[matis140]

I think our public education system is also to blame. We push kids down academic paths too often and many of those paths do not lead to professions that can sustain 45-80k debt after graduation. Too much easy credit is available driving up the price. Degrees are not properly valued. Degrees in social work should not cost the same as a degree in STEM because they are not worth the same. More kids should be going into trades like electricians, plumbers, and millwrites. Good careers that also pay through their apprenticeship programs and currently are looking for kids to train.

[zelon88]

> Good careers that also pay through their apprenticeship programs and currently are looking for kids to train.

This isn't always viable either. I started in entry-level manufacturing and worked my way up to production control and IT specifically because even at the highest level of manufacturing I wasn't going to be satisfactorily compensated. I would have been working long overtime hours for a decade or two only to be replaced by CNC machines instead of ever hitting the bigtime anyway. If I hadn't swapped collars I was destined for a life of sub $50k hard labor with shitty insurance and constant threats of bodily injury. Reporting to a "boss" who probably made as much as the manager of McDonalds and drove a Rav-4. Yeah, that's real potential right there.

[adamrezich]

Most of my friends growing up were way into music... not just playing in bands in their spare time, but high school band, marching band, jazz band, drumline, etc., as well as composing and producing digital music in their spare time.

A few of these friends pursued other careers in college but many of them went to the state college that's known for its music programs. There, they eventually came to realize the reality of the situation: if you want to continue pursuing music in a college capacity, you're looking at either education or performance. Performance is extremely demanding and unless you're the best of the best of the best... good luck finding work with that degree. If you go down the education route, then, being a state school, you're STRONGLY encouraged to teach at a school somewhere in the state... which has the lowest teacher wages in the country (correction: second-worst as of 2018, moving up!).

Many of my friends didn't fully realize the reality of the situation until they'd already got their degrees. One ended up a high school band teacher in our hometown and truly loves it. Another decided to purse computer science instead and just completed his degree in that (and is now realizing how hard it is to find work as a fresh grad with no internship). Another quickly got a business minor and is doing well in the banking industry. Another is a bouncer and photographer.

What I'm getting at is, these kids were all pushed into going to college and getting degrees in the thing they enjoyed doing in high school, without stopping to realize their career prospects with said degree. College is just a thing you do after high school, unless you're a loser (or you went to a trade school, which is "a step up but not college").

The whole system is completely broken for modern society in my opinion, we need something to shake the whole thing up and turn it on its head.