On the other side you need some kind of education for almost any job here. Car mechanic, etc. So it is not as flexible.
I just always cringe when I hear someone is going to university to study for a job. Many jobs just require more practical experience than knowledge. In the US the choices are extrem: either go to some university or do nothing at all and try your luck.
https://www.datenportal.bmbf.de/portal/de/Tabelle-1.9.5.html
I personally know several(!) instances where “the smart and brilliant sibling” went for university, the “quiet one went for an apprenticeship” - and the pay off has been substantially more beneficial for the people taking the apprenticeship road even though the “college siblings” didn’t exactly fail or end up unemployed... I know it’s anecdotical.
But in Germany, they seem to push a rather weird political agenda in this direction which doesn’t help anybody.
I wonder whether it's self-correcting in some way - management-class hopefuls end up poorer than their hands-on counterparts, and these wealthier families end up having more political clout over time which balances the snobbery that got everyone to push their children into management streams in the first place...
This is what has traditionally been believed and does not necessarily represent reality, but it explains the tradeoffs each route offers.
This is anecdotal, but a blue-collar acquaintance who studied for a 3-year power plant safety program purchased a detached home a full 7-10 years before his peers who went to university for four-year degrees. There wasn't much parental assistance involved in the home purchase.
Being able to make enough to cover a mortgage and sock some money away in an investment account can give you a financial boost that compounds over time. If you live in an expensive housing area, that boost could end up exceeding what white-collar grads net out to, 15-20 years later.
It is just so freakin easy to get an apprenticeship in comparison to getting a job with a university degree. And I am talking business/IT apprenticeship versus university counterparts. It’s not as much “those business hobos will all get unemployed and they deserve it” - it’s rather: “if you just sign up early and promise not to strive for ambition you are better off financially in a lot of cases”.
Since there are financially unwise college degrees (social work) and on the other end those with a mostly guaranteed, very decent minimal guaranteed income and incredible potential (medicine), this is an unfair comparison.
Second example - well, the PhD postdoc survives 2-year contract over 2-year contract while his younger brother just loads just more cash than he can carry.
This does not hold everywhere - both “younger siblings” work at a large industrial company that pays well. It’s just 100x easier to get a job that is paying well with mediocre grades and an uncle than with an engineering, business or science “summa cum laude” university degree.
Really crazy how that turned out. Many more similar stories from my siblings and their class-mates.
One must plan a technical career carefully. I was able to get an internship at Kodak's Tennessee plant after my junior and senior years. I originally wanted to study inorganic chemistry. I worked for scientists who both were Ph.D. polymer chemists. They showed me the American Chemical Society's study on chemist occupations. 80% of chemists worked on polymers at some time during their career. I applied for both types of programs, and the UMASS Amherst Polymer Science program provided a research assistance-ship that paid my way. it was a great experience and I had a fantastic Ph.D. Advisor - who is now an emeritus professor at Rice University. I stopped interviewing after I had 5 job offers. Employment fluctuates with the economy. Some fields are more robust than others... Do your homework before rushing into a pricey program...
But honestly: if it wasn’t for like 80+h weeks straight for the past 10 years and “an increadibly lucky chance” even for me university and working in the most prestigious companies would have been a crap choice. Even without the PhD (which I was able to get done in 3 years at the top university in Germany).
I literally do not recommend university to anybody “unless they are willing to take a pay cut and understand the need to be in the top 5 percent for the next 15 years to get a shot at being as well paid as that dude doing an apprenticeship in the quality department working 35h weeks”. And again: university is free here. Not worth it really from a financial perspective for most people. Yet, the “public and political agenda is to push more people into it”
Higher education can be a ticket to a great career. It can be a cost it takes a lifetime to repay, especially if penalties and interest accrues.
I think it's fairly easy to see this type of outcome if the major was a humanity and the trade was something like plumber, electrician, or climate control, even in the US.
The problem is, no family ever considers both to be valid options.
There are families where it's just assumed you'll go to college and no one even questions it. (They don't even stop think, wait, this gal would be a great plumber and easily make six figures as her own boss!)
There are families where college is something "extra" that's not required.
I know of no families (though I'm sure they exist) where plumber is considered an equally honorable profession as accountant or teacher.
There's a kind of social stigma attached to the trades, for want of a better word.
In the US and UK you're considered educated once you go through school. So you can go another two years to University and become a lawyer(same with medicine, provided you can afford it). In Germany you're kind of set for life.
Engineers are not considered business people, business people can't be considered engineers. But one of my favorite startups back in the days(Basho the makers of Riak) two absolutely fantastic engineering managers I met were an english literature grad and an business school grad. Both just had a lot of interest in Computer Science.
Of course the other extreme of the equation is people that found the Fyre Festival or Theranos.
To add to that: This trend only shows that people do not want to do low-pay hands-on jobs anymore. It does not mean that universities compete with apprenticeships. Although this certainly causes the rise of bullshit study programs.
I think some of the commerce chambers/etc. have brought this onto themselves by pushing the advantage of their paying members who have effectively turned most trades and crafts into guilds, where your only chance at getting a good job (aka being self employed) is inheriting machines and the company rolodex. [And no, you generally can't pull it off on your own, because you have to actually pay for studying to be allowed to open a business, so you are 30 years old, have no money and have to get a 200k loan for your non-hyperscaling business, while you have to pay rent or want to buy a house]
Capitalism solves the resulting supply shortage of "qualified" plumbers, carpenters et. al. by providing cheap, eastern european, DIY-style "I can do everything"-craftsmen (actually, my grandfathers both had similar sidegigs (ok, one built his and his friend's homes with them) during the "Wirtschaftswunder" and retired).
Nearly everyone who is sufficiently intelligent to pass the necessary exams then moves to university to study in the hope to get a "nice, comfortable" job. Even if they really liked their vocation. But working your ass off in the lower 10%-income bracket, while your boss buys a Porsche a year from profits you earned in a 5-person company he inherited from his father kind of sucks.
You can say the same thing about software engineering. The push for easy immigration has solved the fake shortage in Germany and kept the salaries low enough to keep companies very profitable.
1 - a high school education in the US no longer results in someone functionally prepared for citizenship (manage a budget, understand how to vote, keep themselves fed and clothed, understand a newspaper etc). It’s also only 12 years. The first year of the 4-year undergrad program at most schools is leveling all the kids to the same base.
2 - despite my criticism above, the US undergraduate design is, by and large, intended to be broad rather than deep; while in most countries you can get an undergrad law or medicine degree and then be a lawyer or physician, in the US undergrads are expected not only to study their subject (“major”) but also some literature, maths, perhaps a foreign language etc. Actual profession comes in many cases from an advanced degree. I think this is a better system though not always well implemented.
There is also a Berufsschule- like system called an associates degree for basic accounting, dental assistant, etc.
My son attended German Grundschule and Gymnasium track, but did some US high school and US undergrad. I did US high school and US undergrad, but my exposure is to a different system. So while I think the us educational system is in a parlous state, it has some strengths as well.
You'll be shocked to find that there are people all over the world and throughout most of history who learned how to do all of these things without any school at all!
I intentionally kept reading the newspaper off that list, because that typically does require some formal education process.
I'm not a radically anti-state person, but its strange and concerning to me that there has been this increasing trend of critique public school for not teaching you basic life skills.
Maybe we need less school and not more. Extending the definition of "child" to be 18+ and keeping students so busy with homework that they don't even learn how the world works through their family and peers seems like a problem that more school won't fix.
Besides understanding a newspaper, which arguably schools do teach since they teach you to read and do analysis on text in English classes, did high school education ever cover the rest of this?
They literally taught sewing, cooking, balancing a checkbook and budgeting, child care, basic auto mechanics, and some welding iirc. These are all super useful life skills and the sad part is that all of us brilliant geniuses that went on to college never got the equivalent covered.
Planning on buying a cheap welder soon and teaching myself how to weld in the next 6 months (at age 50).
I have also done an oil change in the parking lot of a local auto parts store, and they were totally cool with it.
$140/day seems steep but kudos for taking the initiative.
They have a special rate for oil changes, $40. But you only get an hour on the lift. Just enough time to refill, replace filters, and rotate tires.
Doing work in the parking lot of an auto parts store is very normal.
Without a license, you can learn to safely change capacitors, contactors, 24v transformers, and thermostats.
As a broke college student DIY auto repair was a great way to save money. As someone with a job, it's more of a hobby.
But learning how to fix a basic machine is an amazing lesson in design: you see how mature technology is made to be maintainable, which isn't something you get from a lot of modern electronics.
Shop and welding was long gone by the early 2000s but my school had a big greenhouse so I took Horticulture.
A good friend of mine, who later went to the NFL, was so excited he learned to bake cookies. He also learned to read the stocks section and was super excited to try investing.
* He's doing quite well now. Football paid for college, NFL paid for law school.
It was considered a bit advanced that some boys took it don't think girls shop classes.
No. But the upper middle class from which most of HN's inhabitants come could more easily be ignorant of it back then.
You had the token home ec and wood shop classes but eeryone who wasn't super interested did whatever and got a B and didn't really pick up any lasting knowledge in the process (art and music have similar probably the best point of comparison today).
[In the Ontario public school system, specifically] we were required a Civics-classified course in our upper years which resulted in me taking Canadian History rather than general civics—but understanding how to vote has never been a burden here.
Budgets, etc, were covered by a maths course called "Math for Everyday Life" which was, unfortunately, in the "enter the workforce" rather than the College or University stream so most avoided it because it appeared as if it was next to remedial. I took it. It was alright. I don't remember specifics, but it's likely responsible for a lot of my intuitive understanding of things like budgets, credit systems, mortgages, etc. While it wasn't in the higher streams, it did fulfill the requisite for math in order to graduate.
As far as English courses, we were required to take one of College or University streams throughout high school for reading a mix of literature critically, dramatically, and to engage in debate. You could also optionally take a Creative Writing course beside that which had more reading, more debate, more in-depth grammar and creative exercises (which if you ask me only improves reading comprehension) as well as a final project of developing a small body of related work, presenting it and defending it in a proposal.
And I attended rural schools, one of which was being progressively closed as I attended (thanks Mike Harris), so it wasn't just a matter of being in a city rich with resources, or of a certain class.
That said, it's unfortunate that I hear a lot of people claim those kinds of courses are not offered here (and worse, use that as reason for complete reform or selling our public system to private interests), and many subjects are not covered—but they are, and I've just noticed not many people take them. Canadian History, and our amazingly jaded teacher, covered in detail the dark side of the country's history and some of the complex network of politics of the First Nations, and the Math for Everyday Life course (while I wish I had dug into more complex topics with as much fervour) made the basic stuff a little more natural in my understanding.
Any of the wood shop/home economics (joint course, you had to take both) courses mentioned we had taken in the 7th/8th grade rather than high school. There was an auto shop, but I can't comment because I didn't take it. Car ownership seemed well out of reach so I didn't care as much at the time!
I look back fondly on those years and absolutely loved free periods, in addition to the many electives I took that were not purely science or math.
I'm studying CS and I had physics, electronics, history, intellectual property law, PLC programming, automatics and foreign language and more that I do not remember.
Isn't that broad?
For example, a CS student at Stanford would meet these requirements [1] by choosing from a wide range of courses such as "Jazz History", "Conservation Photography", "Contemporary Moral Problems" and "To Die For: Antigone and Political Dissent"
People who like this system would say it produces a well-rounded education - surely nobody would want students of politics to be ignorant of statistics, or students of engineering to be ignorant of ethics!
There are a variety of much more cynical interpretations available, of course...
[1] https://undergrad.stanford.edu/academic-planning/degree-requ...
US employers didn't do this out of the goodness of their shareholder's hearts or (as in Germany) any regulatory obligation. They did it for competitive advantage; skilled labor was scarce and worth investment.
Those days are long past. Contemporary workers are oblivious to this history as it has been more than two generations since this situation prevailed in the US. The reasons for this change can no longer be discussed in a candid manner without triggering people so I won't attempt it.
At the factory attached to my place of employment, I'm not sure what jobs are actually left that are related to any of the skilled trades. Most of our workers are assemblers. We do hire people with 2 year trade school degrees, or equivalent military service training. When our welder retires, we will probably outsource the welding.
Now we get pieces from shops that have skilled trades such as machinists, but I don't think those shops require a 4 year degree. I don't think carpenters, roofers, or plumbers have bachelors degrees. Many of the businesses that hire those people are family owned, and hard to break into if you're not connected.
As for health care trades, well, employers might be willing to bear the cost of the training, if there was only one employer: The government.
The old guard of skilled welders who did the welding by hand are being replaced (and not happy about it) by young guys like him. My friend learned his job through a 3-year program at the local community college. His job involves a lot less of the tacit knowledge a skilled welder would have (judging the quality of a joint by feel) and a lot more theoretical knowledge of metallurgy. Instead of intuitive judgement, he relies on the methods of nondestructive (x-ray scanning) and destructive (cutting a test weld in half and inspecting it under an electron microscope) testing.
Companies that invested a lot in their employees paid less than companies that had no such expenses, so it became common to have a new hire, spend 3 years on trainings and leave for a better salary. This competition pressure made us adjust and move the training budget into salaries.
Why stay in the same place when you make more moving?
People don't like moving, it adds uncertainty. It is done because HR and management knows this and has taken advantage of it to not hand out raises.
It makes more economic sense to train your workers if people tend to stay with one company for a long time.
Tech employers usually offer reimbursement for online training, conferences, books, etc. That seems commonplace and enables business models of PluralSight and alike.
Some also bring outside consultants and training firms for in-house seminars, some pay for conference expenses, and some even reimburse tuition for a professional development course.
but when govt started handing out loans like candy, then of course the employer would rather the university train the person for them.
it moves the cost of training from the employer to the employee paying for their own training with debt
Notice how the high school graduation rate among 25-29 year-olds rose between 1940 and 1950. Those are people who graduated high school between 1929-1934 and 1939-1943. Before WWII.
This pre-WWII trend is consistent with the post-WWII trend, up until ~1978 when effectively "everyone" graduated high school. In other words, this has been happening since before WWII, and WWI had nowhere near the civilian mobilization as WWII, so the demobilized wives/children argument doesn't explain the inter-war increase.
As for college:
Notice how the number of 25-29 year-olds with college degrees rises dramatically between 1948 and 1951 and then slowly through about 1960. That's WWII vets using the GI bill to go to college (18-21 year-olds starting 1945 to 1948). Then the increase tapers off.
There's another significant rise between 1965 and 1978. That's boomers avoiding the Vietnam draft with college deferments. Then it levels off (actually, decreases) for 20 years until the late 90's.
The late 90's rise corresponds to the late-80's / early-90's push to throw student loans at anyone with a pulse.
Starting in 2008, the rate starts rising again: Young adults of all ages staying in or going back to finish college because the Great Recession killed a bunch of jobs. Plus, probably, some amount of people who started college around 2002 to avoid being drafted for Iraq (which didn't end up happening anyway).
This is an interesting angle. Do you think it is a mutually escalating war of trying to screw each other or maximize one's own gains that has resulted in a hostile relationship between employees and employers? What would mutual de-escalation look like?
Union representation on the board and broadly shared profit sharing as part of all employee compensation packages.
Get everyone rowing in the same direction.
my first job out of college was as a "financial analyst". my undergrad degree (finance) was largely not applicable - excel skills were about the only relevant experience. any 18 year old with a 2 month excel bootcamp and maybe 2 weeks of industry and department specific orientation could have done my job; meanwhile i was desperate and had no other offers so i took it making 50k per year with my shiny new 175k degree.
It is typical for grade-school teachers and advisors to discourage everyone but their least-performing students from considering those options.
Only 3 years for a pharmacist?
I think Germany is the exception here, not the US.
Much of the university requirement is a bit of an anachronism because a lot of the underlying reasoning is nominally based on the scenario of pharmacists manufacturing their own drugs in the backroom, but fortunately there seems to be a lot of political agreement that opening up requirements for theoretical efficiency gains would only enrich aggressive investors without making health noticeably cheaper.
She had to take a bunch of classes at the local branch of the state university system and then pass a certification.
There's a lot more advanced stuff pharmacists are qualified to do. Pills don't require much work, but liquids and powders may need to be mixed. Also they often can prescribe certain things like morning after pills for birth control.
Also pharmacists work in other places besides retail like hospitals.
They are usually the highest paid employees in a store, unless it's a Walmart where the general store manager can make just over six figures.
It's not a terrible gig, with only a 2-year program after your bachelor's.
Another part of it is that American college education has low upfront costs typically, due to the high supply of government loans and grants. This lets students access college with low short term financial burden and removes the immediacy of considering the cost benefit tradeoff. This is why we have tens of thousands of students graduating every year with degrees in fields with no economic value. There isn’t a clear incentive and feedback signal to tell students “get a degree in what society values” instead of “get a degree in your area of interest”. And then later when they’re unemployable or paid less than they’d like, they act confused as if the system is broken even though it was their choice to not study something that others value enough to pay for. That shows up in various political struggles 10-20 years later, as large quantities of those very same students now feel left behind.
Germany is different not only because of the availability of diverse education paths (like vocational programs), but due to its culture. The trades are respected in Germany. In the US that cultural value on trades has diminished. And now we are seeing many of those trades compensated heavily due to reduced supply.
But on the other hand, I am always very surprised to hear about “college dropouts” who make a living by working e.g. in a clothing store without any formal education. That seems to work.
I suspect that for the culture of study and work to change in America, we can't expect the current workers/students to change their views. It may only happen when a new generation no longer receives a constant push to attend college. If that's the case, then we'd see a change in college attendance and employer attitudes and employee attitudes 20 years in the future.
But as you said, lateral entrants might have a difficult time since there is a profession for everything. It is a transient education system though. Even if you only got the lowest kind of basic education, you can do an apprenticeship to get access to university or any higher education. Some people need some time to find motivation.
Receiving specialized clearances is both time-consuming and expensive, but the federal government happily covers the bills. The day after the clearance is issued the employee leaves the government job to return as a security contractor.
The government covers all the expenses, the contracting company pockets all the benefits.
I wasn't aware of that, thank you. This seems like an amazingly better way of doing things.
Germany is unique among European countries in having apprenticeships for nursing.
I'm from Italy, my parents were both nurses, they started in the middle 70s, they did apprenticeships while working directly at the Hospital (couple of major Hospitals in Rome).
They received a degree of professional nurse at the end of the three year course that has been made equivalent to the new three year University degree that is required now.
My view on the subject is that it was unnecessary.
My opinion is that in Italy there was a low number of graduates compared to other European countries, so we created this short term University courses to compensate for it that don't match the MD courses, not even closely, they are just the same old apprenticeships updated and rebranded.
In the US, it's 4 years of undergraduate college + 4 years of medical school + 3 years (minimum) of medical residency training.
In my native country in SE Asia, it's 5 years of medical school + 2 years of medical residency training + 1 year of remote posting (go to a remote area to work in order to get medical license). And the medical school is publicly funded, so it's pretty much free (you have to buy books yourself, of course, and pay a small amount for lab fees etc. for chemistry, anatomy labs).
To me, the system in the US is unnecessarily complicated/long and it not only burdens wanna-be doctors with debt (not to mention that because of the high cost, mostly the affluent/well-off kids--mostly the kids of doctors/lawyers/well-paid professionals--can now afford go to to medical school), but it helps them justify the $250K+/year salaries (part of the reason why the healthcare is expensive in the US) that they earn right after their residency programs.
You're wrong about the pharmacists (it's a study program almost as hard as medicine), and the fact that nurses are not an academic study in Germany is something that is often criticized.
And from my experience you do a fair amount of book learning too - so you can remind the "engineer" how ohms law goes :-)
I recall over hearing two specialist nurses discussing what their "first" degree was - this was in a transplant ward.
Three years sounds short back when I was doing my higher level apprenticeships in the uk it was 4 years and it was assumed that some if not all would have done a full craft aprticieship first.
Also bachelor's degrees get all the attention, but there' associates degrees, two-year degrees offered both by colleges and (very cheap) junior colleges. These include a lot of "less theoretical" stuff like dental hygienist or working with other kinds of specialized technology.
I'm in support of continuing education but I don't think it needs to be tied to jobs. People should continue learning and pursuing their interests for their whole lives.
If we want job training trade schools exist and do a great job.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Case_Against_Education#:...
Engineering has a few extra math classes that weed out most of these types..
[1]Compare signing up for a college foreign language course with signing up for a foreign language course outside of college.
I suppose I will allow low-income subsidies, but I consider non-dischargeable federal debt to be less of a subsidy and more of a "sure we'll help, but you better keep paying every f'ing month, or we'll make your life challenging, and we'll still get our money when you die," and less of a "here's some free government money with no strings attached."
It's also an excellent way to "print" money and ensure a steady cash-flow.
I guess it depends on which narrative makes you sleep at night with your worldview.
Having said that I do believe undergraduate education should be available to everyone. As automation continues to improve there is less and less need for labor. Why not reduce the supply a bit and get more educated citizens out of the deal?
If we say an undergraduate education is not worth taxpayer dollars then the real question seems to be "how much education is enough?" If 16 years is too much how do we know 12 is the right amount? The question leaves open the possibility that 8 years is just as good.
Clearly some amount of taxpayer funded education is beneficial. It seems natural to me that the ideal amount of education will continue to increase as we learn more as a species.
Compare to other cultural institutions, like religion. When religion receded, it wasn't "unbundled." It just receded. The belief in God, the community ties, the source of leadership, the welfarism, moral support, etc.
Same for tribes, villages.
There was a Louise Theroux line about Scientology. Dissident scientologists tried to continue the practices, without the totalitarian cult stuff. It didn't work. All that was left was some squishy, gimmicky, self help stuff that people quickly drifted out of.
That said, change is coming. College is no longer a very good way of being educated, and in the US, the price is crazy high.
What still locks college I to place is that it works for the upper classes, and for the high achievers. They pay less, get more and have the most cultural influence.
Yep. And you can replace college with a lot of things in that statement and aptly describe why I have nope hope for anything anymore.
The chasm that has grown between that fantasy and what the economy demands has been massive in the past few decades and the university system only increased it with political red tape.
I certainly agree that a layer that connects businesses with potential is the right shape. Something closer to the “apprentice” structure of before.
We have a lot of those short type of programs in my city in Canada, but employers generally seem to treat them as where you end up if you couldn't get a real degree. There is no signal and thus it is often hard to use it to get a job.
To add to the parent's point, one doesn't need to go to college to have an equally valuable "life-redefining experience". You'll hear similar stories and nostalgia from others who went to trade school. the military, mission, Peace Corps, or even just going straight to work. The "life-redefining" experience has more to do with being 20-ish than with being in college.
Drop the word "early" and I agree 100%.
I think there are a lot of other models that could work if degree status gets separated from it’s theoretical purpose of education.
Why are all degrees for years? Why do all degrees cost the same?
A lot of the existing model doesn’t make much sense.
>Colleges also have a lot of issues around cost. They haven't been good at tracking their costs or really knowing what their programs cost. For example, a lot of colleges don't know what it costs them to graduate a nursing major, versus an English major, versus a business major. And that's in part because the college business model is so complicated. https://www.npr.org/2020/09/16/913500758/as-campuses-become-...
Not only is there less incentive to control costs, but there's a perverse incentive to build stadiums, fancy student dorms, and other things to persuade new students to choose your school over another. Since that student is taking out loans without really evaluating their costs prices get driven up. The student gets left holding the bag eventually.
I understand the intent behind these loans is opportunity - making it so students that would otherwise be rejected for a loan from a bank can get one, but the negative knock on effects are severe. I think ISAs (structured like Lambda's that are very student friendly) align incentives between the school and the student while also giving all students opportunity.
There's also the issue that universities are primarily selling status with some education on the side (particularly true for fluffier majors that are almost entirely status). That's a harder cultural problem to fix.
Software is a good place to get a foothold though since if lambda school can actually deliver students that can write code and pass interview questions they can build out a referral network. Since universities are generally pretty bad at actually teaching students how to write code and pass interview questions there's a good opportunity here.
Time will tell.
A better future would be free education. Get knowledge and experience without the financial burden. College is more than studying. It's also about making friends, connections and getting to know yourself.
I think a better future would be focused, shorter-term educational programs, taken flexibly through one's early career years. There simply have to be better ways to unbundle the positive aspects of the college experience to make them more responsive to people's individual journeys to their serious careers.