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Comment by sytelus | Hacker News Reader

TLDR; In Germany, 60% of people get vocational training as their "higher education" designed for vary specific jobs. Companies sign contract with young people at the age of 15-16. They get certification for this specific training by age of 20 and then get on with those jobs. At least half of the education system is designed as a "factory" that produces specific skilled workers that industry asks for.

Personally I'm not sure if any country should be adopting this model.

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It's not just very specific jobs, it's most jobs. You work in sales? You learn to be a "Kaufmann/Kauffrau". You work as a house painter? You learn "Maler/in und Lackierer/in". You work as a cook? You learn "Koch/Köchin". For three years at much less than 1000€/month! It's no surprise that the drop-out rates are at 25%.

If you don't do that, you usually can't even get those jobs. It's a stupid system. It's basically what became of the medieval guilds, in modern times.

People like to connect our low youth unemployment rate with this system, but I believe in reality most of these people are attending some form of education or job training program, so they don't "count" as unemployed. When they're done with all that, they're so old they don't count as "youth" anymore. That trick only works when a country can afford it, though.

What's wrong with this? Starting out in sales with a three year (not very well paid) apprenticeship still sounds a lot better to me than paying for college for four years, amassing a huge amount of debt and then going to work in sales afterwards with zero real world experience.

Community colleges, which are generally not as expensive or time consuming, exist to provide exactly that to those who want that job-specific training. For everyone else, they can walk into the job without any training. It is not necessary. The best part of the American system is that you are free to do almost anything (there are a few exceptions).

I'm not sure there is any reason to spend four years and rack up huge debt for career purposes. College is for academic pursuits, not career ones.

What's good about it: It produces people who actually know how to do the work, and does so more efficiently than college. The way we do it in the US is dependent on a company being able to decide who can and cannot do the work in a few hours of interviewing, and that doesn't work all that well.

What's wrong with it: It (probably) closes the door to non-traditional entry into the trades. Also, presuming I understand it correctly, it makes it hard to change careers. You hit 40, and decide that you don't like the life you chose as a 16-year-old? Well, if you can re-take it at 40, that means three years of low-paid internship at some other trade.

If someone wants to take up a certain trade, why is it stupid to teach him the necessary skills for that trade? It seems much less wasteful to me than a system in which everyone goes to college for four years and racks up a bunch of debt for an education that is ultimately of little value to most.

It's nonsense to force them into getting a poor government education just so that they are allowed to perform a trade that doesn't even require it.

What sense, for instance, does it make to go to school for three years and get paid poorly just to work as a salesperson?

Or educational systems could simply compete. People would be able to pick, and the most productive and effective system would win out.

Why

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