A Different Road To Work, Bypassing College Dreams

http://www.npr.org/2012/07/26/157033600/bypassing-college-dreams-a-different-road-to-work

by septerr • 14 years ago

177 144 14 years ago

gergles• 14 years ago

From the "stunningly obvious" department...

Seriously, college is practically useless for what people are using it for today (vocational training.) It was not intended to serve that purpose.

The reason that everyone started going to college was that lazy companies used BA degrees as entrance exams because being able to go to college used to be a proxy for 'good breeding'. Therefore, having a college degree was a sure ticket to get a(n office) job. Therefore, everyone started going to college. Therefore, a college degree became a checkbox requirement for a job, not anything that actually helps you get one.

varikin2• 14 years ago

While I agree that college is a poor substitute for vocational training or an apprenticeship, I think it can provide a great benefit. For most, college is a stepping stone to being an adult. You are now making more decisions for yourself, meeting many new people, hopefully living with your peers instead of your parents. At the same time, college provides a fairly structured environment, go to class, study, take tests, have summer break, and do it again. This is similar to high school, but you have a lot more control. The college will help when you want it, but unless high school, they are more willing to not give a damn when you don't give a damn. With all this, there are all the generals that everyone hates. These are phenomenal. I wish I spent more time learning about history, languages, psychology, communication, and art (well I got that education by marrying an artist).

Learning to program and the basics of math (I am calling anything less than abstract algebra basic math) and the basics of computer science theory (automota, grammars, etc) was worthwhile, but I have met enough self taught programmers that I don't think college is that special in this regards. Other industries might be different, especially more formal engineering ones like EE, but I could be wrong. No, all the other bits that rounded me out helped me the most to be who I am. I am not just a programmer and college helped that.

MrVitaliy• 14 years ago

I think companies started asking for BA degrees precisely because college education is readily available and almost everyone they are interested in has a degree.

Yes, college is over-hyped, yes we're in tuition bubble not unlike the housing bubble from not-so-distant past but if most of the crop has college education and you're interested in hiring the cream of the crop, requiring a college degree is given.

tokenadult• 14 years ago

if most of the crop has college education and you're interested in hiring the cream of the crop, requiring a college degree is given

I will agree with you that this is how many hiring managers think. I happen to know counterexamples (people who declined to finish college degree programs even though they were admitted to college on financial terms affordable with their family resources) who have nonetheless obtained paying work based on college-graduate-level skills they developed despite lack of a degree. But you correctly state the general state of mind of hiring managers.

That said, the general state of mind of hiring managers is wrong. Preferring people with degrees to people who lack degrees is less supported by research than quite a few other hiring criteria. I last posted my FAQ for Hacker News on company hiring procedures

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4270768

seven days ago, so rather than repeat all those keystrokes here, allow me to say that hiring managers have more reliable criteria to look at for hiring job applicants than college degrees or any other kind of biographical data about the applicants. Check the FAQ

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4270768

for more details.

cookiecaper• 14 years ago

This doesn't really make sense. People who are different from the usual person have unusual backgrounds. This often includes highly-skilled "best of breed" individuals. You don't get somewhere unusual by doing all the usual things. It does not make any sense to either ostracize or acclaim candidates just by virtue of their having a degree; there are many dumb people with a degree and many smart people without (and vice-versa).

A degree really does not tell you anything useful. Unless a candidate has advanced degrees, I almost never mention education in interviews because I really don't care about it. It is not a reliable metric of anything, really.

amalag• 14 years ago

The difference with the housing bubble is you can't walk away from your college debt by just filing bankruptcy.

andrewcooke2• 14 years ago

don't (at least some people) do both any more? does industrial sponsorship still exist for university students?

i got sponsorship from british aerospace. they paid part of my fees and in return i worked for them for a year before university (in the apprentice program) and over the summers.

i'd recommend that approach for anyone - even if (like me) you go on to an academic career (i continued for a phd). and i should admit that although i was on the apprentice scheme, as a future university student i wasn't held to the same standards as the people who would be working in the workshops (for example they had to get closer tolerances when machining things).

BUT the college courses we took as part of the apprenticeship (at the local polytechnic) were pretty bad. i don't know how anyone would have learnt much there. so it's not all perfect. it seems like the ideal world would have both university-quality courses and practical experience (and don't vocational university programs include industrial experience anyway - at least for engineers?)

UK-AL10• 14 years ago

When my dad had a apprenticeship, there were two types, technical, and craft. Craft apprenticeships were machinists, and they had no chance of ever going to university. They often stayed on the shop floor for the rest of their lives.

Technical apprenticeships(Often requiring o-levels and such, and came from grammar/technical schools), never touched the shop floor and many went on to university. Example Apprentices - Draughtsman and such.

Obviously different companies operated differently, if you was operating as a machinist... on the university track...

The image of CNC machine operator going on to engineering at an elite college may be nice, but often it's just PR to get people to apply for the jobs and a fairly exceptional career path. Most don't.

andrewcooke2• 14 years ago

i don't completely follow your argument, so forgive me if this is irrelevant, but i wasn't saying that cnc operators should go to elite universities. my points were, i guess, that: (1) even if you're going to university it's a pleasure to get workshop experience and (2) the taught part of the apprenticeship (at the poly) was very poor quality.

i don't mean by (2) that it would stop a cnc operator from going to an elite university. what i mean is that i am sure future cnc operators hated it just as much as we (future grads) did, because it was very difficult to understand or learn anything.

RandallBrown2• 14 years ago

An apprenticeship isn't a generalized education like going to college is. Even though I majored in computer science, I still took physics, chemistry, english, psychology, and more classes.

If I did an apprenticeship, I feel like my career choices would be limited to that one field that I worked on.

TylerE• 14 years ago

...and if you were a fresh college grad you'd be bemoaning all the entry level jobs requiring five years of experience. I really wish that was a joke.

RandallBrown2• 14 years ago

I'm a fairly recent college grad (about 3 years ago) and I know what you mean. I constantly was bringing up the fact that their job posting said it required 5 years experience, when it didn't. I kept pointing out "I don't even have these qualifications and I already work here"

My next job I got hired into a position (although not entry level) that asked for at least 5 years of experience.

Lots of those jobs that "require" experience don't, or you can fudge it by talking about experience you had in college or something. I have no idea why HR departments do that.

heretohelp2• 14 years ago

You can learn computer science, programming, physics, chemistry, english, psychology and more...in your own home. You don't need a B.A. or a B.S. for that.

You cannot learn the skills companies like Siemens are offering like that, definitely not in a way that would get you a job.

Closest to it is how my dad got started, by tinkering with motorcycles in his youth and eventually getting a start in manufacturing, but it was a really really long time before he got a decent job.

UK-AL10• 14 years ago

You don't know what you don't know. You may think you know computer science, but you could be missing critical parts. That's what formal courses are for.

Zimahl4• 14 years ago

You can learn computer science, programming, physics, chemistry, english, psychology and more...in your own home. You don't need a B.A. or a B.S. for that.

I'll disagree when it comes to chemistry and physics. If you are going to be doing either of these in anything above the 200-level classes you are going to need resources you can only get in two places - universities and private/gov't institutions.

Besides that, there is a wealth of knowledge at universities that you can't get from a lot of books. And what if you don't comprehend something? You're paying someone to help you understand.

leoedin• 14 years ago

I completely agree. There are obviously degrees which teach useful skills, but the majority of people studying humanities at a large university shouldn't be there. They're learning very little which is applicable to their life, and they're not bright enough to continue in that area of academia. The actual useful skills that you learn doing an english degree could probably be covered in a single semester.

varikin2• 14 years ago

What is a useful skill? How do you decide if it is useful? Why can't those people spend the time learning what they want to learn? Why does everything have be applicable to life in the way you imply?

Do you know what someone learns from an English degree? How is all that different from a single semester of an English class?

emeidi• 14 years ago

That's what we Swiss knew for a long, long time already ...

codegeek• 14 years ago

While I definitely don't undermine college degrees, it only gives you a foundation to get out there in the real world. As far as corporate or job related skills are concerned, you pick most of them up on the job. That is why I personally think that the usual 4 year structure needs a serious overhaul.

zwieback• 14 years ago

One problem with apprenticeships in the US is that they aren't really tied in with larger employment landscape. In Germany apprenticeships are an integral part of a highly regulated system of guilds. You can't really run a business as a painter or plumber unless you've gone through an apprenticeship and then followed that up with a "Meister". At that point you can be licensed to have apprentices of your own.

Here in the US everything is more freeform and unregulated so apprenticeships are mostly an informal way of companies and employees to augment the existing labor market.

The other aspect that usually goes unmentioned is that there's a glass ceiling for workers without a university degree, both in Germany and the US. The pay might be more equal in more regulated countries but the status of a university degree is much higher.

What's also interesting is that the relative cost of a university degree is much lower in Germany yet apprenticeships remain popular.

velodrome• 14 years ago

The US needs to start pushing vocational schools as much as college. People need an alternative. If college is not for some people, they have a viable alternative.

The German system is something that would work in the US. Unlike the Finnish system, it does have a lot of variation and would have a better chance of working in a larger country.

Also, some for-profit colleges are a scam. It is really hard to tell which are good. They also over promise (employment, etc) results.

SoftwareMaven• 14 years ago

At least in my area, vocational training is absolutely being pushed. The problem I see is there aren't enough state-funded schools providing inexpensive training for things liks Medical Assisting. There are lots of $20k private programs, but the earnings from the job can't (rationally) justify that.

UK-AL10• 14 years ago

In the UK a lot of vocational providers are for-profit(Especially apprenticeships). I would of expected more vocational programs, would increase for-profit schools.

The most dominant vocational qualifications Btecs, HND's etc are all from pearson education...

wickedchicken3• 14 years ago

HN has a subtle anti-college bias, so I want to put my point out there: my college experience was not defined by my classes or by my professors, but by the serendipitous connections that I made by being mixed in with a bunch of smart people who like to tinker. In addition, being a part of an institution makes it much easier to find out about and get access to lines of research and thinking I normally wouldn't have thought about. I entered as a kid who wanted to design chips, and I left an amateur computational linguistics researcher (emphasis on the amateur). This was something I 'fell into,' not something I sought out.

Also, if you discover something and want to find out more, emailing the person who worked on it is a great start. If this person happens to be part of your institution, you have a 'free pass' to just email them. Compare to if you were just someone off the street: you have to work harder to get a response. It's a little silly, but a very real effect -- once you're "in" people will be more open to you about their work.

This doesn't mean you can't do any of these things if you choose not to go to college, but if you're making that decision then you should know that the experience is more than just 'expensive and ineffective vocational training.'

jfb4• 14 years ago

I don't get the feeling that the bias is particularly subtle. I wouldn't trade my time at Chicago for all the vocational training in the world; but, different strokes &c.

Retric2• 14 years ago

The pro collage stance is something like:

Spending 4 years at ~19-22 living on your own without a job near a lot of other intelligent 19-22 year olds is a lot of fun. The skills gained are minimal, but the credentials are worth something so why not?

But, that's no reason to actually higher someone because they have a collage degree ed:In the computer field. So, yea I am glad I went to collage, but I don't care about degrees when looking for people and I feel little need to subsidize other people going to collage.

Zimahl4• 14 years ago

Agreed. The anti-college bias here is astounding. College is an incredible time to learn everything.

What are you even interested in? I went to college thinking chemistry or chemical engineering. Found I just didn't like either and moved to computer science. At 18 it's hard to even have a clue.

It's hard to feel sorry for the kids coming out of school with loan debt and a sociology degree. That's a career, but you need to know your field is full of people and it's going to be tough to find a job. Kids today need to adjust their expectations.

But the article is rubbish. 4 year apprenticeship for an associates and your journeyman card? Fine, anyone can find a machinist school (won't cost $44k per year) and be a machinist but that doesn't make you a materials scientist who came up with the alloy. You aren't going to be doing that without college.

eshvk• 14 years ago

The problem is that young people make stupid mistakes. While you selected a career which will be fruitful and possibly pay off your loan debt, a load of young people make career decisions based on flowery statements like "change the world" or "make a difference" and end up being baristas in Starbucks. There is a certain value inherent in expanding your intellect by going through college, I am not so sure it is worth doing that at the cost of crippling financial debt if you are not absolutely sure where you are going with it. So maybe the solution is to spend a few years mucking out at different things figuring out what you like before blowing through a ton of cash going to college.

potatolicious5• 14 years ago

Can we have this self-discovery process without the giant 6-figure bill?

As someone who went to college myself, I agree that it was a tremendous time for personal growth - it was also expensive as all hell, and I'm lucky I chose a field where paying it off is a piece of cake.

In any case, I think there's a false dichotomy here: there's the apprenticeship/trades camp, and the pro-college camp, but really the truth lies somewhere in between. The economy is moving towards knowledge-based jobs, but for the most part people studying for these jobs have completely abdicated their responsibility to seek apprenticeship and mentorship (in the non-regulated sense of those words).

A programmer with a CS degree and no internships, no open source, no working under experienced talent, is (nearly) worthless. An English major aspiring to write for magazines who has never published anything nor worked with a professional editor is (probably even more) worthless.

The problem here is that so many in the pro-college crowd see a degree as an end-run around having to bust your balls and apprentice with skilled professionals when apprenticeships (or internships if you want to call them that), regardless of college/no-college, is absolutely necessary.

funkdobiest• 14 years ago

i think the anti-college attitude comes from the cost of college being far more of a burden than what you can make from the degree. I was a self taught developer who learned a lot from reading stuff on the internet and lots of books, before going to college and getting that expensive piece of paper. In which most of the teachers that taught me were actually behind on the technology, which can cause quite a bit of conflict when you know that the class is being taught incorrectly.

jseliger• 14 years ago

Agreed. The anti-college bias here is astounding. College is an incredible time to learn everything.

I think the problems are several-fold:

1. College works for many people but not all. In addition, there's an American cultural meme that claims college is the absolute and only key/way to success, which isn't or shouldn't be true. I think you're experiencing the backlash, and you're part of the backlash to the backlash (the forelash, perhaps?).

2. The price of college is eroding the lifetime earnings gains for graduates in many fields.

3. Many people don't realize how universities work, which I've written about here: http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2012/01/06/why-how-universitie... and elsewhere.

4. Academics face perverse incentives that demand they produce research, even of dubious or low quality, rather than teach. Consequently, the academic experience many people have in college, especially big public schools, is at hit and miss, with a strong emphasis on miss. For highly self-motivated people, this might not be as big an issue.

nchuhoai2• 14 years ago

I don't think you need to be anti-college to be able to criticize the cost explosion of college. I agree, the most valuable part of college are the ones outside the class room (the only reason why i am still in college), but ask yourself this:

Would you still go if it costs 1000 for your family?

Would you still go if it costs 100000 for your family?

Would you still go if it costs 10000000 for your family?

Different people have different abilities to pay for college, so its really not that unreasonable to look for and discuss alternatives with the rising cost of college 4x over inflation.

The same way you experience in anti-college bias, I sense a feeling of entitlement from pro-college: It's like you have to go to college to be worth anything, and if you dont go, you are less of a well-rounded, worthy human being.

Unfortunately, higher education in the US becomes more and more a matter of money and not ability.

wickedchicken3• 14 years ago

> I sense a feeling of entitlement from pro-college: It's like you have to go to college to be worth anything, and if you dont go, you are less of a well-rounded, worthy human being.

I try to work against that, and perhaps I come up short. What could you recommend?

_delirium2• 14 years ago

I agree, but that's mostly a recent phenomenon due to cuts in funding for state schools. Private schools have long been expensive (though not as expensive as today), but public schools used to be an affordable option if you wanted an education without the price-tag. However, their tuition has been going up roughly in accordance with state funding cuts. In the University of California system, for example, state funding in 1990 equalled $16,500 per student, inflation-adjusted; today it equals $8,500 per student. So, despite the fact that the system has been getting more efficient (about 25% lower spending-per-student in 2012 than 1990, inflation-adjusted), tuition is nonetheless much higher than it used to be. It seems mostly like the generation that got cheap college education has decided that they're not interested in funding the same for the next generation.

So my solution would be to reduce tuition at state universities back to its 1980s-era levels, and return to funding public universities primarily from public funds, so anyone can attend regardless of their family's financial background.

_nist18• 14 years ago

> Unfortunately, higher education in the US becomes more and more a matter of money and not ability.

I think this isn't a higher education issue, its an issue with careers in general. Most companies go by a resume, an interview, and a few basic tests. The interviews usually last an hour to two hours long and they mostly want to hear about your knowledge of the company, what you can offer, and standard fluff crap.

Problem is: 1) Resume can be filled with lies and is usually a one page ad that doesn't show off any type of value. It also shows no demonstration of ability. 2) Interview can be useless and also promote dishonesty. It, again, also shows no demonstration of ability. 3) Basic tests are usually too easy (fizz-buzz anyone?) or non-existent and, for the third time, don't demonstrate ability.

What do all these have in common? If only you had to take an actual test or show off your skill in some way with a small project or demonstrate your creations?

Oh yeah, evidence shmevidence...

jdc• 14 years ago

> Also, if you discover something and want to find out more, emailing the person who worked on it is a great start.

+1 to this. I've emailed people from other institutions for the source code behind their research and gotten it. Never hurts to ask.

snambi• 14 years ago

Yes, I agree, college is where I learned the most and at the highest pace, but not in classrooms or from professors. Mostly from classmates and other students, juniors and seniors. There is no place like college.

Androsynth3• 14 years ago

Im anti-college, I believe that engineers and computer scientists should go to college, but programmers shouldn't. The majority of programmers aren't computer scientists.

I am anti-college for two reasons:

1-I didn't have the outside-the-class experience you did. In fact I think this is a situation where the top students naturally congregate together, in college and then on HN, and don't really have an understanding of what the non-top students go through. Most of them aren't making connections with other tinkerers.

2-I got a EE degree, but in my late 20's I become a professional programmer. I was instantly better than almost every other CS major I was working with. The majority of programming is closer to craftmanship than to Engineering. I don't think the knowledge learned in a CS degree is applicable, or even useful in day to day programming. The bits that are, can be learned.

(by the way, if your counter-argument is 'well I did VERY_HARD_THING_X within my companies app, and I would never have learned how to do this without my CS degree', I would say you may be a computer scientist, but also the vast majority of programmers arent doing this.)

The fact is, you go to college to earn a degree that says 'you are properly trained in this field to get a job'. Any profession that can be learned outside of an expensive college environment, should be.

Any argument that involves 'well you also get these nice benefits on the side' is irrelevant. If you are a smart go-getter, you would have met those tinkerers no matter what path you took. You would have done the same as an 18 year old apprentice programmer at Google.

_nist18• 14 years ago

>> I don't think the knowledge learned in a CS degree is applicable, or even useful in day to day programming. The bits that are, can be learned.

Does this mean that there will be more code I have to fix as a result of my CS degree? I've still got people at my job that write loops with no early exit when they are searching. I learned that as a freshman. They write code that iterates through the entirety of arrays, constantly, which is a complete waste most of the time.

Hell, I've got people that justify writing memory intensive code due to the computers abundant memory because they don't even realize that program space is limited by the kernel. I can thank my OS class for that.

The point is, do you want to waste time looking up basic stuff on Google all your life, or do you want to get hands on, spend time studying things from a reliable source, and not have to look up things online and write crappy code just to get by?

krmboya• 14 years ago

Jamie Zawinski (jwz), one of my heroes, is a well accomplished software engineer/hacker, as we would all agree. One fact is that he didn't go to college.

I am in my final year of college myself, and I believe there's no one right way of succeeding in your career.

EDIT: some re-wording

randomdata• 14 years ago

I consider myself pro-college, but I do feel you are wasting your time if your only concern is about post-graduation employment opportunities. For that, your time would be much better spend focusing on employment.

I find it disturbing how many have to resort to showing a correlation between income and education just to sell the institution. It seems like the value in education should be enough to make it worthwhile, even if you end up being a barista when it is all said and done.

I feel the subtle anti-college bias you speak to is just that. It is not the college itself that is the problem, just the attitude that you have to go to college to get a high paying job, which is demonstrated over and over again to not be true.

jes5199• 14 years ago

> the serendipitous connections that I made by being mixed in with a bunch of smart people who like to tinker.

You're lucky - some colleges have that atmosphere, and many do not. At 18 I certainly wasn't capable of picking that sort of environment on purpose, and no one around me knew how to advise me. So I tried a few different colleges, and didn't find anything that I cared about, and just started working instead.

Fortunately there are other places to meet those communities of people. Sometimes you'll go to an event and half of them went to college together - at MIT or Reed or Grinnell or Bard or UC Berkeley or Mudd or some other random place (most of which I had never heard of when I was looking at colleges). But the other half are just random people like me, who jumped into this culture at age 23 or 30 or whatever. And the handfull of years that they knew each-other way back when matter less and less over time.

cletus• 14 years ago

Australia--particularly Western Australia and Queensland--is currently undergoing the largest resources boom in history thanks to China's insatiable appetite for petroleum and iron.

Because of this there are two industries that are big winners: construction and the direct resources sector. EVeryone else--including software--are losers. So you might earn A$100-150K (base) as a senior (5-10+ years professional experience) software engineer in a capital city but you will have an extraordinarily high cost of living.

To put this in comparison, my nephew at 17, was a deckhand on a tugboat in a mining port making $120K+. Now that he has a license to captain a vessel up to 25 metres I believe he's rapidly approaching if not exceeding $200K.

Now this isn't without expenses either. A crappy home in a mining town can probably put you back $1000/week or more in rent (20 years ago they couldn't give these houses away at $50,000).

He's not a special example either. Those who did apprenticeships (eg electricians, plumbers, fitters and turners) are particularly well-off. Australia is highly regulated when it comes to these jobs. If you say you're a licensed electrician and you're not you can go to jail. The only way to get licensed is to do a 4 year apprenticeship.

The plus side of this is that the standard for Australian tradesmen, at least in my experience, is exceptionally high. The UK is essentially unregulated here (by comparison) and if you're in the UK, hiring a licensed Australian tradesman is really your best bet if you want quality work.

Now, software engineers are on the high end of the salary scale for those who must (or generally do) go to university. You could easily end up in other disciplines only making $50,000 a year. Trust me when I tell you that in Australia this is a pretty low standard of living now unless you were lucky enough to have bought a house 10+ years ago.

So what you're seeing in this post is nothing new to Australia and it's even more pronounced in Australia.

I actually think this is an economically structural problem. Building a new house now (both my brothers-in-law are in construction) costs about $1500-2000 per square meter (for single storey, add 50% for two-storey). New apartments in West Perth now sell for up to $10,000+ per square meter. This is insanely high and well beyond local living standards (for all but a few).

Anyway, picking up one of these trades in Australia at least instead of going to university has been lucrative for many years and shows no signs of abating.

revelation• 14 years ago

The devastating effect a natural resources boom can have on an economy are known as:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_disease

msrpotus• 14 years ago

Almost identical to the financialization that's been going on with Wall Street.

dredmorbius2• 14 years ago

With some notable mitigations, particularly in the case of Norway, as noted in the Wikipedia article.

DigitalJack• 14 years ago

$1000 per WEEK!? for a "crappy" house? That's insane!

ChuckMcM2• 14 years ago

"Anyway, picking up one of these trades in Australia at least instead of going to university has been lucrative for many years and shows no signs of abating."

But it will abate of course, 'rushes' always do. The successful people get in, double or triple their working capital and then step away. A lot of people will keep trying to cash in way past the stage that its possible and lose everything.

I was reading an article in Smithsonian magazine about the Australian mining rush. You realize this is what will happen in Afghanistan right? They have a crap ton of iron and they share a land border with China. I am sure that somewhere someone is putting in motion the plans to get a rail line built to the border such that ore can be removed rapidly from the country. If the Afghanis are smart they will figure out how to get the smelting industries built in country so that they capture both the resource benefit and the steel making capacity they need to kick up to the next level. Unscrupulous folks will try to prevent that, so much easier to steal from someone when it looks like you're just carrying away rocks.

hollerith• 14 years ago

>Afghanistan right? They have a crap ton of iron and they share a land border with China.

I am going to guess that (because of the mountains in Eastern Afghanistan and Western China) the cheapest way to get iron ore or oil from Afghanistan to China (particularly since most of the demand is in the coastal parts of China) is to haul it to Karachi and put it on ships.

There's also of course a very large political risk for any investment in Afghanistan, and mining there would require major foreign investment.

(I do not disagree with your overall point that the other parts of the world will ramp up mining, but Afghanistan is probably not going to be the next Australia.)

ADDED. Google Maps does not show any roads that cross the border from Aghanistan to China although there is a road that crosses from Pakistan to China.

antidoh• 14 years ago

I think at the moment China considers those mountain borders to be a feature.

grey-area• 14 years ago

The uk is not unregulated for trades, far from it, all significant trades are regulated (see corgi, Niceic and part p for example). It is illegal to do even the simplest electrical work without qualifications or inspection. I'm not sure why you feel australian tradesmen have a monopoly on quality work, but there are plenty of qualified and competent tradesmen from other countries working in the uk as well.

vtry2• 14 years ago

I know of plenty of Software Engineers in New Zealand making the equivalent of the US minimum wage.

_nist18• 14 years ago

>> To put this in comparison, my nephew at 17, was a deckhand on a tugboat in a mining port making $120K+. Now that he has a license to captain a vessel up to 25 metres I believe he's rapidly approaching if not exceeding $200K.

I think the major problem is salary. Who the hell pays a captain $200K a year? Managers at high end companies don't even make that much, especially mine. Its not just that, celebrities, sports coaches, and the entertainment industry in general are over paid. Its only a lucrative business because most people don't care about being smart or learning things, they care about their next fix of football or basketball or any other stupid game or TV show that does absolutely nothing for society.

The pay structure isn't aligned with education and experience and that's what promotes high standards of living and a lot of the problems with jobs. People that aren't well educated and have limited experience (like in a trade), probably don't spend their money wisely. Not only that, the cost of training for a tradesmen vs. a college grad is next to nothing because a college grad, like a computer science grad, doesn't need to be taught how to program, design, or use software development tools because there is already a general foundation of understanding. As a tradesmen, there is hardly any foundation. For example, this girl has be taught how to read blueprints and run machines on the job where I don't have to be taught any of that (outside of internal company knowledge) because of my engineering education.

tjic• 14 years ago

> Its not just that, celebrities, sports coaches, and the entertainment industry in general are over paid.

These people deliver value to someone.

I'm not a fan of sports, but I trust a few million people who enjoy watching sports as to what the proper allocation of that money is than I trust you.

> The pay structure isn't aligned with education and experience

Who cares?

The pay structure is aligned with value delivered and the rarity of the skills in question.

Your opinion that education is what should get compensated is deeply uninteresting.

> People that aren't well educated and have limited experience (like in a trade), probably don't spend their money wisely.

Baseless assertion.

A plumber making $90k/yr may not have the exact same IQ you have, but he's likely smart enough to buy a house, save for retirement, etc...and a lot less likely to gamble his entire future on one "hot" startup.

I've known a lot more tradesmen with second and third houses (for the rental income) than I've know engineers.

> As a tradesmen, there is hardly any foundation.

Have you met many tradesmen?

Any?

drcube4• 14 years ago

1) Are you from Australia?

I'm not, so those numbers looked high to me, until I remembered that Aussie dollars are worth about half of American dollars.

2) People, in general, don't spend their money wisely.

3) Unlike a college grad, tradesmen work during their training, so they are productive for the company from day one. It is a win-win situation that should be a model for jobs everywhere, not just technician jobs.

pessimizer2• 14 years ago

More like college is overrated and apprenticeship non-existent. You need to both be connected and wealthy to get an unpaid internship, where you will get experience in data entry and coffee-making. Any actual apprenticeship program has people breaking their necks to get in.

$25-$30K a year to learn a trade? I could find you 10,000 candidates within the hour, even if it was located in BFE, Montana.

wtvanhest• 14 years ago

I went to a big party college, and I cold called small businesses until I got my first paid internship. That turned in to a full time offer which turned in to business school (massive student debt, worth every penny), which turned in to multiple offers from excellent finance companies.

I am neither wealthy or connected (orignally). Now I'm on my way to being both.

People want to do the easy stuff, the hard stuff is putting yourself out there and picking up a phone. You can always find 10,000 people that want an easy to get opportunity.

pessimizer2• 14 years ago

You did what you had to do, and any success you have is hard earned. It is also not scalable and an enormous waste of productivity.

unimpressive2• 14 years ago

>People want to do the easy stuff, the hard stuff is putting yourself out there and picking up a phone.

"Most people don't get those experiences because they never ask." - Steve Jobs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkTf0LmDqKI

renegadedev• 14 years ago

Like someone else already said, you get a generalized education with colleges, unless you know what you want to do for the rest of your life at 17. The other flip side to apprenticeships, particularly in the US, a year into it company management could decide to shut down this cost center and then what?

baritalia• 14 years ago

We could go on days and days about this matter (and maybe we should).

But we live in the times where nobody knows what will be going on in 30 years time†, so I believe this quote is spot on: "Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything one learned in school."-AE

† to all who don't agree with this statement - we can't report weather for 5 days in advance, let alone know the economy and everything else in 30 years

bowmessage• 14 years ago

Speaking as an 18 year old almost done with my first Summer internship, I could not agree more. I went into college with a pretty solid grasp on Java (competed on the national level) and didn't learn a thing my first year. However, as soon as I stepped into my internship, I was learning from day one. You just can't learn the same lessons in school as you can from writing code that silently deletes database records when they should be getting updated...

Yeah. Internships are important. :)

greghinch2• 14 years ago

The headline is a bit of an attention grab, the article doesn't really get into any negatives about college, but I think this concept is spot on and why many 20 and 30 somethings find themselves unemployed or underpaid these days. You can gain a lot from college if you use it correctly, but it's become the thing you "have to do" when you finish high school. The problem is, many high school grads don't know what they want, or how to make college work for them, and so they end up floundering between majors and eventually graduating with some general degree. This of course means they are facing 2 huge challenges for finding a job upon graduation: 1) they likely have no real employable skills 2) they likely have nothing to differentiate them from the thousands of other candidates who also graduated in a similar position.

High school students: if you don't know what you want to get out of college, don't go. Or put it off for a few years. Apprenticeship, entry-level work (where you learn a skill or trade, not flipping burgers), travel: these things will help you figure out a goal for your life. The adults around you telling you that college is the only way to get a job are out of touch with the realities of your position as a young, inexperienced adult entering the workforce.

thronemonkey• 14 years ago

How are people who might struggle to afford to go to college supposed to afford to just "travel" as you put it?

greghinch2• 14 years ago

I'm not sure how you read that as I was suggesting just travel. Travel was suggested as one alternative, but so was working entry level or finding an apprenticeship, the implication there being you'll learn a skill and get paid.

I do think everyone should find time to travel at some point in their life, and it's usually easier when you're young. You'd be surprised how cheaply you can travel if you're willing to live on a budget. But if you just have no money, by all means work. And save.

But what I'm tired of seeing is the legions of teenagers who end up $50k+ in debt with a meaningless degree in communications or something, who then complain they can't get a job. They ended up in that place because they went to college because they were "supposed to", but had no idea how to make it useful for themselves. Doing other things for a few years will help you gain perspective into how you might use college for yourself, or realize that you don't need it.

khyryk• 14 years ago

A minor point:

"And so one of my goals ultimately in this company is to become an engineer, and possibly, you know, travel around the world, go to other Siemens factories, and maybe, you know, work with other engineers from other countries."

It sounds like she has the degree-bearing, recognized-by-law engineer in mind.

rm445• 14 years ago

Slightly offbeat question about this article: does it seem strange that the featured apprentice, good at maths, was planning to go to university to study International Relations?

Of course, she's just one person so it could be pure chance, but lots of Americans seem to study (or major in) communications, business, subjects that seem to lurk around the social sciences. I mean, if this apprentice is good at maths and doing well working for Siemens, why wasn't she guided towards a course in mechanical or electrical engineering?

HeyLaughingBoy• 14 years ago

You're kidding, right? You haven't read any of the many posts on HN about women in CS or engineering?

tikhonj• 14 years ago

With the way high school is graded, "straight As" in math means "did the homework" more than "was good at math". So she probably didn't particularly like or excel at math but just put some work into it.

pitt1980• 14 years ago

The average tuition cost is approximately $16,000 per year. Plus assume another $10,000 in living costs, books, etc. $26,000 in total for a complete cost of $104,000 in a 4 year period. Some people choose to go more expensive by going to a private college and some people choose to go a little cheaper by going public but this is an average. Also, a huge assumption is that its just for a 4 year period. According to the Department of Education, only 54% of undergraduates graduate within 6 years. So for the 46% that don’t graduate, or take 10 years to graduate, this is a horrible investment. But lets assume your children are in the brilliant first half who finish within six years (and hopefully within four). Is it worth it? First, let’s look at it completely from a monetary perspective. Over the course of a lifetime, according to CollegeBoard, a college graduate can be expected to earn $800,000 more than his counterpart that didn’t go to college. $800,000 is a big spread and it could potentially separate the haves from the have-nots. But who has and who doesn’t?

If I took that $104,000 and I chose to invest it in a savings account that had interest income of 5% per year I’d end up with an extra $1.4 million dollars over a 50 year period. A full $600,000 more. That $600,000 is a lot of extra money an 18 year old could look forward to in her retirement. I also think the $800,000 quoted above is too high. Right now most motivated kids who have the interest and resources to go to college think it’s the only way to go if they want a good job. If those same kids decided to not go to college my guess is they would quickly close the gap on that $800,000 spread.

There are other factors as well. I won’t be spending $104,000 per child when my children, ages 10 and 7, decide to go to college. College costs have historically gone up much faster than inflation. Since 1978, cost of living has gone up three-fold. Medical costs, much to the horror of everyone in Congress, has gone up six-fold. And college education has gone up a whopping tenfold. This is beyond the housing bubble, the stock market bubble, any bubble you can think of.

So how can people afford college? Well, how has the US consumer afforded anything? They borrow it, of course. The average student now graduates with a $23,000 debt burden. Up from $13,000 12 years ago. Last year, student borrowings totaled $75 billion, up 25% from the year before. If students go on to graduate degrees such as law degrees they can see their debt burden soar to $200,000 or more. And the easy borrowing convinces colleges that they can raise prices even more.

http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2010/02/dont-send-your-kids-to-....

http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2011/01/10-more-reasons-why-par....

http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2011/01/8-alternatives-to-colle....

jackpirate• 14 years ago

only 54% of undergraduates graduate within 6 year

I'm guessing the people who don't graduate within 6 years are not paying fulltime tuition, and have an outside job to pay for their degree. So your point is way over-exaggerated.

yakshaving• 14 years ago

Apprenticeships used to be the way that people became masters at anything. Master craftsmen, master artisans, master chefs, and master sushi makers (http://www.magpictures.com/jirodreamsofsushi/). It wasn't until reading this story that I truly thought about the relationship between apprenticeships and the batches of graduates from "accelerator" programs.

Today, accelerator programs are largely exclusive. In fact, their popularity has risen in part to their exclusivity and privilege. The exclusivity stems from the fact that after the period of "acceleration" is over, the ability to raise capital is much higher. After the apprenticeship, the apprentice just has a "job", most likely for the master.

Accelerators have done a great job exploiting their "artificial scarcity" to a great extent, making them highly desirable. The "masters" or "mentors" in the accelerator model differ from apprenticeships in that they are multifaceted and have a variety of different backgrounds. In an apprenticeship, usually the masters are focused uniquely on one trade.

According to the article, "apprenticeships are still fighting an image battle. Only 0.3 percent of the American workforce are apprentices, according to a report from American University economist Robert Lerman."

This sounds like the job of a great design and marketing team. A project I worked on as a student in Design School called the New Options Initiative (http://www.newoptionsproject.org/home) sponsored by the WK Kellogg foundation sought to create new alternatives for people who dropped out of school. The project recognizes that school isn't for everyone, and we need alternative career/job paths for people that are similar to the apprenticeship model.

It'd be interesting to see what happened if we just changed the words apprenticeship to accelerator, and provided more means for self-employment and entrepreneurship to the participants. I'm willing to bet that more people would consider it a viable alternative.

vtry2• 14 years ago

Software Engineering should the same really. Apprenticeship.

UK-AL10• 14 years ago

They exist in the UK. They essentially amount to working towards java certs (http://education.oracle.com/pls/web_prod-plq-dad/db_pages.ge...) or .net certs.

Not exactly a well rounded education in cs...

I would hate to miss the cool stuff in cs, and just become specialised in corporate software...

kenster07• 14 years ago

It depends on the profession. In some professions, college is useful, in others, not so much.

What colleges should NOT be used for is a proxy to measure the intelligence or diligence of people (unless you're in one of those very few jobs where a college environment mimics your work environment).

It is dreadfully inefficient, significantly inaccurate, and in net, almost certainly reducing overall economic output.

santigepigon• 14 years ago

I can't help but be reminded of PG's essay, "Why Nerds are Unpopular," where he talks about teenage apprentices in the Renaissance. Also, his point about specialization seems appropriate here.

http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html

matmann2001• 14 years ago

The truth of the matter here is that the girl in the article settled for something other than what she originally wanted to be. Sure, she may have acquired some job security at a fairly young age. But she'll always be a machinist, not an engineer with a focus on international studies, a machinist. I think these apprenticeship opportunities are fantastic for those who absolutely cannot afford college, or those that would only end up earning a useless degree. But if you can afford college, even with loans, it is an experience that you cannot replicate if you do it right.

Here on HN and in the tech/startup community, there has been a ton of college-bashing recently. While I agree that the cost of a college education in America these days is ridiculously high, I still see it as a worthy investment in most situations (I'm glad I was fortunate enough to make that investment). It's an environment where knowledge flows openly and the mistakes of learning are less costly. It's a time where young adults learn about themselves and their place in the world. It's an invaluable source of connections and relationships. In the end, that kind of experience can enable people to become exactly who/what they want to be. That has always been the inherent goal of higher education, but we seem to have gotten lost along the way.

Now in this thread and all over the internet, I've heard story after story of people who went to college and claimed no benefit from it. Many of them state that they never learned anything useful at all. I feel that often this problem is more the fault of the individual than the university system. If a person can claim they went through college without learning, then I must conclude that they didn't try hard enough. Learning is not a passive activity. It requires dialogue, critical thinking, rehearsal, connection-making, and questioning. Learning is something you choose to do.

Now, that is not to say that our colleges and universities are without flaws. Far from it. Current education techniques have become antiquated in face of new technology and a better understanding of how knowledge is acquired. The "sage on the stage" style of lecture is no longer an effective means of enriching young minds. Meanwhile, large universities operate more like corporations than institutes of education. They build huge recreational centers and football stadiums to attract students, while the educational facilities stagnate. High ranking officials take pay raises, while our teachers and professors are paid scraps compared to how important their jobs are. Admission decisions are affected by who you know and how much tuition you can be milked for. Research universities continue to hire brilliant minds from all different fields of research, but whom lack the ability/concern for actually teaching. Furthermore, education in technical fields completely ignores "soft skills" that make for truly great engineers/scientists/mathematicians. Meanwhile, tuition rates continue to rise.

I have seen all of the above, firsthand. Education has hardly changed since the Cold War, and it's time for a revolution. Abandoning the higher education system is not an option if we wish to continue developing ourselves and to grow as a species. This community here is full of some of the most intelligent and creative individuals that I have ever interacted with. Surely, we can fix this.

TL;DR The girl in this article gave up on her dream. If utilized to its full potential, a college education is a very beneficial experience, for those that can afford it, and should not be passed up. Our education system has A LOT of flaws, but abandoning it is not the answer. We need to fix the system to ensure a brighter future.

nathansobo• 14 years ago

We need more of this. We need post-secondary education that focuses on giving people real-world, practical skills. There's only so much room in our economy for psychologists and communications majors.

disgruntledphd2• 14 years ago

You know, psychologists get an awful amount of bashing places. Speaking as a psychologist (almost PhD qualified) working in web analytics, it really isn't deserved.

A good psychology program will give you:

Good communication skills and some insight into how organisations work. Relatively OK statistics skills (no statistician, but at least knowing about the problem with multiple comparisons)

Excellent experimental design and analysis skills. Good human interaction HCI skills (sometimes).

These are extremely useful skills for web analysts and market researchers. And while market research is not expanding that much, web analytics is. I could easily have done the job I'm doing now with just my undergrad (though they might not have hired me), the major problem was that I didn't even know what web analytics was when I finished my degree.

That being said, i spent 9 months unemployed a few years after finishing my degree and during my doctorate I focused on giving myself statistics and programming skills so that I would never be unemployed again, so maybe I'm not typical of psychology students.

bitserf• 14 years ago

The Australian dollar is currently at parity with the US dollar, so it is as high as you think.

quinndupont• 14 years ago

Replacing unions, one apprenticeship at a time!

benthumb• 14 years ago

I've been a jack of trades in the web dev/IT space for an embarrassingly long time (considering how little money I make). Two years ago I decided to go back to school to finish college (I'm 45), this time w/ the aim of pursuing a degree in computer science. So far so good: I'm less mystified/intimidated by math than I was and the intellectual stimulation of the academy is a refreshing change from corporate software engineering shops where innovative, forward-looking ways of doing things is not necessarily embraced as a virtue. Anyway, nothing ventured, nothing gained I say.

A Different Road To Work, Bypassing College Dreams

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