Young Canadians go to school longer for jobs that pay less | Hacker News Reader

Young Canadians go to school longer for jobs that pay less

theglobeandmail.com

34 pointsnithinj21 comments

People should really have a solid plan before going to college. "Well I need a degree so I'll go and figure something out" is pretty much the default, and it results in debt, degree inflation, and demoralized graduates. It shouldn't be controversial to warn against effectively taking out a loan to work at starbucks.

It's the default because society has told them that for multiple generations. Your proposal is already happening, with increasing numbers of mid teens making decisions with the future in mind.

At the same time, we see teens get more depressed and having worse mental health. Teens are expected to fight uphill for many years to get what previous generations got doing virtually the same as young people are today. Worse, we can't exclude a causative relationship between the mental health and having to consider their future that early.

It isn't controversial. The real question is to what degree this is victim blaming rather than productive for the health of younger generations. Turning them all into desired blue collars, programmers, etc. isn't going to get them where they want when even software developers struggle to achieve what their parents did without doing a lick of homework. The ball isn't in their court.

I think options is more valid than a solid plan. I've also seen it go the other way where people have this very specific career path in mind and take a degree towards that goal, only to find that in practice they hate it.

I feel like there are analogies between building software and careers. Having no plan means you go nowhere, but having a rigid plan means you are brittle to change. You want to aim for something inbetween to give you the best chances in success.

Yup, who the hell knows exactly what job they want when they are 40 (peak of their career) at 18 years old? Very few.

Far better to find the best balance between: interests, job prospects and income

If you're interested in subject A and subject B, but subject B can take you twice as many directions, go with B.

In Canada most of the population has a post secondary. People are expected to pay out of pocket to essentially not be behind the majority of the country. The schooling is mostly bullshit and mostly serves as a boiler room to see who will crack first to ensure only the toughest and sharpest can get through, it would be more humane to pick people for jobs by lottery.

Like others are saying you take out a loan to work at Starbucks.

Starting to work at 15 was the best thing I could have done for my developer career.

My grades were trash and I didn't have much of a social life but by the time I was out of university I had already plenty of paying clients and a passive revenue stream (websites with ads)

I had a negative reaction to the headline but agreed pretty much entirely with the article.

I'd prefer to have the climate change stuff framed as the older generation wasting opportunities to invest sensibly, rather than a zero sum game of them using all the precious oil, but other than that it's good to see this narrative out there.

The state absorbing all the inflated property wealth to pay for old people's end of life care seems like the next stage of this.

What happens after that is unclear to me. Will we just let the next generation rot as they age because they don't have that accidental wealth accumulation? It seems less easy to maintain the myth that those with the wealth earned it as the fraction of people with wealth reduces. It's hard to blame your mom and all your friend's moms for living out their old age in an expensive house, but when no one you know has a mom with an expensive home they bought decades ago when it's cheap, it's a lot easier to see that as both unfair and not really efficient either.

Older canadians are also working in jobs that pay less and are paying less and less in real terms as inflation continues. Note that real inflation experienced by actual people is much higher that CPI due housing and education costs having been soaring above everything else for decades. Now food and basic stuff is following suit.

This article is a smorgasbord of cliche outrage topics... I'll just say at least in Canada, first time home buyers can get 5% down payment, so the "takes 10-20 years longer to get a 20% down payment" point doesn't make sense.

Only if the house is less than 500k

which is not even sufficient for a 1 bedroom place in the vancouver area.

It's 5% on the amount less than $500k, and 10% on the amount from $500k up to $1m.

The patchwork of policies that aim to paper over the basic issue are in fact part of the problem.

Houses cost too much, if you aren't already a property owner, because of property price inflation. So let's make it easier for first time buyers. More demand so prices go up again.

It's like printing more money to give to the poor as a response to money inflation.

It seems to be an worldwide thing. I see that, comparing with past generations, there's much more career options to chose but the choice must be done at the same age that past generations did.

Considering we have now an increased working life expectancy, I tend to believe that career choices should be done later, with more maturity.

https://archive.ph/xJBKT

Thank you!

We keep on complaining in the UK about the economy being damaged by people retiring early, but the expansion of higher education, and notably further education was a tactic of the 1997 Labour government to reduce unemployment. It's probably time to reverse that.

Tony Blair made lots of mistakes but the idea that everyone should go to university was definitely one of the worst ideas to come out of him

Why not have all employees pay for their own training? Sounds like a great plan to increase profitability.

Yet, Canadian real estate is astronomically expensive. I keep wondering how all these people are able to afford their down payments and mortgages.

Luck and help from parents, mostly.

I was lucky my house was for sale for lower than what it could have sold for, because the owner wanted a very quick sale.

Also was lucky I had the money to go after it when it was available.

Also got a bit of help from my Dad, when the seller realized they were underpriced and jumped their asking price by a bunch.

I am very grateful I was able to buy into housing when most of my generation is renting. It still took a lot of "right place right time" that I don't think existed for my parents.

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