This isn’t surprising. It’s also not an indication that women are doing better than men writ large. Most degrees are not worth the investment. A few high performing ones hold the average up. Trades are desperate for workers and have above average pay. Men are much more likely to do those jobs. The risk is that women are going to be left with more debt and will be less employable in the long run.
But for a society that acts like everyone’s worth is wrapped up in whether or not you have a degree, we should be a lot more concerned about this than we are.
This would make sense if college degree requirements weren't rampant for tons of jobs that shouldn't require them.
It's a hard requirement a lot of the time in tech as well. Doesn't matter anymore whether you have 10+ years experience at a large company in <very fancy subfield that requires at least grad school level expertise in something very academic> like compilers or something. You'll be viewed as a neanderthal that probably can't or didn't pass Calculus.
In the past, that was less of an issue. A culture of self study (on prerequisite academic topics) was more prevalent. Now the base assumption is that you stumbled into your position and have been flying under the radar as a dimwit changing the color of buttons.
Theories as to why this is now the case:
- Increased competition and rise of CS enrollment and improved perception of CS degrees.
- Bootcamp grads giving recruiters and hiring managers a bad impression about everyone self taught.
- Overhiring in certain subfields and at certain large tech companies causing a reduction in the signaling value of experience.
- Age discrimination
So in other words, with the exception of physical trades, credential inflation is definitely a real thing and it definitely has an impact on how easily you can move positions and/or negotiate compensation.
And if you couldn't tell, yes I'm salty on account of having had to waste time and money going back to finish a degree that I was overqualified for just in order to not immediately get lumped in with bootcamp grads. The entire ordeal was academically worthless. Don't make my mistake kids...stay in school even if it feels like you aren't learning anything so that you don't have to go back and do it while also juggling adult responsibilities. I think this is a mistake that men are probably more likely to make than women as well, which could help explain some of the gender discrepancy in graduation rates. Call it overconfidence fueled by testosterone or something.
> You'll be viewed as a neanderthal that probably can't or didn't pass Calculus.
Funny you say this 1.5 months after I find out that the university where I got my master's dropped calculus classes (from the bachelor subjects, there never was much non-applied math in the master years). Logic (mathematical logic), discrete math, combinatorics and theoretical statistics have been dropped years past (more than a decade for logic). Applied statistics and "Math I + II" (essentially revision of high school calculus, practical only, no theory, e.g. no more treatment of the difference between Riemann and Newtonian integration) are all the math that's left.
Master degree holders starting 4 years from now will all be "neanderthals that probably can't or didn't pass Calculus". Or at least know little of the theoretical underpinnings of calculus.
I think that you’re missing out on the fact that you’re an outlier. Most people in tech do not get there by hacking away at their computer as a teenager on up, or as a hobby (or work related self education). That’s why companies use a college degree as a filter, especially in jobs that are heavily theoretical and not “we’ll just grind on it with man hours until it’s finished”. It suck that you are an outlier but that doesn’t mean companies have to take a chance on you. Life isn’t fair very often, that’s why it’s extremely important to network, go to conventions or trade shows, or volunteer if a company wants someone on site at a 3rd party. I’m in your boat as well. All I have is an undergrad, but I work with PhD’s because I have niche knowledge and experience that a lot of them do not, and after being in the industry for a while I can hold my own, even though this job tends to require PhD as a degree filter.
> It's a hard requirement a lot of the time in tech as well
I've always seen "or equivalent experience". I'd assumed that including that alternative was mandatory-ish for the same reason that explicit intelligence tests are reportedly lawsuit magnets.
I am not an expert in this, but I think that the “trades pay above average” argument has become accepted as fact when the data isn’t so clear. BLS average wage in 2023 was $64,000 and change. Plumbers, carpenters, and electricians were $67k, $60k, and $67k, respectively. Solid money, but not easy or well above average. Tradespeople who work in high demand sectors, run their own businesses, or become masters can certainly be compensated well, but they are not the norm, and it takes a long time to get there.
I’m with you on the moral argument. My dad was a master carpenter and is one of the smartest people I know. And his work will be around long after mine has become obsolete.
BLS figures show tradeworkers make about the median salary in the US - it isn't above average. In the Occupational Outlook handbook, The mean annual wage for all occupations is $65,470. The trades:
Plumber - median $61,550 per year
HVAC tech - median $57,300 per year
Electrician - median $61,590 per year
Framer(Carpenter) - median $56,350 per year
Bricklayer(Mason) - median $53,010 per year
Job demand also seems to be about average compared to overall jobs.
I agree that investing heavily in many degrees is probably ill-advised.
Union plumbers, electricians, pipefitters, and sheet metal workers all make more than $50/hr on the check and $100/hr with fringes in my metro area with a population of 3 million.
You can see what union trades make in a specific area by searching for “prevailing wage [city name]” and looking at the wage tables.
Employee tradeworkers make good average money, self-employed trades people make a ton more money.
I think the silver-lining here is: be competent at your job and all aspects related to it, but do that while being your own boss.
Not much different from other areas but in this case, trades are in high demand and the initial investment in terms of capital is very little compared to "start a company and hope to break even in an year or two".
I don't know what its like it the states, but many household Plumbers and Electricians are actually running their own small company and work very hard to minimize their take home salary.
But regardless of career path, the real trick is to raise your children to aim higher than median. :)
You don't want to be a plumber, you want to run a plumbing empire!
In the Bay Area and other places where tech workers congregate, trades people make far above these numbers. These numbers are kept low by the south, which might as well not count for the purposes of the average demographics of this website.
We're just in a really bad "liquid" economy right now, so it's easy to feel that narrative of "college degrees are useless".
They aren't useless, but as tuition rises it is inevitably going to be a worse investment. Not to the point where trades are worth its equally annoying but different kind of annoyance, though. Pay depends on unions, and get into trade unions is anything but a meritocracy.
The fundamental challenge with the trades is that some of them are extremely hard on your body. I know roofers who've taken multi-story falls and gotten put back together with steel pins. Plumbers often have issues with their knees or back. If you're lucky or you pick a good specialty, you can make it to your 40s in OK shape. But I've seen a lot of people with chronic problems, and a few with serious disability.
One of ways that I've seen middle-aged people succeed in the trades is to hire a crew and turn it into a business. But by definition, not everyone can be the boss.
It can be a great career if you stay healthy! But I think we should be careful about answering every employment or education question by immediately saying "trades."
Younger women in urban/metro areas are doing significantly better than their male peers economically (higher employment rates and income). This gap is increasing.
Young women are doing worse than their male peers in rural areas economically. This gap is closing.
What implications this has for society at large I can only speculate.
In addition to not being surprising, it also isn't news. These trends appear to date back more than 30 years, so they were around when pretty much everyone in the workforce was college-aged. The people who haven't lived through this, if they exist, are on the verge of retiring.
As a non US citizen, can you tell me how much a computer science degree costs? I've heard students are left with hundreds of thousands in debt when they graduate.
Also, can you pay student loans with pre tax income?
I've worked with many talented engineers over the years who didn't have degrees and have had no trouble finding jobs and moving around. I imagine a degree might help you get a foot in the door, but once you can demonstrate you can do the job, seems to be easy to pick up more work.
I really wonder how damaging that debt would be for a young person who is also trying to save for a house and start a family.
I would argue this is mistaking cause for effect. Girls are outperforming boys in high school, and therefore entering college at higher rates and graduating college at higher rates.
It’s not that boys are making a decision in high school not to go to college and therefore letting their grades slip. Once your grades slip, pathways to college narrow dramatically.
To illustrate my point, we can compare earnings of men with no college to women with a bachelor’s degree. Men make $45k, women make $65k. To believe that men are choosing trades you have to believe that men would voluntarily choose to make 30% less.
> It’s not that boys are making a decision in high school not to go to college and therefore letting their grades slip.
I may be taking the surface level for grantes, but: based on the article, men were a lot more likely to in fact make my decision:
> A 2021 Pew Research Center survey asked Americans without a bachelor’s degree why they chose not to seek one – and found some gender differences in the responses. For example, men without a bachelor’s degree were more likely than women to say they just didn’t want to get one.
And women in another study suggest that they more or less need a degree due to less non-degree options:
>What these numbers reveal is that, indeed, getting more education is an important way to close the gender pay gap. College entry—whether it is to get an AS or a BS—helps women gain access to careers where they have a comparative advantage (e.g., office work). Men on the other hand have better access to lucrative careers that don’t require a college degree (e.g., construction work). This appears to be the most reasonable explanation for why women outnumber men in college.
Encouragement goes a long way, but of course kids aren't dumb either. I'm sure some boys simply seek to work these blue collar jobs and realize you don't need to go to more school (which yes, they do worse in) to star doing this stuff.
>To illustrate my point, we can compare earnings of men with no college to women with a bachelor’s degree. Men make $45k, women make $65k. To believe that men are choosing trades you have to believe that men would voluntarily choose to make 30% less.
Using the men's average is not the right metric. We're looking at a choice here, so the proper thing is to look at the percentage of men without a college degree who earn comparably to men with one, vs the same with women. I think you'll find a greater percentage of high earning men without degrees than you will find with women.
I don't think it's "more opportunities". I'm sure there's a statistics on how much women do not want to be electricians, plumbers, etc., which is fine, just saying it's individual choices not lack of opportunity.
I understand what you're saying, but in a broader sense there aren't as many opportunities for a woman without a college degree to earn a comparable living as a college graduate, given their prevailing preferences for types of work. And of course we don't know how much the fact that there are so few women plumbers influences a young woman's decision.
Trade,Estimated Employment
Construction Laborers,1,019,090
First-Line Supervisors of Construction Trades and Extraction Workers,777,420
Electricians,712,580
Carpenters,700,290
Operating Engineers and Other Construction Equipment Operators,450,370
Bls2023
Where as there’s nearly 4 million acredited teachers and 3 million registered nurses
The IWPR link from above (with data from the US BLS) suggests that the 320K women in construction trades represent 4% of the total field, implying that there are about 8 million total construction trade jobs in the US. I'm not sure how many construction workers hold 4 year degrees, but it seems plausible this would explain a large portion of the gap.
- these aren't the only trades. Sorry i got confused by chatgpt
- I only meant to point out, this seems like a very small amount of people compared to what I thought
- Not a mistake, but I was kindof joking with the post and it wasn't obvious. For this alone I deserved the massive downvote I got. I do think these numbers don't reflect the true number of people working in the field as say registered nurses or professional teachers because... how do i say this in a nice way.... many of them may be sharing a ssn and that's much more dangerous from a regulatory perspective than doing that as a REGISTERED nurse or PROFESSIONAL teacher. However there's a lot of peop[le nursing and teaching who aren't in those stats as well
It’s strange how far American women are ahead of men at educational achievement. Education really is a feminist utopia (not really, but more than the real world).
It also shows how out of touch education is that these gains don’t lead to better real world success.
When I was in college I got good grades. My professors told me my grades were so good, I’d almost certainly do better if I dropped out.
That’s how I learned higher Ed’s dirty secret: high performing drop outs do better than graduates.
You’d think that would lead to some soul-searching in academia. But that doesn’t seem to be happening.
>That’s how I learned higher Ed’s dirty secret: high performing drop outs do better than graduates.
Well it makes sense... IF you can afford to drop out. the media praises people like Gates and Jobs for never finishing college but making billionaire empires, but it's not like they didn't each burn millions on failed projects first before hitting the gold mine. How else are you supposed to stand out as someone "high performing" but with no certifications to show for it? You gotta be your own business.
If you don't have that business acumen (and a small loan of a million dollars), dropping out is horrible advice.
In my anecdote of one, college did help me discover topics that really mixed together my mix of talents and passion into one field. I just wish they told me earlier that the jobs tend to expect masters before my grades tanked. I made out okay and am taking a long cut, but you always wonder about what could have been.
I feel bad for all of the boys out there who have the potential to specialize and get a degree but are surrounded by shitty, ignorant male role models. People who have no goals, no sort of ambition left, no desire to learn, they just sit around and pat themselves on the back for being unmotivated
Maybe it's time for some positive representation of masculinity in our culture? Something that celebrates men (and not for being feminine) and maleness? Of course many men don't have any goals or ambition when mainstream culture will do nothing but shit on them even if they achieve something.
The problem is that so much of maleness is stuff like the male libido, which is a bad, no good, horrible, terrible thing which one must be ashamed of and stigmatized for having. They call it “the male gaze” and try to root it out of the media.
Masculinity is porn, soldiers, guns, cars, savior fantasies, and suffering.
We will get a positive representation and celebration of masculinity at around the same time when a term like “toxic femininity” gets used as much as toxic masculinity does today.
I think they're the opposite of ignorant. They know boys are angry and purposefully taking advantadge of their need for acceptance to further their own goals, be it money, power, or clout.
We have a name for groups who target and isolate vulnerable individuals for personal gain...
I wasn't just talking about the GOP. Some of these people actually are ignorant, feel bad about it, and try to keep everyone else ignorant so that they feel less bad about themselves
A lot of these women will be creating PowerPoint slides and holding meetings for things that don't need a meeting to pay down a 6 figure debt incurred to obtain a worthless degree. Blind ambition to meet an arbitrary metric is stupid.
I really don't think this is unique in terms of gender or generation. But it is a persistent narrative that leads a lot of wayward young men to idolize false "role model" e celebs.
I don't know. Why are we told that representation is important and we must have diversity along every axis throughout media?
Well, if you think about it for five seconds, it's because people in general (but especially children) identify with and look up to people who look like them and share their culture. That's just human nature.
It's not impossible, but boys with only female role models do not develop their masculinity, which is important for self-control considering males can be physically dangerous. I believe there is a link between criminal behavior (which is mostly men) and single mothers. It's really more than a correlation, and perhaps one of the leading causes of criminality.
You can, but ultimately there are male issues that are much easier to confide with males on. Especially about women. It's no different from why women need some female role models.
I've done a bunch of college tours this year with my daughter. Its kinda shocking to see so many homeless men on the streets, then the universities majority women. I'm kinda hoping she'll go to a school that is 50/50. Georgetown was at 62% female, I think Tulane is 64%.
this is the way it has always been. men make up the majority of both of the tails on the distribution of outcomes. people look at one tail and say, this is inequitable! but they don't say much about the other tail.
This is not the way it has always been. Males dominated colleges and universities until anti-male DEI programs were put in place. And now we see 60-75% female colleges/universities.
>Its kinda shocking to see so many homeless men on the streets, then the universities majority women
This is a strange juxtaposition. Are the women in universities making men homeless? Why are the two sides contrasted with each other when there's seemingly barely any relation between the two? How is this any different than something like "it's kinda shocking to see so many single moms barely making ends meet, then silicon valley filled with tech bro programmers"?
> How is this any different than something like "it's kinda shocking to see so many single moms, then silicon valley filled with tech bro programmers"?
Realism, to be frank. Even a single mom has better odds statistically to find a partner than 90% of males. That's why there's not anywhere near as many homeless males than females.
Women still have a cultural option to retreat to the role of a housepartner. Very few men have that option.
I absolutely hate making this comment but I’m obliged to because I feel some you all are pointing at irrelevant factors, because you don’t know any better. Look at the birth rate for a better signal and the decline of single income families. Lastly, straight men, I’ll give you a secret women choose to go to school because we are taught at a young age that if getting an education is the #1 way to not be dependent on anyone. A man can easily walk out on you so it’s a poor decision to not get or finish an education. Look at when the data starts going up- that’s the generation that saw the last wave of traditional stay at home house wives and single income families. Unless you absolutely are called to be a house wife/trad wife at 18 with your high school sweetheart… you go to school. It’s pretty obvious.
>Look at the birth rate for a better signal and the decline of single income families.
Those affect both genders, yes.
>Lastly, straight men, I’ll give you a secret women choose to go to school because we are taught at a young age that if getting an education is the #1 way to not be dependent on anyone.
Well I can give you a secret back: for better or worse, men know we have more options without a degree. Both my uncles weren't college material so my grad dad put them both in the army. another uncle went straight to trades. My cousin went to the peace corp and another cousin did go to school but on a sports scholarship.
These aren't male exclusive but very male skewed. It could be a chicken and egg but for a lot of "us" there is nowhere near as much pressure to go to college in order to get a job. So the stats aren't surprising.
>astly, straight men, I’ll give you a secret women choose to go to school because we are taught at a young age that if getting an education is the #1 way to not be dependent on anyone. A man can easily walk out on you so it’s a poor decision to not get or finish an education.
Nobody says you must be a tradwife. You should seek your dreams in life. If that means you want a degree and career, definitely go for it. That's your choice to make. If you give this choice to anyone else, you will be screwed.
Generic stereotypes of men shouldnt be a major factor in making decisions in your life. This is a you decision.
But there's consequences here that you dont seem to acknowledge and you're going to struggle greatly in the dating scene.
It's still shocking to me that women saw men working very hard jobs, coming home absolutely destroyed and worn out and women wanted this? lol?
Honestly, I think the bit about not depending on somebody is something that would help if we drilled it in to young boys as well.
Totally agree about how women should go to school of course. I'm not sure there was anybody in this chat or the article really questioning that, but you made a good case for it anyway.
There’s nothing wrong with single income families, as that has been the default setting for all of our history. I’m inclined to believe that is a solution for some problem that we don’t remember.
By the way, love how you addressed us as “straight men”, flushing down the toilet any interest we had in taking you seriously.
>There’s nothing wrong with single income families
Except the economies. When dual income becomes more common, housing starts to charge under that assumption.
Most people literally cannot afford to be single income. There are divorcees who stay together simply because either cannot afford to move out and go it alone for a while.
There's definitely nothing wrong with them. But we a matter of risk mitigation, it's obvious why people wish to put themselves in a situation where they don't wind up in the situation or being dependent on a single income (that is another person) when they have preplanned all that out already and chosen it
Readit News
But for a society that acts like everyone’s worth is wrapped up in whether or not you have a degree, we should be a lot more concerned about this than we are.
It's a hard requirement a lot of the time in tech as well. Doesn't matter anymore whether you have 10+ years experience at a large company in <very fancy subfield that requires at least grad school level expertise in something very academic> like compilers or something. You'll be viewed as a neanderthal that probably can't or didn't pass Calculus.
In the past, that was less of an issue. A culture of self study (on prerequisite academic topics) was more prevalent. Now the base assumption is that you stumbled into your position and have been flying under the radar as a dimwit changing the color of buttons.
Theories as to why this is now the case:
- Increased competition and rise of CS enrollment and improved perception of CS degrees.
- Bootcamp grads giving recruiters and hiring managers a bad impression about everyone self taught.
- Overhiring in certain subfields and at certain large tech companies causing a reduction in the signaling value of experience.
- Age discrimination
So in other words, with the exception of physical trades, credential inflation is definitely a real thing and it definitely has an impact on how easily you can move positions and/or negotiate compensation.
And if you couldn't tell, yes I'm salty on account of having had to waste time and money going back to finish a degree that I was overqualified for just in order to not immediately get lumped in with bootcamp grads. The entire ordeal was academically worthless. Don't make my mistake kids...stay in school even if it feels like you aren't learning anything so that you don't have to go back and do it while also juggling adult responsibilities. I think this is a mistake that men are probably more likely to make than women as well, which could help explain some of the gender discrepancy in graduation rates. Call it overconfidence fueled by testosterone or something.
Funny you say this 1.5 months after I find out that the university where I got my master's dropped calculus classes (from the bachelor subjects, there never was much non-applied math in the master years). Logic (mathematical logic), discrete math, combinatorics and theoretical statistics have been dropped years past (more than a decade for logic). Applied statistics and "Math I + II" (essentially revision of high school calculus, practical only, no theory, e.g. no more treatment of the difference between Riemann and Newtonian integration) are all the math that's left.
Master degree holders starting 4 years from now will all be "neanderthals that probably can't or didn't pass Calculus". Or at least know little of the theoretical underpinnings of calculus.
I've always seen "or equivalent experience". I'd assumed that including that alternative was mandatory-ish for the same reason that explicit intelligence tests are reportedly lawsuit magnets.
I’m with you on the moral argument. My dad was a master carpenter and is one of the smartest people I know. And his work will be around long after mine has become obsolete.
Citations:
https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm
https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes472152.htmhttps://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes472031.htmhttps://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes472111.htm
I agree that investing heavily in many degrees is probably ill-advised.
You can see what union trades make in a specific area by searching for “prevailing wage [city name]” and looking at the wage tables.
I think the silver-lining here is: be competent at your job and all aspects related to it, but do that while being your own boss.
Not much different from other areas but in this case, trades are in high demand and the initial investment in terms of capital is very little compared to "start a company and hope to break even in an year or two".
But regardless of career path, the real trick is to raise your children to aim higher than median. :)
You don't want to be a plumber, you want to run a plumbing empire!
They aren't useless, but as tuition rises it is inevitably going to be a worse investment. Not to the point where trades are worth its equally annoying but different kind of annoyance, though. Pay depends on unions, and get into trade unions is anything but a meritocracy.
One of ways that I've seen middle-aged people succeed in the trades is to hire a crew and turn it into a business. But by definition, not everyone can be the boss.
It can be a great career if you stay healthy! But I think we should be careful about answering every employment or education question by immediately saying "trades."
Young women are doing worse than their male peers in rural areas economically. This gap is closing.
What implications this has for society at large I can only speculate.
Also, can you pay student loans with pre tax income?
I've worked with many talented engineers over the years who didn't have degrees and have had no trouble finding jobs and moving around. I imagine a degree might help you get a foot in the door, but once you can demonstrate you can do the job, seems to be easy to pick up more work.
I really wonder how damaging that debt would be for a young person who is also trying to save for a house and start a family.
Is that accurate “most”, and is it only when compared to trades?
Dead Comment
It’s not that boys are making a decision in high school not to go to college and therefore letting their grades slip. Once your grades slip, pathways to college narrow dramatically.
To illustrate my point, we can compare earnings of men with no college to women with a bachelor’s degree. Men make $45k, women make $65k. To believe that men are choosing trades you have to believe that men would voluntarily choose to make 30% less.
https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2024/05/23/labor-m...
I may be taking the surface level for grantes, but: based on the article, men were a lot more likely to in fact make my decision:
> A 2021 Pew Research Center survey asked Americans without a bachelor’s degree why they chose not to seek one – and found some gender differences in the responses. For example, men without a bachelor’s degree were more likely than women to say they just didn’t want to get one.
And women in another study suggest that they more or less need a degree due to less non-degree options:
https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2022/mar/why-women...
>What these numbers reveal is that, indeed, getting more education is an important way to close the gender pay gap. College entry—whether it is to get an AS or a BS—helps women gain access to careers where they have a comparative advantage (e.g., office work). Men on the other hand have better access to lucrative careers that don’t require a college degree (e.g., construction work). This appears to be the most reasonable explanation for why women outnumber men in college.
Encouragement goes a long way, but of course kids aren't dumb either. I'm sure some boys simply seek to work these blue collar jobs and realize you don't need to go to more school (which yes, they do worse in) to star doing this stuff.
Using the men's average is not the right metric. We're looking at a choice here, so the proper thing is to look at the percentage of men without a college degree who earn comparably to men with one, vs the same with women. I think you'll find a greater percentage of high earning men without degrees than you will find with women.
Trade,Estimated Employment Construction Laborers,1,019,090 First-Line Supervisors of Construction Trades and Extraction Workers,777,420 Electricians,712,580 Carpenters,700,290 Operating Engineers and Other Construction Equipment Operators,450,370
Bls2023
Where as there’s nearly 4 million acredited teachers and 3 million registered nurses
45-0000 Farming, Fishing, and Forestry Occupations 432,200
47-0000 Construction and Extraction Occupations 6,225,630
49-0000 Installation, Maintenance, and Repair Occupations 5,989,460
51-0000 Production Occupations 8,770,170
53-0000 Transportation and Material Moving Occupations 13,752,760
That adds up to 35 million total employed.
[1] https://blog.dol.gov/2023/03/21/data-spotlight-employment-of...
- these aren't the only trades. Sorry i got confused by chatgpt - I only meant to point out, this seems like a very small amount of people compared to what I thought - Not a mistake, but I was kindof joking with the post and it wasn't obvious. For this alone I deserved the massive downvote I got. I do think these numbers don't reflect the true number of people working in the field as say registered nurses or professional teachers because... how do i say this in a nice way.... many of them may be sharing a ssn and that's much more dangerous from a regulatory perspective than doing that as a REGISTERED nurse or PROFESSIONAL teacher. However there's a lot of peop[le nursing and teaching who aren't in those stats as well
</rant
It also shows how out of touch education is that these gains don’t lead to better real world success.
When I was in college I got good grades. My professors told me my grades were so good, I’d almost certainly do better if I dropped out.
That’s how I learned higher Ed’s dirty secret: high performing drop outs do better than graduates.
You’d think that would lead to some soul-searching in academia. But that doesn’t seem to be happening.
Well it makes sense... IF you can afford to drop out. the media praises people like Gates and Jobs for never finishing college but making billionaire empires, but it's not like they didn't each burn millions on failed projects first before hitting the gold mine. How else are you supposed to stand out as someone "high performing" but with no certifications to show for it? You gotta be your own business.
If you don't have that business acumen (and a small loan of a million dollars), dropping out is horrible advice.
In my anecdote of one, college did help me discover topics that really mixed together my mix of talents and passion into one field. I just wish they told me earlier that the jobs tend to expect masters before my grades tanked. I made out okay and am taking a long cut, but you always wonder about what could have been.
Not really. I was studying something I loved but was really impractical. I had the money to major in basket weaving, so I did.
But if I needed cash, it would be coding and Google.
Masculinity is porn, soldiers, guns, cars, savior fantasies, and suffering.
We will get a positive representation and celebration of masculinity at around the same time when a term like “toxic femininity” gets used as much as toxic masculinity does today.
We have a name for groups who target and isolate vulnerable individuals for personal gain...
Well, if you think about it for five seconds, it's because people in general (but especially children) identify with and look up to people who look like them and share their culture. That's just human nature.
Deleted Comment
* MIT is 49/51 female/male
* Harvey Mudd is 50/50
* Caltech is 43/57 (the exception, I guess)
* Olin is 52/48
Of course, these schools are not feasible options for most people but it is still a relevant counterexample.
Dead Comment
This is a strange juxtaposition. Are the women in universities making men homeless? Why are the two sides contrasted with each other when there's seemingly barely any relation between the two? How is this any different than something like "it's kinda shocking to see so many single moms barely making ends meet, then silicon valley filled with tech bro programmers"?
It doesn't imply any causality or relationship.
Realism, to be frank. Even a single mom has better odds statistically to find a partner than 90% of males. That's why there's not anywhere near as many homeless males than females.
Women still have a cultural option to retreat to the role of a housepartner. Very few men have that option.
Those affect both genders, yes.
>Lastly, straight men, I’ll give you a secret women choose to go to school because we are taught at a young age that if getting an education is the #1 way to not be dependent on anyone.
Well I can give you a secret back: for better or worse, men know we have more options without a degree. Both my uncles weren't college material so my grad dad put them both in the army. another uncle went straight to trades. My cousin went to the peace corp and another cousin did go to school but on a sports scholarship.
These aren't male exclusive but very male skewed. It could be a chicken and egg but for a lot of "us" there is nowhere near as much pressure to go to college in order to get a job. So the stats aren't surprising.
Nobody says you must be a tradwife. You should seek your dreams in life. If that means you want a degree and career, definitely go for it. That's your choice to make. If you give this choice to anyone else, you will be screwed.
Generic stereotypes of men shouldnt be a major factor in making decisions in your life. This is a you decision.
But there's consequences here that you dont seem to acknowledge and you're going to struggle greatly in the dating scene.
It's still shocking to me that women saw men working very hard jobs, coming home absolutely destroyed and worn out and women wanted this? lol?
Totally agree about how women should go to school of course. I'm not sure there was anybody in this chat or the article really questioning that, but you made a good case for it anyway.
By the way, love how you addressed us as “straight men”, flushing down the toilet any interest we had in taking you seriously.
Except the economies. When dual income becomes more common, housing starts to charge under that assumption.
Most people literally cannot afford to be single income. There are divorcees who stay together simply because either cannot afford to move out and go it alone for a while.
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