I'm an old fart, and my details are: out of parent's houses at 20, out of school at 24, financially independent at 25 and married at 26. Never had kids though, at least none with 2 legs. Was 1-2 years younger than my cohorts, and there was a wave of delaying kids until parents were 40-ish that seems to have weakened. Whole lot of girls with older parents it seems.
What's today's trends with people going for advanced or professional degrees?
I moved out of my parents’ at 18, finished undergrad and started my PhD at 21, married and had my first child towards the end of grad school at 26, and currently have 3 kids. Total household income is about $325k in a MCOL area.
We became homeowners in 2019 during a narrow window of affordability and available housing inventory in our area. Had we waited, covid and the subsequent inflation and decreased inventory would have kept homeownership out of reach.
It was extremely stressful at the time, but we made the strategic decision to have kids young while we have the energy. I can’t imagine being 10 years older and being able to keep up with everything.
> What's today's trends with people going for advanced or professional degrees?
The vast majority don't actually make it through to graduation. In a 6 year period , something like 12-20% graduate for a 4 year degree depending on how they've (the college) decided to measure. Metrics aren't tracked to determine how much repeatability happened. That, for the most part is for those who can afford to go to school full time indefinitely which in Today's dollars amounts to roughly $15,000 per 6 months living expenses (if your smart without including books and tuition costs).
Most degrees have general education that act as weed out classes that are designed and structured to fail. Core Physics in Engineering, Economics/Anthro in Business.
Many classes also misrepresent the time commitment needed to succeed in the class. I've seen some 3-unit classes that have so many assignments that you had to spend 28 hours a week just completing them. In a 12 unit full-time load you would need to be able to put in 68+ hours a week for 16 weeks with just one of those classes. Sometimes you get two. Normally a 3-unit class should never require more than 9 hours of coursework a week but that rarely happens consistently.
Older people going back to school would find themselves having to go to the emergency room if they had any stress related medical conditions with that kind of work load.
Physics has the 3 question two test, where each question depends on the previous question's correct answer. You can only get the last problem wrong on either of those tests to pass. Its perfection or nothing.
Economics is plagued with non-deterministic answers in their testing methodology for at least 30% of the questions for any course using Pearson resources (almost all use them). The reading material doesn't match the tested material, and you have to choose which answer is correct among 3 or 4 correct answers. By choose I mean guess because that's what it is without determinism properties which these lack but the professor and school lack rigor in applying it to coursework.
I'm largely self-taught after failing college coursework for nearly two decades. Self taught through MIT's OCW and I do IT System's Administration/engineer responsibilities, no degree. Systems and Signals was probably one of the most important OCW courses I took (where they discuss these properties rigorously). I've completed up past Calc 3 into DiffEQ/Linear Algebra, I couldn't pass the physics because they inconsistently handle rounding rules on those causality spiraled tests. I gave up after try/fail #9 (not the same professor/college) where I got the only perfect at the college for the bundled lab portion/project which was pooled among all physics courses at that college, but not the three question test. The project was designing an egg drop that survives a 4 story drop with set materials from a pool of materials divied up exclusively between teams, I took the lead and we did it with a plastic bag, paper, and water. Escalating the academic dishonesty issues (students selling previous tests in the class to other students loudly with the teacher turning a blind eye), resulted in no action because the teacher had seniority over the Dean (straight from the Dean's mouth).
Organic Chem is often one as well. Many of these course sections have an 8% pass rate or worse.
Systemic issues reported get ignored, the escalation path is professor -> chair -> dean -> board of trustees. All teachers, all with the bureacratic mindset that doing any action will affect their standing so its better to do nothing at all in anything but clear cut fraud. Paying a teacher to teach, and then having them refer you to Khan Academy videos, not teach (no lecture), and autograde/refuse to correct issues on tests where material tested didn't match course materials; isn't fraud in their mind. Incidentally, they also don't consider revoking access to digital materials you purchased through a specific date, which are LMS locked, without any refund, fraud either after you withdraw. There's no requirement for investigatory action upon report and these people are all co-workers who are in it together.
There's a lot of fraud involved with colleges and they largely have blanket legal protection. Unless you go to school outside the US you are faced with this, and predatory loans that can't be discharged in bankruptcy or cases of outright fraud. ITT tech happened in early 2000s, it was clearly fraud, and they only recently reached a settlement in 2022 to discharge the existing debt (but not refund interest payments).
While that agreement was reached, I personally haven't heard from anyone involved in that actually completing the process for the discharge. Last I heard you had to submit additional paperwork that had to be just right which was error prone and stalling tactics. I've a few friends from HS where they went that route and regretted it. They are in their 40s now, not a homeowner, no kids, no wife, critically stunted from overbearing debt imo.
The only other alternative for qualifications is professional certifications, and the same companies are involved with the same fraudulent practices. Extract as much money as possible, have government contracts for blanket legal protection, eliminate due process. Its rapidly becoming an unlivable world where you can't get ahead unless you were born wealthy or steal it.
Most of us are raised from a young age to not steal, the existing environment encourages those who steal and get away with it, at the expense of those that follow ethics, morals and rules. Cheating and academic dishonesty is rampant because fraud & corruption is endemic to the system.
Employers use the claim that you aren't qualified even when you are, simply because you don't have a certification or degree. I've turned down many job offers because they wanted me to come work for them at half-off for work I've a decade of experience at. Imagine what people who have no experience and no college have to deal with.
Thanks for sharing your experiences! It's a bittersweet feeling for me to look back at how I refused a traditional education having known only a fraction of what you do.
My observation is that the base M.O. of academic-corporate apparatus is for any given transaction to be at least a low-level scam. Unless a business is a family mom-and-pop store making fresh pastries at a reasonable price, just expect anything being sold to you to involve some amount of shenanigans. The system leaks and misallocates currency so badly that ripoffs are the only way to get ahead. To have more subscribers, simply make canceling subscriptions confusing and time consuming. If the CEO wants a third home on Martha's Vineyard, he has the cooks use the same amount of pizza dough for the large as for the medium. You want that car at a reasonable price? Be prepared to have features that have been basic to vehicles for decades crumble apart after 80k miles. Don't forget that you can't put a price on education, so use that "good debt" to buy a bunch of paper weights you'll only read 10% of, and expect to be a "self learner" because important people like professors and corporate vice presidents don't have time to do their jobs. If they let you subvert the system, it's just because they know you need to "hit the ground running." Don't ask, don't tell!
If dishonesty and swindling were somehow eliminated from the economy, the entire system would collapse. People must fail for others to win, and the system can only grow and replicate if it can create more failures, but not so much failure that the losers have nothing left to lose.
> Imagine what people who have no experience and no college have to deal with.
Hell, even with experience, employers by default assume that you are the one misleading them, despite many if not most job ads containing overt dishonesty. It works out for them if they can convince candidates that they are all at least somewhat inferior compared to it, and many fall for that. Someone will take that low paying dev job, especially given how few opportunities that seem to be for junior devs now in contrast to when I got started.
> Most of us are raised from a young age to not steal, the existing environment encourages those who do that get away with it, at the expense of those that follow ethics, morals and rules. Cheating and academic dishonesty is rampant because fraud & corruption is endemic to the system.
This is not new, but I do agree it's more noticeable, and probably will continue to be so as real wage continues to drop. People get more desperate and less socially inclined as financial stress increases, and it has been doing so with _less_ social safety net for at least as long as anyone who reads this has been alive.
It’s anecdotal but based on 20-30 years observations. Recall reading something about the Y chromosome being more fragile so age and lab work would agree with this. Just knew lots of 40-ish coworkers and buddies with lots of girls and few boys.
What's today's trends with people going for advanced or professional degrees?