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You can tell this is an ancient meme because it prices college at 4 years at $9,000 per year instead of 5 years at $30,000 per year π
Cool leave all the executive and judicial positions for the children of the rich. They'll make ethical decisions that benefit everyone
That, and they also keep changing it. When too many middle class people make good many with trades, they call it inflation and engineer a recession that depresses those wages.
When too many middle class people are getting higher education, they raise tuition and burden us with debt.
The real answer is: do what you love, if you're good at it and if it provides objective value to society.
And all together, we must have middle class solidarity to reign in the power the elites have over us and make sure we own and control the wealth and housing stock, while they pay high taxes and not us.
If we don't demand our share of the pie, we will end up with scraps and our children will end up with even less.
Few things here. Apprenticeships are hard to come by. You have to know someone or be in the right family already.
Second, university is a universal education. You can do almost anything afterwards. Gradschool is where you have to pick something. But some folks do multiple post grads. If you pick apprenticeship, that's it. That's the thing you're doing. Forever.
Personaly, I'm very happy to have a well rounded education. I became a software engineer 10 years after graduting university. I could do it, and could get hired for it, because of that education. All the skills you hone at university helped me alonng the way, writing, speaking, critical thinking, I even leaned to sail and fence.
Apprenticeships give you a single trade, university teaches you how to think, and makes you a better person.
On top of that, apprenticeships are job training, and a unuversity education is... Not. And no number of 17 year old high school honours students, or their parents, or high school teachers, or university recruitment offices, or corporate HR departments have actually or will actually change that. And that's not to say there's anything inherently wrong with job training, but so much of the discourse around university's "usefulness" always boils down to "you spend all of this money, and they still don't teach you to do the job", which... Yeah. You don't get fried chicken from a tailor's shop, either.
Moreover, one of the key reasons university education is so damn expensive is because rich dicks don't want the poors getting one. And while they've managed to spin public perception of university as job training, and as a result managed to get people to go deeply into debt to target specific, non-comprehensive or non-critical degree programs, it remains true that a high level liberal education is soemthing they don't want us to have.
Because it gives us the tools to see through their lies and bullshit.
All we need to do is look at the degree programs they shit on most strongly: They're all rooted in examining and criticising social power dynamics. In response to that, they tell us that they'll be excited to "order their happy meals" from people perusing those fields.
Which, of course, isn't exactly rooted in falsehood, because most well paying businesses don't want to have people around who are trained in recognizing and criticising power dynamics.
Because they're abusive systems in and of themselves, run by people who don't want their power criticised or checked.
But that doesn't mean the ability to do so isn't unspeakably invaluable to society. But in a society run by entitled, unworthy assholes, the last thing they want is a populace who can recognize both that they have no place in a healthy society, and also the knowledge and gumption to create a healthy society and remove them from it.
Ha, I studied philosophy. It was perfect for becoming a bartender. But also perfect for becoming a successful software engineer out of the blue at 30.
Thank you for these expanded points. I only talked about the pregmatics and my own experience, but all of what you said is extremely important and true.
I used to think like that. As times passes I'm increasingly starting to agree with what you are saying. Sadly I do still think that is a matter of choice. There are poorly valued college educations and not all off them are philosophy and literature. I don't see anything wrong with them existing like you said, they teach people critical thinking and improve people overall. But like you said the lie that education exists to give us jobs exists and there are people going to college to learn not very lucrative things and expecting to make a living out them and coming out with dept and can't find an occupation that provides for them. Honestly I think the only way to go around that problem is to make University universal and free. That way you can always go back for something more lucrative or later in life to learn something that makes you grow.
Absolutely. Education at all levels is a boon to society at large, and it should be freely available to all. An educated populace makes the world a better, more equitable, and forward progressing palce.
An uneducated populace allows people exploit us all, and keep us working for their benefit, and not society's.
Apprenticeships are infinitely more competitive than college applications. Not to say that the quality of education isn't much better, too, but most mentors are already swamped with dozens of apprenticeship requests. It's so competitive that most will expect you to already have some familiarity with the trade, whereas most colleges go into your education assuming you have very little experience with it.
Edit
Also
$19-$23 hour paid apprenticeships
Lmao only in already high COL areas. Plus having to compete with the 1,000+ other applicants (see above). Plus "we'll select a candidate in 4-6 months." Plus "must provide own tools. Our shop only allows Snap-On brand, here's a $2,200 shopping list in case you get chosen." Also "oh yeah that position was already filled last month, so-and-so's son just got out of rehab and needed a job."
T. An actual tradie of nearly a decade who has a proper 4 year university degree and tech school certification
Electrician in IBEW here in a poor rural region. Those pay numbers are pretty close to our current rates, actually. And if you can pass a test, you can get into the apprenticeship program pretty easily. They don't expect much from first year apprentices. I had a trade school diploma and my Limited Liability Electrician license already when I applied, but it didn't matter much. The competitiveness is very dependent on your local.
You gotta buy your own hand tools, but power tools, conduit benders, etc are all provided.
So... like with everything career-related, it's gonna depend on where you live.
βAppreciceshipsβ is a pretty broad thing too. I can think of more mechanics and carpenters I know that had to buy their own tools then plumber and electricians.
This is pretty representative of my area as well. The thing that is weird for me is that they priced it at 40 hrs per week. A friend of mine was an Electrician Apprentice and he worked 21 days in a row 10 hrs per day and he's in a union.
In Switzerland, apprenticeship is the standard for a good middle class income. It's a win-win situation for all involved and if you later feel like you want to go further in your career, there's a "master" training for your profession, which is considered by employers as equivalent to a master degree from an university. I'm not sure why such a system is not more popular in other countries.
Possibly has to do with status as pretty much since forever, university schooling has been a separator of middle class and "elite" (culturally) even though it has been made to be accessible by most people. At least one possible theory.
I have to strongly disagree here. It was the case until neoliberalism hit hard on the country. From the middle 90s, the apprenticeship isn't the standard to a good living anymore. We have roughly half of the households which are poor or near powerty. If the apprenticeship was a gold standard, it would not be the case. Teenagers learned it very well as they prefer to choose to study even after an apprenticeship.
Everything has took an exponential price hike. Healthcare insurance, rent, food, energy and more skyrocket and living is more and more difficult if you don't have a tertiary diploma.
You can tell this is an ancient meme because you somehow expect "non-full-time job" position to be worthwhile in any shape or form. If it's not a full-time position, my personal belief is that either 1) they're probably going to screw you over somehow, or 2) the government regulations are going to screw you over. (I'm in Finland. The government's going to screw you over if you do anything besides staring at the phone and accept the first full-time position that miraculously comes your way. In recent years, they invented a new activity: SPAM JOB APPLICATIONS. This has not worked as well the government thinks it did.)
This is beyond inaccurate...
So infographics are memes now... Seriously?
Because people are bastardized the meaning of the word.
This doesn't work for some fields imo. I don't know how I could train someone in computer science if they don't even know how a for loop works yet.
Senior dev: "Hey junior... " waves a piece of paper "The fuck is this?"
Junior Dev: "My code, boss."
SD: squints
JD: "I couldn't figure out how to email it."
SD: squints
JD: ...
SD: "Why is there a picture of a cat?"
JD: "It's Scratch, sir."
I'm dying lmao
There is a non-null chance the Senior Developer is an absolute God at scratch.
It's a regular thing in Germany.
Our apprenticeships are a lot cheaper though, below minimum wage, so it's easier for the employer to set aside time for training that doesn't earn money.
Well maybe you couldn't, but that doesn't mean there's no way to set up appropriate technical instruction infrastructure as part of a union or guild through which this apprenticeship would go. Or even that one doesn't already exist.
Often, a plumbing or electrical apprentice will come up through a technical high school. Either a technical high school or a technicial continuing education program at a community college, say.
Heck my local technical high school offers an "Information Technology" vocational program that sounds an awful lot like that program I went through in college. Wouldn't it have been great to save 4 years and countless dollars?
For programming jobs, this gap is currently mostly filled with "bootcamps." Increasingly you'll find bootcamp programs that are free but garnish your salary for some time after you've been placed in a job, or the bootcamp is run by a company directly and you get paid to go through the bootcamp after signing a contract saying you'll work for them for a year or two afterward or else need to pay back the price of the program.
These can vary from "pretty good, actually" to "predatory" to "a little bit like indentured servitude." Wouldn't it be great if there were a union or guild around these practices? Or to encourage more kids to enter trade schools that offer vocational programs they're interested in?
I agree. I guess what I'm getting at is some fields require requisite knowledge to be useful as an apprentice on day one.
Like for an electrician, on day one you can hand me tools, pull wires, carry supplies, clean up behind me, measure, etc. You may not be able to design the layout or check that things are to code, but you can help me while I e.g. explain why I needed you to grab 3-1 wire instead of a 2-1 for this fixture.
Where as in software you need a requisite amount of knowledge to do anything useful. And it's hard to sit there and explain what I'm doing when they can't read the language. It could be done, it's just harder to bring on someone that's going to be paid when they can't do much. I'd do it, but convincing the bean counters will be a lot harder
You're right, you're probably not gonna go from rando 18 year old who has only ever used an iPhone for their computing needs to even someone who can do even the "college intern" grunt work of a software dev team.
The typical on-ramp in our industry for someone like that is to come up through the help desk or data center where you do get to pull wires, carry supplies, rack and stack, manage inventory, etc. And probably this is where many apprenticeships would begin, too, if the person had literally no prerequisite knowledge.
But the bootcamp system to create devs directly is also fine. I'd just love to see more worker-oriented structure around it so we don't have cheapass bootcamps flooding the job market with people that perhaps have the bare minimum skills and only on paper. Or predatory bootcamps locking people into jobs at shitty companies that teach them awful ways of working that their next company has to undo.
It really, really, really doesn't take a 4 year Computer Science degree from a university to work a typical software engineer job. I've worked with folks with no college education, history degrees, electrical engineering degrees, etc. Folks that have come up through the help desk, through the data center, through bootcamps, etc.
Let's make that even easier to do.
I agree, I guess the context of the meme made it look like I was saying people need a 4 year degree, but I don't believe that. It helps, but it's not necessary at all.
I was mainly saying I don't think a transitional master and apprentice setup would be easily workable
This already exists through college coop programs, and people can end a coop program with work experience and not much debt.
The problem with special programs being kicked down to high school is it creates scarcity further down the chain, meaning kids need to make their life choices early and following through depends on availability.
You fix the problem of program capacity and sure that's great.
I went to college for certification in c++ instead of a full degree.
I'll chime in with a comment above, but I am an apprenticeship mentor at a big tech company, and while you are somewhat correct, most apprenticeship schemes will mix in academic learning alongside on-the-job training.
It's a great way to learn if you are motivated. If you're not, it's immensely stressful compared to studying for a degree.
$15k/year raises? What industry? I'm in the wrong field! I'm lucky if my annual evaluation gets me a COL adjustment, much less an actual raise.
The apprenticeship thing and pay scales only work when you're talking about union jobs in skilled trades. Which are very hard to come by.
I'm not knocking blue-collar jobs--all labor deserves to be paid a living, and thriving, wage--but that's not an honest assessment.
This is correct, but it's virtually impossible to get most desk jobs without a degree.
Not because the degree is important, only because it's a requirement.
So if you can afford it, unfortunately, I would recommend the degree path.
Maybe in America...
Here you have 5 years of free college for bachelor and 5 years free for masters.
Here's one for you: Decide you want to apprentice at 35 because the career path you initially chose didn't pan out, the market became saturated, or you burned out. See how far that gets you.
36,000? I broke 6 figures in debt.
I work as a mentor for an apprenticeship scheme at a large tech company, and work alongside several apprentices.
While it's not fully serious, there are a few inaccuracies. On the whole, I think the apprenticeship scheme is a great way to get people into work, especially as software engineers. In fact, I would put them way above bootcamps, which are essentially ways to part someone with their money in return for cheap labour.
With that being said, here are a few gotchas:
I still fully recommend people take apprenticeships, but I always say that it's not a route for everyone. The people I work with that have benefited most are self-sufficient, humble, and willing to learn. Those that aren't often find it extremely stressful and end up questioning whether a degree is better for them. As with most things, it's an option, and options are a good thing.
Yeah, if you can get an apprenticeship (nearly impossible).
UK here, on an apprenticeship and earning Β£40,000+ a year.
Recognise I'm exceptionally lucky but no idea how anyone could afford to complete a degree while living independently in current times.
community college can be $5,000ish per year (in community rn), and if you go to a smaller local college after that it might be like double or triple that per year. the average of $9,000 is still lowballing it a good bit, but you can lower the $30,000 figure a decent bit
(i am in no way saying that college isn't as expensive as people say-- it is. i am saying that community college and lower quality colleges are options many people don't include in these sorts of averages. i thought i was boned but community college saved my ass.)
Benjamin Franklin wanted everyone to be apprentices.
It is valid path for some, maybe even for majority of people, but not for all. If you have smarts then college->undergrad-graduate school can lead you to the job of your dreams and well paid on top of this. For example, if you excel in math and physics, and want to be a rocket scientist, by all means, take a shot. Even if you miss, lots of STEM jobs pay well in industry.