I think this trade school obsession is foolish. Everyone cargo-cults it as "pragmatic" without actually analyzing what the jobs entail and what you can actually expect to make.

Statistically, you still earn way more with a degree than without.

You EARN that pay in the trades, and being an electrician is dangerous. The work is hard on your body. A lot of electricians end up on disability.

I wasn't very academic growing up. But then I grew up, and now I am a pretty successful computer programmer making a lot more than that, for way better perks and less dangerous, damaging work.

You can make that kind of money as a manager at Walmart and you do not run the risk of getting your arm fried off or falling off a telephone pole.

And where does a few years as an electrician leave you if you don't end up liking the career? "Sorry son, the internet told me trades were a good idea. Maybe go back to school now that you are an adult with a family?" Part of the reason you go to school as a young person is that you do not have a family to feed or a house to pay off.

> Statistically, you still earn way more with a degree than without.

This is becoming less and less true for lots of cohorts. I suspect it will stop correlating for everyone soon.

From a few days ago: "Is College Still Worth It? The New Calculus of Falling Returns" by Center for Household Financial Stability, St Louis Fed

https://www.stlouisfed.org/~/media/files/pdfs/hfs/is-college...

> The college wealth premium is at a historic low; among other races and ethnicities, it is statistically indistinguishable from zero

> Our results suggest that college & post-grad education may be failing some recent graduates as a financial investment."

I went to a 4-year college, but earned almost all of my money from self-taught programming and design skills.

It's hard to justify the ROI on college.

At $25k/year for a low-tier college, you'll spend $100k (if you don't need loans). If you take that $100k and put it in the market (avg. 7% annual returns) with 0 contributions for 45 years, you could spend every penny you make and retire at 63 with $2.1M.

At more expensive colleges ($50k/yr+) the math seems less and less in your favor.

What if you don't plan to start your life at 63?

I'm not planning for retirement. 63 is a long way off. There's a lot of life between now and then, indeed the majority of my life is between now and then.

These kinds of "responsible financial actions" are a bit silly imho. Invest in yourself now, and spend your time well now. College pays for itself, if you spent $100k on a decent degree I guarantee you'll earn that amount ten times over in any decent career. Aside from that, it's an experience, and that's worth some money in itself.

The difficulty is in landing in a decent career out of college. People have this fantasy that all you have to do is get X degree and go apply at X Y and Z corporation to land a job getting paid 6 figures for the rest of your life. And that's probably true if your X is from an Ivy League school or a massive state school with hyper-competitive admission to the program. And what you're paying for at that point is access to the elite so that you can hopefully ride their coattails into a good job.

If you end up going to a 2nd or 3rd tier school it's basically a wash whether you end up anywhere good. And it's even worse if you don't get X degree, but instead have a degree that doesn't make it through the word filters. And you can't fuck anything up or make any mistakes in your entire academic career. You have to network aggressively. Many of my cohort ended up working as electricians, and one of them manages the line at a brewery. College was pretty useless for nearly all of us, and our lives probably would have been improved by not getting the degree, because at least that way we wouldn't be under the tens of thousands of dollars in debt.

We were mostly mediocre. But we were smart and we knew how to figure things out. That doesn't really matter to most employers, who just want you to know a specific field right out of the gate so they don't have to bother training you.

I lucked out, by the way. I managed to find a job in 2009 clerking in a warehouse at a technology sales company, and it was only because I knew someone who worked there as a service technician. His moving up created openings that I would be able to use to move into increasingly technical roles. And after 4 years there I was making about $44,000/yr., doubling my starting salary as a clerk. The real benefit for me was networking with my current boss. Because if I hadn't met him then I'd probably still be working long hours for little pay.

So I would strongly urge anyone who isn't in the top 10% to strongly reconsider taking your advice. $100,000 is a huge amount of money and would have been a crippling amount of debt for me. As it was, the $20,000 I graduated with after working two and sometimes three jobs was hard to cope with until I lucked out.

I think my comment took it as a given that if you're spending $100k you'll use every single real opportunity you can get in college and make the most out of your $100k.

There's plenty of people that 'made it' from a local not-so-competitive state school. America remains the land of opportunity. But, unless you go to an Ivy or your parents are rich, you shouldn't expect it to come to you.

You can do things in America that you simply cannot in Europe. You mentioned a few way of doing college right in your own response. Wouldn't the correct response be to use your time in college wisely and not slack or "just make it through" but to make the most of it, rather than to skip college altogether just because it's going to be harder than having your life handed to you on a platter if you went to an Ivy?

----

2nd point I'd make is if you're in Europe student debt doesn't matter.

Tuition is almost always free/cheap, government pays for tuition and living for your time as a student, and gives very favourable terms to repay (e.g. in the UK you don't pay anything if you earn under £25k/yr, then you pay 7% of amount earned above that, debt is wiped clean after 30 yrs if any remains). It doesn't show up on your credit record or affect mortgages etc.

I'd describe America more as a country that rewards the ambitious (with perhaps some drops of luck) and the rich. If you're neither then the system is made to entrap you. Europe is easily better for general life, but it isn't great for ambitious people.

Not planning for retirement in that you’re not even putting funds into a 401k or other retirement account? I get it if you’re strapped for cash but it sounds like you have the funds to save.

This isn’t clever, it’s irresponsible especially given that just putting a little money away now literally pays dividends later.

I don't mean not putting in a 401k. The comment I was replying to was implying throwing $100k into a savings account is a good idea because you'll have a couple million when you're 63.

I do not advocate throwing $100k into savings for retirement at 18.

There's a difference between reasonable financial responsibility (401k, match pension contributions w/ employer, etc) and spending all your young years worrying about being prepared for retirement.

Enjoy the life you have. Be financially responsible, but don't over-do it, is what I'm trying to say.

Go to college. Get an engineering or other high paying job. Save and invest. You'll have a couple of million by early 40's, maybe late 30's if you're lucky.

Engineering is one of the few fields where this is true. For the vast majority of college degrees this is not true.

Ah great, I agree, there is a balance to strike

I really don't understand what you're talking about. The OP is saying that you wouldn't need to care about retirement at all if you invest instead of going to college, and if you can teach yourself a valuable skill like programming, you could likely get most of the benefits of going to college.

The question is, will a degree give you a better return than putting the money in the market? Maybe a degree would get you a better job, but you get a later start.

Students just aren't taught to figure this sort of stuff out before going to college and getting into debt. College just isn't the right fit for many people and it often just puts them behind.

Where do they get that 100K to invest from? Most people won't have rich parents to give them the 100K to invest. This means you have to get a job and save up. With college, you have student loans.

For most people, if you go to college, you can get to 2M a lot faster than you can by investing 100K and waiting around for 40+ years.

Low tier college should be about $10k a year and that's assumimg you don't do 2 years a community college.

You shouldn't live on campus if you're price sensitive. And you cant include room and board in your calculations because you'd need that anyway.

7% annual returns are also misleading because it ignores inflation. Edit--I've since learned that 7% average already adjusts for inflation.

> 7% annual returns are also misleading because it ignores inflation.

"One of the major problems for an investor hoping to regularly recreate that 10% average return is inflation. Adjusted for inflation, the historical average annual return is only around 7%."

https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/042415/what-average...

7% is adjusted for inflation. It's about 10% without: https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/042415/what-average...

It doesn't have to be conflated to low tier, state schools are around there as well and cheaper with aid or scholarship. CSU schools are typically pretty cheap considering the areas they are in.

> I went to a 4-year college, but earned almost all of my money from self-taught programming and design skills.

College has other benefits like signalling and networking though.

Eh, unless you're going to Stanford, Duke, or an Ivy League (or maybe USC or $REGIONALLY_RENOWNED_SCHOOL), the networking is definitely not worth the price tag.

What you've written is largely hogwash.

Most fields are not so competitive that you need a degree from an A-list school simply to get your foot into the door.

But you will need to get your foot into the door. Several or perhaps many doors throughout your career. Your network, even if it is not a blue-chip list of Ivy League studs and studettes, can help greatly. Particularly with your first position.

I went to a rather unprestiguous school thousands of miles away from Silicon Valley and the network I established before graduation has directly and indirectly resulted in a lot of work for me over the years.

Anecdotal, sure, but I've heard enough similar stories to be sure that this is a commonplace experience. Not that I need to prove anything. The burden of proof rests with anybody who makes a statement like yours.

Even if the networking one does at $SOME_UNIMPRESSIVE_SCHOOL results in only a few thousand dollars per year over what one would have earned sans networking, over the course of one's working life that can easily equal the cost of a college education.

I went to a public university and the price tag was rather reasonable compared to the typical 200k+ of a private school.

They touted the network but I didn't get any meaningful business connections out of it.

1 year of working in Silicon Valley got me dozens of quality connections that turned into meaningful long-term projects.

> self-taught programming and design skills.

This is essentially my story too, but IMHE, it hasn't been a realistic option for the people I have known who "don't like academics," and consequently struggled or opted out of the system.

(Fwiw, I couldn't stand academics. However, through dint of self study, it didn't prevent me from graduating.)

There's many viable routes that don't have to be academic. I hate the idea of universities being pushed down everyone's throat. They're higher education institutions and should be for people actually interested in academics and possibly/likely research.

Half of the 'degrees' we have now are not academic, and half of these universities shouldn't even exist. I think all routes are fine. Everyone has different interests and learns differently. Trade school should be a prestigious route in its own right and they should be built up as such, rather than trying to chuck everyone into university regardless of whether it's the correct path for them. There shouldn't be a 'university' culture.

From my high school I can think of less than 10% of people that were honestly interested in/good at academics (of any type, science or arts/humanities) that should've carried on to university. In reality, it was pushed down and over 60% went. Most of them just spent their time partying.

And on the same note, schools should be better. It's sad that some people don't get to find their love in academics until college. It isn't necessarily always late blooming imo, it's that public pre-college education often sucks.

That may be the case, but I'd still wager that, for the majority, self-study isn't a viable route - particularly in technology.

(And, IMHO, the many alternatives to academia aren't nearly the rosey picture you purport, particularly for people who hope to be sure of employment in a decade or two. It's clear that, while many will still be here, many won't.)

Self-study isn't what I mean. Nor am I referring to present alternatives to academia. I'm saying the higher education system is broken and this is something governments need to fix (and stop pushing people into university specifically, and accrediting so many that are worthless) and society needs to change in.

There should absolutely be institutions for education or trade-work post high school. These should not necessarily be universities and should still be aimed at all kinds of individuals, but talented individuals that are not good at and have no interest in academics.

Currently those institutions are often not widely respected. Colleges have become the norm post-18. That shouldn't be the case.

45 years from now, $2.1M adjusted for inflation (3%) is $533K. A lot of these compound interest calculators don't show you the values adjusted for inflation. It sounds great when you get 21x your investment. 5x doesn't sound as great, but it's more realistic.

The 7% figure they gave is already adjusted for inflation.

Only if you think you're getting 7% returns after inflation, which statistically is highly unlikely.

$2.1M is literally $100k compounded at 7% over 45 years.

The S&P typically returns 10% YoY. 7% per year is the historical average adjusted for inflation: https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/042415/what-average...

You can't perfectly time your retirement to match the S&P 500 average. That's the reason your portfolio shifts to bonds as you get older. It's the reason everyone quotes 7 & 8% as reasonable long-term returns for your retirement portfolio.

Right, but if for each of the past 100 years you tracked people who put money in the stock market and held it for 45 years and averaged each of their returns you'd get a 7% YoY return after adjusting for inflation.

Some would end up lower but some would end up higher.

Nothing is guaranteed, but neither is a job.

I worked in that particular trade for quite a while, so I'm not speaking from ignorance. You move away from bucket truck work and the serious injury rates plummet (and bucket truck work -- especially line work -- pays way above average). Work for the union where safety is actually enforced and that rate plummets again.

While freak accidents happen, most are due to foolish people doing foolish things. For example, you mention getting your arm fried, but "working it hot" is almost always going to break safety regulations. I got hit with 480v once, but only because someone flagrantly broke safety regulations and cut my lockout off of a breaker.

If you think injuries don't happen at walmart, try working as a stocker for a few weeks. Only a fraction of a fraction of walmart employees are ever managers and it seems they are very often put there due to nepotism rather than merit. At least if you broke your back as an electrician, you make enough to save for retirement and the IBEW has great disability benefits.

Your last statement disregards three important facts of life. First, if everyone could get that computer job, it would pay next to nothing. Most people simply don't have what it takes. Second, as long as you like having electricity, there will be a demand for electricians. Somebody must do that job and the pay is very good. Thirdly, liking a job is not a pre-requisite. I very seriously doubt most people in the service sector like their jobs. If you're going to dislike your job anyway, you might as well go for the one with higher compensation. If you do decide to switch careers later, you'd be a lot better off with all that extra money.

> Work for the union where safety is actually enforced and that rate plummets again.

Not that easy given how weak unions are now in much of the US .

Both of my parents were union tradespeople, one of them IBEW, working on telephone poles.

I agree that the "trades" meme is merely a "grass is greener" perspective. The low capped pay and lack of personal autonomy (if not strong discouragement of it by the union perks) can make one miserable, especially when you're pushed into it at such an early age based on others' perceived assessment of your abilities.

Also, I was a terrible math and science student in high school, and found my groove in college, only to graduate with a BS in CS in the top 1% of the class of almost 1k. Just a late bloomer I guess.

> I agree that the "trades" meme is merely a "grass is greener" perspective

Nah, it's a meme being pushed with organized campaigns that take lots of money: it's an attempt to manipulate the labor pool to bring wages down in certain fields by increasing competition for jobs and increasing return to capital.

Of course, so is the similarly heavily promoted “train everyone to code” push.

Hmm. Any source on that or a piece of journalism ?

I think you overestimate the number of people attending college who "aren't college material" and underestimate the number who excel at trades. I've seen data indicating a majority portion of student loan defaults are by people who did NOT finish college, thus the worst-case scenario: they're responsible for the debt, and haven't the degree or the job to pay it back. Truly a sad place to be. You might consider the average readership of this forum isn't even your typical college-educated tech worker, but likely a more curious and intellectual type. Who is going to repair his electrical, communications, automotive, mass transit, etc infrastructure. Plumbing in non-glamorous. If you do it after hours I bet his billed rate is higher than yours. And he doesn't pay 7% on $125k of debt. His house is paid for already. My stepson has ADD and other initials to factor in. He makes $75-80k operating heavy equip. His tech school cost $25k. He owns a home. He is still close with his HS friends. 1 in 10 owns a home.

> Statistically, you still earn way more with a degree than without.

I would need to see better information on this. I would think a lot of people without a degree don't do much of anything at all and bring the average way down. It would be better to see what the average is for people who complete a trade school program vs the average of people earning a degree.

earning is a misleading figure anyway, a lot of these high paying jobs for graduates are in big cities where the cost of living offsets the higher income

> Part of the reason you go to school as a young person is that you do not have a family to feed or a house to pay off.

If you go to art school as a young person, you won't have the problem of paying off a house because you won't have a job that qualifies you for a mortgage.

My wife went to art school and is (somewhat embarrassing to me) supporting our family with her job at Amazon while I (a CS PhD) am looking for work. We even qualify for a mortgage with her income.

(Lesson: UX designers are as important as programmers)

That’s surprising to me. Why is it so hard to find a job with your CS PhD? Are you trying to get a specific research-oriented job?

There aren’t a lot of PL positions open right now, and I didn’t network as much as I should before. Along with the standard problems in applying for jobs (high stakes leetcode, ghosting after multiple successful rounds of interviewing, etc...), that I can’t just apply to a lot of positions means that it takes a bit longer than I would like.

I also have the luxury of waiting for a better opportunity rather than just taking the first one that matches.

A B.A., even in fine art, still opens up a ton of okay-paying jobs. Jobs like paralegals, retail managers, and HR often require a bachelors degree but don’t care what that degree was in.

But you can get a generic degree in English or business admin at a community college and have a fine career as a paralegal. Don’t see why you need to go to an expensive art school.

Bachelors and associates degrees aren’t equivalent. Whenever I’ve seen a job posting asking for a degree, they explicitly ask for a 4 year degree.

Agreed, I would never recommend someone go to art school unless they are absurdly talented ( and at that point: The school would probably give you a scholarship. )

Is this correlation or causation though?

Are young people who get through a degree course then super focused on getting as much money as they can because they have all this debt?

As opposed to people who don't have mountains of student debt, and can then afford to take lower-paying, better-for-their-life jobs?

Huge debt is really stressful, and hard on mental health. I don't know the comparative suicide rates of electricians and art grads, but I'd suspect art school is effectively worse for your health than a trade.

People generally have two or even three careers now. Migrating from electrician to manager is about as easy as migrating from software developer to manager.

There is also another aspect to the correlation-causation argument. The kids in college are presumably the smart ones in the cohort. We expect them to have much better outcomes than the rest based on intelligence even without getting a degree.

Conscientiousness is a huge factor too, but almost all of a person's attributes that would increase their earning potential also increase their chances of getting into college.

Does intelligence correlate to either education or wealth? I didn't think it did...

Intelligence strongly correlated with education (~0.5), and adult intelligence is mostly determined by genetics.

https://academic.oup.com/ije/article/39/5/1362/802787

The correlation between intelligence and income also substantial, but seemingly not quite as strong. The correlation between intelligence and wealth is weaker still.

https://www.bcaresearch.com/images/Peter_PPT_presentation%20... https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01602...

interesting, thanks for the info. I've met some complete idiots with PhD's, some utter morons with huge incomes, and some geniuses who didn't complete high school. But I guess that's not the normal perception.

It correlates strongly with education, reasonably well with income, and only little with wealth.

>As opposed to people who don't have mountains of student debt, and can then afford to take lower-paying, better-for-their-life jobs

With income based repayment, you pay 10% of your disposable income (income over 1.5x the poverty rate) , so this isn't really much of an issue.

To maintain your debt, yes. But to clear it, and finally be free of it, you need to earn a lot of money. That is bound to focus the mind somewhat.

Or wait 20 years until it's cancelled. People regularly take out 30 year home loans much larger than the average student loan debt without debilitating psychiatric problems.

This isn't comparable in the least, since there's no equity built up over the course of paying off student debt.

Most people are never going to be able to access the equity unless they retire and downsize.

And people end up in situations where they can't make payments and have to walk away and take the credit hit all the time.

Worrying about the theoretical amount you owe instead of the actual amount you have to pay is just dumb.

I think it's not just black and white.

Is college universally useful? No, it may leave you without knowledge on how to earn decent money, while crippling you with a heavy debt.

Is college completely useless? No, it's quite useful for some, and even indispensable for certain professions (e.g. medical doctors).

I'd say that college is useful for those who actively extract knowledge and experience from it, and that knowledge can help pay the tuition. This is definitely not 100% of students. Going to college just to hang out with kids and obtain a diploma for decoration, expecting to be passively taught, or studying stuff no business wants to pay for, is silly, of course.

> You can make that kind of money as a manager at Walmart and you do not run the risk of getting your arm fried off or falling off a telephone pole.

Yes, but we need many more trades people than managers at Wal-Mart.

Not really. We need more trade people than managers at Wal-Mart specifically, but there’s plenty of equivalent positions at other companies.

>Statistically, you still earn way more with a degree than without.

You don't actually. Among non-hispanic white individuals the college premium is at a historic low, for all other groups it's indistinguishable from zero.[1]

And as for realism or pragmatism. I am German and in Germany the majority of people still learn trades and do not go to university. They start earning a paycheck at 17 or 18, they contribute to their social security from the same point, they have good chances of taking over a business given the demographic transition, and they do not have to participate in the competitive hamster wheel that is the American college system or the overrun white-collar service sector including dozens of applications.

And while I can't speak to the crafts and trade sector in the US, in Germany being an electrician is not particularly dangerous, there are strict safety regulations in place and you don't overwork yourself, companies painfully pay attention to it. This isn't the 1920s with people balancing around on steel beams.

When I see the constant anxiety in the US of the millenial generation, the debt driven barely sustainable lifestyles and the constant competition I can only say I am thankful to have grown up in a country where there is a path for normal people to take on jobs that guarantee secure income, without largely useless academic training for a population that is frankly largely unsuited for it.

[1]https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/12/is...

Personally, I think learning a trade should be an option in high school. A trade is better than a high school diploma both in pay and practical usefulness, whereas "college prep" is almost always useless. If you learn a trade and dislike it, you should have as much time as possible to pivot to something else.

I think high schoolers should have two choices:

- Associates Degree track at a local university - apprenticeship at a local trade organization

The AA/AS by itself isn't particularly useful (a little better than a diploma though), but it gives you an introduction into college life. A trade by itself isn't particularly useful (need years of practice to master it), but it's a practical introduction to what's available without a college degree. Our current approach of teaching to standardized tests seems like the worse option since it's neither practical (college doesn't really work like the tests) nor in demand (your employer doesn't care about your standardized test scores).

Our whole education system is out of whack, and just making it free isn't going to fix it. We need more paths to success, and we currently only have one that's pushed by our education system: STEM degrees.

Sounds a bit like what we have in Norway where you have (roughly) three choices for your 11 to 13 free years in school (1 - 10 is mandatory and while you can choose Montessori and a couple of other options they all share the same subjects):

- Vocational: 2 or 3 years followed by 2+ years as an apprentice in a real company, often with a master craftsman where the apprentices pay increases from approx 30% of full pay and up towards full pay during the time you stay. In return for the limited pay they have to take time to teach you and they cannot easily let you go before your apprenticeship has ended.

- Study preparations: three years of languages (typically the two Norwegian ones, English and German but some people will choose French or Spanish or something instead of or in addition to German.) Students who aim for engineering or medicine studies will typically add math, physics and another sciency subject: chemistry and biology were popular back when I went to school.

- leave school and get a job (or more and more likely it seems: fall behind)

As for why I say roughly, there's been a very nice option where you could get certified as a craftsman and get enough subjects to enter engineering in four years.

Also there are some options for transitioning from vocational to other studies. Going the other way is pretty hard and probably involves getting a job as uncertified worker in the field, then work for 5 years, takes some courses and pass the certification test.

Note: I'm not saying this is unique. It would surprise me if something like this isn't common in many other countries.

> Personally, I think learning a trade should be an option in high school.

Lots of Americans do learn a trade in high school. Just to copy the "Programs" menu from the Tech Center at the high school where my wife teaches (suburb in VT): Automotive Technology, Building Technology, Cosmetology, Computer Systems Technology, Computer Animation & Web Design, Dental Assisting, Design and Creative Media, Childhood Education & Human Services, Engineering & Architectural Design, Natural Resources, Professional Foods, Health Informatics. I understand that many of these programs, if not all, are supposed to be a career for the students, and that many of them are thought of as hard.

There are lots of trade oriented magnate schools in LA and many of them could carry you right into LATTC then after that making six figures and full benefits boring heavy rail under the earth. The trade shortage is being tackled, in major cities at least.

The other issue is the health toll many of the trade jobs have. See what 40 years of running cable on your hands and knees as an electrician will do to you vs a cushy desk job.

Yep, exactly.

I went down this "trades are great!" rabbit hole a while ago because I had a cousin who had a friend telling him: "You can be making 6 figures in 5 years as an electrician!" I was surprised when I found out his buddy didn't have a bridge to sell him as well.

Your career is not just about money earned. It is about the lifestyle. It is about your physical health over a long period of time. It is about your chance for advancement. It is about what you are going to be doing day-to-day.

yeah because the average dev guy can run marathons, right?

Working as a dev doesn't inherently prevent one from being healthy and active enough to be able to run a marathon, just gotta spend some time being active in your spare time. But killed knees and back due to a job in trades certainly will prevent you from running a marathon, no matter what you do with your free time.

Sitting in a chair all day is horrible for people though. (To say nothing of what it does for your attitude and personality).

You can easily mitigate that by making adjustments to your workplace (adjustable sitting/standing desk), as well as by avoiding spending a lot of time in a chair and being active outside of work. With trades, you cannot really do anything outside of work to successfully mitigate the damage done to your body, unfortunately.

A lot of what I've seen is that people in the trades will encourage their kids to go for the desk jobs because the trades are hard on your body and dangerous to boot.

It always seemed like the cargo culting around trade school doesn't come from it as a career option but rather because it comes from a bias against traditional colleges. In reality what we should be doing is making both the trades and college free so that students have their choice of career and education rather than trying to pigeonhole them down one path because education has transformed from a societal good to one purely for work.

Taking your comment to its logical conclusion, then, no one should become an electrician. Too dangerous. Low (relative to a degree) pay.

Well, who then is going to fulfill this necessary role?

If fewer people decide to be electricians, then pay must go up to attract them, changing the calculus. If we force every high school student into trade school, on the other hand, there will be a glut of electricians and pay will go down.

Then what do we have? A lot of very angry people who feel betrayed by our insistence on trade school. And they'd be right to feel betrayed! We should be encouraging people to pursue fields that suit their interests, talents, and ambitions. If there are financial barriers then we need to tear them down.

The economy exists for the people, not people for the economy.

The licensed electricians I know make far more than degree holders, outside of comp engineers/doctors/MBA from select schools. For the vast majority of non selective schools and non rigorous degrees, an electrician should easily outearn them.

Electrician pay will also continue to rise quite a bit over the next decade. I already pay far more every year than the year before, if I can even book a decent electrician.

Perhaps people who really want to be electricians because they like the trade itself?

And how do people decide they like the trade itself? Fine line there. How are people to know about the trades if all they hear is "go to college"?

> Statistically, you still earn way more with a degree than without.

Applying population statistics to individuals is a fool’s errand.

Not everyone is cut out to be a software engineer.

Why it worked for you: "computer programmer"

There was a decent chance to get that success without college.

Meanwhile, what of the others who go to college? Most are not computer programmers. Lots of people get a BA in psychology, criminal justice, early childhood education, music, sociology, Spanish, drama, anthropology, journalism, or art history. These people seldom find success.

I come from a family of tradies, I was one myself for a few years, then went to uni. You can't expect to do this after about 40, maybe 50, and expect to have a lot of health problems - bad back, foo-foo valves burst etc. Whereas with the professions you can expect to work as long as you want.

Then of course there are the tradies I knew of when I was young who are dead from it, not many but a couple, I don't know anyone who is dead from computer programming.

There is perhaps one trade that seems to be OK in my experience - plumbing, its not particularly hard work and there's always demand, but you know, digging up sh*t all your life is the trade off. You don't see many old plumbers though - they're probably out in their yachts. Worked with nurses in health for a while - the number of nurses with bad backs is incredible.

Go to uni

Not every position is physically demanding or dangerous. Its quite easy to move into different fields and positions that are not physically demanding and just require a little bit of critical thinking or smart work. This idea that every trade job is dangerous or will leave you disabled is insane.

If you don't like being an electrician, you could move over into HVAC and make twice as much since you have an electrician's license. I feel your view is rather narrow.

With trades you have the ability of taking a 2 week intensive program and getting hired for $20/hr right out of school. Its a way better deal than some liberal arts education that gets you deep into debt and qualifies you to be a barista.

Older developer here with a same age friend that’s an electrician for the city. He often makes a lot more than me with overtime. He wasn’t unemployed for a year either due to interview games and ageism bullshit.

Trade school is a good, viable path, but you do make a good point.

Ask an old electrician what they want their kid to be, and (excluding the scenario of a family business) it's usually "not an electrician"

> Statistically, you still earn way more with a degree than without.

Hate to be so negative, but it looks like it's all the game of prestige in the hierarchy as it always was: https://www.academia.edu/41235398/Personal_Income_and_Hierar...

> Statistically, you still earn way more with a degree than without.

This isn't quite true. What's true is people with degrees earn way more than people without them. But people /w degrees don't equal people without degrees.

The trades also tend to be unionized with good workers' comp and disability pensions, though.

It's good that they pay for it but I still wouldn't want to be subjected to an opioid prescription for the rest of my life.

Factoring in tuition costs, plumbers earn almost the same lifetime income as doctors: https://www.high-profile.com/plumber-vs-doctor-who-brings-in...

And it's generally not a life threatening career.

That's complete bullshit. I've known plenty of plumbers, I've never met one who had almost $1 million saved up by 33--which is the example they are using.

Sure some small percentage of plumbers might make $90k after 5 years and manage to seriously save. But that's not anywhere close to normal.

Also even with the cherry picked example of a union plumber who is unbelievably disciplined with respect to saving. And a doctor who does an optional fellowship.

The doctor still comes out WAY ahead over their lifetime.

I'd guess this might have some confusion of average and median one way or the other.

Example: In 2010 the median lawyer made 78k a year while the average made 120k. Note the 50% difference.

Plumber != Plumbing business owner.

That’s the distinction most people gloss over.

So, I assume you pushed your kids to skip medical school and enroll in plumbing classes instead right? How did it go? Are they in the one percent now?

>Some of my kids seem like they enjoy academics, but others do not. I'll be pushing the latter toward trade school. Average IBEW (electrical union) pay is about $20/hr for an apprentice and $33 for a journeyman. $40,000 to $66,000 with ZERO DEBT right out the gate is nothing to ignore (and that pay can easily double -- especially in your younger years -- if you're willing to travel and put in those extra hours). It sure beats minimum wage at a crappy service job.

so, uh, I guess I'm the modern equivalent of those trades. I mean, I don't have a union, but I fix computers and make a whole lot of money doing it, without any education. It is a lot like a trade, 'cause essentially I'm infrastructure for industry. I mean, instead of maintaining electricity at a factory, I'm maintaining servers in a build farm, but it's still infrastructure.

On the individual level you have a point. I mean, as a sysadmin, I do make like 30% less than a SWE, but I still make a whole lot of money, and I started when I was 17.

On a societal level, though? when you don't have a degree, the amount you make is dramatically dependent on how productive the people around you are.

Because I live in silicon valley and manage infrastructure for (mostly highly educated) engineers who are incredibly productive, I make a lot of money. A huge amount for someone who isn't educated or born rich.

If I was in a rural area, I'd be fighting for a job at geeksquad. I mean, I'd handily win that fight, but if I'm maintaining infrastructure for people who aren't very productive, I'm going to make... not very much money.

My point here is that if the US continues this trend of not educating it's children and excluding foreign educated people? Jobs like mine, for uneducated maintainers of infrastructure follow the jobs for the more productive people. If those people start working from china? They're probably gonna go find locals to do my job.

What I'm saying is that it is very much in my interest to do what needs to be done (mostly, I think, pay taxes) to see to it that kids go to college, even if I don't have any children of my own.

College doesn't make someone smart. College doesn't make someone choose to be productive. The decisions that lead to being smart and productive start early in childhood. Unfortunately, dollars spent on early education don't seem to have much of a correlation with success later in life.

So, I think about this a lot. I know a lot of really good sysadmins with no education; like of the people I consider really good sysadmins, close to half might not have degrees, and this is one of the reasons I equate my job to the trades. (I mean, along with the fact that our job is to create and maintain infrastructure so that other people can work) I know a fair number of software engineers with no formal education, though the proportion is a lot less than half. I know very few good electrical engineers who lack formal education. I don't know any good chemical engineers who don't have a formal education.

My own experience (I've tried at school several times. I'm currently enrolled in the computer information systems "competency based" degree at nau.edu, but I've tried a bunch of others) is that school is actually way more difficult than industry. You can't just be brilliant twice a month, as is my experience of industry; you have to show up and perform at 90% every day which seems impossibly brutal to me. I mean, this is probably a quirk of my own personality; I'm actually really good at coming in and dealing with disasters every now and again, but my consistency is... really pretty bad.

I mean, I personally think that a love of and respect for learning is fundamentally more important than education; but I also think that education isn't nothing. There are a lot of people who do a lot better with some formal education, and there are a whole lot of jobs, that as far as I can tell, are almost impossible to do well without a good formal education. I personally don't think I'd let a self-taught doctor hack on me if I had any other choice at all.

My personal opinion is that if there are any young people with the capacity to be good at those things that require an education who are prevented from doing those things because of money, our society has made a huge mistake, one that will cost us much money in the long term, just 'cause having those people perform at peak value is hugely valuable to society. Further, I think that the unwillingness, as a society, to pay for the education of young people evinces a lack of valuation of learning that might be an even bigger problem.

It's a tangent, but I'd love to hear more about your decision to pursue the degree at nau.edu.

well, the equation on the "competency based" degrees for me is essentially that they are super way less prestigious than traditional degrees, but they are the only way, as far as I can tell, to get an education without a "you are on time all the time or you fail" condition, as I have a very hard time being on time (and am largely not budget constrained, so the "pay for time" part of most competency based degrees is not as big a deal for me as it would be if I was very slowly earning a degree while working a less remunerative job.) -

'failure' in academia seems, to me, to be way harsher than failure in industry; Nobody brings up even pretty big failures of mine that occured even a few years back in industry, but my high school academic record, more than two decades back, still haunts my admissions efforts, so as far as I can tell, community college is the most prestigious route open to me, and I need to execute almost perfectly to graduate to the next level. I probably won't execute perfectly, especially as my work is a higher priority than school for me, (and my work record isn't perfect either) so I think this is the most realistic route to some sort of undergrad degree, even though I generally work a lot better in person than remote.

There are a lot of 'competency based' programs, and while I think something like that is the best chance I have of getting a degree without permanently marring my record in ways that makes doing academic things harder in the future, I have no idea if I picked the best competency based option. I do personally think that on the low end, you are way better off with a government school than with a private school; that was a big part of my decision. But, for instance, a friend was telling me about western governors university, and... that might have been better? they have an actual CS degree, which would definitely get me further.

Interesting. So are you learning anything from the degree or are just you doing it to get the credential?

But you asked about motive, and that's different from how I responded. I do need to get better at constrained writing, and to learn even really basic level management type writing, and while this is certainly a goal, a degree is also something I want; I... would like to do some graduate-level work, and that seems difficult without an undergrad.

Also, a degree is an important plan B... I mean, as long as I'm employed where I am, and as long as the industry doesn't change, a degree in and of itself won't help me all that much, though basic management writing might. but if industry changes, there are a lot of cases where having a degree means you are legally middle class. Right now, the pay cut I'd take working anywhere else in the world would mean I should probably just travel on vacation, but if that ever changes? a degree is almost essential to do my job for a non-US company.

No worries about being off-topic. I’m more than happy to listen to your unconstrained writing. I always enjoy your comments and find you have a unique and valuable perspective.

Anyway, what sort of graduate work would you like to do and why?

And I’m surprised your academic performance in high school is still a hinderance. Do you also have not great test scores?

If you could get into someplace reasonably prestigious, would you go back to school full-time? Or is being able to go to school while still working important for you?

>Anyway, what sort of graduate work would you like to do and why?

I actually don't have a project in mind at the moment. I have in the past wanted to do a lot more with pushing forward open source diagnostics tools, (and with proving the ESD problems in the way most people handle physical servers) - but I don't know that is what I want to do now; it's been a while since I've been serious about the physical layer, and it's really really unstylish right now; it would be better done once the outsourcing pendulum swings back to insourcing.

I am interested in graduate level work in part because my impression is that my work style would be a better fit; my impression is that if you do something recognized as really pretty great every now and then, they forgive you failures in the meanwhile. Like industry. (I also think I'd be more comfortable going to school with graduate-school age people than with undergrad-aged people. I'm pushing 40 at this point.)

>And I’m surprised your academic performance in high school is still a hinderance. Do you also have not great test scores?

Only okay. I'm held back by pretty terrible math test scores. almost average GRE quantitative reasoning (95th percentile verbal, which is good, but not good enough to make up for an average quantitative) I did pretty okay on the MAT, too, but I don't remember the score, and anyhow, if I want to do something with language or the arts, I really badly need an undergrad. I can mostly read okay and can talk about themes of the classics as well as an arts major, (though, uh, I probably cant speak of the criticism of those works the way they can) - but everything else in the arts I'm pretty terrible at.

(I do have plans to take the LSAT this coming year, with little study. I actively studied for the FE exam last year, but found I have another year of math before I can even try. The LSAT looks doable; I mean, I would be surprised if I do well on it, but I'd give myself better than even odds of doing better than average on it.)

I think bringing up my knowledge of basic maths up through, you know, at least GRE math levels is a moderately high priority, but I haven't quite figured out how.

>If you could get into someplace reasonably prestigious, would you go back to school full-time? Or is being able to go to school while still working important for you?

If I seriously thought that I had a 90+ percent chance of graduating... and I do think that the admissions committees are pretty good at judging that sort of thing, yeah, I would be willing to spend four years on it.

This, though, I think is the crux of it. They won't admit me 'cause I don't have a 90+% chance of graduating. Yes, it seems horribly unfair that they hold my bad behavior of 20 years ago against me, but the fact of the matter is that I still don't have that level of discipline.

I suppose that's another reason I want to go; I see this lack of discipline as a big weakness, and... well, where do I go to learn it? I mean, the good colleges could be said to not teach that sort of thing 'cause they filter out people who don't have it on the front end, so I guess I'm in the right place? but maybe not availing myself to the right bits of it? I mean, there's a very large chance that this will simply be something like handwriting, something that I will be terrible at for the rest of my life, and that I simply work around by not doing the things that require discipline, but... like even with handwriting, I spent a few years at calligraphy as an adult before I gave up on it.

It involves a lot of essays... I'm learning a lot about constrained writing, something I'm pretty terrible at as-is. I mean, most of the actual information systems stuff is old hat, but there's a lot to be said for improving my writing to a particular format, and maybe it's best to do that on a subject you already know about? (Interestingly, feedback from my boss has been that I need to improve my constrained writing, that my design documents and things of that nature need to be better, more numerous, and more on topic and to the prescribed format)

It's really interesting 'cause the feedback at the online classes feels... a lot harsher than any I have ever gotten at work; I wonder how much of that is just what is expected in school vs. work? or if it's a class thing, like the school isn't prestigious, whereas most jobs i've had, well, it's usually obvious that I have a lot of other choices... or maybe that I'm really bad at this, and at work, well, there's enough I'm really good at that people treat me somewhat diffidently even in the areas where I'm really bad? I don't know, but it's an interesting experience in a lot of ways.

I mean, it's not bad really, just... really different from how I'm used to people giving me feedback.

But... yeah, I mean, to me it feels like you are paying for essay feedback. Like, they also provide PDFs, videos and reading materials, but I can get all those things on my own; it's the essay feedback, I think, that is the individualized thing.

The biggest correlation on success later in life is how wealthy your parents are. Chances are you would be living in a safer neighborhood with better role models and exposed to more opportunities for further success, while being relatively insulated from opportunities for self-destruction.

College functions to get you out of your class bubble and expose other opportunities that you wouldn't otherwise have living at home. You play college right like many do, you advance up that economic ladder, and in the process set up your future kids for trivially easy success.

More than that, many degrees (especially in the liberal arts) are, economically speaking, luxury goods. They may teach things that benefit society on some level, but the cost of procuring them isn't offset by low wages and scarcity of the relevant jobs.

In a way, they form a bit of a poverty / class mobility trap for those who aren't well off enough to afford them on their own but are attracted by the idea of a purpose-driven life (social work, librarian, historian, identity studies come to mind).

You co-authored a reasonably successful book teaching people how to use a complicated piece of software. You may not have any formal schooling past high school but you’re wildly unrepresentative of the “uneducated”.

I think That was actually an example of the benefits one can gain by being around people who are smarter and better educated than you are. That book would not have been intelligible without my smarter and better educated co author.

I mean, I do think I am rather a lot smarter than average, but everything is relative, and I believe I have accomplished so much more because I seek out situations where I am surrounded by people I think are better than I am on those scales.

I will contend that this is not the core problem, but an auxiliary one forced by the states themselves. The primary source of funding for universities is the state, which makes sense because universities rely on local infrastructure and respond to local needs. Depending on the size of the university, they can essentially be a small city within a city. At the same time, the amount of money invested in universities has dropped dramatically:

https://www.cbpp.org/research/state-budget-and-tax/a-lost-de...

In order to stay solvent as institutions, the universities raise tuition, which is then enabled by student loans. My point isn't that student loans are blameless. They certainly are. In addition, there's a lot of blame that can be levied at the universities themselves for wasteful spending, but this itself is complicated due to donations being contingent on particular projects or buildings and competition between the universities to attract students who often choose a school based on how awesome the quad is. However, at its core, if a state like Arizona reduces its per student spending by over 50%, how is university supposed to stay solvent without dramatically raising tuition?

None of this helps the family in the article. I think they did the right thing. I wish more people would hold the states accountable rather than first blaming students loans.

State institutions are only part of the picture and not the worst part. This might explain why they've raised their tuitions but it doesn't explain why private institutions have done so even more aggressively. It's definitely the easy, guaranteed money from student loans.

Yes and no. Higher public tuition costs allow private entities to raise their tuition as well. While it depends on the college, I contend that most private colleges are not competing on cost. Schools like Harvard and Duke use price as a way to convey prestige, so they need to remain higher priced than their public counterparts. Schools like University of Phoenix compete on convenience, but if everyone else is charging higher tuition, then they can justify even higher tuition costs as well since everyone else is doing it and this new price is the de facto standard.

Now, I agree that the Feds need to cut back on loans in order to put pressure on the states to reduce their tuition costs. Essentially, the student loan system allows the states to receive free federal money by using students as the vessel of that transaction. I find that morally wrong. At the same time, there are a huge number of students who need some kind of loan to pay for college. I believe it to also be morally wrong to create a system where only those of means can enjoy public education. If the states adequately funded their universities, the universities held their tuition costs down, and either the state or the feds provided loans, then this wouldn't be an issue. However, this requires all of these institutions to agree on the principles of access to education and this isn't happening.

I don't know how to fix this. If the Feds eliminated their loan and grant programs, I personally believe that tuition costs would go down or stabilize because a large-section of the population would not be able to afford the current prices, so the universities would be forced to reduce tuition. This would benefit middle class families who have saved for education. I also believe this would prevent low income families from attending college and I'm not fine with this prospect.

Additionally student loans should be something you can refinance. When I took out loans in the early 90s, interest rates on subsidized Stafford loans were about 8%. As interest rates dropped during the course of my education, I was locked into that interest rate and the only way to get a lower rate on those high interest early loans was to consolidate loans. Loan consolidation doesn’t get you a market rate new interest rate instead you get the average of the 2 interest rates.

My student loans have auto re-financed to lower interest rates with no action on my part. But I got them in the 00's, maybe the rules changed.

Peter Schiff has a great video on YouTube about how these “well intentioned” subsidies have done the opposite and have inflated the price of college in the last few decades. It should be cheaper now due to economies of scale, computers, etc. Not when the government is involved.

This.

Pushing college the way we do helps to stigmatize the trades. Why don’t we push the trades? We give the impression they are “lesser”.

I have a feeling that trades are paying well because a generation of pushing people away from trades has created a shortage. Now that people are rediscovering this career path and just do trades is becoming (and in some circles has become) the new de facto advice, the generation who all go to trades will have the same issues as the generation who all went to college: stagnating wages, insufficient opportunities, increasing difficulty of getting your foot in the door, etc.

Trades aren't easier to get in and better paid because of their inherent characteristics. The supply and demand in the market has made them so. The new generation of advice is going to change the supply side. I am not sure if the advice is going to be valid for the rest of a young person's career should they choose this path. We have already done this once before with just go to college.

I may live in a bubble in this scenario growing up with parents and their friends that did painting/contracting/electrical/plumbing/flooring/etc. but I don't ever hear them as stigmatized. I think a lot of people have a real solid view of these jobs; Physically demanding with low top end rewards.

Few people go into those jobs or unions and make 200k a year. People def make a livable wage, but it's very demanding work physically. I have a friends that do flooring and roofing and they absolutely pay the bills but they are hurting and only just approaching 30. They have months where they have tons of work, and months where they have no work at all.

So while these jobs beat entry level roles and service jobs paying 15 an hour if you're luck, they don't hold the same value as being a lawyer or a doctor or like many of us here, an engineer. My back hurts because I have bad posture and sit all day, not because I was lifting hundreds of pounds of shit all day. And my salary is higher than my buddy that is high up in his union stopping OSHA violations.

Support trades, they are valuable and important. But I don't think we should praise them as the best path to securing your future. They are jobs just like any other with their own risks and rewards.

Most of us are not actual engineers (registered, and with a seal). We are software developers.

Which makes my point even more. It's even easier to get these jobs when you don't need years and years of school. And the salaries and perks will outpace what you get by getting into trades.

Not trying to devalue trades, they are great ways to get into a skilled job, but we can't pretend that they are silver bullets to achieving a happy, successful life.

The people who work in the trades are pushing their children away from the trades. (An example is the recent HN post on Chinese restaurants closing: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21871240) The hours can be long, the manual labor is hard, and the conditions are often harsh.

I struggled with college and don't know if I'll be returning... I made it over a third of the way to a CS degree but had to take a break from school.

I got a job while in college as a programmer - and work full time making around the 50k range. I feel that I self taught myself the necessary technical skills for my job, and that the biggest places for self improvement aren't acedimic but business/relationship related.

I have less then 5k in school debt left, and I already have the job I wanted, my only fear is when I eventually look for a new job, how well they'll consider me without a degree. I strongly feel my technical skills are at least up to par, meanwhile in school I watched classmates copy answers off YouTube...

1) look into transferring your credit while it's still good (it can expire) to some place with a fairly cheap online CS program. Most degree programs, including most CS degree programs, are the "do the work, get the degree sort", not the (good) kind that'll run you ragged trying to do 20 hours of math and algo homework a week or whatever, so you can knock them out about the same speed as normal as long as you use the Summer sessions (you'll still have tons of weeks a year without any classes). No one who isn't already (more or less) filtering out non-top-tier school graduates cares where you got your degree or how rigorous the program was, unless the interviewer happened to go there—they aren't getting many candidates from top-tier schools, even at pay much higher than $50k, so they can't be that picky. Just sit down and force yourself to do whatever school work you have for the day before doing anything else, after work. Most days it likely won't really be that much. Every now and then you'll have a 3-hour night of school stuff.

2) make sure the program you're transferring to accepts a bunch of CLEP tests for credit and then pass those for anything you haven't already taken that qualifies—a book, a couple weekends of hard study, and a (relatively) cheap test beats paying for a class and taking all that time. These will mostly be 100-level courses, including and especially "gen ed" classes. Maybe you don't have any of those left, but if you do, CLEP right the hell out of them.

If you can get it cheap enough IMO it's definitely worth some money and some effort not to have questions about why you didn't go to or finish college, in interviews. If nothing else the confidence not having that stuff come up gives you frees you to ask for higher salaries. One 20k bump (not a crazy number for a jump with one job move, if you're at 50k, even if you're in like a 3rd- or 4th-rate city for tech) that otherwise would have taken a couple years longer to achieve, and that degree's a hell of a long way toward paying for itself. You could probably have one in under 3 years, maybe around 2, without taking on too much stress.

[EDIT] oh and ask your employer to chip in for tuition. Can't hurt to ask.

I wouldn't worry too much about the degree in CS if you're already in the industry. Unless you want to do something very specific, your work experience will trump your academic experience in nearly every case. I don't have a degree and have been able to move companies a number of times, as have my other engineer friends without any sort of degree.

Unless you want to do some serious crypto research or something like that, more schooling probably isn't required. You'd be better served getting a CISSP or something.

I was going to school for physics and do plan to go back because I want to be in that field doing research eventually. If you want to do something similar, then school might be worthwhile.

If you have enough work experience you can get onto a distance education Master’s from a UK university without a Bachelor’s.

For example

https://www.ox.ac.uk/admissions/graduate/courses/msc-softwar...

Oxford M.Sc. Software Engineering

A typical applicant will have at least two years' experience in a professional environment, and an undergraduate degree in a related subject. However, more extensive experience may compensate for a lack of formal qualifications, and a strong, immediately-relevant qualification may compensate for a lack of professional experience.

There are others but that’s the best I know of for Software Engineering without a Bachelor’s.

Military is also a good option to college, especially if your specialty is a skilled trade. My brother did this straight out of high school. Spent a few years overseas and then eventually changed his specialty to biomedical equipment repair. When he left the service he made 60k/year and after 5 years he is at 125k/year. Also when you are in the service, you are getting paid and if you are overseas, all your bills are paid too.

He never had any student loans ever or school expenses. When he was young he just saved most of his money....most of which has doubled or tripled in value due to how good the stock market has been.

The danger is the military can legally lie to you with promises of what you'll be doing when you enter, and in times of personnel shortfalls that might be true.

But they can also make you cannon fodder or a deck swabber.

And ask the reservists about military promises from Iraq. Oh you're in the National Guard? Yeah we're deploying you to a foreign country for years on end.

And once you're in the military, you can be summoned for duty if they need you.

Yeah, but you're gambling that you will survive and that you will survive intact. A life full of PTSD or without legs or arms or eyes isn't worth a million a year, let alone $60 to $125k. Then there's the very real possibility of dying. Not to mention the high risk of suicide afterwards.

Given those risks, I can't see how the military is a good option.

Mortality rates in the military are actually lower than in the civilian world: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22694586

> Crude mortality rates are lower among U.S. military members than their civilian counterparts; service members must be healthy when they enter service and deaths from illnesses are relatively infrequent.

Suicide rates for veterans is on the high end, but comparable to other highly physical professions. Adjusted for age and gender, the suicide rate among veterans is 50% higher than for the population as a whole: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/sep/26/suicide-rate.... That's on the high end, but not "high" in absolute terms: https://www.registerednursing.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11.... (Scroll down to the chart showing suicide rates by profession for men versus women.) At 40-45 per 100,000, male veterans are about as likely to commit suicide as those in the arts and entertainment and installation/maintenance fields, and less likely than those in construction/resource extraction.

It's not mortality you should worry about, but life altering injury.

My stepdad, my next door neighbor, and 3 of my friends all have some kind of long term chronic injury caused by military service.

In fact I only know 1 guy well who's ex military who doesn't have at least a moderately severe problem related to his service.

Military service is either a noble sacrifice, or it's a good job. It can't be both simultaneously.

The worrying thing about those rates for veterans is that the spike is in younger people, which is not the normal pattern.

There may be a "cohort" effect. See this tweet for an example of this happening in the UK: https://twitter.com/ProfLAppleby/status/1161940914308300801?...

If this is happening it's potentially really worrying, because risk usually increases with age. So we'd see an increase in rates of death as this high risk group ages into a higher risk group.

A very small percentage of people in the military ever see combat, and of those an even smaller percentage get hurt. Most jobs in the military are industrial type jobs, so all of those normal dangers do come along. Now, if someone really does want to see combat I'm sure they can maneuver in such a way to make it happen.

The GI bill paying for college is a big benefit of service, but staying in as an officer can also be a great living.

I get the overall sentiment because I am born well-enough-off and I agree that you are basically signing away your health or even life (after all, no regular mechanic will have to fix a car in a shootout).

OTOH, lots of people don't have my fortunate background and loving but poor parents can only do so much. Housing and food being taken care of and a paycheck on top is a very good incentive if the other choice is to be a "burden" on your family for another few years...

Not gambling health or life is only possible in a very privileged setting. Those not in it might actually be making a very wise choice.

Wouldn't building a society where people don't have to make such critical choices out of desperation be the best way to tackle this problem?

Yes, but until this is accomplished, military service is a viable options for a lot of people.

joining the military != fighting in a combat role

There's lots of regular work, maintenance, staffing some random base overseas etc

Extremely low probability of any of those happening.

Besides, military service changes you. It gives you perspective you will never get anywhere else.

I have 3 nephews who served in the military.

2 have PTSD, one severe. The one with severe PTSD also got to spend 6 months in a hospital after being shot out of the air in a conflict that we are theoretically not involved in.

Given their other options, military service might have been a good thing. But the odds of PTSD or injury are much, much higher than I would like.

I served in the military for twenty three years.

My sample size is thousands of times yours.

The odds are very low.

> The odds are very low.

The odds are very high for post-9/11 veterans (and higher the more of their period of service is post-9/11 within that group), who are more likely to have been deployed and seen combat than veterans of earlier eras (both because of optempo and organizational changes that have increased the teeth to tail ratio of uniformed services as support functions have been moved to contracted support.)

There are ample actual studies of this, we don't need to rely on the “sample size” of competing anecdotal reports.

This discussion interested me enough to do some casual Googling. The US military's statistics from 2011 say that only 15% of service members are actually involved in combat roles; slightly over 1 in 7. See figure 2 and figure 4 here: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Improving-the-DoD's-To.... And, of course, not every service member who is in a combat role gets PTSD or injuries.

If you have current tooth-to-tail estimates, they'd be interesting to see.

It's hard to find any simple, clear, current figures, but this has a historical study for deployed units through Iraq 2005 (which clearly isn't exactly what we want), and it shows (in the counts that don't include contractors for Iraq 2005, so the ones that are actually addressing uniformed personnel and using the same standards as earlier figures) the highest tooth to tail ratio since WWII, as part of a late (relative to the whole period of study) reversal of what had for most of the post-WWII period been a trend of decreasing the tooth-to-tail ratio.

https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Portals/7/combat-studies-ins...

You do not have to be in a combat role to see combat, get PTSD, or get injured.

My nephews serve as examples. Their non-combat roles were heavy construction, setting up communication networks, and airplane mechanic. However all three actually saw combat. 2 wound up with PTSD. And one wound up seriously injured when the plane that was delivering him to a secret mission got shot down en route.

In fact according to some estimates, the prevalence of PTSD among veterans of the Iraq war exceeds the fraction who were supposedly in combat roles.

Anybody can "some estimate" anything. My guess is that they're using figures from the massive amount of fraudulent PTSD claims submitted to the VA.

PTSD is the easiest diagnosis to get through the VA, and thus it is rife with fraud. As a result, it is quite difficult to get anything approaching accurate or useful numbers for it.

Not everyone will develop PTSD. Of the ones that do, not all who develop it recognize it immediately. Of those, even fewer will seek treatment. Combat is not the only way to develop it. Some might only develop it after ruminating on events later on, or failing to adjust to civilian life. What's certain is that not treating PTSD can cause much bigger and more dangerous problems. And unless you're a doctor, I wouldn't throw 'fraud' around so easily.

It sounds like you're one of the ideal ones for your line of work, though; brains that are less susceptible to stress damage are rare. It's why not everyone is fit to become a police officer or give talks in front of big crowds. Others have an adrenaline sensitivity or a panic groove etched so deeply in their brains that they'll forget their names if you talk to them when they don't expect it.

I'm also assuming you entered the military voluntarily. There's a predisposition for certain brains to take on and thrive in certain careers. As a DWB friend of mine put it about the career mercs he treated, "They aren't psychopaths, just real mean sons of bitches."

You don't have to like people who aren't built as tough as you, but that doesn't mean they're faking.

I’m well acquainted with how ptsd works.

The vast majority of the people in the military are never exposed to anything at all. They do a job and they get paid for it. They’re no more likely to develop ptsd than the local grocer, plumber or electrician. Many of them are exactly a grocer, plumber, or electrician with a military ID card. They’re not “Mercs” any more than the local grocer...

Everyone on active duty today entered voluntarily as well.

No, they’re not.

I retired last year.

I deployed to Afghanistan multiple times.

I’m literally someone who experienced the life you’re trying to tell me about. Your studies are mostly bullshit written to drive an agenda.

> Your studies are mostly bullshit written to drive an agenda.

It could be that that's true of of a variety of scientific studies from diverse sources with no reason to have common agenda, or it could be that that's just true of your unsubstantiated pseudonymous anecdotal ranting in an internet discussion board.

Cite the studies and I'll be glad to explain to you why they don't say what you believe they do, or why their methodology is laughably incorrect.

Again, btdt. I don't need a think tank to write a paper to tell me how the military works.

I'm still waiting to see the studies that the odds are "very high" that us veterans have PTSD. Not holding my breath here, but you've made the claim based on your anecdotes and a claim that "ample actual studies exist", so I'd like to see it.

Maybe the percentage is low but it's still plenty high to be a deterrent and much, much higher than at any educational institution and most jobs.

You bring up another excellent reason to avoid military service. I'm sure there are plenty more.

Extremely high probability compared to any other developed nation. The US fights foreign wars with alarming regularity, We are currently fighting several.

That’s because other developed nations barely have militaries. Of those who actually do and deploy and do the things we do the numbers are probably about the same - very low.

I can second this. Most branches let you select a job (MOS/whatever the other branches call it) that have real work uses, and you can also change your job if you'd like (with some caveats of course). I certainly didn't enjoy many moments of my military career, but I value the things I learned and the opportunities it opened up for me.

Its certainly not for everyone, but with National Guard/Reserve options it's a pretty sweet deal that the vast majority of people could certainly handle.

>If you're getting a necessary degree, it's very uncommon to default on your loan because you'll be in demand and getting a decent wage. Banks understand this fact and will do the math to give a loan anyway.

Why doesn't it make economic sense to declare bankruptcy in any situation, even if you're a CS major from Stanford, at 22 when you have nothing if you've got a loan in the six figures and IF you're allowed to do so, which is what you're implying (loans that aren't guaranteed)?

The issue with bankruptcy is not "excluding" students from bankruptcy. It's applying bankruptcy law fairly to every debtor.

If there ever was a poster-child for how basic grammar and economics education has failed in primary school....