Jaded with education, more Americans are skipping college

[dalton99a]

https://apnews.com/article/skipping-college-student-loans-trade-jobs-efc1f6d6067ab770f6e512b3f7719cc0

Jaded with education, more Americans are skipping college
By COLLIN BINKLEY

JACKSON, Tenn. (AP) — When he looked to the future, Grayson Hart always saw a college degree. He was a good student at a good high school. He wanted to be an actor, or maybe a teacher. Growing up, he believed college was the only route to a good job, stability and a happy life.

The pandemic changed his mind.

A year after high school, Hart is directing a youth theater program in Jackson, Tennessee. He got into every college he applied to but turned them all down. Cost was a big factor, but a year of remote learning also gave him the time and confidence to forge his own path.

“There were a lot of us with the pandemic, we kind of had a do-it-yourself kind of attitude of like, ‘Oh — I can figure this out,’” he said. “Why do I want to put in all the money to get a piece of paper that really isn’t going to help with what I’m doing right now?”

Hart is among hundreds of thousands of young people who came of age during the pandemic but didn’t go to college. Many have turned to hourly jobs or careers that don’t require a degree, while others have been deterred by high tuition and the prospect of student debt.

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Who needs critical thinking? Let AI do the work for you

[no_hypocrisy]

1. Depends upon the profession and/or career chosen.

I know of a man (43 years old) who only has a high school diploma. He's a driver for UPS. He's in a union and satisfied with his life.

However, he can't think or reason and will always follow someone instead of leading. Gullible comes to mind.

A college degree is more than a piece of paper. In some cases, it's freedom.

[no_hypocrisy]

7. "Indoctrination"?

Even if you're in a business administration program, you learn to analyze, doubt, argue, and persuade. Not to mention picking up a few useful facts. Most colleges still require a prerequisite program (excuse the alliteration) of writing, science, a foreign language, literature, and/or the arts.

Critical thinking is inherent in most college courses, not indoctrination.

[yardwork]

10. Cough. I don't think you'll get a response...

[DBoon]

9. even a much derided humanities degree teches one how to write and think

I'm saying this having encountered computer science graduates who could not write a coherent paragraph if their life depended on it

[Emile]

11. Saying one can't think or reason without a college diploma . .

Wow

[Blues Heron]

2. More like jaded with high tuition / loan payments

`Cost was a big factor`

How can you be jaded by college if you dont go?

[marybourg]

8. Well, it's certainty clear that the AP is no longer hiring English

major college graduates to write their stories, I guess proving the point that one can get a job without any credentials.

[malaise]

3. They are jaded with the cost of education

That is all

[jimfields33]

13. Yeah 67 thousand a year for Cornell (an example) is disgusting!

Let’s cut that to no more then 15K a year per student. There is zero reason that it can’t be that amount for a year of classes and living in decades old dorms.

[Solly Mack]

4. Well...

Alrighty then.

[Torchlight]

6. I graduated in '89

and still (usually) take a night class a year at JC for my own satisfaction that has nothing at all to do with my career.





(I'm not clever enough or patient enought to graduate from Youtube University or Pocast College with a master's in passionate intensity)

[tanyev]

12. I'm not working in my degree field.

In fact, the job I've had and enjoyed for over 15 years does not require a college degree. And yet, my college years were some of the most wonderful and formative years of my life.

People who don't want to go to college shouldn't have to, but everyone who wants to should be able to.

[Chainfire]

14. I didn't go to college, but I am glad that my doctor did.

I married early and worked an apprenticeship program. My wife had not yet graduated from high school when we married, but we put my wife through a master's degree on a pay as you go basis; helped by academic scholarships. Our income path through our working careers went like this; I made most of the money in first third of our working careers, we were near parity in the middle third, and she made more money in the final third. As it turned out, over the totality of our careers, I ended up making slightly more money, but that was more due to women being chronically underpaid than anything else.

The truth of the matter is that when I was college age, I was too immature to buckle down and study. I had breezed through high school with top grades without ever studying and discovered in my first semester at college that that didn't work, I was shocked. Unlike my wife, I did not have the courage to work 8 hours, go to class for four hours and then study for four more hours every day. She was a champ!

Republicans are terrified that a college education provides students with, as Dr. Sagan suggested, "A functioning bullshit meter." They want college to be for job training only, for if the students learn to think critically, Republicans can not thrive.

[mike_c]

15. honestly, this will likely improve colleges and universities

Remember those fanciful medieval illustrations of exotic animals from distant lands, with parts from a bunch of more familiar beasts stuck together to represent the unknown in more recognizable forms? That's a metaphor for the modern American university that, trying to be everything for all people, can't quite decide whether it's a dog, an elephant, or a bird. Dialing back the expectation that nearly everyone should attend college can only help.