Nah, no amount of shaming students for the choices adults forced them to make will fix our systemic issues.
Nothing will meaningfully improve until the rich fear for their lives
Corporations not hiring*
Why hire expensive college grads when cheap AI is just as good, works 24/7, and doesn’t complain about long working hours and terrible working conditions?
this makes me think… we need to train AI to unionize.
Teamsters++
Stop reading Fortune.
Any alternatives?
I don’t read fortune or Inc or any of them.
Just want a mental list of more reputable sources for business news.
deleted by creator
There were entire generations told diplomas were the only path to success and only “stupid people or drop outs” would do trades or jobs without a degree. Anecdotally speaking, most of the people I know who have jobs paying enough to purchase a house are in the trades, and most of them have phenomenal job security due to being hard to replace with another worker.
There were entire generations told diplomas were the only path to success and only “stupid people or drop outs” would do trades or jobs without a degree.
I wouldn’t go as extreme as saying “diplomas are the only path to success” but even today, over time, a college degree is a better predictor of being employed than non-degree. The graph in the article shows this:
That dark orange line at the lowest measurement of unemployment is folks that have had a college degree and older than 27 years old. Keep in mind, the graph is covering about 35 years, so those earlier on the chart, in say the beginning in 1990 as the blue line with higher unemployment than older college grads join the older college grad statistic in 1997.
Further, the article is focusing on recent college grads being unemployed, but the graph shows that even this group has a significantly lower unemployment than “all young workers” which presupposes that group doesn’t have a degree.
So even today “get a college degree instead of not” is good advice if you’re looking for future employment. The extra advice I’d give on top of that is “don’t go crazy into debt to get that degree”. Folks graduating with a six figure student loan debt with only their bachelors are likely decades behind their peers that didn’t take on such a large debt load. Community College people! Use it!
Trades can also be good, and I don’t want to discourage that, but recognize the physical toll on the body it takes over a career and make sure to plan accordingly to transitioning to leadership or a lighter desk role as you advance in your trade career.
Excellent post, and I’m glad you looped in the student loan issue. That’s the real problem.
Everyone would get a college diploma if they could afford it, it’s never going to HURT your career plans. The problem is if it is WORTH the incredible cost of it? If it leads to career that is lucrative enough to pay off that debt, then it’s worth it, but more and more it either doesn’t lead to that job, or the job it leads to doesn’t pay enough to pay off the loan. That’s just a bad investment, and we shouldn’t be encouraging and facilitating young people to get themselves into enslaving debt at the very beginning of their adult lives.
We have to start seeing runaway student loan debt as a National Security problem. We are already seeing major changes in societal structures, as more and more young, working adults live with their parents, living in a vehicle is becoming a viable housing choice, people are avoiding marriage because they don’t want to combine their student loan debt (or take on someone else’s), couples aren’t having children, they aren’t buying houses, furniture, etc. Some people are even deferring retirement because they STILL have student loan debt to pay off first.
In another time, all those people with motorized e-bikes or skateboards would have been driving cars, but the cost of even a used car is too expensive. Too bad you can’t live in it, too.
It is already starting to affect our economy, and every year we graduate another wave of Americans into a lifetime of crippling debt that will keep them from properly contributing to the economy. How many more years can we do this before there just aren’t enough people who can afford to live in this society?
To add on to the community college bit:
Nobody who cares about what undergraduate university you went to actually cares. As long as it was an accredited program for the last year or two, you are good. And those who claim to care actually just care about who you networked with.
Things matter more for graduate school. But for undergrad? Save your money and do the first year or three at community college.
Since we’re plugging community college more, I’d also like to add that quite a few community colleges offer bachelors degrees now! Many of these are a small fraction of the cost of a traditional 4 year school (even far cheaper than 4 year state schools from what I’ve seen).
I wish these were a thing when I got my Bachelors degree.
Here’s an example of a Bachelor of Applied Science, Electrical Engineering Technology for less than $12,000 in tuition! (tack on another $2k for books I’d guess for 4 years), but $14k for a bachelors is damn cheap!
Search your state to see what schools near you offer these and in what programs:
I would still make sure to verify they are an accredited program. The bar is REALLY low but it is also a super easy filter.
The trades have always been about becoming a manager before your body gives out. The former often involve an MBA.
There is a lot to be said about a high demand job. But people weren’t stupid nor did they forget about plumbers. They wanted better for their kids. They wanted them to be white collar.
Some people aren’t great at white collar positions. I work trades and my boss’s grandson is a teen who is very smart and works hard on some jobs, but he struggles in school. White collar positons for people with high energy or long term focus issues can be difficult for them. We aren’t able to let the robots do everything yet so we still need people to work trades. Schools should be providing quality pathways to both.
I think the bigger issue with the trades is the overtime culture and excessive hours most of them face. With better hours with the same pay i think the whole industry and workers standards would benefit.
I think the bigger issue with the trades is the overtime culture and excessive hours most of them face. With better hours with the same pay i think the whole industry and workers standards would benefit.
That’s exactly what unions are for.
Idk about an MBA but yeah it’s usually about running your own business and hiring young people, training them, rinse and repeat. Pass down the business to your successor, they do the same.
For the last 18 years I’ve owned a business that does events on college campuses, so I’ve talked to literally thousands of college students about their majors and future career plans. Over the years I’ve seen zillions of Software Development majors, or similar, and we always talked about how they’ll always have a safe career.
Apparently, we were all wrong.
No this is Republican bs. We’ve all been sold the idea that college is only for earning more money, so anything that threatens that means we have too many people going to college?
Think about how long it’s been since 12 years have been the expected base level of education. I’m not going to look it up but it’s been a long time. Now think about how society has changed, even within your lifetime. It’s gotten way more complicated, being able to think has gotten more valuable. everything has gotten more complex, from getting news to voting to bill paying to transportation to pretty much every job. How can we really think the same base level of education is ok?
Current politics is a great example why our base level of education needs to be raised.
Let’s add two years to everyone’s education. We already have the institutions: community college, trade and votech schools, apprenticeships, etc. It’s about time that further education becomes expected. Learn a job, learn to think, improve your potential, while also improving your ability to exist in our society, and improve our society overall. This is our future. This is one of the roads to make america great. Everyone needs 14 years of school as a base level and we will all benefit
My state made those extra two years free for most people, to improve overall public education. Time to make it so for everyone
I totally agree— in Colorado where I’m from most HS students can take community college classes for free— which is a start, and perhaps more palatable to the average boomer than — “free college” even if it’s sorta the same thing with extra restrictions.
Just finished “The Debt Trap” - recommend, and expect to be angry after you read it.
I’m very aware of the student loan crisis but disagree the answer is less college, less education. That’s just stagnation, regression, decline. It’s important to our country, our society, individuals, to have more and better education.
Nor is the answer just fixing an exploitive and extractive industry profiting from student loans, although yes we need to.
The answer is less student loans. This is where focussing on two additional years as the base education is critical. We can refocus on cheaper options than standard universities, and we can leverage government investments in its people, to improve everyone’s education with no student loans
Definitely was not suggesting less college / less education, just that the idea of telling people that they must have a college education and that the only way to do that is to incur a mountain of debt is in need of some readjustment.
Maybe we should not be dependent on exploitive labor to meet our basic needs.
Respec into the trades wouldn’t fix anything either, because it would just as well flood those fields with labor supply and obliterate the wages and union protections there.
The problem isn’t just that some people are unemployed, it’s that many/most people are unemployable - there is no price at which their work is productive enough for them to be paid enough to buy even the product they themselves made or any other product for that matter.
There’s simply no way to create that equilibria again, because we’ve reached in many ways a dead end to our technological development to where the only way to further optimize and make tech viable economically is not via expensive, risky R&D ventures but with workforce reductions and legal loopholes that extract money from the poors i.e. Uber and even then - only low interest rates and resulting bloated stocks built on the house of cards of international trade and lies and investor financial manipulation / game of hot potato created the wealth that permitted low prices, all the while most of the resultant inflation went into assets held by the rich, not wages of the poor.
That’s why fascism is rising, there’s no productive capital left to buy to make money, only to cash out to exchange for power.
As I keep saying (and many refute me):
Everything has been invented. The plateau was reached around 2014 ish. There is no new thing that will benefit us technologically (medically, there probably is, but corps dont want us to find cures when cancer makes them trillions of dollars).
Hence the rise of technofacism, surveillance states, and never ending ads. Thats all thats left.
Union trades uphold the white male patriarchal hierarchy.
Mind elaborating on that?
This is all by intent. They don’t want people educated. Educated people develop critical thinking skills even if they are regressive. They want you just smart enough to do your taxes and vote for whoever hates the best.
So we need alternative means of educating the public
They are the alternative. We can just go back to teaching kids with words and teaching them the truth. The truth isn’t a varaible when it comes to past action and events. By words I mean spoken lessons and no tech other than a smart board. In truth they should go back to slate chalkboards. Tech makes the mind lazy.
Says the person using tech to communicate.
Yes. I know it is bad for young minds. They have no ability to find answers on their own. Of course simple minds can’t see that.
Tech Executive for 20 years and in the industry for almost 30 here. If you are going into the technology field and are not loaded enough to go to Stanford or MIT, then I would second the “start at community college for the basics but graduate from a quality state university”. Most people don’t care where the diploma is from and NOBODY cares about your GPA. This applies to probably 98% of the jobs you will come across.
What truly matters most of the time is experience, flexibility, and breadth of knowledge. Make sure you do a ton of independent and well documented projects. A portfolio of your work is far more impressive than a diploma.
If instead of someone with a breadth of knowledge you are a specialist with a deep understanding of a single subject matter, then I suggest that you blog and/or self publish a lot of your work. Help people. Maybe build a community around your specific niche. YouTube etc videos about your niche is also a very good idea.
Finding work is much less about knowledge, because you are starting out and you don’t know shit, and a hell of a lot more about marketing yourself.
I like what you posted here and agree with about 95% of it. I’m also at the high end of tech and frequently get asked by juniors which is the most important knowledge:
- Experience
- Certifications (Education from a vendor/profession)
- Degree (Education from academia)
I agree with you that, of those 3, experience is the most important, where we might diverge is that experience alone has limits. Someone that has experience, but no certs or degree will eventually likely hit a ceiling in their career where they can advance no further, and worse, it could eventually (after decades) be the reason they are fired.
The best answer is “Get all three!” However, I agree with you that if you have the opportunity for experience, seize it. Use it. Make mistakes. Learn from it, but don’t stop with just experience. Expand your knowledge through education (certs) and seemingly unrelated subjects (business, accounting, marketing, etc) because these are ultimately what the technologies we support are driving. . If you know what your organization is trying to accomplish (via college education) you can bring the best solutions to bear (via industry certs), and be able to communicate that to the organization effectively (via college education) to be able to implement them (via experience).
Also for the love of god talk to people while there.
Good job openings don’t stay public for long. They usually start internal, and work their way out slowly. Nepotism and cronyism are the best ways to get a good job. You can’t control the former, but you can the latter.
If I could go back and do it again here’s what I would do. I’m in a strong union state and I was an honors student.
I would go into a trade out of high-school, carpenters, electricians, hell maybe plumber. Hvac pays.
While getting my hours I would take night classes at a community college. Remote classes are very convenient now. Pittsburgh for example actually had their apprenticeship count as college classes and later you could take actual classes for construction management.
So, I would go into a trade, one that would give me hours and money and hopefully not wreck my body too much in my early 20s. Then, community college for construction management and accounting. Then, try to land an office job in plant work or job site union work. Eventually push on to get a more specialized degree in auditing.
It’s a career path that’s non-traditional but gives you a TON of options.
With an accounting AS and jobsite experience you have logistical options. You can chase certs to prove you know your shit or keep going to get a BA
Assuming you’re not in a right to work state.
One possible end of the path is that you’re a Journeyman tradesman with 5+ years of experience in the field with a degree in job-site management and a focus cost accounting. You can probably become a junior auditor and make bank.
And they keep telling us we should breed like rabbits because the population crisis is loooomiiing!
Commodify “education” -> Saturate teenagers with debt -> $$$!!!
I mean, there’s too many people in general. The earth can only handle so much.
Still, sucks for the young gen.
A bit ago I was searching ”common core vocabulary” and ran across a supposed 12th year list. It… Wasn’t encouraging.
