'You don't really want to go to college.' Ugh, what a depressed, non-optimistic outlook on life and society. IME far more people want to go to college and can't than people who are somehow compelled to go and don't want to. Why don't we let people decide for themselves what they want to do, let them dream their greatest dreams and highest ambitions, and give them the opportunity to succeed or fail, through hard work and imagination. That is the American Dream!
The solution, for a productive, optimistic society, is not to tell them not to. My strong belief is that the reactionary elite dominate public perception, and perception is reality. Very broadly speaking, they want to concentrate power in their hands, and reducing investment in human capital saves them immediate money (costing them the long-term benefits of an educated, empowered, free population) and creating an uneducated underclass. Notice that we are, effectively, talking about college for people who can't now afford it - the best predictor of college education is family wealth, and the rich kids will still go to college, regardless - these op-eds argue for eliminating college for everyone else.
One way they do it - one way they control perception, which becomes reality - is by framing the question. They talk about college as if it's job training, that is, it's preparation for people to assume their role serving the elites who own the corporations. 'We don't need so many of our employees to go to college', and right there your humanity, your value as a human being, is reduced to what you can do to them, and your possibilities, your horizon, your potential is reduced to serving them. (It's also economically short-sighted, somehow defining the current economy, it's current demand, as some end state. It's exceptionally conservative. The economy will transform or become moribund, and the next generation will transform it.)
People go to college because they want to learn, to grow, to open up vistas in their inner and outer worlds, to learn the best of what humanity has created and learn to create their own, to change the world, because they believe in themselves and their dreams. GREAT. Let's give them the opportunity to go there!
One elitist thing I keep seeing is romanticization of 'the trades'. We're overlooking what it's like to work physically your whole life, day after day, year after year, for decades, in often miserable conditions. Bodies break down, and many work and live in pain. Sitting at a desk, where your biggest physical problem is remembering to stand up once in awhile, is far preferrable. Many tradespeople work hard their whole lives so that their kids can do something else.
> I know plenty of people who have degrees only to work in offices for $16 an hour
That is your anecdotal experience - one person in one place and time -but the data shows, very strongly, that people with college educations earn far more over their careers.
I'd genuinely like to see the data on that for younger millennials and gen Z. From what I've seen, employers will keep their older staff at higher compensation rates, but will not match them for new employees, reducing their labor expenses across the board with new generations of workers.
Perhaps what you find on the Internet is not nearly the same quality as what you find at college, and much it is misinformation, having a negative impact - you are better off not reading it. You could always try to learn from books you found at the library, and those were much higher quality on average than what you find on the Internet! Personally, it's hard to imagine a worse idea that 'learning' from 'the Internet'.
But if we throw out the values of truth and knowledge, then the Internet is filled with stuff!
> practical education
College isn't supposed to be practical, only to transform your understanding of the world and your thinking skills. Go to a vocational school for practical information.
You seem to know it all but here I am with 20 years of fruitful employment with all of my learning , that is needed to do my job , learnt from the internet. Thank you Wikipedia and hyperlinks. So yes I have a strong opinion that traditional college education is obsolete now.
Do you have evidence that engineers create more economic growth? HN is a bit biased of course, and general reactionary culture is biased against humanities. But generally engineers have a bit of a ceiling on their careers. Management, leadership, and roles in society depend more on what you learn in the humanities.
> If high school was the significant factor, why has Canada never really become all that significant of a power?
Because Canada had far, far fewer high school graduates. It just has a smaller population, currently ~1/9th of the United States. There are enormous economies of scale due to populations. As very simple examples, look at the size of the impact - the market for what a business produces, the people affected by what an activist achieves - or compare the money and military that the populations of the US and Canada can afford to invest in international influence. Consider the difference today, from Russia's or Iran's perspectives, between being cut off from the Canadian market and being cut off from the US market.
So what you're saying is that America became a superpower because it had a lot of people who, notably, weren't busy spending their time rebuilding society after a war? That seems like a much more reasonable explanation, honestly.
You said that America became a superpower because it had a lot of people, unlike Canada which had comparatively few people.
To which I added that America was different to the countries in Europe that had large populations as those large populations were busy cleaning up the mess made by several wars that took place during the rise of America.
It stands to reason that if your people are busy cleaning up, they aren't moving you forward. There is only so much time in the day. That's a tremendous advantage America had alongside its large population.
I see; I didn't realize you were talking about European countries. Good points, IMHO.
I would add that much of what was destroyed in Europe was necessary to productive, advanced economic activity - factories and their contents, infrastructure, etc etc. The most valuable human capital (looking at it from a purely economic perspective) - young, able, working age adults - were the soldiers and disproportionately killed. And without functioning economies, they produced much less money to invest in rebuilding and growing.
However, the US population is still ~4x the size of any advanced European economy (Germany has ~80 million).
The solution, for a productive, optimistic society, is not to tell them not to. My strong belief is that the reactionary elite dominate public perception, and perception is reality. Very broadly speaking, they want to concentrate power in their hands, and reducing investment in human capital saves them immediate money (costing them the long-term benefits of an educated, empowered, free population) and creating an uneducated underclass. Notice that we are, effectively, talking about college for people who can't now afford it - the best predictor of college education is family wealth, and the rich kids will still go to college, regardless - these op-eds argue for eliminating college for everyone else.
One way they do it - one way they control perception, which becomes reality - is by framing the question. They talk about college as if it's job training, that is, it's preparation for people to assume their role serving the elites who own the corporations. 'We don't need so many of our employees to go to college', and right there your humanity, your value as a human being, is reduced to what you can do to them, and your possibilities, your horizon, your potential is reduced to serving them. (It's also economically short-sighted, somehow defining the current economy, it's current demand, as some end state. It's exceptionally conservative. The economy will transform or become moribund, and the next generation will transform it.)
People go to college because they want to learn, to grow, to open up vistas in their inner and outer worlds, to learn the best of what humanity has created and learn to create their own, to change the world, because they believe in themselves and their dreams. GREAT. Let's give them the opportunity to go there!