Dex is right and I am more or less continuously angry about this

Kids have no idea what they're doing and the people giving advice about college by and large do not know how the game is played

and this by and large screws kids

and I am Mad https://twitter.com/DogmanRespecter/status/1290053473434664961

There was probably a time when "lol just go to college man College is what you need to be successful COLLEGE COOOOOLLLEDGE" was probably reasonably good advice in the US

That time probably continued maybe most of the way through GenX when entry level jobs were plentiful (??)

I went to a state college in the mid aughts. I had a highly technical background with publications and most of my friends were unusually good at what they did.

Most of them ended up getting tech jobs in the late aughts or early 10s and theyre fine

Representative? Idk

What I do know is that I worked an advising office for a while as a grad student and while they tried real hard, they were not suited to advise students for getting private sector jobs that will allow them a comfortable living

College advisors are people who got jobs as college advisors after graduating. This is not a bad gig but it's not what most students have in mind as Success.

Professors are mostly people who are professors got their academic jobs in a much better academic academic market.

I did my best to steer students in the right direction. I encouraged them to learn to code, I begged them to get internships, if they seemed cut out for grad school I warned them about /that/ (another enchilada entirely)

But mostly these students were hosed

Like--tens of thousands in debt for a so-so degree, not cut out for grad school--I don't know where they ended up, mostly.

I really tried, even in class: "Here are the things you need to do to get an entry analyst job." I'd guess maybe a handful followed up on it.

I think many of them were there because it was Expected, not because they wanted to learn my shit, and not because they had any kind of plan for what to do next.

And you know, thirty or fifty years ago, maybe that cut it.

It really doesn't now but do their parents know?

UMC parents have an inkling if they're connected. Maybe. In the big coastal cities, in tech, sure.

Everyone else, no way.

Universities have no incentive to publicize this. They're /delighted/ to take the tuition and lead a generation into debt slavery

And if you're not plugged into to get the lowdown on the True Path--if your last memory of college was out of the eighties--God forbid, if you never went to college yourself--there's no way you're going to be in a position to give good advice.

But how would you know that?

I'm not sympathetic to children of the Upper West Side murdering each other for NYT internships, but they are not the median case.

Median case is probably something like a gen 2 Hispanic kid burning his proud parent's life savings and taking debt for a worthless degree.

Anyway, burn down campuses and salt the earth. This system is distilled Lawful Evil.