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Old 10-18-2022, 08:43 PM
 
Location: Oregon, formerly Texas
10,004 posts, read 7,147,048 times
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College is pretty useless until you need it. Being able to analyze Shakespeare is useless until at some point in your life you actually need to use the set of skills and mental bandwidth you activated by analyzing Shakespeare.

Ultimately everything you learn is generally useless until it's not.

Biggest career mistake I ever made was taking away a college degree requirement for a job class. My thinking was, "any decently smart high school grad can be trained to do this." No. No they couldn't. I almost got fired because it was my initiative and those people crashed and burned. Put it back to bachelors required and suddenly most candidates were able to do the tasks again.
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Old 10-19-2022, 05:27 AM
 
Location: Texas Hill Country
23,450 posts, read 13,691,600 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by redguard57 View Post
College is pretty useless until you need it. Being able to analyze Shakespeare is useless until at some point in your life you actually need to use the set of skills and mental bandwidth you activated by analyzing Shakespeare.

Ultimately everything you learn is generally useless until it's not.

Biggest career mistake I ever made was taking away a college degree requirement for a job class. My thinking was, "any decently smart high school grad can be trained to do this." No. No they couldn't. I almost got fired because it was my initiative and those people crashed and burned. Put it back to bachelors required and suddenly most candidates were able to do the tasks again.
I was in a class where I didn't have the Prereq. The prof asked me to tell him about myself.

"Well, I have a degree in Engineering Technology from Texas A&M and......,"

"Stop right there! That's enough. If we find you are lacking in anything, we will just give you the text book and in a week, you will be up on the subject.".

That's what being college educated can mean, the developed mind to be able to absorb massive amounts of information quickly. Absorb it.....and use it.
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Old 10-19-2022, 10:24 AM
Status: "I'm turquoise happy!" (set 25 days ago)
 
Location: The New England part of Ohio
23,878 posts, read 32,156,993 times
Reputation: 67753
Quote:
Originally Posted by ohio_peasant View Post
Not quite. In a large lab, it's accepted cultural-lore, that the technicians will look askance at the degreed engineers, as flighty and pompous nincompoops, who can't solder, can't weld, can't turn a wrench or use a set of calipers.



Indeed. American society has always been skeptical of “the elites” or of academic knowledge. By “elite” we don’t necessarily mean the wealthy or the well-connected, but the well-educated, or what in Europe might have been termed the “intelligentsia”. Writers, poets, journalists,… and their counterparts in the theoretical hard-sciences (physics, math,…). Taking the point further, just imagine how much animosity there is, towards people with PhDs!

Some of the most reviled jobs today, are college-professor. They get labeled as being arrogant, out-of-touch, and ultimately clueless and parasitical.
+ 1. For some reason the US is an anti-intellectual country. I find it sad.
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Old 10-19-2022, 10:28 AM
 
Location: Shawnee-on-Delaware, PA
7,936 posts, read 7,289,299 times
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Originally Posted by sheena12 View Post
+ 1. For some reason the US is an anti-intellectual country. I find it sad.
I disagree. Everyone who runs the place has a degree from an Ivy university, and they often have several such degrees.

If you're concerned about anti-intellectuals making their opinions known, Twitter and Facebook's censors are working on that.
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Old 10-19-2022, 10:29 AM
Status: "I'm turquoise happy!" (set 25 days ago)
 
Location: The New England part of Ohio
23,878 posts, read 32,156,993 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Babe_Ruth View Post
Related to this thread.. It kills me when a young college graduate boasts about being the "first in their family to graduate college". So what?

They may have accomplished something unique within their family (fair enough).. But it implies (to me), they feel like they've done something better than their ancestors. Which I don't believe.. All the veterans, good parents, skilled tradesmen, that may have comprised their family tree. But they're declaring they've secured a college degree (sometimes in impractical fields, etc). It's not as (relatively) meaningful as the accomplishments of your ancestors. It strikes me as an overstated accomplishment, and implies that simply from a degree, they've somehow bettered their ancestors.. just a pet peeve of mine, not a fundamental antipathy toward college education.

I mean you never really hear welders boasting about being the "first in their family" to weld. But that's a very practical, useful skill. And they can make a lot of $. A college degree is not a unique feat to gloat.. even tho society does seem to impart that lesson.
Well, they HAVE accomplished something better than their ancestors. And their parents. They do have a right to gloat. Most of their parents are equally proud.
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Old 10-19-2022, 11:18 AM
 
9,229 posts, read 8,497,635 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Solere View Post
...
Has there for many years been an underlying antipathy toward the college educated from the non-college educated that was aggravated by the recently announced debt forgiveness plan?
I've been hearing it for decades. Usually it is from someone that didn't achieve what they thought they should've and refuse to admit to themselves that had they taken the time to pursue higher education they might have succeeded further in life. I just nod, listen for a short time, and then move on to someone else. Let them have their fantasy. Personally, I know that my income level was significantly greater than my former peers that did not go the extra mile, so to speak. I know that DH survived an employment cut after a company takeover because he was one of the pool that had a degree. I know that when I am talking with people who chose not to pursue higher education, they are less able to think critically and rely on hearsay and suppositions rather than evidence and facts.

Some will, some won't. That's that.
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Old 10-19-2022, 12:56 PM
 
302 posts, read 228,279 times
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I think it's akin to "Sailors vs. Marines" and "Cops vs. Firemen" and so on. Alpha Company doesn't like Bravo Company. And don't even get me started on Wpns Company.

Some Group doesn't like Another Group.

In this particular instance, the student loan forgiveness thingy has refreshed an old animosity. The college graduates make fun of the tradesmen, the tradesmen make fun of the college grads. Enough dislike to go around.
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Old 10-19-2022, 02:30 PM
 
3,048 posts, read 1,132,564 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Superhornet View Post
I think it's akin to "Sailors vs. Marines" and "Cops vs. Firemen" and so on. Alpha Company doesn't like Bravo Company. And don't even get me started on Wpns Company.

Some Group doesn't like Another Group.

In this particular instance, the student loan forgiveness thingy has refreshed an old animosity. The college graduates make fun of the tradesmen, the tradesmen make fun of the college grads. Enough dislike to go around.
Do they, though? I've certainly never denigrated someone who performs physical labor for a living. Never! My daughter is a civil engineer. She designs wastewater systems to move poop, and that's the stuff of civilized, healthful living. If you stick your hands in human waste to earn your paycheck, then you have my life-long respect. My husband works as a technology consultant. He spends very long days hunched over a keyboard, ensuring that the companies that stock your groceries, the websites that store your photos, the GPS system that helps you drive your car, and the shipping companies that deliver your new refrigerator, to name just a few of the industries that employ him, have the information they need to function effectively and efficiently. I've never known him to denigrate someone who pulls wires for a living, but let me tell you, he's certainly heard tradesmen joke that he doesn't really work for a living. And holy hell have I heard many times throughout my life that being a long-term SAHM must mean that I sat around eating bonbons all day long.
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Old 10-19-2022, 03:13 PM
 
6,922 posts, read 6,986,626 times
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Originally Posted by North Beach Person View Post
Even though the high school where I taught the bulk of my career was middle/upper middle class we always had a significant number, mostly male, of graduates who were the first in their family to graduate from high school. To give perspective on time, the last graduation I was involved in was 2014.
Are you saying that families where nobody had previously graduated from high school are more likely to have sons, rather than daughters? Or are you saying that sons of people who didn't graduate from high school are more likely to graduate high school than daughters? If neither, then why were the first in their family to graduate high school mostly male? That makes more sense for college since more women than men are going to college these days, but high school is required for both genders.
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Old 10-19-2022, 03:19 PM
 
Location: On the Chesapeake
44,916 posts, read 59,916,725 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by mitsguy2001 View Post
Are you saying that families where nobody had previously graduated from high school are more likely to have sons, rather than daughters? Or are you saying that sons of people who didn't graduate from high school are more likely to graduate high school than daughters? If neither, then why were the first in their family to graduate high school mostly male? That makes more sense for college since more women than men are going to college these days, but high school is required for both genders.
How could you have so twisted around and misunderstood what I wrote?

No, as was clear to everyone but you, the vast majority of kids who were the first in their families to graduate from high school were male.

Which means, again to anyone else that understands education and education policy, that there were generations where the boys dropped out while the girls generally did not.

Last edited by toobusytoday; 10-19-2022 at 03:47 PM.. Reason: Removed rude comment
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