Has 2000s America done a bad job at inspiring youth to go into science and engineering? (schools, doctors)
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To be fair, art history is a you want fries with that degree. Nobody should major in things like that. Or at least get a double major with something useful. That being said, it is sad how parents try to control their kids financially in college.
If the parents are paying the bill, there's nothing sad at all about them not wanting to pay for an art history degree. It would be sad if they were forced to pay for it.
It's squandered if they devoted their time and effort and youth in those pursuits and ignored building an educational foundation that would be more broadly applicable.
Nobody is saying they shouldn't be led into being a more well-rounded person.
If the parents are paying the bill, there's nothing sad at all about them not wanting to pay for an art history degree. It would be sad if they were forced to pay for it.
It's sad if they force the kid into a profession he is not the bit interested in.
How the hell do they get a job in that field with no college degree?
I think maybe back in the day, it was easier to get your foot in the door and work adjacent to a field that you might be interested in even if you don't know it at the time. Maybe you weren't "the thing" you wanted to eventually be, but you could work beside them and assist them in their work.
For instance, after my first job as a dishwasher, I got into more administrative work as opposed to typical retail and food & bev work that most high schoolers fall into. A lot of this was due to going the technical pathway I pursued as opposed to the AP pathway that some of my other college-bound peers followed. Through the tech school I went to (during high school), the program helped find me a job as an admin asst. at a very small, family-owned business looking for some additional help around the front office. In that role, I worked with our HR manager, CFO, accountant, ops managers, etc. That later led to a role at their sister company as an accounting assistant. These roles gave me valuable work experience after I graduated from college, which I think gave me a leg up compared to many other fresh grads.
I don't know how possible it is to get these opportunities today, because modern hiring seems so incestuous at some of the smaller places and nearly impossible at the big corps unless you know someone who knows someone. A lot of our interns wind up being sons or daughters of executives and directors. Stringent hiring practices of today may make it increasingly more difficult to do these little exploration projects to "find yourself" IMO.
I'll add that expecting to know what you want to do at 15-20 years old, especially if you're coming from a low income, blue collar family, is going to be incredibly difficult for anyone (though not impossible). All my early career dreams were fantasies with very little groundwork in place to achieve them. Since we were low income, this also meant we didn't go to the best schools. Not going to the best primary and secondary schools vastly limits your exposure to the world beyond low income career paths. I'm also in a field today that didn't exist when I was in high school, so how much of it will really be relevant unless they go into some traditional career like veterinarian, teacher, or accountant.
Location: Was Midvalley Oregon; Now Eastside Seattle area
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Quote:
Originally Posted by NDak15
I could see your point on high school students.
Exactly. He lives in another dimension.
To be fair, art history is a you want fries with that degree. Nobody should major in things like that. Or at least get a double major with something useful. That being said, it is sad how parents try to control their kids financially in college. Since I put myself through college with loans my parents didn't have a dog in that fight. All I had paid was health insurance and car insurance.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ralph_Kirk
If the parents are paying the bill, there's nothing sad at all about them not wanting to pay for an art history degree. It would be sad if they were forced to pay for it.
DS spent more time writing, reading, than doing rithmetic, while he was in the publics.
Location: We_tside PNW (Columbia Gorge) / CO / SA TX / Thailand
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it's not tough, many employers will pay / assist with college to help an employee progress... VA medical paid for (5) programs for my sis, including PhD. Not at all uncommon. Just go to work for Dollywood (eligible for all employees, including PT, the first day of employment)
If you are a chronic underachiever... Walmart or Taco Bell will do.
I don't think we will ever agree when it comes to weedout. If high schools are doing a bad job of teaching STEM, then colleges maybe need to take up the slack, rather than weeding people out. Plus, as I keep saying, but you don't agree, they use the wrong criteria to weed people out. They tend to weed out anybody who doesn't want to be a doormat, and justify it by saying that's how the real world is. For example, a STEM professor gives a 0 to a studentw ho misses an exam for a funeral, justifying it by saying that's how STEM employers operate. And then students decide that if this is the lifestyle of a STEM employee, then it's time to pick a different major, especially since STEM fields only pay modestly, but expect you to give up everything for your job. Maybe it's the employers who need to change.
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I think the difference is neither I, nor my kids, nor anyone I know experienced weedout that used criteria and excuses that you bring up. That's not weedout; that's simply a poor program.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mitsguy2001
I find it interesting that you clearly support women in STEM at the expense of men, but you also support weed out, even though women seem to be disproportionately weeded out.
I don't support one vs the other; I support everyone having the opportunity to succeed or fail. The issue with girls and STEM isn't what you seem to be hung up on but on how fundamental classes were taught. It wasn't too long ago that girls were not allowed to take things like shop classes and boys weren't allowed to take HomeEc.
That's no longer the problem today or this thread. The problem today is neither boys nor girls are being adequately prepared for STEM education.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mitsguy2001
The teachers justify it by saying that in the real world, presentation counts, and that they are trying to encourage women to go into STEM. Trouble is, it encourages the wrong women, and then they get weeded out in college when they get a professor who doesn't care what gender you are. Whereas, women (and men) who actually are interested in STEM get turned off.
Any teacher saying that isn't trying to encourage girls into STEM. Just like your question to your teacher earlier, all they know is style so that's what they grade.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ruth4Truth
Running Start began years before 1993, with what could be called a pilot program at one highschool in Seattle and one of the private universities back in the 80's. But actually, "free college" via enrollment in college courses while in highschool has been going on quietly on a small scale for generations in California and Washington, I don't know about other states. It wasn't necessary to have a formal program set up, in order to be able to enroll kids in cc or university courses while they were in highschool. Many highschool counselors knew how to do it for the rare students who asked for that option. It just wasn't talked about. It was believed to be an option only the high-achieving students could handle.
An interesting note is it wasn't long ago in our school system that a kid could take enough classes at the local CC to almost complete the first two years of college. But they couldn't graduate high school because the school system wouldn't count the CC courses against the high school requirements. And without the high school diploma they couldn't get officially accepted into college to get the college degree those courses enabled. After a bit of controversy back then, dual enrollment is now accepted by the school system.
Quote:
Originally Posted by digitalUID
I think maybe back in the day, it was easier to get your foot in the door and work adjacent to a field that you might be interested in even if you don't know it at the time. Maybe you weren't "the thing" you wanted to eventually be, but you could work beside them and assist them in their work.
For instance, after my first job as a dishwasher, I got into more administrative work as opposed to typical retail and food & bev work that most high schoolers fall into. A lot of this was due to going the technical pathway I pursued as opposed to the AP pathway that some of my other college-bound peers followed. Through the tech school I went to (during high school), the program helped find me a job as an admin asst. at a very small, family-owned business looking for some additional help around the front office. In that role, I worked with our HR manager, CFO, accountant, ops managers, etc. That later led to a role at their sister company as an accounting assistant. These roles gave me valuable work experience after I graduated from college, which I think gave me a leg up compared to many other fresh grads.
I don't know how possible it is to get these opportunities today, because modern hiring seems so incestuous at some of the smaller places and nearly impossible at the big corps unless you know someone who knows someone. A lot of our interns wind up being sons or daughters of executives and directors. Stringent hiring practices of today may make it increasingly more difficult to do these little exploration projects to "find yourself" IMO.
I'll add that expecting to know what you want to do at 15-20 years old, especially if you're coming from a low income, blue collar family, is going to be incredibly difficult for anyone (though not impossible). All my early career dreams were fantasies with very little groundwork in place to achieve them. Since we were low income, this also meant we didn't go to the best schools. Not going to the best primary and secondary schools vastly limits your exposure to the world beyond low income career paths. I'm also in a field today that didn't exist when I was in high school, so how much of it will really be relevant unless they go into some traditional career like veterinarian, teacher, or accountant.
Another aspect of the whole high school intern discussion is how many or how few jobs there are in an geographic area that really fit in with this discussion. Percentagewise there just aren't that many internships available in most of the country to give high school students a taste of STEM careers, even as just a coffee getter.
Regarding schools and careers, it's not so much that school can teach what you need for a particular STEM career, but that middle and high school should provide the needed fundamentals to enable a student to go into a STEM program and to not discourage STEM either overtly or by neglect.
Well, I didn't read the whole thread up to now, but anyone who's been in the US culture the last few decades and is an engineer, knows about engineer-hating. We're constantly derided and characterized as dweeby nerdy out of touch guys ( and a few fat ugly girls) with no social skills, probably Aspergers if not downright autistic, can't speak about anything other than our narrow technical interests, either scrawny or overweight, obsessed with things like Dungeons and Dragons, etc., etc., etc., etc. And of course our subject matter is weird, incomprehensible, and generally dangerous, bad for the environment, probably going to spead disease and pollution, or at a minimum it's the evil engineers who designed that car that costs $1000 to fix something that should cost $100, or it's the evil engineers who designed your fridge that crapped out after only two years.
What kid, seeing this constant drumbeat of how unappealing as humans engineers and scientists are, would want to become one? Far better to aspire to be a rapper, influencer, or pro athlete.
At least one good thing comes out of it - old engineers like me, we're in demand amongst employers, because at base they need our skills and there aren't enough younguns coming along to fill in behind us. A threat of early retirement can work wonders.
Not quite how I would have said it, but yep, that's a big part of the problem. It's also a part where how schools teach math and science can help change those attitudes.
it's not tough, many employers will pay / assist with college to help an employee progress... VA medical paid for (5) programs for my sis, including PhD. Not at all uncommon. Just go to work for Dollywood (eligible for all employees, including PT, the first day of employment)
If you are a chronic underachiever... Walmart or Taco Bell will do.
These programs usually come with lots of stipulations, too. I'm not against this idea, I'm doing it myself in fact. But I know full well that if I quit within a certain time period, chances are they will send me the bill.
Employers doing this is as a means to "progress employees" is also a generous characterization of these programs. It's a recruiting tool; no more, no less. They offer it, because their competitors offer it. These programs are often some of the first administrative expenses cut during lean times. My F100 employer didn't even offer this as a benefit two years ago. My manager couldn't care less about what I'm learning in my Master's program and how to help me meet my own career goals within or outside the company.
Additionally, most of these tuition reimbursement programs are good enough to cover only a fraction of what it costs per semester (not including text books and other fees). The only reason it's feasible for me to use my employer's program in full is because my online program is relatively cheap compared to a traditional brick & mortar. I think our yearly benefit cap is $5000, which is a drop in the bucket of what it costs to attend many brick & mortars these days. It might cover half the cost of the actual program. Admittedly, it's better than nothing.
And finally, private benefits usually come nowhere close to government benefits, so it's not really a fair comparison.
To be fair, art history is a you want fries with that degree. Nobody should major in things like that. Or at least get a double major with something useful. That being said, it is sad how parents try to control their kids financially in college.
That may be true, but there is a huge difference between majoring in art history vs being forced into one single major that the student isn't interested in.
Quote:
Since I put myself through college with loans my parents didn't have a dog in that fight. All I had paid was health insurance and car insurance.
Yes, but your parents' income was likely included in the financial aid calculation, so you likely paid more than your fair share.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ralph_Kirk
If the parents are paying the bill, there's nothing sad at all about them not wanting to pay for an art history degree. It would be sad if they were forced to pay for it.
Yes, but my point is that the cost of college is way too high, and I explained an unintended effect.
Quote:
Originally Posted by phetaroi
Nobody is saying they shouldn't be led into being a more well-rounded person.
The cost of tuition makes that impossible for most people these days.
Quote:
Originally Posted by phetaroi
It's sad if they force the kid into a profession he is not the bit interested in.
Again, it's not all or nothing. Probably best not to major in art history, but that also doesn't mean that there is only one major that leads to any money.
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