[hackinthebochs]

>We give everyone in the U.S. high school education and we don't make the claims you make above.

Probably because a high school diploma has been so normalized that it is seen as the baseline. But that underscores the problem. Of course everyone having a high school diploma devalues it. That's part of why its seen as the default. If we make undergraduate education a similar default, it will just devalue that too. Not to mention what happens to the people who can't complete an undergraduate degree. They become even further marginalized in society.

It is faulty reasoning to notice that a bachelors degree correlates with good outcomes and then conclude that more bachelors degrees means more good outcomes. Good jobs are zero-sum. If there are more people who satisfy the requirements for good jobs, the requirements just increase. It's not like most office jobs require a bachelors degree, the fact that so many people have them makes them an effective zero-effort filter.

[throwawaygh]

> Good jobs are zero-sum.

Without universal high school, the USA would still be a largely illiterate subsistence farming nation with high rates of poverty as defined at the global scale.

Even well-paying jobs in the trades require literacy and basic mathematics skills.

So, no, good jobs aren't zero-sum.

[hackinthebochs]

At one point a factory job would have been considered a good job. In modern times, they're on the low end. What counts as a "good job" is relative to the current standards of living and so you can't naively compare across timescales.

[throwawaygh]

Yes, agreed. And our high schools evolved to prepare students for those good factory jobs. Now that those factory jobs aren't good, maybe our high schools should also evolve.

But the point is that we can't do away with K-12 schooling. Subsistence farming was, is, and will be a bad job.

[HPsquared]

Middle school alone would be sufficient for most jobs. Also don't forget most learning happens outside school.

[throwawaygh]

I've tutored a lot of tech school kids.

College Algebra is required to enter a lot of trades. And not just because it's a requirement for the AS, but also because you actually do need to be able to understand the material in order to work in many trades. The students I tutor often fail college algebra, move on to their subject courses thinking they can tick off that useless stuff later, then realize they need a college algebra tutor after failing those courses because it turns out they need to understand how to interpret a table or graph of a function in order to do the job.

College Algebra is really hard for a lot of people. I can say with almost certain confidence that, even with extensive tutoring, they would never make it through that course without years of practice reasoning about mathematical objects in Algebra I and Algebra II and Geometry.

I think people who are naturally talented in STEM massively underestimate the amount of practice some people need to pick up the quantitative skills needed to enter many trades.

[rovolo]

I am interested in hearing more about your experience tutoring. Questions:

- Which aspects of algebra do the students have the most trouble understanding?

- What are some good examples of tables, graphs, and functions the students need to interpret?

[throwawaygh]

> Which aspects of algebra do the students have the most trouble understanding?

The basic concepts of variables and functions. I can't stress enough that most of your high school facebook friends posting these memes are doing so non-ironically: https://www.google.com/search?q=math+was+great+until+they+ad...

Which, I guess, means "everything". But really getting over that first conceptual hurdle is the hardest part. After that, it's a lot more hand-holding through exercises/practice than trying to surmount a fundamental conceptual barrier.

> What are some good examples of tables, graphs, and functions the students need to interpret?

Tables and ratios and rates of change abound in the trades. Especially anything related to electricity or water. You really need at least a conceptual understanding of variables and functions to understand a lot of the material.

Also, most tradesmen will want to run their own business at some point (that's where the money is), and tables/graphs/functions abound.

If you're struggling with college algebra, odds are good that you're uncomfortable:

1. interpolating values from a table (1/16 : x, 2/16 : y, ..., 1: z; oh no, I need to know the value for 3/32 and it's not on the table!),

2. evaluating a function at a point ("the equation tells me xs from ys and zs, but I need zs from xs and ys!").

Pick a trade and (1) and (2) are fundamentally necessary skills. Smart phone calculators obviate this some-what, but it's still important to have at least a conceptual understanding even if the mechanical skill of doing the math atrophies. Otherwise you won't even know how to use the calculator properly. See this all the time.

The money thing in particular is super important, though. I do a lot of example problems that basically boil down to "if your fixed cost is $X and the equipment needs to be replaced every 2 years, and if you charge $Y, will you make a profit? What is the smallest value of Y that will make a profit? Etc." Students really struggle with this sort of thing, especially if you throw in seasonal variable with fixed debt payments ("how much do I need to make in the summer months to cover the loan payments in the winter months?"). Questions like this are at the heart of college algebra.

Like, would not be surprising if lots of small businesses fail because the owner doesn't do the work of making sure the unit economics can cover amortized costs, and then end up defaulting on their loan.

TBH even gig economy participants need to be able to do the more basic stuff from college algebra...

[Kinrany]

You're explicitly saying that good jobs are zero-sum. Why do you think that?

It seems like a non-prediction that having more people with good education will enable new businesses.

[hackinthebochs]

At any given moment there are a fixed number of jobs, and so a fixed number of "good jobs". I can grant that the number of good jobs isn't fixed on the scale of years. But people that want/need good jobs usually can't wait years for them to materialize. On the timescales that matter to individuals, the number of good jobs is fixed and so the competition for them is effectively zero-sum.

There also seems to be a scale issue when it comes to the availability of good jobs. That is, not all jobs can be good (i.e. high paying) and there is an essential order-of-magnitude difference between the number of high paying jobs and the number of low paying jobs required to make the economics work. So the proportion of good jobs is effectively fixed even on longer timescales.

[opo]

>At any given moment there are a fixed number of jobs, ...

I think most economists would say that is called the lump of labour fallacy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy

[bradly]

Yep, you are correct. Paul Graham writes in Hackers and Painters about how wealth is not zero-sum.

You can read more about it in his essay here: http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html

[hackinthebochs]

Wealth doesn't map well to what we're talking about here. No economy can support an unbounded number of "high paying" jobs, for example. While wealth has gone up steadily since the world industrialized, a good (i.e. high paying) job is relative to the current standard of living and so wont be monotonic.

[bradly]

> No economy can support an unbounded number of "high paying" jobs, for example.

Why not? Is there some economic axiom that states this? Can wealth not continue to increase? And can't wealth be used to create "good" jobs?

[bradly]

I don't understand this. The U.S. would be much worse without free, universal High School, regardless of whether you think it has devalued over time. I believe that if I didn't have a H.S. education, my life would be more difficult, but I get the feeling from these replies that people view a u.s. high school education as throw-away.

[umanwizard]

Many developed countries in e.g. Europe don't actually have universal academic high school like the US does - they have perhaps 1/3 of people go to academic high school, where it is more difficult than in the US (perhaps comparable to the difficulty of AP classes). The rest go to vocational or semi-vocational school.

[C1sc0cat]

Not sure that is actually a good idea as kids with well of backgrounds tend to get the higher tracks.

I remember a native German poster on hn commenting on the subject "funny how the its the brown skinned Germans, who end up in the lower tier schools"

[9HZZRfNlpR]

You get there by merit not wallet, I thought usa has it the same to be honest. Sometimes I feel like Americans have very deranged view of Europe where half thinks it's some socialist equality utopia and the other half thinks a communist hellhole.

[bradly]

> You get there by merit not wallet, I thought usa has it the same to be honest.

The problem in the U.S. is that not all public schools are equal, so the "merit" to get into a certain school/scholarship is at least partly tied to your social-economic status.

For instance in my area, all public schools have removed arts/music/foreign language, but in the nicer neighborhoods PTA, boosters, and fundraisers have added those removed subjects back with parent donations. So you have a situation where when it comes to vote for a small tax increase to help our schools, many people are confused as their kids go to a public school with everything they need. These are schools in the same school district. New, upscale homes can also pay directly for their public school in the form of Mello-Roos taxes.

[C1sc0cat]

Really and having well of parents live in a wealthy make no difference, not being Neurodiverse also is a big help.

You know that meritocracy was seen as a bad thing when it was coined.

[bradly]

Thanks for that. Yeah, I'm all for education reform and different options so it's great to hear about different programs, but many of the comments here are dismissing education, both high school and higher ed, simply because it is less scarce or not what it used to be.