A generation of American men give up on college
4 unpopular opinions from an old:<p>1) There&#x27;s a point to education.  Decide what you&#x27;re going to do and then prepare for it.  Most likely you will need to get a job that either does something for someone because it&#x27;s specialized, do something for someone because it&#x27;s boring, or you will entertain people.  If you want to be an electrician, great, line that up and get on with it.  We need electricians.  Going to college isn&#x27;t a goal.  It&#x27;s a strategy to get to a goal, but that&#x27;s not what we tell kids.  We tell them it&#x27;s the goal.  If you want to go to college because you want to work as a civil engineer - awesome - we need civil engineers.  Going to college to study civil engineering isn&#x27;t the goal - working as a civil engineer is the goal.  Many jobs, like licensed Civil Engineer, oncologist, or attorney from YouTube videos (even if you read <i>all</i> the comments), require education ** as a strategy to get the job **.  Other jobs require you work for a licensed practitioner.  Some require a mix of the two (e.g. CPA or Welder).<p>2) I see too many men have extended adolescences into their 40&#x27;s.  If you want to man up, here&#x27;s the list:  1) take care of the kids, 2) take care of the spouse, 3) take care of your job, 4) take care of your house, 5) your community, and somewhere along 8, 9 or 10 is &#x27;spend Saturday on the phone with you college buddies from 2007, on your fantasy draft.&#x27;  If you&#x27;re childless an unmarried, the list is 1) take care of your job, take care of your house, 3) take care of your community.  I see too many guys with the list that focuses on fun.  Many of them are unmarried.  Mammals are expected to invest in their children.  Men who show no ability to invest in anything besides themselves are probably signaling they are poor choices as mates.  This is not to say they can&#x27;t get laid, but are probably not messaging well as a long term bet.  I suspect they over-compensate for their poor signaling by signaling hyper masculinity.  They buy trucks they don&#x27;t need, spend too much time at the gym, or engage in high-risk activities.<p>3) The better the job, the farther it is away from being automated.  No one runs to a room to look up your records at the DMV any more - we&#x27;ve automated those clerks away through computers.  Call centers are largely automated - thanks to computers.  Bus and truck drivers will eventually be automated away - thanks to computers.  If your job can be done by anyone with a few hours or days of training, chances are it will be automated away.  This includes programmers, as well.  Companies like Square will chip away at the market from the bottom up and hyper-scalers from the top down.  Developers with the depth of knowledge (usually obtained by getting degrees and often advanced degrees) are better off than going through a boot camp to put buttons on a page.  Whatever your field, make sure you are able to do something that automating it away would be impractical.<p>4) Some skills and jobs are more valuable than others.  If you want to be a music producer or DJ, awesome.  You be you.  Just realize that unless you&#x27;re better than 99.999% of the other wannabe music producers, DJs, indie game developers, founders with a &#x27;great idea,&#x27; or whatever it is, you will make little money.  If you want to be a successful book keeper, it&#x27;s nowhere near as hard and requires only a little more preparation.  While people may stream your latest mix on as free wall paper music, they will pay you good money to maintain their financial records and any related filings with the US Treasury or state agencies.  That&#x27;s not saying music is worthless, but it does say the average book keeper is more valuable to most people than the average musician.  You&#x27;re more likely to pay off that degree you got in Empathy Studies as a book keeper than DJ.<p>What does all this have to do with the article?  1) people are becoming disillusioned with education for the wrong reason.  They think that being smart and learned is just a con because they (or someone they know) got an education in a random major and is struggling.  2) Growing up asks how you can be of service rather than how someone can serve you - and I see a lot of men not growing up.  Signaling you&#x27;re a grownup will generally improve your fit and function in a society where people expect grownups.  3) Easy jobs disappear easily - you need to have enough investment in your skill, trade, or business that you provide more value than a shell script.  4) No one cares about your shitty music except maybe your girlfriend (she&#x27;s lying) and your mother (also lying).  Even if you&#x27;re an entrepreneur, you&#x27;re filling a need for someone else so think about the utility and value of what you&#x27;re doing.<p>That&#x27;s it.  That&#x27;s all there is to it.