At this point schools are daycare in the US, little more.

My mentor is really starting to worry about what the cohort of students who were in high school from 2020 to now will look like in college. Schools fucking around killing weeks to months of classes staying open with mass absences means the kids will be very far behind other cohorts, but colleges cannot deny them without suffering for a loss of students for several years. Then either the colleges have to lower their standards or be prepared for a whole lot of students to fail out.

Should note that while it is likely they will lower standards, that is not a good fix as graduate school will not lower standards, so basically all that is being done is putting a concrete ceiling up for kids trajectories in many fields.  So kids will get through college then find out the hard way how far behind they are when graduate schools tell them there is no path for acceptance.

If they can't learn at school then they can learn at work!

Jan 7, 2022 18:12:35 GMT c said:

At this point schools are daycare in the US, little more.

My mentor is really starting to worry about what the cohort of students who were in high school from 2020 to now will look like in college. Schools fucking around killing weeks to months of classes staying open with mass absences means the kids will be very far behind other cohorts, but colleges cannot deny them without suffering for a loss of students for several years. Then either the colleges have to lower their standards or be prepared for a whole lot of students to fail out.

Should note that while it is likely they will lower standards, that is not a good fix as graduate school will not lower standards, so basically all that is being done is putting a concrete ceiling up for kids trajectories in many fields.  So kids will get through college then find out the hard way how far behind they are when graduate schools tell them there is no path for acceptance.

Maybe they’ll all fail out and go into good paying technical fields which we need considerably more anyway.

Can only do low level tech stuff with a traditional vocational tech degree. For advanced stuff will need engineering or biology in some form.

Jan 7, 2022 21:56:18 GMT c said:

Can only do low level tech stuff with a traditional vocational tech degree. For advanced stuff will need engineering or biology in some form.

"Low level tech stuff"

Please bust that line out next time you need a plumber in an emergency situation, c!

Just came home from getting my booster and I have a question...if this is the same shot as the 2 before it, how does that capture new variants? For instance, usually a new flu shot takes care of newer strains found within the past year (not all, but some). If the Pfizer shot I received is the same as the first 2 before it, how does that keep Omicron and other variants at bay? Or is it just a top up ensuring I don't get super sick like we discussed early in this thread? 

Jan 7, 2022 22:18:56 GMT iron maiden said:

Just came home from getting my booster and I have a question...if this is the same shot as the 2 before it, how does that capture new variants? For instance, usually a new flu shot takes care of newer strains found within the past year (not all, but some). If the Pfizer shot I received is the same as the first 2 before it, how does that keep Omicron and other variants at bay? I'm guessing it doesn't?

It doesn't do jack to reduce transmission from everything I've read

I am the one who gets stuck doing the plumbing as it is low level work. When I lived in Georgia we gutted the house to the frame and redid everything in it. Plumbing, electrical, insulation, heat ducts, tiles, replaced all the drywall, ect.

The work most with vocational degrees will do is not the higher level craft stuff, but low level work usually working for a larger company. High level stuff you need an in for and contacts. Think about it, the average person wants a job done for as cheap as possible. The need for jobs is at that level, not custom doing the plumbing of a new house that will pay more for craft service.

The other issue with most vocational degrees is right now the jobs offer higher pay based on scarcity. But with vocational school enrollment up 50% since the pandemic started the market will start to flood. Once the scarcity is gone, the pay starts to drop.

Also many of the statistics are very misleading anyway about tech degrees as they include masters level degrees in them, like electrical engineering or nursing. Salary includes jobs that it is nearly impossible to get if you do not have a degree, like statistician jobs or computer database engineers. Sure you can do both without a degree, but almost no one will even interview you.

Vocational school are great for teaching a specific career, but sending everyone to vocational schools is as bad of an idea as sending everyone to four year college is.  We need to move to actual fucking career planning in high school and real paths to that career, rather the system we have now.

And in both cases, students will be coming in unprepared as one thing that is constant in both areas is math, and math skills are one of the skills that COVID is really hurting.

Jan 7, 2022 22:18:56 GMT iron maiden said:

Just came home from getting my booster and I have a question...if this is the same shot as the 2 before it, how does that capture new variants? For instance, usually a new flu shot takes care of newer strains found within the past year (not all, but some). If the Pfizer shot I received is the same as the first 2 before it, how does that keep Omicron and other variants at bay? Or is it just a top up ensuring I don't get super sick like we discussed early in this thread? 

Basically the theory is you get the shot now and your antibody rate goes sky high so now if you do get sick, you start from a high rate of antibodies and not after they waned for six months.  

Does very little to stop infection of the current variant as it binds super easily, but slows the spread of the older ones that transmit fastest through droplets.  

Imma just stay home forever.

Supreme Court in the US likely to kill the general workplace vaccine mandate via OSHA. Likely the healthcare one as well. But companies will be free to discriminate as they wish, so the healthcare one will effectively not change, nor will the workplace one for most majority companies.

Can't wait to see Fox keep it in place after the mandate is lifted.

Oral arguments seemed to favor the healthcare mandate but tore apart the general one.  The healthcare mandate it was noted did not have any opposition from healthcare organizations, only employees.


Sotomayor refused to attend in person.  Gorsuch, who normally sits next to her, refused to wear a mask.  

Jan 7, 2022 22:32:37 GMT iron maiden said:

Imma just stay home forever.

You and 🤯 are living the dream~

Jan 7, 2022 21:56:18 GMT c said:

Can only do low level tech stuff with a traditional vocational tech degree. For advanced stuff will need engineering or biology in some form.

What you’re calling low level tech is what’s needed.

And make good jobs, but you hit a concrete ceiling early forcing you to go back to school to if you wish to advance in your career. Like it or not many companies hiring departments use the degrees as hard filters for applicants. So your only option is to go into business for yourself or have a connection to skip the degree. If you go into business for yourself, you need to compete against major corporations.

There are tradeoffs that are being forgotten about in this debate and people mistakenly assume that the need for vocational jobs is a need for things like handymen when the need is in computers, healthcare, and logistics and transport.

Jan 7, 2022 18:38:46 GMT mikec said:

Jan 7, 2022 18:12:35 GMT c said:

At this point schools are daycare in the US, little more.

My mentor is really starting to worry about what the cohort of students who were in high school from 2020 to now will look like in college. Schools fucking around killing weeks to months of classes staying open with mass absences means the kids will be very far behind other cohorts, but colleges cannot deny them without suffering for a loss of students for several years. Then either the colleges have to lower their standards or be prepared for a whole lot of students to fail out.

Should note that while it is likely they will lower standards, that is not a good fix as graduate school will not lower standards, so basically all that is being done is putting a concrete ceiling up for kids trajectories in many fields.  So kids will get through college then find out the hard way how far behind they are when graduate schools tell them there is no path for acceptance.

Maybe they’ll all fail out and go into good paying technical fields which we need considerably more anyway.

In Australia you can make more as a good technician than you can from a lot of degree jobs.
It's crazy here, I see engineers employed to do clerk work that a high school graduate could do

Can is the imperative word. Most however do not. Most will make less than they do if they got a four year degree because of that concrete ceiling that requires you to have specific contacts to advance your career.

Also in the US engineering is traditionally a masters level degree. And a degree that COVID will disrupt extremely because of the reliance on calculus, trig and matrix algebra.

A lot of confusion mixing up the guy that lays the bricks and the guy who planned the house.  They do not make the same.  

Jan 8, 2022 0:08:22 GMT c said:

Can is the imperative word. Most however do not. Most will make less than they do if they got a four year degree because of that concrete ceiling that requires you to have specific contacts to advance your career.

Also in the US engineering is traditionally a masters level degree. And a degree that COVID will disrupt extremely because of the reliance on calculus, trig and matrix algebra.

A lot of confusion mixing up the guy that lays the bricks and the guy who planned the house.  They do not make the same.  

Here it's different, most tradies who are decent can make six figures with overtime.
I could go back on the tools tomorrow and get 150k.

We don't have master contractors and labourers.
Here a plumber makes more than a nurse and an electrician makes more than a teacher by a wide margin

US median on a plumber is 50k a year. Be about 70k australian. Median income for any degree holder in the US is also 50k.

Pay for plumbers is limited by contacts. Either you have contacts and can do craft stuff, you work for someone who has contracts or go independent and hope to get work. Only way to really make big money here would be doing craft work making it a luck based or contact based job. My friend does craft carpentry and only way he got into it was our area is full of super rich people, who have friends who refer him around to do their summer / winter or vacation homes during off seasons. My other friend who does it makes more money doing youtube videos about carpentry than he does from the carpentry jobs himself. He is the better worker of the two, but makes a quarter of what my friend with contacts does.  He can record his work though, and found a way to double dip on youtube though which makes up for it.

And this is why they report average salary, craft worker gets paid multiple more than the rank and file guy doing contract work. For craft workers, market only supports an extremely limited about people in a geographical area. Most people are not willing to throw down 100k to have their house customized.  Which is why a concrete ceiling exists.  Either you have the contacts and do work for the rich, or you rely on contracts and get paid a fixed rate that varies only with cost of living.  Not much room for growth.  

It is a stable career, but we should be really honest with kids about what the market, income and growth.  A plumber is never going to be a designer, and most will not get to do any sort of craft work.  You generally will be working for someone doing repairs.  This is not the narrative many get though at vocational schools telling them they will be their own boss and can earn six figures if they work hard.

To detail this out, here was the pitch for the school I planned to attend when I wanted to do statistics, before I realized evaluation was actually the exact work I wanted to do. Be your own boss, doing private statistical consulting for the largest firms, starting at 100k. Google, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon all hire students from here. Learn cutting edge methodology, etc, etc.

Talked with graduates, you started at 50k - 60k, only the kids that got into the big firms had family there or got extremely lucky and had the firms give them their practicum and hired them as the best person on the practicum team, no one got consulting work, and many did not even land interviews. Was told to expect 18 months of interviews before landing a job unless I wanted to work for the practicum team and was the best person on my randomly assigned team. First job was as a bunion statistician doing data cleaning and pre-analysis work, so you didn't even get to do statistical analysis, just prepare the work for a senior member to do it. Cutting edge methods were not taught unless you define cutting edge by 1970.

Jan 8, 2022 1:42:37 GMT c said:

US median on a plumber is 50k a year. Be about 70k australian. Median income for any degree holder in the US is also 50k.

Pay for plumbers is limited by contacts. Either you have contacts and can do craft stuff, you work for someone who has contracts or go independent and hope to get work. Only way to really make big money here would be doing craft work making it a luck based or contact based job. My friend does craft carpentry and only way he got into it was our area is full of super rich people, who have friends who refer him around to do their summer / winter or vacation homes during off seasons. My other friend who does it makes more money doing youtube videos about carpentry than he does from the carpentry jobs himself. He is the better worker of the two, but makes a quarter of what my friend with contacts does.  He can record his work though, and found a way to double dip on youtube though which makes up for it.

And this is why they report average salary, craft worker gets paid multiple more than the rank and file guy doing contract work. For craft workers, market only supports an extremely limited about people in a geographical area. Most people are not willing to throw down 100k to have their house customized.  Which is why a concrete ceiling exists.  Either you have the contacts and do work for the rich, or you rely on contracts and get paid a fixed rate that varies only with cost of living.  Not much room for growth.  

It is a stable career, but we should be really honest with kids about what the market, income and growth.  A plumber is never going to be a designer, and most will not get to do any sort of craft work.  You generally will be working for someone doing repairs.  This is not the narrative many get though at vocational schools telling them they will be their own boss and can earn six figures if they work hard.

Yeah, like I said it not like that here.
Every trade does a four year apprenticeship and this limits the amount of available trades people

Jan 8, 2022 1:42:37 GMT c said:

US median on a plumber is 50k a year. Be about 70k australian. Median income for any degree holder in the US is also 50k.

Pay for plumbers is limited by contacts. Either you have contacts and can do craft stuff, you work for someone who has contracts or go independent and hope to get work. Only way to really make big money here would be doing craft work making it a luck based or contact based job. My friend does craft carpentry and only way he got into it was our area is full of super rich people, who have friends who refer him around to do their summer / winter or vacation homes during off seasons. My other friend who does it makes more money doing youtube videos about carpentry than he does from the carpentry jobs himself. He is the better worker of the two, but makes a quarter of what my friend with contacts does.  He can record his work though, and found a way to double dip on youtube though which makes up for it.

And this is why they report average salary, craft worker gets paid multiple more than the rank and file guy doing contract work. For craft workers, market only supports an extremely limited about people in a geographical area. Most people are not willing to throw down 100k to have their house customized.  Which is why a concrete ceiling exists.  Either you have the contacts and do work for the rich, or you rely on contracts and get paid a fixed rate that varies only with cost of living.  Not much room for growth.  

It is a stable career, but we should be really honest with kids about what the market, income and growth.  A plumber is never going to be a designer, and most will not get to do any sort of craft work.  You generally will be working for someone doing repairs.  This is not the narrative many get though at vocational schools telling them they will be their own boss and can earn six figures if they work hard.

Plumber starts as an apprentice at 40k, is trained on the job, makes $160k in four years while person earning bachelors degree takes 20-50k in student debt. The median wage for a plumber is about $5000 more per year than the median wage for anyone with a bachelor’s degree. Plumbers at that median wage after completing their apprenticeship with no debt, college degree guy has to start their work at a lower wage. By the time they’re thirty the plumber is more than 250k ahead in lifetime earnings adjusted to their debt and it doesn’t get better.

Oh and because there’s a significant lack of plumbers and that problem is compounding as a generation of people being told to “be whatever they want to be by going to college” choose not to be plumbers and replace the ones retiring, so that plumber has their choice of positions with whichever company they want offering the best hours, pay, benefits or whatever or can go into business for themselves.

I love in a rural, industrial area so that skews some of my views, but there are a significant number of positions that require vocational certification or less to start that pay more than my Bachelors required middle management position.

Jan 8, 2022 2:08:57 GMT mikec said:

Jan 8, 2022 1:42:37 GMT c said:

US median on a plumber is 50k a year. Be about 70k australian. Median income for any degree holder in the US is also 50k.

Pay for plumbers is limited by contacts. Either you have contacts and can do craft stuff, you work for someone who has contracts or go independent and hope to get work. Only way to really make big money here would be doing craft work making it a luck based or contact based job. My friend does craft carpentry and only way he got into it was our area is full of super rich people, who have friends who refer him around to do their summer / winter or vacation homes during off seasons. My other friend who does it makes more money doing youtube videos about carpentry than he does from the carpentry jobs himself. He is the better worker of the two, but makes a quarter of what my friend with contacts does.  He can record his work though, and found a way to double dip on youtube though which makes up for it.

And this is why they report average salary, craft worker gets paid multiple more than the rank and file guy doing contract work. For craft workers, market only supports an extremely limited about people in a geographical area. Most people are not willing to throw down 100k to have their house customized.  Which is why a concrete ceiling exists.  Either you have the contacts and do work for the rich, or you rely on contracts and get paid a fixed rate that varies only with cost of living.  Not much room for growth.  

It is a stable career, but we should be really honest with kids about what the market, income and growth.  A plumber is never going to be a designer, and most will not get to do any sort of craft work.  You generally will be working for someone doing repairs.  This is not the narrative many get though at vocational schools telling them they will be their own boss and can earn six figures if they work hard.

Plumber starts as an apprentice at 40k, is trained on the job, makes $160k in four years while person earning bachelors degree takes 20-50k in student debt. The median wage for a plumber is about $5000 more per year than the median wage for anyone with a bachelor’s degree. Plumbers at that median wage after completing their apprenticeship with no debt, college degree guy has to start their work at a lower wage. By the time they’re thirty the plumber is more than 250k ahead in lifetime earnings adjusted to their debt and it doesn’t get better.

I agree 100% with this.
Also for me it's an argument against the forgiveness of student debts, people need to take some responsibility for the studies they choose.

Have you ever thought about changing gears and going into a trade mikec?

Jan 8, 2022 2:13:13 GMT iNCY said:

Jan 8, 2022 2:08:57 GMT mikec said:

Plumber starts as an apprentice at 40k, is trained on the job, makes $160k in four years while person earning bachelors degree takes 20-50k in student debt. The median wage for a plumber is about $5000 more per year than the median wage for anyone with a bachelor’s degree. Plumbers at that median wage after completing their apprenticeship with no debt, college degree guy has to start their work at a lower wage. By the time they’re thirty the plumber is more than 250k ahead in lifetime earnings adjusted to their debt and it doesn’t get better.

I agree 100% with this.
Also for me it's an argument against the forgiveness of student debts, people need to take some responsibility for the studies they choose.

Have you ever thought about changing gears and going into a trade mikec?

Not really, though if I had done social work much longer maybe I would have considered some production positions because $25k starting pay for 60 hours a week at a non-profit wasn’t worth it when we had a kid. I have never had much of a mechanical aptitude.

Oh and I will disagree with iNCY on loan forgiveness, mostly because we’re talking about 18 year olds being flashed tens of thousands of dollars to go do the thing that practically every guidance counselor in America preaches as the best option for everyone. One of the biggest targets the last five years has been trying to challenge that mentality that college is the first option, something else is an alternative for kids that are not good enough. That attitude pushes parents to expect college and students to accept it as inevitable or a judgment on themselves if they don’t want to do it.

One of my favorite speaking topics with kids when I get to meet with high schoolers is that college is an incredibly expensive way to figure out what you want to do. I went to college to be a politician, and it wasn’t until after my first year in school I had a work experience in politics and decided that was a terrible fit for me. So getting work experiences, internships and job shadows before going to college is critical.

Lifetime wages by retirement sees a reversal here as degree holders due to mobility end up with higher wages. Degree career expect promotion over time, trade careers accept that there is not much room for movement.

The costs of a degree verse the tradeoffs should be taught to kids in detail in high school though. I been for this from the start with detailing their full set of options. I also believe we should vocational prep skills in high school. Tech math, basic healthcare, bookkeeping stuff, ect. Some Southern schools do this, but almost no Northern ones do. Suggest this in a program where they train future policy leaders who could implement this and you get branded racist. This was what started my split from my cohort, suggesting that maybe we should just suggest to at risk kids vocational careers with high pay as a means of social justice as they can make money right away to better themselves and their communities. Did not go over well at all. But after years of telling intro to psych students they cannot be Physiatry as a psych major, and psychology is not the best major to be a counsellor either it is clear students have very little understanding of what degrees lead to what actual jobs. Second half of my undergrad I was the one who worked with students who requested it to make sure their idea of psychology and a psychology degree was aligned to what it actually was. About 3 in 10 students changed their major after our first week meetings. Most to social work, some to communications and some rare ones to nursing. This should have been done before they applied to college though, not afterwards.

And again, the faults in not doing education for the last few years for weeks to months at time for kids, means kids on both paths suffer. Most of high school is not needed, but the math is. Moreso for people in these vocational careers who need to really understand basic high school level geometry, algebra and ratio shit.

Jan 8, 2022 2:21:32 GMT mikec said:

One of my favorite speaking topics with kids when I get to meet with high schoolers is that college is an incredibly expensive way to figure out what you want to do. I went to college to be a politician, and it wasn’t until after my first year in school I had a work experience in politics and decided that was a terrible fit for me. So getting work experiences, internships and job shadows before going to college is critical.

Same when I talked to them before I went off to graduate school.  Going to college without a career in mind is a waste of time they could be getting experience to leverage for what they want to do.  


For the loan forgiveness topic, you realize Incy that the majority of college loans are forgiven right?  Interest these days is higher than 15% income for graduates so after 30 years of paying interest, the base loans are forgiven anyway along with the rest of the interest.  Sometimes faster. 

Also the whole topic got started as there was student loan forgiveness programs setup in the Obama administration that the Trump administration then did not honor.  Then universities like Trump University were ordered to forgive loans due to predatory practices.  The logic extension is should kids who were told they cannot get jobs with a college degree by schools first, then to get a job and pass the automatic sort system American employers use to find employees for entry level, unskilled work not also get forgiven since they took were victims of a predatory practice?

My job counting screws and putting them into bins required two years of college to get, and it was a temp job.  This is how the US labor market works though, many use an arbitrary amount of college as a measure of responsibility.  Can tell kids they do not need college, but many unskilled entry level jobs will not even look at their applications, even if they are qualified or have prior experience.   
Until very recently the combination of employers and college had Americans by the balls.  Until this year.  College enrollment is down 20% and continuing to drop and there are now far, far more jobs than we can fill and a labor shortage despite a low unemployment rate.

Is this still the covid thread?

What are you the COVID restriction police!!!

My body my choice where to post!!!

Ya know I've always considered going to the local career center and trying to learn hvac, et, tradie stuff, etc. simply because working here I've been forced to learn some basics to a lot of building stuff. We have higher level maintenance that know the stuff, but ya know. In school this stuff made my head spin (and during my time they seemed to discourage anything but traditional college) but reading stuff here has steered me from the idea. Seems I'm making about what those guys already make and I'm not willing to take a chance on my own business. Working for another company seems like it would be a pay cut while taking away some of stability I currently enjoy.

On Covid I'm still surprised we didn't have a lot of absences due to it (me being one of the few exceptions)... which doesn't help the "fake virus hoax" discussions here since they've taken next to no precautions being hard-rs and all.

So my covid-19 is progressing nicely, I feel like hot garbage.

As of tonight my brother in law, mother in law and father are all positive as well as at least ten of my friends.
You can't stop the Omicron