This isn’t surprising. It’s also not an indication that women are doing better than men writ large. Most degrees are not worth the investment. A few high performing ones hold the average up. Trades are desperate for workers and have above average pay. Men are much more likely to do those jobs. The risk is that women are going to be left with more debt and will be less employable in the long run.
But for a society that acts like everyone’s worth is wrapped up in whether or not you have a degree, we should be a lot more concerned about this than we are.
This would make sense if college degree requirements weren't rampant for tons of jobs that shouldn't require them.
It's a hard requirement a lot of the time in tech as well. Doesn't matter anymore whether you have 10+ years experience at a large company in <very fancy subfield that requires at least grad school level expertise in something very academic> like compilers or something. You'll be viewed as a neanderthal that probably can't or didn't pass Calculus.
In the past, that was less of an issue. A culture of self study (on prerequisite academic topics) was more prevalent. Now the base assumption is that you stumbled into your position and have been flying under the radar as a dimwit changing the color of buttons.
Theories as to why this is now the case:
- Increased competition and rise of CS enrollment and improved perception of CS degrees.
- Bootcamp grads giving recruiters and hiring managers a bad impression about everyone self taught.
- Overhiring in certain subfields and at certain large tech companies causing a reduction in the signaling value of experience.
- Age discrimination
So in other words, with the exception of physical trades, credential inflation is definitely a real thing and it definitely has an impact on how easily you can move positions and/or negotiate compensation.
And if you couldn't tell, yes I'm salty on account of having had to waste time and money going back to finish a degree that I was overqualified for just in order to not immediately get lumped in with bootcamp grads. The entire ordeal was academically worthless. Don't make my mistake kids...stay in school even if it feels like you aren't learning anything so that you don't have to go back and do it while also juggling adult responsibilities. I think this is a mistake that men are probably more likely to make than women as well, which could help explain some of the gender discrepancy in graduation rates. Call it overconfidence fueled by testosterone or something.
I am not an expert in this, but I think that the “trades pay above average” argument has become accepted as fact when the data isn’t so clear. BLS average wage in 2023 was $64,000 and change. Plumbers, carpenters, and electricians were $67k, $60k, and $67k, respectively. Solid money, but not easy or well above average. Tradespeople who work in high demand sectors, run their own businesses, or become masters can certainly be compensated well, but they are not the norm, and it takes a long time to get there.
I’m with you on the moral argument. My dad was a master carpenter and is one of the smartest people I know. And his work will be around long after mine has become obsolete.
BLS figures show tradeworkers make about the median salary in the US - it isn't above average. In the Occupational Outlook handbook, The mean annual wage for all occupations is $65,470. The trades:
Plumber - median $61,550 per year
HVAC tech - median $57,300 per year
Electrician - median $61,590 per year
Framer(Carpenter) - median $56,350 per year
Bricklayer(Mason) - median $53,010 per year
Job demand also seems to be about average compared to overall jobs.
I agree that investing heavily in many degrees is probably ill-advised.
The fundamental challenge with the trades is that some of them are extremely hard on your body. I know roofers who've taken multi-story falls and gotten put back together with steel pins. Plumbers often have issues with their knees or back. If you're lucky or you pick a good specialty, you can make it to your 40s in OK shape. But I've seen a lot of people with chronic problems, and a few with serious disability.
One of ways that I've seen middle-aged people succeed in the trades is to hire a crew and turn it into a business. But by definition, not everyone can be the boss.
It can be a great career if you stay healthy! But I think we should be careful about answering every employment or education question by immediately saying "trades."
Younger women in urban/metro areas are doing significantly better than their male peers economically (higher employment rates and income). This gap is increasing.
Young women are doing worse than their male peers in rural areas economically. This gap is closing.
What implications this has for society at large I can only speculate.
In addition to not being surprising, it also isn't news. These trends appear to date back more than 30 years, so they were around when pretty much everyone in the workforce was college-aged. The people who haven't lived through this, if they exist, are on the verge of retiring.
I would argue this is mistaking cause for effect. Girls are outperforming boys in high school, and therefore entering college at higher rates and graduating college at higher rates.
It’s not that boys are making a decision in high school not to go to college and therefore letting their grades slip. Once your grades slip, pathways to college narrow dramatically.
To illustrate my point, we can compare earnings of men with no college to women with a bachelor’s degree. Men make $45k, women make $65k. To believe that men are choosing trades you have to believe that men would voluntarily choose to make 30% less.
I don't think it's "more opportunities". I'm sure there's a statistics on how much women do not want to be electricians, plumbers, etc., which is fine, just saying it's individual choices not lack of opportunity.
Trade,Estimated Employment
Construction Laborers,1,019,090
First-Line Supervisors of Construction Trades and Extraction Workers,777,420
Electricians,712,580
Carpenters,700,290
Operating Engineers and Other Construction Equipment Operators,450,370
Bls2023
Where as there’s nearly 4 million acredited teachers and 3 million registered nurses
It’s strange how far American women are ahead of men at educational achievement. Education really is a feminist utopia (not really, but more than the real world).
It also shows how out of touch education is that these gains don’t lead to better real world success.
When I was in college I got good grades. My professors told me my grades were so good, I’d almost certainly do better if I dropped out.
That’s how I learned higher Ed’s dirty secret: high performing drop outs do better than graduates.
You’d think that would lead to some soul-searching in academia. But that doesn’t seem to be happening.
I feel bad for all of the boys out there who have the potential to specialize and get a degree but are surrounded by shitty, ignorant male role models. People who have no goals, no sort of ambition left, no desire to learn, they just sit around and pat themselves on the back for being unmotivated
Maybe it's time for some positive representation of masculinity in our culture? Something that celebrates men (and not for being feminine) and maleness? Of course many men don't have any goals or ambition when mainstream culture will do nothing but shit on them even if they achieve something.
I think they're the opposite of ignorant. They know boys are angry and purposefully taking advantadge of their need for acceptance to further their own goals, be it money, power, or clout.
We have a name for groups who target and isolate vulnerable individuals for personal gain...
A lot of these women will be creating PowerPoint slides and holding meetings for things that don't need a meeting to pay down a 6 figure debt incurred to obtain a worthless degree. Blind ambition to meet an arbitrary metric is stupid.
I really don't think this is unique in terms of gender or generation. But it is a persistent narrative that leads a lot of wayward young men to idolize false "role model" e celebs.
I've done a bunch of college tours this year with my daughter. Its kinda shocking to see so many homeless men on the streets, then the universities majority women. I'm kinda hoping she'll go to a school that is 50/50. Georgetown was at 62% female, I think Tulane is 64%.
I absolutely hate making this comment but I’m obliged to because I feel some you all are pointing at irrelevant factors, because you don’t know any better. Look at the birth rate for a better signal and the decline of single income families. Lastly, straight men, I’ll give you a secret women choose to go to school because we are taught at a young age that if getting an education is the #1 way to not be dependent on anyone. A man can easily walk out on you so it’s a poor decision to not get or finish an education. Look at when the data starts going up- that’s the generation that saw the last wave of traditional stay at home house wives and single income families. Unless you absolutely are called to be a house wife/trad wife at 18 with your high school sweetheart… you go to school. It’s pretty obvious.
This site has some data on college majors with major gender disparities (although it's a bit outdated). Women are heavily over represented in Fashion Design, Interior Design, and Elementary Education. Men are heavily over represented in Construction Management, Mechanical Engineering, and Electrical Engineering.
The narrative that women don't succeed in computer science and cybersecurity because of discrimination never aligned with my experience whatsoever.
Sure, when I was in high school and college, there were significantly less women. And sure, women experience discrimination in many forms, many in ways that men don't understand or have to deal with. I get it, I'm speaking from a "position of privilege" as a man.
But I had numerous female teachers and college professors in my programming and math classes. The female students in my classes were smart, capable, and dedicated. Never once did I see them denied anything or treated differently. Female friends told me about negative experiences facing sexism, and they always came from people outside the school, or at the very least outside the CS program.
And yet literally everyone I talked to at this overwhelmingly left-leaning school assured me that being a female CS student was a form of torture. They could never explain why. Forget about the female-only scholarships, the conferences, the special clubs and interest groups. These middle-class college students living in one of the world's richest cities are suffering in this field, and we should be doing anything and everything to help them, we will not be satisfied until we have an exact 50%-50% split.
I'm not saying it's all rainbows and sunshine. Obviously sexism is still a systemic problem in many parts of American life. I have sisters, they have told some awful shit. I'm simply posing the questions - at what point does a minority group stop being disadvantaged? When do they stop being considered a minority? Who gets to decide when and how that happens? Why are there so many scholarships, interest groups, and initiatives designed to help women in STEM who are struggling, but the very real problem of men and boys struggling in other fields is largely ignored? How large does the gap between male and female education have to get before it reaches public consciousness?
It seems like we (the US) should be doing more across the board to help students and provide them opportunities, regardless of gender, race, sexuality, etc. Constant culture war spats and identity politics aren't helping anyone. The vague impression from my social group is that Europeans have it figured out and we just don't, but I really don't know if that's true.
Professionally one trend I have noticed is an increasing number of women programmers particularly at my current company, and they are all extremely competent and hungry. It could be our target universities but articles like this suggest maybe it's simply a more general trend. I suspect the other new grads entering aren't batting an eye but to me it's an extreme and refreshing departure from when I started. Curious if others are noticing an increasing number of women programmers hired into their orgs?
Men can be more easily drawn to the trades for what seems like much easier money. When I was a poor student I had friends working in house building, driving trucks and even 1 working in a foundry. They all had nicer cars and more beer money than me until I graduated.
> They all had nicer cars and more beer money than me until I graduated.
It's not exactly surprising that someone working full time has a higher standard of living than a college student. The question is what happens after graduation.
First day of Polytechnic school, one of my instructors asked how many of us had spouses or girlfriends; about half raised their hands. He said very plainly that they should withdraw from the course if they valued their loved one more than their academic performance.
Thing was he was being kind. The course load was targeted around 80 to 100 hours a week in year 1 and then eases off to 60 to 70 year 2 after proving you have the mental fortitude to sustain that kind of pace for more than a few weeks.
Post secondary is hard. It's supposed to hard. Only 9 out of an intake of 60 graduated. We were staking a lot of money on the line that would disappear if we didn't make it through. Is it really so unreasonable to think that some people would look at that and decide they don't want to make those sacrifices even if means higher pay check afterwards?
US used to be a deeply racist and sexist country, and in order to "make things up", people overcorrected, effectively creating a society that hates white men. Now the pendulum is slowly swinging back. Give it 50 years, white men will be in the position of power again, albeit to a lesser degree. Then it's going to be women and non-whites again. These cycles will keep going on. The idea that a deeply racist and sexist country would magically stop being such "because we've collectively decided not to be sexist and racist anymore" was naive. It's going to take generations to create a society where people are truly equal.
>Not so long ago women were not allowed in academia; shouldn't the first reaction be "yay!"?
If your ideology is "any differences in outcomes must be caused by systemic discrimination, and we should engage in reverse discrimination to fight it", then this is bad news, because according to that ideology, you should be doing a 180 and discriminating against women. That conclusion upsets some people.
Maybe. I thought we were supposed to think of that as bad?
The second reaction should be to institute a bunch of scholarships for men only, tutoring programs for men only, and so on. Even the elementary school near me a few years ago had a "girls after-school math program" they advertised on a giant banner for the entire time I lived there.
(I don't actually think this, but this is what we collectively did when the "problem" was reversed.)
At what point in history has the message "People like yourself are falling behind in a very serious way" ever been met with "Yay!" ?
Also, many Americans are taught that statistical gaps between different demographics are usually a result of some terrible injustice. (It's certainly been true in the past.) Whether or not this is true always or even in this case, I can't really say, but I do understand why the mostly American audience of HN would have a negative reaction...
It's sad that women are dominating in accrual of debt to purchase something where the actual value is drifting downward rapidly. Yes, there are places demanding the credential, but they're entering the region of danger where what they actually are selecting is people with poor cost/benefit analysis skills.
Within this context i find it amusing that i still have seen scholarships that are only for women, none that are only for men. I'm still burdened by student loans that i never would have had in the first place if i were female.
[+] [-] listless|1 year ago|reply
But for a society that acts like everyone’s worth is wrapped up in whether or not you have a degree, we should be a lot more concerned about this than we are.
[+] [-] zifpanachr23|1 year ago|reply
It's a hard requirement a lot of the time in tech as well. Doesn't matter anymore whether you have 10+ years experience at a large company in <very fancy subfield that requires at least grad school level expertise in something very academic> like compilers or something. You'll be viewed as a neanderthal that probably can't or didn't pass Calculus.
In the past, that was less of an issue. A culture of self study (on prerequisite academic topics) was more prevalent. Now the base assumption is that you stumbled into your position and have been flying under the radar as a dimwit changing the color of buttons.
Theories as to why this is now the case:
- Increased competition and rise of CS enrollment and improved perception of CS degrees.
- Bootcamp grads giving recruiters and hiring managers a bad impression about everyone self taught.
- Overhiring in certain subfields and at certain large tech companies causing a reduction in the signaling value of experience.
- Age discrimination
So in other words, with the exception of physical trades, credential inflation is definitely a real thing and it definitely has an impact on how easily you can move positions and/or negotiate compensation.
And if you couldn't tell, yes I'm salty on account of having had to waste time and money going back to finish a degree that I was overqualified for just in order to not immediately get lumped in with bootcamp grads. The entire ordeal was academically worthless. Don't make my mistake kids...stay in school even if it feels like you aren't learning anything so that you don't have to go back and do it while also juggling adult responsibilities. I think this is a mistake that men are probably more likely to make than women as well, which could help explain some of the gender discrepancy in graduation rates. Call it overconfidence fueled by testosterone or something.
[+] [-] el_benhameen|1 year ago|reply
I’m with you on the moral argument. My dad was a master carpenter and is one of the smartest people I know. And his work will be around long after mine has become obsolete.
Citations:
https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm
https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes472152.htm https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes472031.htm https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes472111.htm
[+] [-] clusterhacks|1 year ago|reply
I agree that investing heavily in many degrees is probably ill-advised.
[+] [-] bluesnews|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] ekidd|1 year ago|reply
One of ways that I've seen middle-aged people succeed in the trades is to hire a crew and turn it into a business. But by definition, not everyone can be the boss.
It can be a great career if you stay healthy! But I think we should be careful about answering every employment or education question by immediately saying "trades."
[+] [-] choilive|1 year ago|reply
Young women are doing worse than their male peers in rural areas economically. This gap is closing.
What implications this has for society at large I can only speculate.
[+] [-] roenxi|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] kevinventullo|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] vannevar|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] janalsncm|1 year ago|reply
It’s not that boys are making a decision in high school not to go to college and therefore letting their grades slip. Once your grades slip, pathways to college narrow dramatically.
To illustrate my point, we can compare earnings of men with no college to women with a bachelor’s degree. Men make $45k, women make $65k. To believe that men are choosing trades you have to believe that men would voluntarily choose to make 30% less.
https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2024/05/23/labor-m...
[+] [-] proc0|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] alexnewman|1 year ago|reply
Trade,Estimated Employment Construction Laborers,1,019,090 First-Line Supervisors of Construction Trades and Extraction Workers,777,420 Electricians,712,580 Carpenters,700,290 Operating Engineers and Other Construction Equipment Operators,450,370
Bls2023
Where as there’s nearly 4 million acredited teachers and 3 million registered nurses
[+] [-] pyuser583|1 year ago|reply
It also shows how out of touch education is that these gains don’t lead to better real world success.
When I was in college I got good grades. My professors told me my grades were so good, I’d almost certainly do better if I dropped out.
That’s how I learned higher Ed’s dirty secret: high performing drop outs do better than graduates.
You’d think that would lead to some soul-searching in academia. But that doesn’t seem to be happening.
[+] [-] matrix87|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] lmm|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] johnnyanmac|1 year ago|reply
We have a name for groups who target and isolate vulnerable individuals for personal gain...
[+] [-] sincerecook|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] disambiguation|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] JellyBeanThief|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] Copenjin|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] rr808|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] iam-role-admin|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] klodolph|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] declan_roberts|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] queuebert|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] jqwizard|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] mettamage|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] nradov|1 year ago|reply
https://www.payscale.com/career-advice/do-men-or-women-choos...
[+] [-] duxup|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] jokoon|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] jqwizard|1 year ago|reply
Sure, when I was in high school and college, there were significantly less women. And sure, women experience discrimination in many forms, many in ways that men don't understand or have to deal with. I get it, I'm speaking from a "position of privilege" as a man.
But I had numerous female teachers and college professors in my programming and math classes. The female students in my classes were smart, capable, and dedicated. Never once did I see them denied anything or treated differently. Female friends told me about negative experiences facing sexism, and they always came from people outside the school, or at the very least outside the CS program.
And yet literally everyone I talked to at this overwhelmingly left-leaning school assured me that being a female CS student was a form of torture. They could never explain why. Forget about the female-only scholarships, the conferences, the special clubs and interest groups. These middle-class college students living in one of the world's richest cities are suffering in this field, and we should be doing anything and everything to help them, we will not be satisfied until we have an exact 50%-50% split.
I'm not saying it's all rainbows and sunshine. Obviously sexism is still a systemic problem in many parts of American life. I have sisters, they have told some awful shit. I'm simply posing the questions - at what point does a minority group stop being disadvantaged? When do they stop being considered a minority? Who gets to decide when and how that happens? Why are there so many scholarships, interest groups, and initiatives designed to help women in STEM who are struggling, but the very real problem of men and boys struggling in other fields is largely ignored? How large does the gap between male and female education have to get before it reaches public consciousness?
It seems like we (the US) should be doing more across the board to help students and provide them opportunities, regardless of gender, race, sexuality, etc. Constant culture war spats and identity politics aren't helping anyone. The vague impression from my social group is that Europeans have it figured out and we just don't, but I really don't know if that's true.
[+] [-] cloverich|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] jimjimjim|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] khuey|1 year ago|reply
It's not exactly surprising that someone working full time has a higher standard of living than a college student. The question is what happens after graduation.
[+] [-] Izikiel43|1 year ago|reply
Well yes, they had jobs. Let's say 10 years after graduation, how are things holding up.
[+] [-] deftosser8501|1 year ago|reply
First day of Polytechnic school, one of my instructors asked how many of us had spouses or girlfriends; about half raised their hands. He said very plainly that they should withdraw from the course if they valued their loved one more than their academic performance.
Thing was he was being kind. The course load was targeted around 80 to 100 hours a week in year 1 and then eases off to 60 to 70 year 2 after proving you have the mental fortitude to sustain that kind of pace for more than a few weeks.
Post secondary is hard. It's supposed to hard. Only 9 out of an intake of 60 graduated. We were staking a lot of money on the line that would disappear if we didn't make it through. Is it really so unreasonable to think that some people would look at that and decide they don't want to make those sacrifices even if means higher pay check afterwards?
[+] [-] anal_reactor|1 year ago|reply
US used to be a deeply racist and sexist country, and in order to "make things up", people overcorrected, effectively creating a society that hates white men. Now the pendulum is slowly swinging back. Give it 50 years, white men will be in the position of power again, albeit to a lesser degree. Then it's going to be women and non-whites again. These cycles will keep going on. The idea that a deeply racist and sexist country would magically stop being such "because we've collectively decided not to be sexist and racist anymore" was naive. It's going to take generations to create a society where people are truly equal.
[+] [-] I_cape_runts|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] sho_hn|1 year ago|reply
Not so long ago women were not allowed in academia; shouldn't the first reaction be "yay!"?
[+] [-] gruez|1 year ago|reply
If your ideology is "any differences in outcomes must be caused by systemic discrimination, and we should engage in reverse discrimination to fight it", then this is bad news, because according to that ideology, you should be doing a 180 and discriminating against women. That conclusion upsets some people.
[+] [-] silisili|1 year ago|reply
Women surpassed men in degrees earned over 40 years ago. How long is the celebration supposed to last?
[+] [-] creato|1 year ago|reply
The second reaction should be to institute a bunch of scholarships for men only, tutoring programs for men only, and so on. Even the elementary school near me a few years ago had a "girls after-school math program" they advertised on a giant banner for the entire time I lived there.
(I don't actually think this, but this is what we collectively did when the "problem" was reversed.)
[+] [-] johnnyanmac|1 year ago|reply
The reasons, causes, issues, etc. are too numerous to analyze in a comment. But this wasn't particularly new data for me.
[+] [-] jqwizard|1 year ago|reply
Also, many Americans are taught that statistical gaps between different demographics are usually a result of some terrible injustice. (It's certainly been true in the past.) Whether or not this is true always or even in this case, I can't really say, but I do understand why the mostly American audience of HN would have a negative reaction...
[+] [-] vandyswa|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] xyst|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] plsbenice34|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|1 year ago|reply
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