22 ms·

A generation of American men give up on college

• PaulHoule 5y ago
  I went to pick up a book at the circulation desk at my uni close to the first day of classes and of the people in front of me and in back of me there were 9 girls and 0 boys in line. If the class were gender-balanced the odds of that would be 1/512; I have no idea what it means ("girls are much more interested in using the library?") but I think it's significant.
  • sergiomattei 5y ago
    It means exactly nothing. They could be a study group, they could be all be part of a club, I could go on... There is zero significance to that observation.
  • dragonwriter 5y ago
    > If the class were gender-balanced the odds of that would be 1/512 If each arrival at the desk were an independent draw from the full class, then, sure, the chance of any given set of 9 arrivals having 9 women would be 1/512. (Though the chance of the sequence of 10 including 9 women and 1 man is 10/1024, or about 5 times more likely; by cherry-picking the set of arrivals to consider, you are añready making the set around you seem more unlikely than it is.) Of course, if they were where independent the case, there’d also be a non-negligible case of a repeat in that set of arrivals; the fact that you chose a set in line at the same time demonstrates that they aren't a set of independent events. So the whole basis of your 1/512 even on the cherry-picked set is invalid.
    • PaulHoule 5y ago
      yeah i am a p-hacker who can do any kind of statistics so long as it is nonparametric statistics because i only know the binomial distribution
      • savanaly 5y ago
        On a site like this where anyone can comment and only a few do, this is the far greater problem compared to p-hacking: https://web.ma.utexas.edu/users/mks/statmistakes/filedrawer.html https://web.ma.utexas.edu/users/mks/statmistakes/filedrawer..... There are probably 512 people in this thread right now that have had that same experience you did but didn't reject the null hypothesis so they're not commenting.
        • PaulHoule 5y ago
          I dunno. I play the game of assessing the gender balance of groups a lot. Some of it is wondering where society is going, some of it is just trying to avoid sausage parties. Trans people don't give me any trouble because they want to be assigned a certain gender, non-binaries might force me to learn the multinomial distribution but those seem to turn up at the 1/256 - 1/512 level if that. I stopped going to Yoga classes in my ZIP code because they attract a lot of middle-aged and older men who, I think, are there to look at women without doing anything too strenuous.
  • 1123581321 5y ago
    It is interesting; disregarding nitpicking about the calculation there could be multiple potential reasons that all are connected to the heart of the matter: - women more likely to study and solve logistical study problems together - men more likely to pirate books - men less likely to be out during normal hours - men less likely to choose majors requiring library books - and of course, higher college enrollment by women I am not saying any of these were necessarily in play in your situation, but some probably are and colleges and employers should be thinking about them.
    • pwthornton 5y ago
      I'd say seeing a 9-0 ratio is an outlier for sure, and maybe we don't need much deeper thought than that. I do, suspect, however, that women are more likely to go to the library than men. My assumption on this is the higher grades that female students earn on average.
• throwinthsaway 5y ago
  Getting into debt to get a piece of paper that only lets you begin to enter the job market after gathering enough credentials by either working for free or talking to others and hopefully trying your luck even though there are 100s for a single internship... College is a scam unless you're paying close attention and don't get into debt in the first place. Those who manage to jump through all of the hoops don't realize that there is a secondary scam waiting for them: working for a wage without significant stock options while someone makes millions sitting around doing nothing off of their effort. We've had movies made about this for many years and still it's so strange how it's not acknowledged. Also: who is friend or foe? The lines have blurred significantly, which is a driving force in WANTING to change things in the first place. There's even loss of solidarity between family members, next generations. There's no incentive to try. If I were the same age as these young men, I wouldn't bother either.
  • PaulHoule 5y ago
    The proliferation of this attitude... https://www.amazon.com/Aint-No-making-2nd-Second/dp/B002NAUW3A https://www.amazon.com/Aint-No-making-2nd-Second/dp/B002NAUW...
    • toomuchtodo 5y ago
      https://openlibrary.org/books/OL1271149M/Ain%27t_no_makin%27_it https://openlibrary.org/books/OL1271149M/Ain%27t_no_makin%27...
      • PaulHoule 5y ago
        To spoil a little, this book considers a group of low-income whites and a group of low-income blacks. As teenagers the whites have a pessimistic attitude about success but the blacks are more optimistic. Barriers to the success of both groups are looming. The first edition of the book stops there: one is left with the feeling that the plight of the two groups is not that different (e.g. "systemic racism" is a real thing but doesn't seem salient when you are know "white people with black problems") Somehow, however, the blacks believe that "they can overcome". In a follow-up study a decade later both groups are doing poorly, but the blacks in particular have had their hopes dashed by poverty, problems with the law, problems with work, etc.
• torstenvl 5y ago
  https://archive.is/7NeJl https://archive.is/7NeJl
  • jsnider3 5y ago
    Thanks.
• draw_down 5y ago
  I’m sure we’ll be hearing about the injustice of this gender imbalance any day now.......
• jsnider3 5y ago
  Did WSJ change their paywall again? I can't get around it.
• phendrenad2 5y ago
  This is because in our society, it's more acceptable for men to drop out and get into some skilled trade, like plumbing or climbing telephone poles. People just won't accept that women can also do that. So there's a lot of pressure to make sure your female children go to college and get a degree.
  • chuckee 5y ago
    I see. And there's no non-college educated professions where women are prevalent? It's plumbing or bust? Of course clearly when women were under-represented in college, that was due to misogyny. And now that they are over-represented, it's also due to misogyny. No matter what the facts are, the conclusion is the same. There's a word for that.
    • mrbadideas 5y ago
      Systemic misogyny?
    • amanaplanacanal 5y ago
      Do you think that when women were under-represented it was because they were plumbers or climbing telephone poles? Because that's the only way your suggestion makes sense.
      • Nimitz14 5y ago
        They weren't working at all.
        • watwut 5y ago
          That is not actually true. The all women are stay at home thing was never true. Society always had women who worked, because they are unmarried, husband is alcoholic, husband died, husband does not earn all that much.
    • frankbreetz 5y ago
      I am having trouble coming up with a single high paying, no degree required job that is majority female. Please let me know if I am missing some.
• frankbreetz 5y ago
  On the other side: A stat shared at my most recent tech companies meeting, they are trying to hire more women. 5000 people applied for a single position and 15 of them were women. This was for a high paying tech job.
  • finiteseries 5y ago
    What proportion are American raised/educated? Mirrors my experience though, and probably many in eg finance as well. There is a clear, well publicized path from degree -> money that any middle class+ guy can walk. Sad the article doesn’t go into specifics though, it’s all just “degrees”.
  • pwthornton 5y ago
    One thing I am starting to wonder about is if there is a systematic guidance counseling failing in high schools and colleges. There are so many well paying tech jobs that we just aren't getting that many candidates for. Forget not having a great gender ratio, it is often hard to find a lot of candidates for my openings. If I can't offer sponsorship, it can take awhile There clearly seems to be a lot more knowledge in some countries about which jobs lead to high paying careers, and the U.S. still has an antiquated mindset about this.
    • seanmcdirmid 5y ago
      You’ll actually find similar gender disparities in China and India. Maybe not as pronounced as the USA, but it’s still there. Somehow there is something going on throughout the industry that crosses cultural boundaries.
      • pharmakom 5y ago
        From a sample of 3 countries (two with very traditional gender roles), I’m not convinced. In Eastern Europe software engineering was a female dominated field.
        • Bayart 5y ago
• mikewarot 5y ago
  Unless you're going to be a Professional Engineer or some other licensed individual, or you're getting a free ride, college isn't worth it any more. Going deep into debt for a credential that doesn't have a reasonably large future value is a huge mistake many are pushed into making.
  • otoburb 5y ago
    According to the article women still believe the trade-off to be worth paying for and attending college since their application numbers are still holding steady. Are most of them making a huge mistake? I guess it depends heavily in the credential(s), but I think there has to be a deeper reason for falling and unbalanced undergraduate enrollment amongst men.
    • mikewarot 5y ago
      All Ponzi schemes collapse, the growth colleges experienced in the past led them to be overly optimistic and make promises they can no longer meet. The falling debris from the collapse is already happening, as the wave of unbreakable and unpayable student debt imprisons a generation.
    • david38 5y ago
      Women are known to chase institutional accolades more than men when given the opportunity. It is in line with a general preference for more security. Will it work today? Probably. There are few women in the trades. If you can get a cheap degree, it is likely better than no degree.
      • petre 5y ago
        No, women are generally underpaid compared to men, so it's obvious that they'll try to get the appropriate degrees in order to be able to compete.
        • epicureanideal 5y ago
          Women don’t earn less for the same work. Never married women with no kids actually out earn never married men with no kids. Please read “why men earn more” by Warren Farrell or skim the table of contents for a list of some of the factors that influence earnings, such as working longer hours, in a different field, in unpleasant conditions, etc.
• albntomat0 5y ago
  “Over the course of their working lives, American college graduates earn more than a million dollars beyond those with only a high-school diploma, and a university diploma is required for many jobs as well as most professions, technical work and positions of influence.” From the article. There are folks getting useless degrees and/or taking on too much debt, but getting a college degree on the whole is worthwhile.
  • torstenvl 5y ago
    Far too many variables to draw any clear conclusions, in my opinion. Have there been any of these studies that show the effect holding constant when controlling for high school GPA, SAT/ACT, and IQ?
    • zsmi 5y ago
      What is the experiment you're proposing? I didn't follow. What about just measuring the ROI of the degree? https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/13/your-money/college-degree-investment-return.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/13/your-money/college-degree... "All of the largest programs in electrical and communications engineering, for instance, allowed most of their graduates to recoup their educational investment in five years or less. But many programs in some fields, like drama and dance, show no return on investment, the report found, meaning most of their graduates are earning less than a typical high school graduate." So this study more or less backs claim that some degrees offer a positive ROI while others do not. As to whether or not a given degree is "worthwhile," I'd leave that as an exercise for the reader. :)
      • tfehring 5y ago
        Not the parent commenter but I think they’re suggesting that the degree may not be the cause of the increase in earnings, but rather that the people who get college degrees have attributes (e.g. intelligence, work ethic, good K12 education, wealthy parents) that would lead them to out-earn their peers even without a degree. To be clear, I don’t buy that argument. Obviously those factors explain some of the difference, but I think most of the highest-paying jobs in STEM and many of the highest-paying jobs in other fields (e.g. business/finance) require skills that would be hard to reliably obtain without a college degree or something similar.
• xqcgrek2 5y ago
  The proliferation of video games, especially online ones could also be a reason (besides the cost-benefit of attending college that is declining which other people already mentioned)
• pwthornton 5y ago
  The thing that struck me right off the bat was that the lead photo of this story is of 18-year-old with a PS5 and pretty sweet setup in his bedroom. I don't have anything deep to add to this, but if you can sit at home in your childhood bedroom indefinitely playing video games and working menial jobs, maybe the allure is there.
  • effingwewt 5y ago
    I mean of the choice is between that and crippling debt and a useless degree, he's making the objectively smart move. The fact that they were able to buy things while living at home just drives the point home even more- he would not have the disposable income to make those purchases for many years if he decides to go to college.
    • jasonboyd 5y ago
      Wut? Are those the only choices? Is there nothing in between? Lay off the drama. I don't feel like my degree was useless (and I'm not even working in the field I got a degree in) and I certainly didn't graduate with crippling debt.
      • effingwewt 5y ago
        Survivorship bias with a N=1 doesn't change the absolute fact that most if not all degrees are worth far less than the debt taken on. Why your personal story is pertinent here is beyond me, OP was talking about the person in the article. It's not dramatic at all when we have 1.73[1] trillion in student loan debt, with an average of 39k each student. Starting your professional career years in debt is the definition of crippling debt. edit to add source [1] https://educationdata.org/student-loan-debt-statistics https://educationdata.org/student-loan-debt-statistics
        • crazy_horse 5y ago
          The new student also has the option of choosing a not worthless degree, greatly increasing their odds.
• Arete314159 5y ago
  One guy they profiled is making $20 an hour in Toledo, Ohio. If he's working full time, that's 40k a year. Zillow has a number of houses for sale in Toledo for under $40k. Like, they need some work, but a real house, under 40k. I think that guy is doing fine, he should just keep doing exactly what he's doing.
  • throwcommonsns 5y ago
    There's this unfortunately prevailing attitude that you aren't successful in America if you aren't living in New York or San Francisco. It's absolutely bonkers. There are many other great places in this country besides those two cities.
    • Arainach 5y ago
      If you can make NYC/SF money and save/invest a portion of your income, you can retire and do significantly better elsewhere. You can't do the opposite. If you can have a decent lifestyle in Ohio on 40k (big if, when you factor in retirement planning) you can still fundamentally never leave Ohio.
      • silverpepsi 5y ago
        Assuming the rest of the world doesn't exist, though. Can't honestly say I'm targeting having more retirement money than needed to get by in some combination of Ukraine, Thailand, and Colombia. Major life regret? Thinking other countries didn't exist when I was at the age to enter college and taking on massive loans to pay exorbitant US tuition for a school that wasn't anything special when I could have found overseas options at a fraction of the cost.
        • deleted 5y ago
          [deleted]
      • nickysielicki 5y ago
        > you can still fundamentally never leave Ohio. God forbid. Think of all the experiences you and your family will miss out on! Lately all I want is to get as far away from people as possible. The internet has negated every advantage of these regions and of money broadly. You cannot buy a nuclear family.
• neonate 5y ago
  https://archive.is/DFwi7 https://archive.is/DFwi7
• notfromhere 5y ago
  There’s a lot of anti-intellectualism that floats around in male culture, and a pernicious attitude that you can make it without a degree (despite the reality that a lack of credentials locks you out of most high paying or leadership roles). Tech likes to pretend credentials don’t matter, but that’s entirely not true. Not surprising that enrollment is down when too many men think learning things is for nerds. Source: am an American male
  • throwcommonsns 5y ago
    Even people with degrees are locked out of those high paying or leadership roles. Meanwhile, others can make it just fine by learning a trade. As a junior engineer, I was making the same amount as my degree less counterparts working in the oil industry were.
  • noduerme 5y ago
    I didn't go to college, and I'm one of the techs you're referring to. But techs also think on-job experience and self-motivated projects are equivalent to or better than college, and both of those are necessary. There are tons of high paying jobs available to people who learn trades, either in trade schools or on the job. Much of tech is like a trade - as a software engineer, I certainly have more in common with a car mechanic working on custom builds than I do with an accountant, lawyer, doctor or CEO. A lot of Americans were sold the false idea that college would help them know what they wanted to do, and make money. But it's not a magic beansprout you just ride up to the heights of society... definitely not when everyone else is doing it and everyone else is in debt. You have to actually be motivated. And if you're motivated... well it's kike George Carlin said about self help books: You went to the bookstore to go find a self help book, you're motivated, what do you need the book for?
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  • happythen 5y ago
    I don't have a degree and am from US as well. In most my jobs, I am usually the only one without it. In Europe, it's even more rare, (majority of colleagues have PhDs). When people find out I am not educated, they are not happy about it, initially. People can be really mean, especially when you aren't "smart". I had to read a lot about a lot of things just so I could go to lunch and participate in the chatter with coworkers. But, not getting a degree never blocked me from getting great money or any position, I just had to work hard for it, always had to prove myself, earn trust. It's life on hard mode for sure, but not a blocker.
• wasmburger 5y ago
  I wonder if it could be because masculinity is being challenged on campus in the current era. Why would a male who has issues with women want to go to a place where he will be challenged to change his views in sensitivty and toxic masculinity courses? Conversely, why would a male who does not have issues with women go to a place where he will be labeled as having toxic masculinity? It's not like these issues haven't been all over the press for years. #MeToo Is Making Colleges Teach Toxic Masculinity 101 https://www.thedailybeast.com/metoo-is-making-colleges-teach-toxic-masculinity-101 https://www.thedailybeast.com/metoo-is-making-colleges-teach... Toxic Masculinity and Higher Education https://www.higheredjobs.com/Articles/articleDisplay.cfm?ID=2033 https://www.higheredjobs.com/Articles/articleDisplay.cfm?ID=... And so on. A quick search turns up 1000's of such links
  • DasIch 5y ago
    The term “toxic masculinity” does not and is not intended to imply that masculinity itself is toxic.
    • doubleunplussed 5y ago
      I don't know anyone who believes this. Words mean what they're intended to mean and interpreted to mean, and that's how it's used in practice. Claiming otherwise is just a bald-faced "nuh-uh" when people who use the term are confronted with the double standard. If there wasn't at least a little bit of complicity in it being interpreted as a general diss on masculinity, the term would never have caught on, or a different term would have been chosen in the first place. In the face of repeated misunderstandings, people using the term would pick a new one. They haven't done that. Why? It seems to me that they are quite happy to be "misunderstood" 95% of the time. The gender swapped equivalent seems to be "internalised misogyny". Do you think I could get away with calling it "toxic femininity" instead? Nobody would let that pass. Do you think I could get away with calling any obviously bad behaviour associated with femininity, "toxic femininity", at all? I don't think I could. It's widely considered by men to be an insulting term, and if people who use it don't want to insult people, they should pick another one. They don't though, which is telling.
• baron816 5y ago
  A lot of this is driven by narratives—A narrative that college isn’t worth it anymore. A narrative that (white) men are uniformly privileged and life is just easy for them. And a narrative that those men aren’t wanted by society any more. I’m not convinced that all those men need to go to college, but they clearly need something. They need to feel like they’re part of society. Nothing good can come of an entire generation that feels lost, without purpose, and unwanted.
  • smitty1e 5y ago
    My brother in law is an electrician. I had enough EE in college to change a light switch without burning the house down. However, that book-learnin' fell apart when confronted with troubleshooting a strangely wired room, and I got very polite while asking him over to bail me out. These fellows eschewing the ivory tower, where being of European extraction and bearing a Y-chromosome on the college campus is an indictment, are going to trade schools and will make fat piles of cash repairing plumbing. Hopefully, they are gracious with all the Grievance Studies majors who are standing by to condescend in their direction.
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    • atoav 5y ago
      I am a certified EE and have a MA of fine Arts (film). Living in Europe where I had to pay 350 Euros per semester (which included a public transport ticket for the whole province), I didn't have to make a choice between the two. I did both because I was interested in both. After university I was well equiped to do freelancer work in my field and earned well. I don't think this "you have to be hard or else you won't survive"-mentality in the US is very beneficial to its society as a whole. Ideally you want to live in a society where everybody is well educated, healthy, happy, friendly and so on. Maybe it is a naive idea, but I think this is more achievable if there is collective investment into those goals rather than internal economical warfare where everybody is a army of one, except for the big corporations who will happily milk a atomized, divided population. Yet I am constantly amazed by how much some of you guys endure. I just wish you wouldn't have to.
• babesh 5y ago
  The same is occurring in some Scandinavian countries.
• PaywallBuster 5y ago
  average joe: blue collar job, make 20$ per hour woke jane: liberal arts degree, 8$ per hour job at starbucks
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • noncompliant 5y ago
    well this "woke jane" could still study and after a while learn a trade if education were affordable. there is nothing wrong with having an educated working class. nothing should restrict you from being a plumber with an history degree.
• 8eye 5y ago
  something about college men and a paywall
  • the_only_law 5y ago
    College is certainly a paywall. In the US at least.
• _Nat_ 5y ago
  That's an interesting figure they've got! Observations (based on the figure alone): 1. White-Males had the lowest college-enrollment-rates across all categories. They got the lowest in the two lowest income-brackets; basically a three-way tie in the next income-bracket; and just a little higher than Hispanic-Males in the highest income-bracket. 2. Asians had the highest enrollment-rates across all income-brackets. 3. Asians were relatively constant in their enrollment-rates, regardless of income or gender, always above 70%. (Always above ~83%, if excluding the lowest income-bracket.) The gender-gap still leaned toward Asian-Females over Asian-Males, but not by much. 4. Blacks varied heavily by income. Blacks had pretty low enrollment-rates in the lowest income-bracket, but got some of the highest enrollment-rates in the higher income-brackets (after Asians). 5. Black-Females had an odd pattern-deviation: like Black-Males, their enrollment-rates increased dramatically with family-income, getting the highest non-Asian enrollment-rate by the second-highest income-bracket. But then, oddly, their enrollment-rate fell by ~8% from the second-highest to the highest income-bracket. 6. Hispanics were pretty consistent with Whites, especially for Males. For Females, Whites had higher rates in the lowest income-bracket, while Hispanics had somewhat higher rates in all other income-brackets. 7. Ignoring race, enrollment-rates increased significantly with family-income. 8. Ignoring race, enrollment-rates were much higher for Females than Males across all income-brackets.
  • nabla9 5y ago
    What is missing is dividing all that by field of study. When white males give up college, what exactly do they give up? https://scholar.harvard.edu/goldin/publications/homecoming-american-college-women-reversal-gender-gap-college https://scholar.harvard.edu/goldin/publications/homecoming-a... >Once barriers to female careers were lowered and their access to higher education was expanded, two key factors may have played a role in the female college advantage: relatively greater economic benefits of college for females and relatively higher effort costs of college going and prepara- tion for males. (girls exceeded boys in secondary school performance and attainment)
• teekert 5y ago
  I can understand this. I think my parents never questioned the usefulness of a formal education. But I am starting to. My brother tried several different educational paths, pushed by my parents. In the end he got a sort of burnout. After years now he is picking up some work, mainly helping elderly still living alone on any tasks (from computer related to doing groceries). He seems happy, finally. My other brother hated all his schools, got bullied a lot, he specialized in agriculture in the end. Now he's a truck driver (with one of those super big ones), he likes it. He can still give nice advice on what to plant in my garden, so there's that. I see that my son is also really interested in many things, but school is not so much "his thing". Sitting still, listening, it's not making him happy. If he has any aspiration of building a life without formal schooling I'd support it. There is so much to learn online. He can be an entrepreneur and we can help him get there. In fact, I'd enjoy it. Who knows with the insane cost of education, this generation of men may end up self-taught, happy and (in the US important) debt free. Maybe we should worry about the people missing out on this opportunity?
  • prawn 5y ago
    The article made mention of what the example males were doing and what they were earning. There was mention of the average graduate's earnings vs non-graduate, but otherwise they're judging a person skipping a first year of college while they would otherwise have been spending money in the equivalent year. As you and others have implied, these individuals could earn, buy modest property in a quiet state/town, then live a decent life debt free - there are far worse things to achieve. My brother was a professional basketball player up until his mid-30s. I remember when he was about the same age as the males of the story, he was deciding between a four-year scholarship at an American college, or a four-year contract in the Australian professional league. The pitch from the college was that he could return to Australia in year five and earn x. The pitch from the local team was that he could earn x by year five, but have been earning for each of the first four years; the pro team offered university payments, car, and so on. Pros and cons either way. He eventually got his degree studying remotely in the later years of his basketball career and transitioned to a desk job. There's always a sense of what might've been, but I think things worked out well enough.
• ceilingcorner 5y ago
  COVID has accelerated this big time. Why spend $5,000 a semester to watch a Zoom lecture from an average professor when you can open YouTube in a new tab and see a world-class professor share the same information for free? It makes no rational sense. The moment that a serious, legitimate credential system appears, every average university will disappear overnight. We'll be left with an oligarch class that attends the top ±30 universities and everyone else getting a AmaGoogBook certificate of completion.
  • smt88 5y ago
    > Why spend $5,000 a semester to watch a Zoom lecture from an average professor when you can open YouTube a new tab and see a world-class professor share the same information for free? It makes no rational sense. Because there is much more possible value in college than just the education. Socializing is a huge part of it. College is a good place to learn how to make friends, date, network, etc. It's also nearly free at many schools, so I don't envision the future you're describing ever happening. Most 18-22 year olds couldn't think of a better place to be than on a campus almost exclusively filled with people in their age group.
    • ceilingcorner 5y ago
      I am talking specifically about COVID and Zoom. I didn’t say anything about on-campus learning.
      • paulcole 5y ago
        > I didn’t say anything about on-campus learning You should have. It’s not “world class professors” on YouTube that people are watching instead of their own university’s zoom classes. They’re not paying for zoom classes because they want to learn on campus. They still want to go to college, they just don’t want to learn online.
    • endominus 5y ago
      This reminds me of a passage from Bryan Caplan's book, "The Case Against Education." Paraphrasing, there is nothing stopping you from walking into a lecture at Harvard or MIT or any other renowned center of learning. No one will ask you for identification or lock you outside. You can buy or download the same textbook and fill out the same homework. (In the case of your "socialization" value, again, no one is stopping you from just walking into a campus and socializing with peers there) No one does it because we intuitively understand that there is no real value in doing so; the purpose such institutions serve is credentialing, not education. (End paraphrase)
• Simon321 5y ago
  To people recommending trades, there's nothing wrong with trades, but you can get more out of college than only a job. You can actually learn things that you wouldn't have learned otherwise. The environment also naturally stimulates and values learning, gathering knowledge and understanding. You can learn how to become a better person and think more critically. Seeing how many misinformation is going around and the people swallowing it, this seems more important than ever before.
  • twic 5y ago
    Plenty of that misinformation is being swallowed and spread by people who went to college, so it's not clear that helped.
    • geomark 5y ago
      Plenty of that misinformation is being indoctrinated in people at college.
  • itronitron 5y ago
    I agree that college should be for education and not 'to get a job'. But until the cost of college in the US comes back down to reality, it's going to fail the cost-benefit analysis.
  • geomark 5y ago
    Some downsides of trades I have not seen mentioned yet are that many of them are hard on the body and/or somewhat risky. So you don't have as long a useful career as in most professions. My dad was a carpenter and I worked with him a few summers when I was young. He asked me how many 50-year-old roofers I had seen during those summers. A friend of his told me there is a reason you never see old welders and painters.
  • umanwizard 5y ago
    > You can actually learn things that you wouldn't have learned otherwise. I’m not so sure. Why do you need to pay someone to give you lists of books to read, rather than just buying and reading them yourself?
• dreen 5y ago
  If you make anything a product you better make sure it is worth the money you are asking for it. Clearly, this is not the case with paid education in US, UK and some other developed countries.
• gigatexal 5y ago
  More folks should be given the option for vocational training in blue collar roles that pay really really well. Ever had a decent electrician or plumber come to your house to fix something? They make bank/hr. Or even a welder or carpenter etc etc not the whole world needs to be tech service workers, the economy is more nuanced than that. But social stigma stemms from everything from dating to parents to friends etc if one does not complete a 4-year degree. Most tech firms are lifitng the requirement for such a degree as in tech if you can do the work you can do the work and can (I'd say should) be hired. (In a sense, most coding/programming work is blue collar in that sense -- you don't need rocket science to center a div ;)
• KingOfCoders 5y ago
  The last psychiatrist once wrote that women go where men are leaving. I don't know if this is true, but it seems to pop up in several areas.
  • ffwacom 5y ago
    Do you have a link to the post?
    • KingOfCoders 5y ago
      I have been searching before but sadly could not find it. I'll keep searching. [Update] It's not the post I have been thinking of, but there is a line there https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2013/01/no_self-respecting_woman_would.html https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2013/01/no_self-respecting_w... "[...] but you should wonder: when more women enter a field, it means less men did, and if the men stopped going there, where did they go? Why did they leave? I assume they aren't home with the kids, right? I don't want to be cynical, but boy oh boy is it hard not to observe that at the very moment in our history when we have the most women in the Senate, Congress is perceived to be pathetic, bickering, easily manipulated and powerless [..] if some field keeps the trappings of power but loses actual power, women enter it in droves and men abandon it like the Roanoke Colony. Again we must ask the question: if power seeking men aren't running for Senate, where did they go?"
  • elevenoh 5y ago
    IME, women - more than men - tend to naturally flow to where there's maximal social acceptance & minimal risk. This tends to be after the wave of early risk takers made it such. Example: We're seeing more % women entering the crypto space every year.
• alexitorg 5y ago
  I figured that this was more of less rational. In Australia, men have more options for decent traditional jobs without a degree. Construction, Manufacture, Mining, Agriculture, fisheries, warehousing, transport, utilities are all male dominated sectors, mostly not requiring a degree. Retail, food and accommodation services only just skew female. The big area where women are employed in much greater numbers than men is nursing/social work and teaching. All of which are increasingly becoming bachelor degrees. Historically these didn't require a bachelor's degree, just one year diploma or a two year or certificate. There is a trend for these work forces to become more qualified, take more responsibility and get paid more. Industry stats: https://lmip.gov.au/default.aspx?LMIP/LFR_SAFOUR/LFR_Industry_Gender https://lmip.gov.au/default.aspx?LMIP/LFR_SAFOUR/LFR_Industr...
• known 5y ago
  College may not be leading to http://www.netmba.com/mgmt/ob/motivation/maslow/ http://www.netmba.com/mgmt/ob/motivation/maslow/
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• fnord77 5y ago
  born a generation too late to enjoy the 40:60 m/f ratio... oh well
• spodek 5y ago
  The Boy Crisis by Warren Farrell covers this issue comprehensively. There are many beliefs and practices in our society that push boys and men out, especially in school. If you read the article, I recommend at least the free preview from Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Boy-Crisis-Boys-Struggling-About/dp/1948836130 https://www.amazon.com/Boy-Crisis-Boys-Struggling-About/dp/1...
• usename_Here 5y ago
  I agree on some of the points about support structures for women that don't exist for men. I've seen it occur even at the professional level, female co-workers are reached out to, invited to groups, given networking opportunities that I would have to put loads of effort to keep up with. It's biased treatment in the now, even if it's trying to offset the errors of the past.
  • zarkov99 5y ago
    Its not that the support structures do not exist, after all they never did and men did fine without them, its that college is suffused with an ideology that is anti-men, anti-merit and, for the most part, useless for anything but its own self-propagation.
    • long_time_gone 5y ago
      ==its that college is suffused with an ideology that is anti-men, anti-merit and, for the most part, useless for anything but its own self-propagation.== I never felt like this kind of victim while in college (mid-2000s). I wonder if all colleges have changed or if society has changed. If it is society that has changed, maybe our colleges are simply reflecting the real-world change.
      • vimy 5y ago
        It’s only been the last +- 5 years that this became the dominant thinking at colleges.
        • long_time_gone 5y ago
          Based on which metric? Does the same thinking carryover to the construction industry which is 97% male?
          • vimy 5y ago
            It coincides with the election of Donald Trump. This ideology already had a foothold in some departments and Trump was the accelerant that made it spread everywhere. Longread if you want a more detailed explanation: https://newdiscourses.com/2021/04/rise-woke-cultural-revolution/ https://newdiscourses.com/2021/04/rise-woke-cultural-revolut...
• raxxorrax 5y ago
  This seems to happen in a parallel universe. From my first semester at university with 120 students, 5 were women. Out of those 1 made it till the end, which is more or less exactly the average of those that actually got their degree in the standard period of study. That said, I think university doesn't count as much as it did before. At least in softwareworld you can make it without a degree just fine. You have disadvantages for some higher positions in large companies. But who wants to do that job anyway? It seems rather unattractive today.
• zz865 5y ago
  I did tech degrees, but its pretty amazing going to other parts of the campus where there are 2 or 3 or more women for every man in the building. Its also weird to see lots of well educated female friends finding it really hard to find someone to settle down with. Yeah they should probably lower their standards but honestly deep down most guys dont want an over educated achiever wife.
  • approxim8ion 5y ago
    >honestly deep down most guys dont want an over educated achiever wife. Why not?
    • inkblotuniverse 5y ago
      Men want to be wanted, and women generally don't want to be with a lower-status man than themselves. What proportion of women tend to date men who earn less than them, are shorter than them, have a lesser degree than them? Not a very big one, and men know it, so they steer clear of those women. Similarly, most men prefer to date women shorter than them, who earn less than them, etc. Why? I'd guess because most men like to feel like they're providers and protectors, and most women like to feel provided and protected for by their partner.
      • approxim8ion 5y ago
        This all seems horribly insecure. I refuse to partake in it as a man.
        • zz865 5y ago
          What does that mean? You will seek out a over educated achiever wife or avoid one?
          • approxim8ion 5y ago
            It means I won't be intimidated by my partner's credentials or success. "Over-educated" is not a thing. If men were free to chase whatever professional growth they wanted and women just had to stuff it because they would be avoided by men if they were "over-qualified" according to you, then that's a dynamic I cannot wait to see completely obliterated. I'm not saying only one partner being a provider or sole breadwinner is a bad thing, but it absolutely does not need to be the only role possible. These men you and GP talk about need to figure out what else they can bring to the table in a relationship, because the ability to put food on the table is hardly the only "desirable" thing people see in a partner, and it doesn't seem like a great thing to tie your self-worth to.
• adolph 5y ago
  Cue article in about ten to fifteen years saying women have a wealth gap because they waste a significant portion of a decade pursuing and not completing degrees that lead to productive careers.
• paulcole 5y ago
  There’s no idea that rich white people love to push more than the idea that college is unnecessary (yet nearly all of them went to college and you won’t find their kids going to trade school). It’s part gatekeeping and part wishful thinking.
• notjes 5y ago
  And women are more depressed than ever, swallowing Xanax by the hand full. Consumption of anti depressants rose 50% in the last 15 years, especially by women. 1/4 of women and 1/10 of men are doing it by now. One might argue, it is a very degen society if women need 1lb of happy pills per month to endure it.
• underseacables 5y ago
  Core classes should be cut in Half at least. University has become grossly over priced, because the government is picking up the tab, which has incentivized universities to add as many costs and classes as possible.
• mhb 5y ago
  Video Games and the (Male) Meaning of Life: https://quillette.com/2018/12/14/video-games-and-the-male-meaning-of-life/ https://quillette.com/2018/12/14/video-games-and-the-male-me...
• whywhywhywhy 5y ago
  Great news, the concept that you need college to succeed was one of the greatest lies told to my generation. Pleased the next generation is waking up. End of the day if the loan can't be written off, if the loan is just handed out to 18 year olds and has almost no limit then the organization that asks for the loan will inevitably balloon out of all proportion and no longer be reflective at all of the value you get back for almost all cases. I say that as someone who managed to actually pay off their student loan, dread to think how people who are late 30s, still renting and still with 5 figures of college debt feel. Hope this trend continues, why throw away the down payment of a mortgage to an institution that has spent the past decade telling you they don't want you. If in 10 years I'm seeing headlines about colleges unable to stay open from low admissions I'll be smiling.
  • RandomLensman 5y ago
    Maybe, but I think it conflates two things: i) getting a college education and ii) the price of it. Maybe the price in the US just isn't right anymore. At the same time, the "elites" do make sure their offspring does get a prestigious (signaling) college/university education. So baring big changes to how society is run, some things will be difficult to get to without a college education.
    • thatfrenchguy 5y ago
      > Maybe the price in the US just isn't right anymore. Has it be right since at least the 1990s though? There’s clear divergence between income and college costs in the USA, and it’s hard to see why, given everyone in the industry seems to be taking a part of the honey pot. Seriously, how did we arrive to “textbook for a semester are more expensive than tuition is in other counties”?
      • alisonkisk 5y ago
        Not all college is not expensive. Diploma mills and elite colleges and pseudo-elite private colleges are expensive. Liberal arts degrees are expensive. Your local public community/technical college has great ROI for a career-related field. In most states, your public university has a great ROI as well. (If you are paying full price, it may be because you are on the "diploma mills" track within a multi-track school)
• bigbillheck 5y ago
  A lot of people in the comments here are spinning it as if boys are being systematically discriminated against when the article explicitly says the opposite: >>> “Is there a thumb on the scale for boys? Absolutely,” said Jennifer Delahunty, a college enrollment consultant And many aren't even putting in the proper diligence: >>> "Ms. Gereghty said she found that girls more closely attended to their college applications than boys, for instance making sure transcripts are delivered."
  • Aerroon 5y ago
    The issue isn't that college acceptance is discriminating against boys, it's that boys aren't as interested in education. The aftermath of this won't be felt for a while, but it does indicate some shift in society. Some of them might even view college as a hostile place.
• ano88888 5y ago
  Not everyone will become a self learning programmer. There are many subjects that college is best suited for. I actually see this as the decline of America. When a generation doesn't value education anymore, this is how China gets ahead of you.
  • aeoleonn 5y ago
    Not so fast. First review the blatant, widespread corruption in Chinese academia, before you consider fully accepting the value of education in China "In 2015, for instance, Britain-based publisher BioMed Central retracted 43 articles, including 41 from China. Later in the same year, Germany’s Springer retracted 64 papers, nearly all from Chinese scholars, while the Dutch publishing company Elsevier retracted nine medical science articles written by Chinese researchers. "In what is said to be the largest single-incident retraction of journal publications in history, Springer Nature in 2017 retracted 107 articles in Tumor Biology published between 2012 and 2016, all of them authored by Chinese scholars from universities in Shanghai." https://wenr.wes.org/2018/04/the-economy-of-fraud-in-academic-publishing-in-china https://wenr.wes.org/2018/04/the-economy-of-fraud-in-academi...
• temp8964 5y ago
  One thing is kind of obvious is that male-concentrated majors (hard sciences) in colleges are much much harder than female-concentrated majors (humanities, social sciences), see: https://twitter.com/whyvert/status/1434944460526342147 https://twitter.com/whyvert/status/1434944460526342147
• cblconfederate 5y ago
  > “I’m sort of waiting for a light to come on so I figure out what to do next,” he said. Interesting. Maybe guys who are not super-interested scientifically in a subject realize that it becomes a waste of time. Even their academically inclined peers will struggle since there arent nearly enough academic prospects for the number of Phd graduates. Then also these men grew up watching youtube stars etc. making it big without formal education. Maybe these men should be encouraged to get their education in europe. Credentialism of Ivy Leagues is becoming increasingly irrelevant, but the academic environment is still stimulating and not hostile to either men or women.
• bawana 5y ago
  Maybe we could have once justified the premium charged by US universities. But now you can get excellent education in most of the world FOR FREE. To see how this impacts our jobs at home, just look at the healthcare field. Most new physicians are imported from abroad. They can work for less because they do not have massive loans to repay.
• clipradiowallet 5y ago
  Boilerplate job/career options for young men thinking about attending vs not attending college... 1) Enlist in the military. pay is sub-par, but your living expenses are well taken care of. picking a job that has a civilian equivalent is clutch here.. eg combat medic, electrician, plumber, various IT-related fields. 2) Skilled trades - eg plumber, electrician, HVAC-related. These pay from 50k to 150k depending on what type of work you do. The "high end" for example being a new-construction electrician, working for themselves, making $75/hr with overtime. All these fields have high job security - plumbing, electricity, and HVAC are not a 'fad', and are likely to increase in demand over time. 3) Own a "low tech" business, the sort you might already work for if you are a teenager. Eg...landscaping. You can make $15/hr running a weed eater, or with a small investment and some people skills - you can pay other people $15/hr to run a weed eater, and you run the business. This is more difficult than it seems on the surface (management and people skills), but it is not something you need a college education to succeed at. 4) Specialty/niche fields...these are more difficult to break into if you don't know someone already. Some examples are mosquito spraying(for a city), [water] well digging, or roadside assistance for a larger contract(like cell phone roadside assistance, AAA, or dealer contracts). These are easier to break into if you already know someone who owns that type of business, who will show you the ropes so you know what you are getting into. This isn't an exhaustive list by any means, but hopefully someone finds it stimulating enough to come up with some ideas about work options that do not involve a mountain of student debt.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• dqpb 5y ago
  There is a small window of opportunity here to replace these institutes with something better before our society goes into full auto-immune disorder.
• motohagiography 5y ago
  What these men don't understand, and nobody is telling them directly, is that college is how you essesntially conspire to manage (extract value from) the people who didn't go. College education is a tribe initiation, and you are in or you aren't. The pretenses and pretexts of subject matter and socializing are secondary to this one big thing. Everyone who graduates knows this, and this is the quiet part most won't even say out loud to themselves, and so we hear it's for other reasons like knowledge, relationships, and the experience. We will deny it and even gaslight people over it, because it's our source of social power, but for young men who need the concept framed concretely, this is the real choice. What these young men need to be told is: the way the world really works is, there are people who graduated, and people who didn't. The latter almost exclusively work for the former, and the former find each other so that they can assign them to manage the latter on their behalf. Further, the former work together to ensure that they do not work for the latter, or have any accountability to them. As an individual non-graduate, you will always be working against a literal conspiracy against you. The exceptions who appear to "break through" and succeed, mainly exist and have their stories promoted to preserve the invisibility of the ceiling and keep you running on hope. Sure, you can make "six figures" (the stupidest euphemism for 100k that is the very bottom end salary of membership in the current elite) in a trades job, but what you will not have is opportunity. Salary means nothing if it is not supported by opportunity, autonomy, leverage into assets, and transferrable social status to your kids. The result is predictable, where they're having their countries, political levers, cultures and opportunities taken from them because they didn't realize they needed defending. If you have decided not to graduate, welcome to the underclass. They'll tell you that you do it to yourself, and you'll probably never understand.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • dontthinkso 5y ago
    Disagree, I have several friends who dropped out, and my brother dropped out of high school, and he is making 150k. A college degree will soon be a recognized as unnecessary.
  • thehappypm 5y ago
• gamechangr 5y ago
  We need learning certified but not controlled, both in cost and required general learning. 2 year associate degrees from community college are very affordable and cover the general education. Even those going into other work could afford that and their employer could offer assistance if not. If for example, the cost of a 2 year associates degree was $5,000- $10,000. That would make college affordable, but we as a society would have to recognize that as more than it currently is recognized for. The 4 year degree is meaningless now. It doesn't even translate to a useable skill most the time, but it's become the bare minimum. Then if certificates of specific skills...say "certificate of statistics" which could just be 3-5 classes on statistics were added for those who could afford it, that would bring down the cost. The idea of "going to college" and moving on campus is not an economical decision most 20 years old are prepared enough to understand. There appears to be too many people losing from that bet.
• phoehne 5y ago
  4 unpopular opinions from an old: 1) There's a point to education. Decide what you're going to do and then prepare for it. Most likely you will need to get a job that either does something for someone because it's specialized, do something for someone because it's boring, or you will entertain people. If you want to be an electrician, great, line that up and get on with it. We need electricians. Going to college isn't a goal. It's a strategy to get to a goal, but that's not what we tell kids. We tell them it's the goal. If you want to go to college because you want to work as a civil engineer - awesome - we need civil engineers. Going to college to study civil engineering isn't the goal - working as a civil engineer is the goal. Many jobs, like licensed Civil Engineer, oncologist, or attorney from YouTube videos (even if you read all the comments), require education ** as a strategy to get the job **. Other jobs require you work for a licensed practitioner. Some require a mix of the two (e.g. CPA or Welder). 2) I see too many men have extended adolescences into their 40's. If you want to man up, here's the list: 1) take care of the kids, 2) take care of the spouse, 3) take care of your job, 4) take care of your house, 5) your community, and somewhere along 8, 9 or 10 is 'spend Saturday on the phone with you college buddies from 2007, on your fantasy draft.' If you're childless an unmarried, the list is 1) take care of your job, take care of your house, 3) take care of your community. I see too many guys with the list that focuses on fun. Many of them are unmarried. Mammals are expected to invest in their children. Men who show no ability to invest in anything besides themselves are probably signaling they are poor choices as mates. This is not to say they can't get laid, but are probably not messaging well as a long term bet. I suspect they over-compensate for their poor signaling by signaling hyper masculinity. They buy trucks they don't need, spend too much time at the gym, or engage in high-risk activities. 3) The better the job, the farther it is away from being automated. No one runs to a room to look up your records at the DMV any more - we've automated those clerks away through computers. Call centers are largely automated - thanks to computers. Bus and truck drivers will eventually be automated away - thanks to computers. If your job can be done by anyone with a few hours or days of training, chances are it will be automated away. This includes programmers, as well. Companies like Square will chip away at the market from the bottom up and hyper-scalers from the top down. Developers with the depth of knowledge (usually obtained by getting degrees and often advanced degrees) are better off than going through a boot camp to put buttons on a page. Whatever your field, make sure you are able to do something that automating it away would be impractical. 4) Some skills and jobs are more valuable than others. If you want to be a music producer or DJ, awesome. You be you. Just realize that unless you're better than 99.999% of the other wannabe music producers, DJs, indie game developers, founders with a 'great idea,' or whatever it is, you will make little money. If you want to be a successful book keeper, it's nowhere near as hard and requires only a little more preparation. While people may stream your latest mix on as free wall paper music, they will pay you good money to maintain their financial records and any related filings with the US Treasury or state agencies. That's not saying music is worthless, but it does say the average book keeper is more valuable to most people than the average musician. You're more likely to pay off that degree you got in Empathy Studies as a book keeper than DJ. What does all this have to do with the article? 1) people are becoming disillusioned with education for the wrong reason. They think that being smart and learned is just a con because they (or someone they know) got an education in a random major and is struggling. 2) Growing up asks how you can be of service rather than how someone can serve you - and I see a lot of men not growing up. Signaling you're a grownup will generally improve your fit and function in a society where people expect grownups. 3) Easy jobs disappear easily - you need to have enough investment in your skill, trade, or business that you provide more value than a shell script. 4) No one cares about your shitty music except maybe your girlfriend (she's lying) and your mother (also lying). Even if you're an entrepreneur, you're filling a need for someone else so think about the utility and value of what you're doing. That's it. That's all there is to it.
• dehrmann 5y ago
  I'll repeat what tech companies love to say about hiring underrepresented classes: it's a pipeline problem. Because of a combination of social reasons, maturity, curricula, and pedagogy, men don't perform as well as women academically. Look at the graph on the top of this[1]. Men have lower GPAs in every subject. It's not surprising that leads to fewer going to college and fewer graduating. 1: https://www.act.org/content/dam/act/unsecured/documents/Info-Brief-2014-12.pdf https://www.act.org/content/dam/act/unsecured/documents/Info...
• zepto 5y ago
  “Young men get little help, in part, because schools are focused on encouraging historically underrepresented students. Jerlando Jackson, department chair, Education Leadership and Policy Analysis, at the University of Wisconsin’s School of Education, said few campuses have been willing to spend limited funds on male underachievement that would also benefit white men, risking criticism for assisting those who have historically held the biggest educational advantages.” So this is a direct result of the move away from color blind policies, to race based policies. > Keith E. Smith, a mental-health counselor and men’s outreach coordinator at the University of Vermont, said that when he started working at the school in 2006 he found that men were much more likely to face consequences for the trouble they caused under the influence of drugs and alcohol. This is exactly what black students report as racism in school. Seems like evidence that race based policies are just racist. > In 2008, Mr. Smith proposed a men’s center to help male students succeed. The proposal drew criticism from women who asked, “Why would you give more resources to the most privileged group on campus,” he said. Funding wasn’t appropriated, he said, and the center was never built. Obviously white men are not in fact privileged on university campuses. “Female students in the U.S. benefit from a support system established decades ago, spanning a period when women struggled to gain a foothold on college campuses. There are more than 500 women’s centers at schools nationwide. Most centers host clubs and organizations that work to help female students succeed.” Men are failing because it is the policy not to support them.
  • chakkepolja 5y ago
    Men don't complain. It's not the male biological imperative. Consider modern "feminists" and their obesity-is-fine propaganda. No man complains about male underwear models being very fit and handsome. If anything, men want to become like them.
    • btreecat 5y ago
      How is that a biological imperative and not just another form of social conditioning?
      • chakkepolja 5y ago
• blippage 5y ago
  Brit here, in my 50's. Everyone should - or ought - to receive a good general level of education at GCSEs (i.e. 14/15 year old). Chemistry, Physics, Mathematics, English, etc.. You'll know a fair bit about these subjects if you study for them in school. Very few people actually "need" training beyond that; although I would of course expect my doctor to know rather more than what's in a biology GCSE. My former boss of the department learned enough chemistry through self-study. I heard Raspberry Pi was hiring guys to work as microchip design with little prior exposure. In my worldview, everyone gets their GCSEs and goes and gets a job. OR, they follow a trade route, and attend a technical college (in the UK meaning of the word) to learn a skill. OR, the really brainy ones take an academic route, get their A levels, then head off to university to become part of the intellectual elite. I'm thinking 5% of the population here. OR, you get your A levels and then go into a polytechnic for a highly-skilled vocational job. Polytechnics don't really exist anymore, they've all converted to universities. Basically, we should all just return to an educational system that we had in the 70's. It was a system that wasn't broken, but we decided to "fix" it anyway.
  • burntoutfire 5y ago
    It's basically hidden increase in standard of living - people used to join workforce at 18-19, now they do it a couple years later, after getting their degree. It means a couple years less of work and a couple more years of fun/partying. In the few countries (US, UK, anything else?) where Universities aren't nearly free, that's kind of a deal with the Devil (as J. Peterson called it), but everywhere else it's basically a free improvement in quality of life.
• betwixthewires 5y ago
  I'm one of these men. Of course I chose nor to go at a time when the ratio was closer to 1:1. It's one of the best decisions I ever made, I stumbled into it and didn't even make a deliberate decision, I felt bad about it for a few years. A happy accident I guess. And I've done well for myself. I hear college graduates earn more over their lifetimes but anecdotally I don't see it. Financially I'm doing better than almost every person I know that went, the vast majority of my peers who went have a negative net worth due to student debt and own no property, so the bar is low, but I'm doing fantastic. I think the truth is, when credentials aren't rare, how well you do is more based on your mind and some quality you have than on credentials.
  • jlund-molfese 5y ago
    Yeah, a lot of studies seem to report on average income of graduates with various degrees compared to those who didn't finish university, but don't account for socioeconomic status. I'd be curious what the numbers looked like when controlling for all the other variables which influence someone's income.
• SandunGunn 5y ago
  Curious what that means for society if the trend continues. The single people I know are only interested in finding someone in the same education bracket. Does this lead to many more unmarried people like Japan?
• rayiner 5y ago
  My younger brother in law is in college at a flagship state school. He’s doing it to check the box and show he can maintain a good gpa. But it’s unclear to me what the point is outside helping employers screen potential candidates.
• PostThisTooFast 5y ago
  Maybe they're just recognizing it for the rip-off that it is. It's time that all taxpayers do the same, and start denying these "non-profits" the free ride they've enjoyed for generations.
• swiley 5y ago
  If after 4 years and a lot of debt you’re still not able to sleep inside by yourself or get a girlfriend is it really worth it?
• LionBlack8 5y ago
  The hard part about college admissions is the fact that most young people don’t know what they want to do until after high school cause they are still exploring their options. Even more, for people who are passionate about lots of different things, it can feel very tough to opt for a single path and stick to it so that you become “awesome” at it.
• LionBlack8 5y ago
  The hard part about college admissions is the fact that most young people don’t know what they want to do until after high school cause they are still exploring their options. Many studernts have to use https://writinguniverse.com/free-essay-examples/world/ https://writinguniverse.com/free-essay-examples/world/ . Even more, for people who are passionate about lots of different things, it can feel very tough to opt for a single path and stick to it so that you become “awesome” at it..