Academia

The notion that college is not worth it is deeply inequitable. Georgetown researchers predict that within a decade, nearly three-quarters of jobs will require some education or training after high school.

I dislike the not-so-subtle assumption that "some education or training after high school" should be equated with "college." He's failing to acknowledge that many of those jobs are skilled trades that are best approached by apprenticeship or vocational school, not college.

In fact, he wears his bias against the skilled trades on his sleeve later in the article:

As someone who was academically tracked to not go to college and instead encouraged to go to a technical school, I find the messaging abhorrent. Black, Latino and poor white students in my high school were consistently placed in remedial courses and vocational courses such as small engine repair, auto repair shop and wood shop. Meanwhile, white students from the affluent part of our little town enrolled in college prep courses.

He -- like many people in recent decades -- was done a disservice by guidance counselors etc. treating trades as second class when they really shouldn't be. As an engineer, one of my biggest regrets is that I was pushed away from hands-on "vocational" classes that in retrospect would've been helpful to me, just because they were for the "bad" students. It's sad that, instead of realizing that problem in messaging, the author is choosing to perpetuate it.

The bottom line is that, while I get that his main point is poor and minority students need to be encouraged to go to college more, I wish he'd at least spent a little time pointing out the flip side, that privileged white students need to stop being pushed towards it to the point that vocational training is demonized.

Part of it is how academia is associated with the elite, and nobody likes the elite, whatever you think the elite is.

The real issue is the messaging here. Climate change is going to make this a non-issue for everyone pretty soon. There won't be anything to worry about but surviving if we don't fix our collapsing climate.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

But there in the Imperial Valley of southeast California, I forged ahead as a full-time night student, picking up what wages I could during the day.

After transferring to San Diego State University’s Imperial Valley Campus, I earned my bachelor’s in psychology among scattered trailers and temporary classrooms.

Like an arduous hike from a valley up to a mountain summit with a beautiful vista, that first-generation diploma changed the trajectory of my family.

“Jobs for people without college degrees that pay over $130,000 a year make up 1 percent of the American economy,” Anthony Carnevale, director of Georgetown’s Center on Education and the Workforce, recently told CNBC.

I was the only one in my group of friends at my high school who refused to listen to the guidance counselor who told me that college was “not for me.” From a recent New York Timespodcast episode to a much-cited Gallup poll showing a drop in Americans’ confidence in higher education, too many students from marginalized communities are hearing the continual drumbeat of the same message I heard decades ago.

We know that a college degree leads to better health outcomes, a more engaged and responsible citizenry, that we collectively generate more tax revenue, that we become life-long learners, that our families and our communities are transformed, and that we have more control over our careers.

The original article contains 867 words, the summary contains 219 words. Saved 75%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

When you ask people to front load their economic lives with basically a mortgage of debt, and it becomes untenable to ever catch up because your degree is overlooked in the sea of degrees kf other debt holders and HR wants over qualified morons for barely over factory work wages - people look at that and rightfully nope out.

You could have had a solution to that with a very affordable "how are you going to pay for that" and you chewed him up and spat all his supporters out while rolling out the red carpet and giving candies to neocons.

So don't cry to us crocodile tears when people resort to the trades and make as much as a bachelors degree holder with paid training and zero debt.