skills here. Those magical skills that college supposedly gives you. The ability to show up on time, see things through, take notes, organize, etc. That was the specific thing discussed. And I have no idea why you would expect some college student to have them to a greater degree than someone who has actually productively worked for four years.
Frankly, from what I’ve seen of college students, I would put better money on someone who has shown up on a construction site every day for 40-60 hours a week and done the job to have the ability to show up on time, see things through, etc., than I would the average liberal arts college student.
Again, I have no idea why someone who has worked for 4 years is somehow supposed to have worse “critical thinking skills” than someone who studied Chaucer. Great. You learned to show up for class and may half-ass learned old English. Meanwhile, the guy working learned how to show up at work on time every day (you don’t get to skip work like so many college students skip classes because they were hungover), submit to a boss he doesn’t like and keep him happy, how to keep customers happy, how to efficiently go about his work day (and a real 8 hour work day, not going to class when they feel like it then going home to watch afternoon television), whatever actual job related skills he needed (selling things to people, bookkeeping, working with machinery and equipment, for exmaple), etc.
If anything, I think college today shelters people from actually having to do and learn productive things for four years. At least liberal arts degrees do.
I think we use the fact that colleges select more motivated, intelligent people as a proxy for college giving useful skills that those motivated, intelligent people would have obtained without college.
Are they really though? When you include all of our colleges, and no you can’t arbitrarily push out some types of college to pad better outcomes, more than half who tried don’t succeed, and that’s before you look at outcome based job placements. Just because someone gets a degree doesn’t mean they are where they need to be. This is part of the problem with the original topic. Millennial Burnout… one of the most educated generations out there, struggling, burning out.
So when we say the stats… which ones? Are we ignoring the group that tried but failed. Are we not counting the underemployed? What about the ones that can’t actually get work in their field?
I don’t think those stats are as cut and dry as often sold.
Those are all really important skills. They’re nearly impossible to assess in a hiring process. So, employers play the odds and say that a person with a college degree is more likely to have those skills than someone who’s not. The degree becomes an imperfect proxy for those skills, and as long as there is a reasonable correlation there, they’re decreasing their false positives. What else are they to do?
On the issue of whether 4 years of non-college work is better than 4 years of college in terms of practical skills, at the start of a career, I don’t disagree with you. I think you’re right, the employers are using college as a proxy for intelligence, motivation, etc. That is, college is viewed as a proxy for traits, whereas work history in a non-directly related job (e.g., a construction job when interviewing for an office job) is arguably a proxy only for skills.
A good welder can make pretty good money. Many in the trades can make pretty good money. And I agree, not everyone needs a college education.