Yes this stood out to me as well. I don't understand the rationale behind that argument. College attendance is at an all time high. Why is University not producing the thing that "smart immigrants" seem to have that U.S. graduates do not?
Oddly enough no educational program helps with those already affected, retraining program participants have even been observed to fall behind about one day per 24 hours no matter how intensive the training program.
If they would just pull themselves up by their bootstraps like I do then they'd all look 29 for the rest of their lives, I mean can't all macroeconomic problems be solved by lecturing people to all do microeconomic improvements upon themselves, of course if they did that and no one were over age 29, then ageism would simply result in no one appearing to be over 28 ever being employed again, LOL.
I don't understand this, do you mind explaining it to me?
You can tell these at college - they take the easiest classes, they do as little as possible, they'll give you long-winded explanations justifying cheating, they complain about the college rather than taking advantage of the opportunities there, and they avoid math as much as possible.
When they graduate, they are only marginally employable, and offering more training won't help.
This is kind of off-topic and nitpicky of me, but it's something that's been on my mind recently, so I'll go ahead anyway:
For many things in life, condemnations are much easier to make than defenses, but that doesn't mean the defense is without merit.
I once took an upper-level math class where the instructor told us that we were not allowed to receive any help from people who were not currently enrolled in, or administering, the course. I said "screw that" and routinely asked my friend at another university, who had taken a similar course, for advice and clarifications on the subject matter and assignments. As a result I did very well in the course, particularly on the exams (where of course I had no one helping me).
This was clearly cheating, but to fully justify why I felt the rule was unfair, and why I felt it was morally permissible to cheat, would have required a full exposition of my beliefs on the purpose of education and fairness and personal responsibility. Meanwhile, anyone could just say to me, "that's against the rules, it's cheating, and you're putting the people who don't cheat at a disadvantage." Much easier to condemn than to defend.
This is really just a nitpick, though, and I agree with your overall point.
You can't just train/encourage people into that. They are born that way. They'd be scientists/engineers for free if they could. Ironically, this often results in them being very well paid :-)
It reminds me of the fighter pilots who say "I can't believe they actually PAY me to fly these things!"
There's always a shortage of those kinds of people.
What if your mother was a drug addict and your father was a fast-food worker? Would you still be a natural-born scientist?
It's too easy to think "People are born how they are."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly_Johnson_(engineer)
and his autobiography:
"Kelly: More than My Share of It All" by Kelly Johnson
Also, the wikipedia page makes it sound like it was all due to his merit:
His parents were Swedish, from the city of Malmö, county of Scania. Kelly was ashamed of his family's poverty, and vowed to return one day in prominence.[6] Johnson was 13 years old when he won a prize for his first aircraft design. He worked his way through Flint Central High School and graduated in 1928, then went to Flint Junior College, now known as Mott Community College, and finally to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where he received a Bachelor's and Master's Degree in Aeronautical Engineering.
Who granted him the prize? It's fortunate they were paying attention to his work. How did he attend college with no money? It's fortunate he managed to find a source of income. Nowadays college is prohibitively expensive for those in poverty who don't achieve a full-ride scholarship or loans. And if you entered the workforce and later decide to go to college, you don't qualify for loans.
It seems less useful to say that someone will become something rather than they might overcome X and Y to become Z.
People (especially in America) have choices about their path in life. They are not hapless victims of circumstance and do not follow preordained paths.
Your thesis is that they do: "They are born that way."
It's probably best to agree to disagree as to how much someone at the bottom can influence their situation in the modern day. You're talking about nearly a century ago.
> It's probably best to agree to disagree as to how much someone at the bottom can influence their situation in the modern day. You're talking about nearly a century ago.
You're right it's different today. There's a lot MORE opportunity today than a century ago. Heck, I can get any information I want about any field of knowledge by pushing a button at my desk. How awesome is that? How about all those people becoming billionaires in their early 20s? That was utterly unheard of 50 years ago.
That's a very convenient model, isn't it? If someone fails to make opportunities for themselves, then they must not be very smart and motivated.
It's like epicycles: The model can fit however you want it to fit. That's why it's worth being suspicious of it.
> then they must not be very smart and motivated.
Negation does not work like that. A implies B does not mean that !A implies !B.
I leave you with Feynman noting that you cannot prove a vague theory wrong: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIN_-Flswy0&feature=youtu.be...
Your model seems to fit that description.
Because I've been around a long time, and know lots of people over many years. The ones who believe they can make their lives better and take action to do so, tend to get results and are happier. Those who believe they are victims of chance with no choice, tend to take no action, achieve little, and wind up bitter and defeated.
Note I said nothing about their circumstances.
I choose the happy path. If you choose the victim of fate path, I am sorry for you. Feynman is a terrible argument for your position - I've read his biographies, and he always chose the happy path.
I'm glad you've personally achieved success. It's mildly annoying that you attribute your success to your own inborn merits rather than the mixture of hard work and luck that success seems to be derived from, but you're in good company.
You can indeed close your eyes and choose the happy path. I hope you'll never be cut down by forces you cannot control.
I presume you have sound mind and body, and live in the US. That's all the luck you need. Anything else is up to you. YOUR choice. Even your health is about 60-80% under your control, if epidemiological studies are to be believed.
Even your health is about 60-80% under your control, if epidemiological studies are to be believed.
Do you have a source on this?
If you're not failing now and then, you're not trying. The Uber driver has my respect for getting in the game and trying.
> source
Not offhand. But you can start with every health report that comes out that outlines how this disease or that can have its lethal probability reduced by changing lifestyle. Such as quitting smoking, eating healthy, exercising, flossing, getting vaccinations, washing hands, using condoms, quitting meth, etc. The list goes on.
I interviewed a man last week who had a CS degree from a good school and had been working in industry for two years, two different companies. Couldn't answer any of my technical questions. Couldn't describe, even in broad strokes, how his websites worked behind the scenes (as in "request sent to this server, server accesses DB, server sends this response, mail server sends an alert, etc") Couldn't answer basic questions about his own code (I believe he wrote it, but perhaps with a lot of copy/pasting)
I asked him why he majored in CS. He says that the recession had a big influence on him and he wanted to make a lot of money :-p Okay then! That explained a lot. I don't think programming is as hard as it's often made out to be on HN, but it's a really difficult field if you don't like it.
That's the issue in a nutshell. You can tell people they'll make 100k easily but to be a developer you have to like it.
A good developer looks at the problem and goes "that's cool".
A great developer looks at the problem and goes "Huh, let's try that again".
God forbid people have an instrumental interest in getting one of the few decent jobs available?
- Recent grads from other countries are hungrier so they are constantly learning and have a plan. Many here get a sense of entitlement from graduating college because their parents came from an era where going to college was a near guarantee of a good job. Now it means very little as it's a requirement for most people.
- Our universities leave our students with a lot of debt which can be overwhelming. Rather than take a good opportunity with an internship, they're wanting high salaries straight out of college. They're very short-sighted and entitled. When I hire - I'm not going to overpay because you took on a lot of debt. Most small businesses can't afford to hire at what these grads want. I'm personally hiring people with no formal experience in technology with good personalities and a hunger to learn and teaching them.
- Universities are failing because most don't have the professors and curriculum yet to handle the needs of our evolving economy. I've always been interested in the web but they didn't teach any web development or technology when I was at school, so I taught myself instead of going to classes and ran an ecommerce store in 01 when margins online still existed. My brother is much younger than me and his school has these programs so that's a good thing.
A college education is definitely oversold and has been for some time. It used to be an incredible value. As with most things, I think we'll see a return to the older times and apprenticeships will emerge as a competing alternative. I know General Assembly offers apprenticeships where you pay something like $3500/mo for a boot camp graduate and they work on-site for 4 days and spend Friday learning at GA. I haven't tried it yet because I've been hiring in-network but I think that's a pretty compelling offering for both the student and the company hiring.
Universities know what they should be teaching in order for their graduates to be successful in the workforce and in graduate studies. Lesser schools simply dumb down the curriculum to pad their graduation rates. In the case of software jobs, good companies want new graduates with solid fundamentals. There are certainly professors who are clueless but I doubt it's the tenured/tenure track faculty in top STEM departments.
>A college education is definitely oversold and has been for some time. It used to be an incredible value.
I agree with you on this, most schools are simply not worth attending.
> I've always been interested in the web but they didn't teach any web development or technology when I was at school
This is too vocational for a school to teach. Web development frameworks are easy enough to learn on your own and intellectually they are not challenging. Schools must concentrate on the fundamentals and not on ephemeral technologies.
>As with most things, I think we'll see a return to the older times and apprenticeships will emerge as a competing alternative.
I'd say it's more likely software hiring turns into what you see in industries where too many people want to get in such as investment banking, big law, and consulting where employers simply recruit from certain schools. My Summer software engineering internship at a Fortune 500, non-tech company is composed roughly of 75% of students from reputable or name brand schools. Bay area software companies are probably even a greater percentage.
> My Summer software engineering internship at a Fortune 500, non-tech company is composed roughly of 75% of students from reputable or name brand schools
You might be right with the big companies, but even they have had to open their requirements because of the shortage of talent. SMBs can't afford what those reputable school graduates want. So there is a big gap and opportunity which I think the more value priced colleges, boot camps and apprenticeships can fill to add more good paying jobs which will stimulate the economy.
Many American teens are told that they are able to become and do whatever they want and that money, knowledge, education and job stability have very little utility for happiness.
At age 18, "whatever they want" means partying while gaining large amounts of debt and barely passing through a ridiculously easy, but useless liberal arts major.
Based on the number of students who either never attend or fail to graduate due to financial reasons I think most of this could be by our society choosing not to invest in high-quality education and other social support rather than some intrinsic failure of the higher-education system.