474 karma · joined November 1, 2019
PhD in Speech Recognition for Assistive technology and Gaming.
Consultant for social good startups.
From there, who thought that you'd need a bachelors to be a barista and pour coffee? It's not just about the raw requirements, but about the competition you face in the job market.
Finally, more and more field service technician and electrician, HVAC, roles that are traditionally GED/2-years only, have extremely high experience requirements, and most are preferring people pursuing or with a bachelors in electrical engineering (electrician, HVAC), mechanical/fluid engineering (plumbing), or similar. Earlier this year I was in a remote-ish location (about 100 miles from a major city) and we had an electrical fault that legally required a licensed electrician to repair. We had multiple electrical engineers offer to help who clearly knew the problem and how to fix it according to code, but we couldn't let them touch it because they didn't have their J or better.
If you want to risk no degree and go for your 8,000 hours to get licensed (roughly 4 years experience for no/mediocre pay), go for it.
A 501c3 nonprofit with pretty stringent requirements (accreditation, reporting, transparency), but yes a business nonetheless.
> The main problem with the CCs is that they are very corrupt, have been issuing students worthless degrees.
Could you elaborate on what you mean by corrupt, and issuing students worthless degrees? Graduates from the program I direct at a community college are generally earning 120-160k in IT around 2 years after graduation.
> The colleges' goal is reaching a "graduation quota," and not "employability."
Universities yes, community colleges I would not consider this an accurate statement. At my community college our CTE programs (job training) are explicitly evaluated on student salaries as well as how many are actually employed in the industry after graduation, usually within 18-36 months time. It's actually two of the few metrics that are considered "high value", as in 2x the other value of other metrics like graduation, enrollment, retention, revenue-per-student, etc.
Let me dissect this article with uncompromising scrutiny:
> "...have over a million openings in critical jobs, emergency services, trucking, factory workers, plumbers, electricians and tradesmen.”
Maybe because for 30 years America sold the idea that you need a bachelors degree to do the majority of these jobs, while simultaneously implying that you only needed 2 years of vocational school? A lot of these require extensive apprenticeships and experience (576 classroom hours, 8,000 experience hours, passing exams for a journeyman electrician license in Oregon). It's absolutely not "Go to school for 2 years and get paid $120k."
Furthermore, most of the trades are brutal on your body, mind, and lifestyle.
> "we don't have trade schools anymore"
We do, and we do our best to train students on only the absolute necessary skills that get them the job and working as quickly as possible. Corporations stopped meaningfully supporting them while simultaneously raising expectations. Major companies stopped most training and orientation programs or significantly scaled them back, passed the burden of training onto community colleges and trade schools, and now complain that our tools and techniques are out of date.
Ford does at my college this while keeping their name slapped on the auto mechanic's program because they helped start the program 20 years ago. Now they're upset because they're not getting the same returns while my fellow instructors struggle to teach on supplies that are 2 decades old.
> "What we don't have are enough young people with the literacy and math proficiency needed to learn skilled trades."
A lot of the K-12 complaint is the No Child Left Behind act and the effects of Common Core. Lots of throwing up of hands here saying "Well guess there's nothing we can do. We have all these high paying jobs that no one wants"
Wanna fix this? Eliminate No Child Left Behind. Actually invest in teachers, tutors, and the people making the impact. Stop calling teachers 'heroes', and give us the resources to actually instruct kids. Stop assuming a household with 2-3 kids, 2 parents that work full time (overtime in today's America), are barely making ends meet, and have no extended family to help kids with homework or tutor, are going to somehow do extremely well.
In fact, we have loads of papers that demonstrate that math scores and grades are pretty tightly correlated with parents'/family ability and availability to help kids with homework. Maybe have parents work less so they can tutor their kids more?
> "Workers who struggle to read grade-level text cannot read complicated technical manuals or diagnostic instructions."
They don't have trouble reading grade-level text. This is a complete misunderstanding of what those tests evaluate. More importantly: If they're struggling to read those complicated manuals or diagnostic instructions, maybe it's because most manufacturers eliminated a lot of the repairability of cars in the past few decades and scaled back their service manuals? Maybe invest in technical writing again?
> They were passed on with inflated grades
Because you stopped hiring anyone with less than a 3.0-4.0. If a teacher's job is to get a student a job in the trades, you won't hire them because their GPA is poor, and we get fired if too many students fail, guess what we (instructors) are going to do?
> "If they can’t handle middle-school math they can’t program high-tech machines or robotics, or operate the automated equipment found in modern factories and repair shops."
Also not correct, and a gross misinterpretation of what the national exams show. Most students can do most math with a calculator just fine, mental math not so much, but it's rare to be in a shop without some kind of computer or calculator nowadays. If you want people who have completed a 2 year trade program to be able to competently do calculus, robotics, PLCs, and program, you need to admit that the job requires far beyond 'middle-school math'.
> ""Servicing an electric vehicle requires interpreting data flows, troubleshooting electronics, and following precise, multistep instructions." It's not a job for "grease monkeys."
Here is the crux of the problem. All of these are needs that are way beyond a standard mechanical technician's toolkit. You need them to dual train as electrical engineers and mechanical engineers with notable expertise in 12/24v and rather high voltages for EVs. You don't want 'average technicians' for 120k, you want dual-degree mechanical and electrical engineers to work for you for less than their going market rate. If your toolchain requires more than an understanding of ODB2 (or 1-2 device) readings and a solid understanding of vehicular operations and what commonly breaks, then you've spent too much time making your products unrepairable and obtuse.
The car chip shortage caused the resale value of cars to skyrocket. In the past few years my 15 year old CRV, which just passed 100k miles, has gone UP in value according to my mechanic because the used car market is so bad.
Many car dealerships, already well-known for poor consumer practices, have straight up refused to sell cars to people who don't wish to finance because they can make a lot more money off someone who wants to finance. You used to be able to convince them you planned to finance, then buy the car in full at the last minute, and the salesperson would do so because of sunk investment. Not anymore, many of my friends have experienced this firsthand when shopping for a new vehicle.
Combine this with it being all-but-required for people in the US to have a personal vehicle and drive if they want a job ("reliable transportation" in job postings), new & used car dealers have the additional leverage of time pressure as people can and do get fired for their car breaking down.
What I see a lot of wealthy people do, on the other hand, is finance a luxury vehicle, drive it for 3-5 years, then trade in for a newer model. Used to be lots of luxury vehicles, like the Giulia Quadrifoglio, with 20-30k miles for 30-40% of the original vehicle cost (25k-35k) which is an incredible deal for a luxury brand. This isn't really a thing anymore as the cost of a new car skyrockets.
> Professors are not (at least not supposed) to be a decoration in a University.
Our names and reputations are nothing more than an enticing line in a marketing pitch. A way to say "You could be taught by a Nobel prize winner!"
My college's pitch for me is "This person worked for Beyonce and made AAA games! They'll get you a job!"
As the article stated, college in the US is now transactional. Put money in, get degree out. Put lots of money in a famous-name college, get more opportunities in the US labor market. They are not students anymore, they are customers buying a product. The product they are paying for is a piece of paper that gives better access to the US labor market. The US labor market increasingly expects a college degree even for even the most asinine roles.
When you're spending 5-to-6 figures and 4 years of your life for access to the entry-level US labor market, you are a customer, and learning and integrity take a backseat. When an institution cares the most about growth and profit, they are a business focused on increasing their capital. This is not to say that capitalism is bad, just that the incentive structure shifts from educational outcomes to revenue-per-student. In fact there is an explicit term for this, Full-Time Equivalent, or FTE. More FTE = more money = institutional growth.
> You have all the leverage
I do? Are you sure it's not the person who pays my paychecks, guarantees my health insurance, and can fire me at the end of the year since contract renewals are annual? Are you sure that the leverage and 'forcing management' that you say I can do isn't dependent on union support for an action I wish to take, since being unionized means I waived my right to individual actions?
It would be appropriate to say "The union should have all the leverage." This is because the union has an exclusivity agreement with the college, such that you cannot have non-union instructors teaching at the college. However our union is extremely weak, and struggles to take even the most basic opposition stances against the college. Our collective bargaining team gets weaker at negotiating every year; IT/CS professors took a $5000 pay cut this year because the union gave up our salaries during negotiation. Also worth noting that the college is hinting that they will not longer work with the union in the next contract negotiation, and move to individual instructor negotiations. This will enable them to lay off all tenured instructors and re-hire them as part-time adjuncts with a 70% pay cut. They just fired me, and they have told me they plan to extend that exact offer if I want to continue directing the program. I have already accepted a role elsewhere.
People who aren't in education generally read that tenure means "Job for life." and "They can't fire you". Maybe in the 20th century, but tenure doesn't work the way anymore, and hasn't since the 2000s. There's also a ton of politics. In the event of a union it is the union vs the college, not you vs the college. You have no individual leverage, you are dependent on union support.
> When workers have leverage they unionize and can force management.
Force them to do what? We ARE unionized; we are members of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). Since we are unionized we waive our right to individual arbitration, and individual protests or strikes (Wildcat Strikes) are explicitly illegal. We must go to the union, tell them the situation, and they decide if they wish to pursue action against the school in solidarity. If the union decides to not pursue action we cannot go alone. Conversely, if the school calls a 'state of emergency' they can take actions without union approval and with the union waiving their ability to object to actions, and eliminating their leverage.
And a state of emergency is exactly what they called this year. They did it in response to this https://www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-takes/2024/09/25/s... which is going to put them $5.5 million in debt in the next 3 years. They have told the union "We don't care, sue us. If we don't do this, we shut down, and everybody loses. If you sue us or strike, we shut down, and everybody loses."
The union has stated they do not plan to take action, but have sent many strongly worded emails ending in "In Solidarity" or "Union Strong". This isn't to say that unions are bad, in fact I'm very pro union. This is to say that not all unions are equal, and leverage is actually dependent on the union's overall strength and the overall power dynamic.
Your comments suggest that I am at fault here, and not my employer nor my union for taking inaction at the issues I've raised. I am proud to say that as a unionized public employee our collectively-bargained contract is publicly available for view online. If you are curious I am happy to send a link to you. You will quickly realize that it is two groups constantly speaking for you, you have very little recourse or individual agency, and the 'leverage' you claim I have or should have as a union does actually not exist.
Glad to be leaving this college.
I failed a student recently. He did no work for the entire quarter, then insisted I tutor him through all the homework assignments until he passed with an A. I said no, you failed. I was verbally harassed and threatened for weeks by the student, had other staff actively harassed and threatened, heard a member of staff get physically assaulted by the student, and the administration ultimately sided with the student. They came to me and said "You will run a private 1-person classroom with just this student so he can make up the work and his graduation date won't be impacted. Also we won't pay you for this, and we're going to 'cluster' the class so it doesn't show up on your credit load. If you refuse, it may impact the future of your program, and your tenured role."
In other words, I was heavily punished for failing a student by being assigned an extra class for no pay, in such a way that they can avoid paying me more later that year for a course overload, and my job was threatened. Why would I fail a student if this is the outcome?
At this point failing even a single student can lead to loss of employment. This may sound ridiculous, but my college just slashed 30% of its programs, cut a dozen tenured professors (including me), shut down all bachelor's programs, and killed all computer science programs. They cited low enrollment, but they also said "Even if we ran your programs at full capacity we would be losing hundreds of thousands of dollars."
Process that for a second. About a dozen tenured professors are now unemployed because a school is so financially mismanaged that even in maxed classrooms they are losing money. This is the reality at many colleges, and it's about to get worse with the DoE and other funding cuts.
As people in engineering regularly say, when you use KPIs to determine performance and promotions, your workers will maximize those KPIs. Professors are no different when it comes to moving up the career ladder, or achieving employment security.
As for the impact of screen time on reading ability, it's important to discuss what literacy means from an educational standpoint. Literacy is much more than "Can you read the words on the page, or speak them aloud"; modern literacy is broken into understanding prose, documentation, and quantitative analysis. This is why when the article says "US children are falling behind on reading" they mean "1/3 of Eighth graders could not make an inference on a character's motivation after reading a short story" and similarly did not know that 'industrious' means 'hard working'.
Since you've asked about screen time, it's not so driven by 'screen time' as it is by the activity performed with screen time. When you say screen time, are you referring to someone reading a book on a Kindle, or doomscrolling on the social media of their choice? Both have been very well studied, with a wealth of publications on their impact.
The tl;dr of the research: Both have words on the screen, yes, but one (reading on a Kindle) is shown to have positive effects on literacy while the other (consuming social media) is shown to have detrimental effects across the board (not just limited to decreased literacy performance). Notably (and a point discussing the 'resources' in terms of time and energy investment), parents co-viewing content with their child has been suggested to improve overall language abilities, children who are left to their own devices (pun intended) experience poorer vocabulary acquisition and retention. [1]
1. Effects of Excessive Screen Time on Child Development: An Updated Review and Strategies for Management https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10353947/
* P.S. I read manga and play video games in Japanese to study and practice the language. It's been incredible for reading speed and basic comprehension, but I'm still years of daily effort away from reading legal documents.
The Reading Teacher 47, 1993-1994 https://archive.org/details/sim_reading-teacher_1993-1994_47...
The problem with education is a lack of funding. Many of the funds you speak of expired without use, and another 13-20 billion is set to expire this year.
What happened? Schools cut staff hard during the pandemic. At my particular school, faculty and staff were laid off in droves or accepted furloughs (20-60%) to keep their role at severely reduced pay. Among the fired were grant managers, the people who figure out how to use ESSER funds. When these huge windfalls (ESSER) came in, it also came with restrictions on how to use the funding. Unfortunately nobody at my school knew how to navigate the process anymore. The school tried to hire people back, but nobody applied because who wants to be underpaid working at a failing school that runs more rounds of layoffs than a major tech company?
It is now the end of ESSER. My school is $2 million in the hole, they are about to cut another 25% of staff (including me), and they spent only a tiny amount of the allocated funds because they fired their grant manager in 2021. My salary has already been cut $5,000. What little they figured out how to spend was used trying (and largely failing) to renovate our decaying and crumbling buildings. Those buildings have broken HVAC, networks, outdated teaching equipment, and burnt out projectors. Not exactly an inspiring teaching environment.
Around this time I was also involved in a startup providing online language and reading tools (Bamboo Learning). During ESSER we secured contracts with major school districts (Los Angeles, Rochester NY, Arizona, Texas). Something to the tune of 50,000-150,000 licenses. All of them trying to burn the ESSER funds. They couldn't figure out how to access the money and asked us to grant the licenses now and they'd pay us later. We couldn't afford that, and our investors wanted to see income before moving us into a Series B. We starved out in 2023 and closed before any of the districts figured out ESSER.
Admin is a common finger to point at, "we pay them too much money!", and yes I do not have positive opinions of any admin beyond my immediate dean. However the problem with ESSER isn't bloated admin, it's educators leaving enmass to work for literally anyone else.
Extremely bleak, yes, and it isn't set to get any better. However while the broad public argues over some nebulous problem, our schools will fail and close.
Either way, Im looking forward to February's "Who's Hiring" thread.
But it does. Even something as simple as writing a thank you email has an opportunity cost. In that time a sales person could initiate a new call, or an engineer could write another paragraph on a design doc.
It's why engineers having free coffee, or even BYO coffee, is such a bellweather. When the free coffee goes, the good times go with it. It costs the company nothing to let engineers BYO coffee, yet my friends and I have been with many a company that eventually set up a small coffee shop or a pay-per-cup coffee machine and go around confiscating employee-brought coffee machines. Historically they cite a "fire hazard" or some similar safety issue.
> That low interest rates make people better managers?
It's not entirely wrong. Higher interest rates reduce investment frequency and amount because it increases the risk and opportunity cost. When interest rates are low it's easier to justify to investors/board members that diverting some capital to employee value and satisfaction. When interest rates are high, things like the aforementioned thank you email becomes an inefficiency, reducing your attractiveness to investors. An extra 2% on a 10MM loan is 200k, and someone's gotta provide that additional revenue. Suddenly free coffee, unsupervised/unmonitored work (like remote), and thank you letters don't provide direct increased revenue while a sales call or design doc could.
One of two things happen: a stock-for-stock exchange at a ratio (like 2 Blizzard becomes 1 ATVI stock), or a complete buyout and liquidation of the acquired company's stock.
In the latter, you are basically sent a check based on the sale price agreed upon by the two companies. In the case of Nordstrom, shareholders receive $24.25 for each unit of stock they hold. The downside is you pay capital gains on it. In the case of my friend at Splunk, she is left with a horrifying tax bill that'll be in the upper-5 to lower-6 figures.
What also happens is once the share price is agreed upon, the stock is priced in. As a result there is little point in shorting as the stock's price moves very little.
Correct. Before the UC system also cancelled their subscription with Elsevier they reported paying $11 million annually.
> The Elsevier publisher's articles are still valuable to us.
Yes, but not $11 million/year with a 3 year lock-in. UC reported (at the time of ending the contract) that they have a perpetual license to ~95% of relevant work on Elsevier, so that $11 million/year went to access 5% of Elsevier's library.
What we do see is publishers shifting to open access (OA), which appears to result in lower Uni costs, but shifts the expense burden to researchers. Researchers in the UC system are now asked to use grant funding to help pay OA APC fees.
Cost cutting and increased personnel funding are not related. Just because MIT library is saving millions by cutting a publisher agreement doesn't mean those savings will be directed towards increased staff.
MIT did not renew their contract with Elsevier in 2020, a major reason being their inequitable profit model, and refusal to honor open access agreements. They have a postmortem saying the loss had little impact to their researchers.
How about that for a policy change?
> we are paying millions to Springer, Elsevier, etc. for the use of their names.
As an academic researcher, you are (or your institution is) paying them millions in publication and subscription fees so you can keep your job. Publish or perish.
Significant value which is given gratis by said peers, which journals use to boost their reputability and, by association, their profits. Publishers are profiting off of free labor from subject matter experts. Even more disappointing is this free labor is viewed as a right of passage. Don't forget that the author spent hundreds to thousands of dollars to access these unpaid peers. Publishers are increasingly well-known as scammy. It's why MIT ended their Elsevier contract, and why many other R1s are following suit.
Also don't get me started on the dubious quality of peer review in todays "Publish or Perish" climate.
The real problem is the system enables bad actors to do the same, without gaining the Ad label, by gaming the system to outrank legitimate (or free) sources of information.
> Every reasonable person would act against stalkers like Mark and his cronies. Let’s apply this logic to the digital realm.
The author assumes that a digital persona matches their physical persona. This is not the case. Plenty of people curate content that does not match their personal beliefs, purely for economic benefit. Are they criminals?
>If you’re a criminal, I will not use any application you write.
Author probably has not considered that these writings may result in a defamation case against them, if someone views them as a valuable prospect. If the ruling works against them, does that make them a criminal immediately unworthy of their engineering contribution? If so, a number of reverse engineers who skirt these laws every day would like to have a word with the author.
You can buy them here: https://www.songbirdocarina.com/collections/synesthesia-ocar...
P.S. I did something way fancier than a Fourier here.