Work school

How about this idea? Pretty cool.

https://www.zerohedge.com/personal-finance/mike-rowe-scholarship-highlights-lost-virtues-hard-work-and-sweat

Rowe is a national hero. He successfully says that the problem is too many kids are going to college, not too few. All these kids going off to college, many not even knowing their major yet. Yeah, that is a good idea, spend 20 large on something you do not even know you want or need.

Unless you're a really good student and highly motivated, forget college; apprentice in a union instead.

Become an electrician, or plumber, or mechanic.

Few things suck as much as graduating college with a degree in basket weaving, carrying massive student loan debt, and working as a barrista.

Quote: missedhervee

Unless you're a really good student and highly motivated, forget college; apprentice in a union instead.

Become an electrician, or plumber, or mechanic.

Few things suck as much as graduating college with a degree in basket weaving, carrying massive student loan debt, and working as a barrista.

Wouldn't a degree in basket weaving be a vocation?

Quote: DRich

Wouldn't a degree in basket weaving be a vocation?

Unless you were Native American it would be cultural appropriation.

I think this is very good. I have long said that college is overrated. Unless you are going for a specific reason (like a hard science, or want to pursue a graduate degree eventually), the idea that everyone needs some random B.A. to check the box to get a decent job is a relic of the past (or at least should be, but I guess its really not).

College is mostly fluff (more non-major related classes that are graduation requirements than major related), and most classes that do not require a lab can be done online far more efficiently (obviously some degrees are exceptions, but even B.S. hard sciences majors have a lot of credits of fluff...). I think hyper focused certifications will be the future for most jobs. Even this can be somewhat overrated as you can join an apprenticeship or union and learn on the job in many fields (and get paid to learn).

My advice for people entering High School who care about optimizing their life is to enter a Vo Tech program, and for regular classes only take AP classes. If you do it right, you can graduate High School with an Associates degree and a Certification in a chosen trade, and if you really want a B.A. for resume purposes or whatever you can take online or part-time classes to finish it off. When I was in high school this (the vo-tech part) was very looked down upon, but in retrospect, they probably had the best plan (up to lunch you are in the regular high school with everyone else, then after lunch you are bussed to the applicable training center and the afternoon is purely a program for your specialty), instead for some reason it was praised for people to fill their day with study halls and fluff classes than to maximize your day. Even if you want to go to a regular four-year college, this is probably the optimal pathway, because it will knock out pretty much every general (and some special) requirement between your AP classes and certifications and you can graduate with a liberals arts B.A. in less than a year if you really want to be a full-time college student after high school.

All AP plus all four years of Vo-tech probably equals graduating high school more qualified than the majority of adult working Americans (and AP classes are actually not really that much harder than regular Honors or even CP classes, they can even be far easier in some -many- fields, since they spread one college semester -Classes designed for 8 Weeks of three hours of class time per week- over a full year of 5 hours of class time per week, so it can be a very slow pace depending on the subject making AP actually far easier in many cases).

Of course this is very easy to say in retrospect, when you are in (let alone getting close to starting) High School you are not thinking about any of this, and most parents and guidance counselors will actively push you away from this path (basically saying Vo-tech is for losers, and AP is too hard outside of subjects that you excel in, when both of those statements are false, in fact almost the complete opposite of the truth), and most kids are not going to spend the time to research the wide variety of options entitled to them in High School while they are in 7th-8th grade and just go with whatever their parents and counselors agree on. A lot of these programs the article talks about can be done for free (or I guess technically at the cost of taxpayers) in high school if you play your cards right and have parents that will support your decision, though this scholarship is great as well.

Quote: Gandler

I think this is very good. I have long said that college is overrated. .

Until someone shows me some data that proves otherwise I'm going to keep referring to lists of the most educated countries in the world as a better correlation of overall success than anyone pointing out their personal experience of useless college degrees.

The greater the lack of tertiary education sure seems to be correlated with overall success of the country whether large or small.

You can check which countries you prefer, at the top or the bottom of the lists.

Quote: rxwine

Until someone shows me some data that proves otherwise I'm going to keep referring to lists of the most educated countries in the world as a better correlation of overall success than anyone pointing out their personal experience of useless college degrees.

The greater the lack of tertiary education sure seems to be correlated with overall success of the country whether large or small.

You can check which countries you prefer, at the top or the bottom of the lists.

This is a great post. It is pretty easy to analyze the value of a ‘history BA’ for an individual in purely monetary terms. It probably is -EV for the individual, but + EV for society as a whole. I do agree with AZ that there are certainly many people that should not go to college and should go to trade school. But it is a strength of our society that higher education is at least available to the masses.

Quote: rxwine

Until someone shows me some data that proves otherwise I'm going to keep referring to lists of the most educated countries in the world as a better correlation of overall success than anyone pointing out their personal experience of useless college degrees.

The greater the lack of tertiary education sure seems to be correlated with overall success of the country whether large or small.

You can check which countries you prefer, at the top or the bottom of the lists.

My full post gave tangible examples of how somebody can finish a B.A. within a year of HS graduation (and complete their A.A. and a Certificate of choosing while in H.S.) with zero cost to them. So, surely you cannot take my post to be anti-education (more so I think certain forms of education are overrated, and if people really want to, they should maximize their effort to get it for free).

However, "tertiary education" does not just mean a B.A. degree (or even an A.A. degree) , it also included non-degree certificate programs. So if somebody graduates HS with a A.A. and a Certificate (or two!) then they are way ahead of the curve (and already meet the requirement of at least one such program by your metric, likely two or more if they do it all four years). This also, means that by your metric, encouraging certificate programs is not an automatic negative method of "increasing education".

More importantly, what is your definition of a "successful country"? Because we already have the top GDP by a wide margin. If your "successful county" metric is simply one with the highest education population (by percent of diplomas), then of course countries that push traditional college the most will be the top of that list by the nature of the metrics....

For the record I think community colleges and State Universities should be free (I do not think private universities should be subsidized), so I am not against making higher education more attainable for those that want it. And, I think it is a positive attribute, but it's not worth centering four years of your life around (again for the majority of people, there are some programs that are exceptions).

Again, I highly recommend taking all AP classes, grind out college credits while it costs you nothing (and there is no risk), and if you do well you can get a degree while still in HS. If this is not pro-higher education, I don't know what is. And this is both the most cost and opportunity optimal method of college credits (and undergraduate degrees) under the current system (if you have a better system for Americans I will happily be corrected).

Full AP (four years) and full Vo-Tech (four years) = graduating high school more qualified (academically, and by your education metric) than the majority of Americans.

However, looking down on people who do not go to college or get a degree is equally wrong. The fact that the majority of Americans who have graduated a four-year college have never once used their degree in a direct capacity, means that it is more than a few of us who feel degrees are nothing more than resume padding (which there is nothing wrong with, but be honest about it).

Also, there is the fact that the more B.A.s that exist in a market, the less valued a B.A. becomes. Somebody told me recently that the M.A. (or any equivalent) will soon become the new B.A. (and the B.A. is the new High School diploma). So be careful what you wish for, or you may have to start taking graduate classes to stay competitive. It's basically the old saying, "when you place too much importance on something, everyone will want it, and when everyone gets it, it means nothing" (paraphrasing), so that is a secondary reason to be cautious about oversaturation (you may just get what you wish for and may not like it).

(I just googled this to be honest), The U.S. is number 6 in tertiary education per capita, so it's really not as bad as some would have you believe (and the countries that beat us are to be expected, Canada, UK, Japan, Israel, and South Korea.)
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/most-educated-countries

The point of certifications over degrees is streamlining. More learning the subject/trade at hand in a direct manner, less random classes about Art History to fulfill some arbitrary requirement, strictly classes required to learn the skill at hand. It's not about eliminating tertiary education, but expanding it, by making programs shorter and more relevant (which in turn makes it more affordable and accessible).

If somebody wants to learn construction management for example (a good example for a field where both degrees and certs are offered and often compete against each other), they don't need art credits, language credits, and history credits to make them more useful on a jobsite, a targeted certification with an internship gets right to the heart of the matter.

Quote: Gandler

My full post gave tangible examples of how somebody can finish a B.A. within a year of HS graduation (and complete their A.A. and a Certificate of choosing while in H.S.) with zero cost to them. So, surely you cannot take my post to be anti-education (more so I think certain forms of education are overrated, and if people really want to, they should maximize their effort to get it for free).

There was a report I was reading comparing men who were active in their 50s to men who weren't active in their 50s. Even when some of the active ones were evaluated to be relatively sedentary later in their late 60s, they seemed to still be benefitting from their early physical activitiy in overall health even though they were effectively just as out as shape as the ones who weren't active in their 50s.

My point being, the benefit of something may not be what you think it should be nor occur the way you expect.

If you take a position, for instance, learning how to read Egyptian Hieroglyphics at age 18 is not pertinent to what you want to do, and you will likely forget almost all of it later, you're assuming that it did nothing for you.

Do we know that for sure? I say, no. Certainly nothing I've read.

I'm not saying I know what way college may benefit people or society. Just to me, there appears to be a correlation.

That's what I'm saying. Nothing negative about trades or why that isn't a viable option as well.