OT: A Generation of Semi-Useless “Workers”

[barnacle]

I can certainly agree that economic viability is a useful definition of a useful/less degree.

(It's possible that government provides such dreadful results in education, or indeed anything involving techological or scientific thought, because there are vanishingly few people with STEM degree education in government, and the higher you go, the fewer there are...)

But if a state _isn't_ the body to encourage education in specific fields and discourage it in others, then who? The universities will provide the courses that provide the best return for _them_ with, in most cases, little regard as to what might be the best return for the student.

I was lucky enough to have been employed by a company which maintained its own education facilities for at least sixty years, providing degree level education to its own employees as well as on-going education through a career (and suffered a hell of a drain of its trained engineers in particular to similar companies who didn't do their own training). In the seventies, many UK companies did that to some extent or other, or maintained apprenticeships. But we've already seen that these days, companies want employees already trained, and aren't prepared to provide that training.

So unless you can persuade companies either to sponsor or fund specialist courses, where do you go? Oh look, over the water there, there's a country that trains engineers! And they expect to get paid peanuts, too!

Neil

[BigDumbDinosaur]

Yes, a country’s leaders should encourage citizens/subjects to obtain an education, but should not be dictating curricula (“the state should be keeping its damn oar out”).  At least in the USA, the federal government dictating curricula and other educational policies has resulted in American public schools becoming bastions of mediocrity.

In particular, our public schools have been (mis)guided by the “no child left behind” policy that ends up promoting students to the next grade regardless of how poorly prepared.  Other meddling has resulted in the “slow” (aka “special education”) students being in the same classroom as the “smart” students, resulting in the class proceeding at a pace effectively set by the learning capacity of the “slow” students.  Just how good is that for the majority of students with normal learning capabilities?

Further political meddling has resulted in our public schools bowing to the “diversity, equity and inclusion” zealots who demanded that standards be “modified” (i.e., reduced) to compensate for the supposed-handicap of being raised in a household headed by a single mother, who herself is poorly educated and hence incapable of holding down a well-paying job.  Again, how good is that for students who are motivated to learn despite poor familial circumstances?

The combined effects of these policies have resulted in our public schools producing “graduates” who are semi-literate, lack critical thinking skills, and are unemployable in any skilled field—yet are highly competent at being truculent, demanding an artisan’s paycheck for doing a minimum-wage job ($20 an hour to move boxes in a warehouse...are you serious?), “conversing” on a phone using thumbs alone, and responding to stupid Tik-Tok challenges—with sometimes-fatal results.

[barnacle]

There should certainly be no need for a university to provide remedial English courses (except for those students for whom it is a second language).

My feeling in the UK - now as fifty years ago - the main reason for pushing so many students into further education was because that way, they didn't show up in the unemployment figures. Or when they did, the ministers in charge were by then in different positions.</cynicism>

Neil

[BigDumbDinosaur]

barnacle wrote:

There should certainly be no need for a university to provide remedial English courses (except for those students for whom it is a second language).

I agree.

In the Chicago area, the aforementioned state (i.e., public) university that offers an African Women’s Studies degree also offers remedial English to would-be scholars who are products of the Chicago public school system.  It’s all about political correctness and making administrators look good, and speaks volumes about the quality of Chicago’s schools—schools that produce an exceptional number of semi-illiterate “graduates,” as well as good, old-fashioned dropouts.  Anyone in Chicago who wants their child to get a quality primary and secondary education enrolls them in a parochial school if they can afford the tuition.

Quote:

My feeling in the UK - now as fifty years ago - the main reason for pushing so many students into further education was because that way, they didn't show up in the unemployment figures.  Or when they did, the ministers in charge were by then in different positions.</cynicism>

England and USA: two nations separated by thousands of miles of water, but apparently with nearly identical political problems. 

[jgharston]

barnacle wrote:

There should certainly be no need for a university to provide remedial English courses (except for those students for whom it is a second language).

My feeling in the UK - now as fifty years ago - the main reason for pushing so many students into further education was because that way, they didn't show up in the unemployment figures. Or when they did, the ministers in charge were by then in different positions.</cynicism>

This is something I've discussed when doing census research. In the 1910s, 20% of the population were under 10, and were in school with teachers employed to teach them. (HALF! the population were children. You never see that reflected in period dramas.) By the 1940s, 10% of the population were under 10. Oh Noes! We've got a surplus of teachers, what do we do? Fire half of them? No way, we've got to protect out phoney baloney jobs, ladies and gentlemen. 20% of the population are under 15, let's raise compulsary schooling to 15. Trebles all round.

By the 1980s. the under-15s were also now dropping towards 10% of the population. Not enough demand for the supply. Reduce the teaching sector size? No, raise the school leaving age. Push that A levels are core education requirements, pushing school leaving age up to 18. Yay! Jobs protected.

In the last ten years the push now is "must be in education or training until at least 18". 50% are in university until 21. Coincidently, that under-21 cohort is again only about 10% of the population. Where does it go? We've got to protect our jobs!

We've also effectively removed an half an entire generation from the workforce - 14-to-24-year-olds - and simultaneously complain about a dearth of cheap workers for unskilled jobs, exactly the things that 14-to-24-year-olds would be doing half a century ago.

[barnacle]

jgharston wrote:

(HALF! the population were children. You never see that reflected in period dramas.)

Quite: my paternal grandfather had eleven siblings. My father had one, as do I.

Neil

[sburrow]

This is why I need to pop in here once in a while

jgharston wrote:

When I got to university I spent three years thinking "when are we going to do some, y'know, *actual* computing?"

BDD wrote:

In particular, we’ve managed to produce a generation of college graduates with useless degrees, little motivation to get their hands dirty (both metaphorically and literally) and whose main talents seem to be endlessly complaining about student loan debt (which they voluntarily incurred in order to matriculate with a useless degree).

BDD wrote:

As for why college students are there when they shouldn’t be, American society has strongly pushed the notion that one will be a third-class citizen without a degree and will be doomed to a subsistence existence

barnacle wrote:

The joke used to be: the first professional words of a Social Science graduate? Would you like fries with that?

Just some highlights I took away from this interesting conversation. Before I say anything else, thank you all for your candid responses, I highly respect y'all for that.

As some of y'all know, I am a college professor, in mathematics. A few constant questions I have about my own job are:

1) Why does *everyone* need to learn at least Algebra? I get some folks need to have Calculus or at least a mathematical understanding of some key concepts in this Newtonian world. My father was an engineer for all his life, struggled with calculus, got a job doing no math at all and made more money than I ever will, and now is retired and is on permanent vacation. Did he really need Calculus? I see a lot of folks who are getting degrees in who knows what, and yet they all filter down to Algebra. How many times have I heard, "This is the last class I need to graduate!" I'm glad everyone is forced to learn "problem solving skills", but in the end the material is spoon-fed anyways just to get folks to pass and move on if they have even the slightest amount of motivation. Even our Calculus classes are dumbed down to the lowest common denominator unfortunately, and there really is nothing I can do about that.

2) What does someone do with a Math degree besides... teach Math? When I was going to 'university', I essentially had two choices given my talents: Computer Science or Mathematics. I realized that if I chose CompSci, I'd have to sit in a cubical all my life. So I chose Math instead. I got a Bachelors, then got a full-time job tutoring at the college where I teach now. I continue to get my Masters at the same time, and because of that my boss said, "Chad, you will teach a class next semester." I said, "I don't want to teach." He said, "You *will* teach a class next semester!" I said, "Yes sir!" And that's how my teaching career started. Otherwise, what *would* I have done with it? I have seen multiple folks go through the same pathway I did, get a Masters even, and now... are just tutoring. Perhaps I was fortunate, sure, but no life lesson was learned here. And to this day I still don't know what someone can even do with a Math degree.

3) Why are we not preparing our students for the real world? The college I work at offers a vast array of certificates and associates degrees. Our completion rate is... less than 10% for sure. Our first-time retention rate is around 50%, that is half the people who start college do not even show up again to the next semester (let alone pass that current semester!). Perhaps that is just us, our local demographics, or maybe it is also a sign of the times.

We as the college are supposed to train individuals for the outside world, but perhaps some do not even belong here? Did we the college disservice them somehow, or is it their own fault? Consider some data that I recently analyzed for my boss: We have literally thousands of "declared" Engineering majors, yet only a 5% graduation rate. What classes are their last classes with us? Mostly College Algebra, the very first math class they ever take with us on your engineering degree journey. Physics and Calculus are also some, but obviously you had to pass Algebra to even get to those. But I had an OVERWHELMING amount of "declared" Engineering majors NOT EVEN TAKE A MATH CLASS their first semester. They fail English or History or something, and never come back. We in the math dept never even got to *see* these "declared" engineers. How interesting. Is that the college's fault for placing them in non-interesting classes? Or is that the student just not having enough motivation to do *any* college classes at all? I had to take English and History too, ya know, and I passed.

Then again, what does one *do* with an Associates in Engineering? Hm.

4) Why can't people learn something without college? My jaded look at learning has skyrocketed thanks to you all. I came here about 3 years ago, where I was literally just learning what voltage, current, and resistance was. My interest in electronics just happened by accident really, as I was first wanting to design a binary calculator out of water (yes, pumps, valves, etc), but thought, "That'll take too much effort, surely electricity would be easier than water." I started here with a 1 MHz 6502 "potpourri" computer from Garth's website. And here I am now, 3 years later, currently designing a PIC32 microcontroller-based computer running at 200 MHz. Did I have to go to school for any of that? No. I had y'all! And y'all didn't sit me down in a classroom and teach me each day, I had to learn how to read datasheets and schematics basically on my own, only coming back here to ask, "What the heck does this mean?!" once in a while. If I could do that, can't anyone else? I am *sure* that many of you, if not all of you, had to learn something completely new outside of the classroom setting. You had to problem solve, on your own, nobody was going to spoon-feed you. And yet you succeeded. Go figure that that is actually possible for any human

Heck, what if someone wanted to learn more about Plato? Can't they just *read* Plato? Why would someone need to take a class about Plato? Or get a degree in Plato? I mean, I was reading Plato just a couple months ago. ( I found it too stoic and stopped half way. ) The point is, if you want to be a philosopher, then just do it. You can be both an philosopher AND an engineer (and many philosophers of the past WERE also mathematicians and engineers!).

Then, why am I teaching anyone Algebra at all? Can't they learn Algebra on their own, if/when they would need it for their job? What purpose is the piece of paper the college hands out to folks who did enough 'busy work' in various classes all while spending money doing it? Couldn't they have just work under a master, learning as they go, doing real projects for real purposes? Couldn't they show their past projects to future employers to say, "Look at what I can do, put me to work so I can do this and more for you too!"? Why are the folks in college not actually learning about the real world? Why are all of these classes like playing "pretend" for X years, then when tossed out on the street (with a mountain of debt) we wonder why they can't find a job?

Am I just adding to the problem?

So many questions. Anyways, thank you all for this conversation. And thank you BDD for all the awesome memes

Chad

[barnacle]

Chad, you may enjoy this video from Steve Mould: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxXaizglscw

Neil

[BigDumbDinosaur]

sburrow wrote:

And thank you BDD for all the awesome memes

This one is political in nature, but I’ve seen a parallel to it in the business world when it comes to managerial promotions.

[sburrow]

barnacle wrote:

Chad, you may enjoy this video from Steve Mould: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxXaizglscw
Neil

I think I had seen that at some point a while ago. Yes, very neat stuff! I was thinking of something similar-ish, though it's been years

BigDumbDinosaur wrote:

This one is political in nature

Fine by me BDD

Been thinking about my response above a bit, and I think I have some conclusions (shorter than above):

A) I cannot keep on topic very well. I must be a math guy, English is my "second language", haha

B) We all here are a bunch of non-philosopher-types, instead we are engineers, creators, and problem solvers. No wonder we have the opinions we have. (That doesn't make them wrong though.)

C) I doubt we are the absolute best out there, but we do continue to pursue hobbies and interests in those directions while others do not. We are constantly improving and honing our skills.

A fine breed of folks we have here indeed! Very happy to pop back in for a bit. Thank you all!

Chad

[sark02]

This thread is peak-Boomer to MAGA. A real hoot. Keep it coming.

Don't forget to vote! (blue, by the way...)

[sburrow]

sark02 wrote:

This thread is peak-Boomer to MAGA. A real hoot. Keep it coming.
Don't forget to vote! (blue, by the way...)

Aside from BDD's last meme, I didn't find anything here directly political. The bigger point I think is that we as older humans need to be teaching and training our younger humans how to keep the human race going in a positive direction. We here are more focused on the engineering/technical side of things, and so we are bias towards that (as we should be), and we do have a tendency to poke fun at philosophers, etc. But as humans, we all know that that we need fewer philosophers and more skilled workers. Just the bottom line really.

I second the vote to keep it coming though

Chad

[barnacle]

Paraphrased slightly from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:

Philosophers meet Deep Thought, the second greatest computer in the universe...

"We are quite definitely here as representatives of the Amalgamated Union of Philosophers, Sages, Luminaries, and other professional thinking persons ... And we want this machine off, and we want it off now.
...
I’ll tell you what the problem is mate: demarcation. That’s the problem.
...
You just let the machines get on with the adding up and we’ll take care of the eternal verities, thank you very much.
...
By law the quest for the ultimate truth is quite clearly the unalienable prerogative of your working thinkers."

Neil

[BigDumbDinosaur]

No prejudices here against professional philosophers.  All I expect of one is that when I order 10 Chicken McNuggets I get 10, not 9 or 11.  10.  In order to accomplish that, the professional philosopher must be able to do some math.  In order to know how to do math, would-be professional philosophers must take some math classes whilst in college, which means we need math professors—such as Chad. 

As for my last meme, ignore the political angle.  I meant it as a commentary on how business elevates employees to managerial positions.  I do not advocate for any particular political candidate, as I consider all politicians to be nasty knaves who are in it for personal gain.

[teamtempest]

Actually I found Plato to be quite funny in a very sarcastic way. But then again, I did not have the benefit of a college class to tell me how I should interpret him.

I listened to an audio book a while back about archaeological explorations of some of the many civilizations that existed before the invention of writing. A topic that wasn't really talked about in the book was, how did knowledge get transmitted from one generation to the next if writing didn't exist? The only answer I could come up with was some kind of master/apprentice system, where an older, experienced workers taught younger, inexperienced ones in very practical, hands-on ways.

Maybe college is supposed to be at least partly an alternative to that. A more efficient, systematized method of transmitting advanced knowledge to those who don't know it yet. The distilled wisdom of those who have been there, done that, so that the upcoming generation doesn't have to re-discover all that for itself.

Not that college always works like that.