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Comment by davemp | Hacker News Reader

As it turns out bombarding a generation with the idea that you just have to follow your dreams and have "passion" for your work (whatever that means), doesn't do so well when met with reality. Children/adolescents are presented with role models who are textbook examples of survivorship bias. Media is constantly bombarding them with unrealistic "inspirational" and success stories. Educational institutions have never been accused of being in-touch with reality, and chase growth with reckless abandon.

At the end of the day it falls to parents to educate their children. The assumption that the world at large has (or will ever have) your family's interests in mind is horribly naïve and negligent. Schools can mostly be trusted to educate in an academic sense, but reality is not best learned through an iPad.

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How is following your dreams associated with the student debt crisis?

I would argue that most people in college are not following their dreams, but rather following a defined path.

The student debt crisis is not equal for all types of degrees; one of the many contributing factors for this is that student loans have (by regulation?) the same conditions for all majors. Some of those majors generally lead to a substantial increase in income that would enable the student to repay the loan, and some do not; some education is an investment into that student's future earning capacity, and some education is just spending that money for an expensive self-improvement hobby.

And where are all the people who wouldn't, or couldn't, take on the financial risk of going to college, moving to a major city or buying a house?

Is there some part of US society where they hire non-college graduates for a good career and bright future I don't know about? Because from what I hear even people who move to fairly large small cities with cash in hand get disappointed by the small city core, the career opportunities and rising housing costs.

As far as I know people aren't doing what they are doing because they are inspired, but because if they are going to get screwed over anyways they might as well try to have a say in how it happens.

Follow your passion is what previous generation (us) was told. This generation grew during recession and largely follows market. Most go for various bussines degrees.

Our parents generation went to school and got great jobs tho...

Do you think that was the case for everyone?

I think the percentage was far higher than today.

Statistically speaking, yes, I believe that my parents' generation (in the US) could assume that college degree + hard work = good job. That's how we got into this mess: it was such a clear equation that going to college became a no-brainer for people who could do it, which inflated the value and in turn the cost of a degree.

Mostly after going to war first, right?

No.

When my dad gradutated high school in the mid 1970's, you could get a decent job with a high school diploma. Not having a HS diploma meant you were flipping burgers, but you could still find work. My uncle lived with my father (and mother) while working on his GED, which really didn't give him HS diploma status but was good enough to find slightly better work.

College basically meant you could make sure you had a steady salary for life and could definitely find work. You had much more than the minimum schooling.

Go read The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman. Things changed greatly from when I got out of grad school in 1982 and when I was laid off from my job at the end of 2017. I worked for a company that had 65,000 employees in our city when I started and about 2000 when I left.

Many called Ross Perot a nutjob when he coined the phrase "The great sucking sound of jobs leaving the country." I watched it happen.

We also watched the ratio of the highest paid employee/ lowest paid full time employee skyrocket. I understand that there are high performing employees, but economies need a large middle class who have income to buy products (without running up debt) for the economy to prosper.

Now we see people trying to support families on what were after school jobs for high school students... Times changed when offshoring became easy...

Automation has eliminated a ton of jobs.

Look at the steel mills of the early 20th century. They had groups of people hoisting around huge pieces of steel on chains.

Look at a modern steel mills. All that hoisting is now done by heavy machinery control by one guy in an air conditioned operator cabin.

By offshoring or just the advancement of technology, those jobs are gone.

People just have to invent new ways to contribute to society - to say it’s “easier said than done” is understatement though; but there is really no other way.

I’d say “follow your passion” means do a job you don’t mind doing.

I have a hard time reconciling the common meaning of passion with "don't mind doing". An entire generation was told that they should only work at something they love. Turns out not enough people love being a garbage man or cleaning up vomit for minimum wage for that to be an effective strategy at the societal level.

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