Secret Santa Causes Anxiety For Millennials...

[Jludo]

Graduated high school in 04, did 4yrs in the service. Got out and used the gi bill for a degree in diesel tech and within a month before graduation had a job with the railroad. My wife has a small business and we live within our means to have a house and her be able to stay home 95% of the time with our 8 month old. I had a solid 4yrs in the service to party and when I went to school at 23 I was focused on my studies unlike my 18yr old counterparts.

Yea I think we have a bad model throwing kids from 0 to 100 into adulthood in an instant. Tuition is an expensive price to pay for an 18 year old to work through how to be an adult and student at the same time. A couple years between high school and college to live on your own would be beneficial to a lot.
I know at 18 I didn't realize I was actually interested in learning the subject matter, I just viewed learning as something I had to do to get the degree.

 

[Vigilant]

Yeah that is an outright serious stretch right there.
Yes things were different. But not that different. I as born in 50 so yeah I am a boomer and grew up in those times.

Umm, sir, we’re talking 1950’s here, not 50A.D. I know it’s tough the older you get, but please try and keep up.

 

[churchmouse]

Umm, sir, we’re talking 1950’s here, not 50A.D. I know it’s tough the older you get, but please try and keep up.

 

[eldirector]

Yea I think we have a bad model throwing kids from 0 to 100 into adulthood in an instant. Tuition is an expensive price to pay for an 18 year old to work through how to be an adult and student at the same time. A couple years between high school and college to live on your own would be beneficial to a lot.
I know at 18 I didn't realize I was actually interested in learning the subject matter, I just viewed learning as something I had to do to get the degree.

I do find it interesting how we, as a society, continue to delay adulthood and extend childhood. In years passed, adulthood correlated with reproductive ability. 18 was absolutely an adult. 15 had adult privileges and responsibilities (like entering into contracts, and working a job). Today, 18 is considered a child by many/most. At 25, you can still be dependent on your parents.

 

[Vigilant]

Today, 18 is considered a child by many/most OF THE DEFENDANT’s FRIENDS AND FAMILY.

Fixed it for you.

 

[jamil]

I don't think the point of the griping is that it's impossible to graduate from community college and buy a cheap rural house. It's that the same paths aren't available and it's not as easy as it was for previous generations if comparing apples to apples. You can't go to purdue and pay tuition/ room and board with the cash you made at your part time and summer job.
All that said the flip side is that college is all but unnecessary today. You're paying for the experience and the network but there is very little you can't learn without a university. We are just in an uncomfortable period transitioning from employers wanting a 4 year degree to employers realizing degrees don't matter.

In which generation was it easier to go to college than which? Nevermind. It's really not important as institutional learning becomes obselete.

I mostly agree with what you said about the necessity of college. But, there are some really good reasons why a degree is a really good idea, still. I'll talk about both ends of that from the perspective of engineering. I've been an engineer for nearly 35 years and have worked with people who've had bachelor's engineering degrees, and masters, and with no formal education. Most engineers with at least some kind of bachelor's degree, especially earlier in their career, are better, more well rounded engineers, than the ones without. Their breadth of knowledge in the field is just better. People with no degree may have a depth of knowledge in a very narrow area, sufficient to do the job, but they often have to learn other aspects of the job from their more learned coworkers, or on their own.

The other side of that, I've also worked with some really smart engineers who were self taught, and their knowledge of those narrower concepts was often much deeper than those with degrees. They learned the concepts deeper because they were deeply interested in it. They turned out to be valuable assets because of that depth of knowledge, and as they gained more experience in the job, they caught up with or surpassed some of their peers who had degrees. After so many years experience, the quality of an engineer tends to be way more about other attributes than just their education.

So, though there is value to having a college degree to get into some fields, for some people--not all are cut out to just make a career out of their hobbies. And then there are some fields that flat out require a degree no matter what. I'd not be comfortable having a doctor who was self-taught as a hobby.

I think the internet will eventually change post-secondary education. There's no reason why it can't be decentralized. I see a model where you take certification tests that reveal the depth and breadth of knowledge in a given discipline, and how you learn the subject is up to the person. There are already a lot of educational youtube channels that teach students subjects. Even in schools now they're kinda doing that where teachers just point students to an online resource to learn the presented material, and the only thing the teacher does is help them with things they still don't understand. Might as well cut out the middleman at that point and just hire a tutor for things you still don't understand.

I think rather than trying to keep the current centralized institutional model of education, there should just be certifications, which employers can require, and no longer rely on college degrees. So you learn however you learn best, maybe for free by watching youtube videos. Maybe by paying a school to teach you. And then you pay for certification tests that give employers a reason to believe you know how to do the job as an entry level employee. That beats the hell out of Bernie's plan to indoctrinate at the expense of tax payers.

 

[CKW]

College is not for everyone. Just not.

 

[BehindBlueI's]

I was raised by people who were children or young adults during the Great Depression. None of them thought their generation had it harder than their parents, and they were right. The post WWII through '70s era was simply easier for most people. Since then wages have stagnated or declined. Steady full time manufacturing jobs went from roughly 30% of the economy to 10% of the economy. Part-time retail/service jobs made up the bulk of the replacement jobs. Barriers to entry for "good jobs" have increased, the cost of college vs wages has skyrocketed, the cost of housing or rent has skyrocketed, etc. compared to wages.

I am incredibly thankful I'm not starting out from scratch today. I'm incredibly thankful I had a family that pushed education, that I qualified for military service, that I inherited a shack in the woods so that while I lacked most of the 'creature comforts' I had minimal housing expenses. I know I worked to get where I am but I also know that hard work alone isn't going to work for everyone and that I had opportunities and luck that many just don't have today. The jobs I did as a kid either don't exist or have been crushed by illegal labor, and were never an option for the urban poor to begin with.

 

[Jludo]

I do find it interesting how we, as a society, continue to delay adulthood and extend childhood. In years passed, adulthood correlated with reproductive ability. 18 was absolutely an adult. 15 had adult privileges and responsibilities (like entering into contracts, and working a job). Today, 18 is considered a child by many/most. At 25, you can still be dependent on your parents.

As we evolve adulthood is pushed further back, I dont think there is some inherent age of adulthood. Your frontal lobe isn't done developing until 25.
I thought I saw somewhere that one of the things that made us more intelligent as a species was how long our childhood/development took.

 

[jamil]

BBI, much of that I agree with. The standard of living has gotten progressively higher than it was years ago though. My dad was one of those people who were born before the great depression, before the roaring twenties. He was born in a one room house with a dirt floor, no running water, and had to **** in an outhouse, quit school in the 3rd grade to pick cotton with his brothers to help the family makes ends meet. He was 45 years old when I came along. I was born in a hospital. I came home to a multi-room house with wood floors, running water, 2 bathrooms. I still had to share a bedroom with my older brother though. Folks got divorced when I was young. I went to college and paid my own way, except that my dad did help with some living expenses.

My son was born in a hospital and came home to a better house than I did, with more family resources than mine had. He is starting out from scratch now. He's working and mostly paying his own way, but with our help. He has a scholarship that pays some of his tuition also. He's paying the rest by working while attending school. If all continues as it is, he will be debt free with money in the bank when he's done with his undergrad. If he decides to go on to law school, that's more expensive and he may need to take out student loans to pay for what he can't cover on his own. It just depends where he is financially then. He has taken advantage of many things I didn't have. Primarily, I didn't have two parents still living together with a middle class household income. For all that privilege he's getting a reasonable start in the world that exists now, much of which I did not have available to me.

But, because my son grew up with the privilege of progressive standards of living, he has not learned a lot of the lessons I learned through the hardships I had. And that cascades all the way down through generations prior of progressively worse standards of living. Technology and socioeconomic improvements has increased those standards through the generations, not decreased. Nearly every grown child can say he or she has it better than their parents. All the way down. Almost no one in the US today has to go outside to **** like my dad did. Almost no one lives in a dirt shack today with several brothers and sisters like my dad did. 95 percent of people today have cell phones. 77% have smart phones. It's not that people today don't have hardships. It's that the hardships are different. And less existential.

If there is a diminishing return for now as opposed to then, I think it's more in the form of the ease that comes with societal improvements. Like muscles, if you don't use them regularly then simpler tasks become more burdensome. Well, it's just rambling thought stream at this point. The point was, even with crazy high tuition, if someone is starting out today, they can indeed make it. My son has more advantages than I did, and I had more advantages that my dad did, and I really don't think I'm better off because of it, because he could likely live through things I couldn't. Dirt floor. Picking cotton as an 8 year old. ****ting outside. Nope. Not doing that. But he was satisfied with his life when he died.

 

[jamil]

As we evolve adulthood is pushed further back, I dont think there is some inherent age of adulthood. Your frontal lobe isn't done developing until 25.
I thought I saw somewhere that one of the things that made us more intelligent as a species was how long our childhood/development took.

Peek intelligence I don't think matters in terms of when someone is deemed an adult. That's probably as much social as it is physical. Appropriate stress/hardship vs support vs socialization seems to make the best person. Not sure how else to put that idea into words but I think you get the idea. A person who lives in luxury, is never challenged, never stressed, never feels hardship, may never mature enough to be an adult in a practical sense. And someone who has hardships to figure out for themselves as they're capable, with guidance from caring adults, will probably mature sooner and be more adult-like in a practical sense, even if his frontal lobe isn't yet fully developed.