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by SantalBlush 1149 days ago
>Community College is for people who are busy getting things done.

FiveThirtyEight has a great article from 2016 that agrees with you. [0] It also debunks a lot of the myths of higher education, like the myth that students are mostly majoring in humanities:

>What few journalists seem to understand, Goldrick-Rab said, is how tenuous a grasp many students have on college. They are working while in school, often juggling multiple jobs that don’t readily align with class schedules. They are attending part time, which makes it take longer to graduate and reduces the chances of finishing at all. They are raising children, supporting parents and racking up debt trying to pay for it all.

>“One little thing goes awry and it just falls apart,” Goldrick-Rab said. “And the consequences of it falling apart when they’re taking on all this debt are just so severe.”

>Students keep taking that risk for a reason: A college degree remains the most likely path to a decent-paying job. They aren’t studying literary theory or philosophy; the most popular undergraduate majors in recent years have been business and health-related fields such as nursing.

[0] https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/shut-up-about-harvard/

2 comments

I'd love to see an update. 2016 doesn't seem like long ago but in the labor markets and advent of TikTok I'm curious to see what the industry (higher ed) looks like compared to trade schools w/ TikTok channel on the side or something. I've met a ton of folks who, like me, decided to sail off into the sunset and started a youtube channel and now that's all they do and are thriving. I decided against the channel and instead continue to work via starlink. For younger generations, what's the outlook on higher ed vs doing your own thing?
I have met nobody who is making substantial money from Youtube or other social media. Is it not true that you need huge subscriber and view numbers to make money? I compare it to making money as a professional athlete or musician or other celebrity profession. Yes you can do well (even really well) but the odds are much more likely that you'll make peanuts.

Edit -- I did think of one person I kmnow personally who is probably making some money from YouTube, but he was a well-known author and public speaker before that. YouTube became an additional channel for things he had already invested many years in creating, it was not something he launched into as an alternative to or replacement for his day job.

>I've met a ton of folks who, like me, decided to sail off into the sunset and started a youtube channel and now that's all they do and are thriving.

That is very surprising to me, and I am a reasonably-successful YouTuber.

For nearly everyone, YouTube is not a viable career path. It’s not even a viable path to making money. Any money.

YouTube is the most saturated market that I know of. There are almost no barriers to entry, and your competition is everyone else on the planet who has a YouTube channel, plus, to some degree, the entire entertainment industry. Success on YouTube requires hard work, but hard work doesn’t guarantee even a bit of success. To succeed on YouTube, you don’t just have to create great content; you have to create content that people want to watch more than everything else that is available to them. That, obviously, is very hard. And even if you do it, a significant luck component remains.

Why did you “decide against the channel?”

because of all the hard work you just described. Sailing channels boil down to 2 sub-genres that are successful. Boat Projects. Babes in Butt Bikinis. I'm too old for butt bikini's and I'm not proficient enough to guide you through my frankenstein boat projects. It's not about making money from YouTube itself. It's about directing your viewers to avenues where the odds are in your favor. Patreon, Merch sales, Monthly subscriptions, even a little OnlyFan's if that's your jam. YouTube is like public broadcasting. Your content brings the audience. It's up to you to compel them to visit another site and part ways with that money beyond $0.0000001/view.
> I've met a ton of folks who, like me, decided to sail off into the sunset and started a youtube channel and now that's all they do and are thriving.

I wonder how much this is additional jobs, or how much it replaces jobs cut from traditional media companies.

Nielson knows I'm sure. That's a very good question. I'm sure the answer is just as complex. A mix of replaced jobs (or lets say, restructured jobs) into social media platforms vs traditional media (broadcast, print/web) over additional jobs in the sector.
I'm not surprised that many students in CC's are in fields related to health care. When I considered a career change into health care community college offered the easiest path to that.