I think some home schoolers have managed to work some version of this out - mostly by getting their children started on community college courses at age 16. Now that won't get you into the workforce at 18, but it does accelerate the education process.
My personal experience with 18 year olds is not vast, but I would think maturity levels would be more of a concern than actual aptitude or ability. Then again, people do tend to rise to expectations if they are motivated.
I think you are right that young people rise to expectations. When I joined the Navy at 16, a good proportion of my fellow sailors were under 18. I think people rise to the occasion. Not everyone, of course, but enough that it would be worthwhile to make the pathway more accessible.
I am not a woman but… I came top of my class in school but left at 16 to join the navy. I earned twice as much as my dad before I was twenty and ten times as much — working on Wall Street — before I was thirty. Only once in my career as a software engineer did HR make a fuss about the fact that I did not have a degree but my boss told them to mind their own business. Your argument that skipping college would be good for women is spot on, but I think it would be good for everyone who is smart enough.
I think the main problem is that most people are not that motivated in life or at least not until later in life. They need their hands to be held in order to learn anything meaningfully useful. Most people aren't the LBJ type of industrious and would fail without the crutch of college. Also, there is an argument to be made about how college is a unique time in life where people find themselves or at least have experiences they couldn't have had otherwise and the learning comes secondary. Life isn't just about career success so I wouldn't be yoo hasty in pushing people towards success when the motivation doesn't come from within.
As a father of 2 girls I'm much happier with this post than the previous one where Ruxandra was advocating use of technology to extend a woman's fertility window.
I really see the benefits of girls leaving education young and harnessing what seems to be a feminine urge to 'explore' (contrasted with our 2 boys' urge to 'achieve') before they become weighed down by the responsibilities of adulthood.
However, care needs to be exercised. Some careers are much more constrained by credentials than others and many of the former are the lower risk ones that 'sensible' capable women tend to opt for.
By way of anecdote, our youngest graduated high school a month after her 17th birthday then opted for a 3 year 2x STEM degree with excellent grades from hard papers. Her reward to herself was to travel internationally (on her own dime) during which she landed a FAANG SWE job, though now instead of being a year ahead, her immediate peers are now 3 and 4 years older. Contrast this with the likes of Medical professions or Law where the credential is essential and women start professional roles in their late 20's at best.
I'm not American. None of the following are American:
WRT medical professions, I have a niece who chose to specialise in oncology. While she was working [while studying for her speciality] from about her mid 20's she only became an oncologist at 32 (I think) at which point she had a child and went 'part-time'. Another niece (now about 40 and childless) did a 4 year pharmacy degree and went into hospital pharmacy. I recall she qualified after 2 years in that role then went into management in a multinational.
WRT Law, another niece qualified for law with a 4 year degree then got called to the bar the following year (which was quick). She had also done accountancy and her career has been with a multinational. After she became a Team Leader she had 2 kids (in her 30's) and shifted to part-time. She continues part time with her husband working full time.
We started having kids when my wife was in her late mid 30's. She says it would have been physically easier if she had had them in her 20's. Also because she had 4 kids in fairly quick succession (all planned on her part) she was out of her science career for a prolonged period then couldn't restart it, which she regrets.
Maybe if her fertility window could have been held open longer by technology she would have had the kids more slowly and worked part time, though she did tell me before we married she wanted her kids close in age. Also after the first, that her priorities had changed somewhat and she has subsequently worked with kids, but without a credential.
We were kind of oblivious. Once the house is covered, kids start out cheap so adding more didn't directly affect us (me, that is!). Though, from the 3rd we stopped taking international flights as ticket prices got too high to justify. My wife wasn't working [edit: she tried out MLM which turned out to be a cost centre] and she liked babies so the expense of day care wasn't the constraint, though we used it, and the kids did entertain themselves somewhat, but it would have been helpful to have Grandparents around (the closest set were an 8 hr drive away). We holidayed with them a few times.
As teenagers they mostly got around by public transport and essentially self funded through Uni (2 took out loans to supplement work income).
It only felt unusual after my wife was invited into the informal Evangelical Christian mothers group at school as she is more atheist than I am.
I think encouraging of gap years, long/multiple postdocs, etc. can stack up years that make it more challenging for women. But I am wary of too much pushback against credentialism when it goes as far as the bachelors degree.
Science is complex, and underlying background knowledge is important. Some of this needs to be acquired through self-study, but my experience is that more and more people enter research without a solid understanding of the fundamentals which is still best cohesively delivered through some amount of classroom instruction for almost everyone. I actually think in many ways the US system--which encourages undergrads to get in the lab and do original research in an extracurricular fashion and has the resources to accommodate this while they are taking classes (as well as offering a bit of freedom about what classes they take)--is probably the best balance (people who are really set to excel in science, especially at a high level have the time management skills to balance this). One issue I have with Australia and the UK is there are limited opportunities for undergraduates to work in the lab in an open ended fashion while they are pursuing their bachelors degrees. There are lots of reasons for this, some bureaucratic some cultural.
There are exceptional people who can make contributions without formal instruction, but my experience is molecular biology and chemistry both benefit from formalized instruction along with time in the trenches in lab. Which just requires time.
People like Peter Thiel have a bad track record with understanding the underlying issues with R&D in biology and are often a bit hubristic. It's more complicated than developing a tech product.
I actually was a lot closer to your POV when I was a PhD student and early postdoc than I am now, btw. Perspective has made me appreciate my education, inefficiencies and all. I also more and more appreciate the American model for education, especially at some of the undergraduate focused liberal arts schools even if it is an expensive and probably unsustainable model for most.
I disagree though not vehemently. Paid TA roles can provide good 'lab'/tutorial experience as soon as the semester after completing the relevant paper. There are also full time paid summer semester research and lab roles for undergrad students, especially now when fewer internships are being offered by businesses due to economic constraints.
Glad you / someone finally attacked this problem head on. Gender imbalance confusion in higher / greedy careers echoes the tone deaf confusion around class imbalance in PhDs (imho):
"where are the talented low income people? Why don't they want to spend their time getting a PhD?" While at the same time salaries don't cover the cost of living.
"Where are all the women in professorships / VC / high banking" while at the same time job expectations do not allow for women to have a family.
Directly to your arguments though, I've thought about a few norm shifting workarounds for this as well. Some make me uncomfortable.
1, Good) intergenerational families become the norm and women have children / marry younger. Women could continue avidly pursuing greedy careers if a sixty year old with more bandwidth who also unambiguously loves them lived in the same house. Grandparents are here for a reason and I think the norm of making it to seventy so that you can play golf and atrophy while watching your kids / grandkids from a distance is a bummer (unfairly paraphrased, but directionally accurate). I frankly think it'd be fun to move with your children and grandchildren at sixty five anyway.
2, Good - okay) employers reduce the reward for relocation / travel. Couples could pair up sooner and have kids a few blocks or at least in the same city as extended family. This is the norm for any "normal" / non-greedy job and the sharp women I grew up with who chose to do this all seem fine.
3, Bad) women marry men ten years or so their senior and have children at a younger age but with enough money to support a greedy career. Salaries grow with age and it is a simple fact that youth offers women different options than it offers men. Women could marry / have a family with a man almost a generation their senior and then pay for a lot of the childcare work that disproportionately falls on women (for biological reasons, breastfeeding, infant care, etc). Something about this feels rather dystopian to me (like surrogacy) but within the confines of the present rules this solution doesn't invoke institutional change.
-- got a PhD in stats / chemistry and founded a tech company. Have been with wife for a decade and we're both frustrated with the issues you talk about here.
Want to start a family, but don't want to park our imagination / focus in boring work forever. If we started now / in the next two years almost certainly one of our careers would become irreparably side tracked — re-engaging with a greedy career after a four or six year break / backseat seems like an uphill battle.
We would start if family lived nearby, but mine is in rural America and hers is not in America. Money / a larger place would help family, or at least her mother, be around but it's not an option now. It would be an option if grandparents shared our conviction in intergenerational families but it's definitely an afterthought for them.
The biologically most sensible time to start a family coincides with the time that has the largest marginal impact on our careers. With family nearby or with institutional norms that paid better respect to well adjusted humanity (is it really healthy to opt out of a family for a job? What kind of institution / learning happens when it is populated only by people that made that decision) we would likely be able to do both
It is straightforward to skip 2 years - have your kids do college in high school / Running Start, which starts them in college when they would have gone to 11th grade. This does require the parents to make sure that they have advanced their math enough to take or have taken calculus by or in 11th grade. If they take transfer level classes for their target major, they will gain 2 years. I had planned this for my daughter and son. But my daughter got in to the university via early admissions after 10th grade (she had just turned 15). My son did do this. They both had their MS's when they were 21 - my daughter in structural engineering, my son in Management Information Science - Data Security.
The STEM fields are still pretty much meritocratic, as are the harder areas in the Business schools. Unfortunately, businesses are not into career development of their employees as much as they were 50 years ago, so I don't really count on them.
I would note that pushing the math may take considerable parent involvement. I am a physcist with an engineering Ph.D, so I knew what was needed. I had my daughter take Geometry and preCalculus by correspondence over two earlier summers, with me serving as tutor. My daughter is an Aspie and did not like the social environment of the school and wanted out - I told her how to do it and supported her.
Looks interesting. It wasn’t available when I was having to work with my kids on math. Parents currently facing these same issues should investigate it.
One of my friends graduated from school at 15 and applied for direct entry to Med School. They told him he was too young even though he had met the academic requirements. (This was decades ago in a non-USA Anglophone country). So he redid his final [school] year and scored a national scholarship (one of a few 100 a year). He was then accepted.
Back then if you had achieved 'Uni Entrance' you could start at 16 (without any need for special dispensation) and it was relatively common to do so. I was friends with a girl who was awarded her PhD [in chemistry] when she was 21. I felt she was smart but not unusual.
The med schools want the additional maturity of age - if only to deal with patient uncertainty concerning unusually young medical students. Students who did early admission would have to do a year or two of research assistant work after graduating before applying to medical school.
In NZ in the 1970's you could go directly into Medical School if you passed the entrance exam and the interview stage, I presume from High School. My friends parents were both Medical specialists so were familiar with the process. Nowadays AI tells me a year at Uni is required but I suspect there is still a discretionary element to this.
Skipping college if you want to get married and have kids is not a good idea. College is an excellent place to find a husband. Nearly all my married friends with kids met in college although I do know one that married her high school sweetheart.
All the marriageable men will be in college, pretty much. "Working" class men are less likely to marry and less likely to be able to support a family, and their genes probably aren't as good (on average). And even if you just lurked around college educated men some other way than actually going, college educated men don't marry down anymore; they want an educational equal these days.
What is this career, and why is everyone there the same age?
Shortening timelines in a *systematic* way makes sense, per the quoted bit. Here in the UK a medical degree is an undergraduate degree. Copying that serms great.
Individually choosing to do this in the current environment where this is not supported is not likely not getting you a good career or a nice family, let alone both.
(It's true I ended up not really having much of a career before starting our family, but I wouldn't have been able to start a family at all if I hadn't gone to higher education. All the men I met in "the real world" when I took a year off were complete trash, and it's doubtful I would have met any at work given I work remote.)
I just gave an example of an entire scheme (the Palantir one) and said it might open the Overton window to other such schemes. I'm obviously proposing smth societal wide
Meritocracy is a huge threat to self-perpetuating elites. The advent of selective state secondary schools in the UK forced previously mediocre fee-charging high schools to up their academic game, but the introduction of comprehensive schools* then helped the mediocre to keep uppity plebs at bay.
The real clincher in arresting social mobility has been to combine requiring higher-level academic credentials even for work like childcare with lengthening the time that talented/hardworking-but-poor kids have to do unpaid study in expensive-to-live places in order to gain access to the best-paid/highest-status jobs.
Since self-perpetuating elites run things, they are going to be extremely resistant to any attempt to lower these barriers. But you're right that it's in wider society's interests for them to be brought down.
*Oddly enough, more grammar schools were closed by Margaret Thatcher than by any other UK Education Minister.
The problem with expecting companies to train people is that they don't much because you can't contractually bind people to it. You spend £5k training someone and they can hand in their notice when it finishes.
The other answer is shorter qualifications. You don't need 3 years of study to start work in software. One year is fine. And you could probably get people doing it younger. Skip A levels, do your certificate in software/marketing etc.
My daughter will turn 18 the summer before she starts college and she’s be the youngest in her class group. A large minority will be 19 and a few will be 20.
I don’t think she’ll be immature, in fact I’d really love to telescope the system and have her finish even another year earlier.
I agree this sounds like a good idea in theory! But I was wondering whether you know any examples of this actually leading women to be able to have an impressive career while achieving their fertility goals? I looked up the two women you mentioned but neither seems to have children.
If there aren’t any actual examples, that would imply the fertility bottleneck lies elsewhere.
I think undergraduate and post-graduate work are too monolithic in general. It just can't be true that every undergraduate needs exactly four years to learn what they need to perform as a professional, and it makes it too much of an obstacle to go back to school later. We could make BAs three years, or we could make a diversity of degrees that support different life changes at different stages.
How about this: We fix basic education so it's done by the end of 8th grade. High school becomes the new college-track and technical school becomes an even more common alternative. Then we may college a thing you might do more often and in smaller chunks -- at 18, but also in every decade of life.
I just met someone in Scotland and they did this with a software engineering role at JP Morgan. So sounds like folks are trying it out in places with labor market shortages.
No one is mentioning the apprenticeships here, or in broader American society. The Swiss have the best model, where apprenticeships are present in white coller careers, not just the trades. Earning while learning is going to have to become the default if the West is going to retain its astronomically high housing prices.
I think some home schoolers have managed to work some version of this out - mostly by getting their children started on community college courses at age 16. Now that won't get you into the workforce at 18, but it does accelerate the education process.
My personal experience with 18 year olds is not vast, but I would think maturity levels would be more of a concern than actual aptitude or ability. Then again, people do tend to rise to expectations if they are motivated.
I don’t think skipping college in this way is for everyone but certainly over credentialism is not good for women
I think you are right that young people rise to expectations. When I joined the Navy at 16, a good proportion of my fellow sailors were under 18. I think people rise to the occasion. Not everyone, of course, but enough that it would be worthwhile to make the pathway more accessible.
Yes yes yes. Raise expectations for talented ppl
Exactly. If it's a self-selecting path then the likelihood of success is higher.
I am not a woman but… I came top of my class in school but left at 16 to join the navy. I earned twice as much as my dad before I was twenty and ten times as much — working on Wall Street — before I was thirty. Only once in my career as a software engineer did HR make a fuss about the fact that I did not have a degree but my boss told them to mind their own business. Your argument that skipping college would be good for women is spot on, but I think it would be good for everyone who is smart enough.
Yep ofc. It's bad to waste both young men and women's time.
I think the main problem is that most people are not that motivated in life or at least not until later in life. They need their hands to be held in order to learn anything meaningfully useful. Most people aren't the LBJ type of industrious and would fail without the crutch of college. Also, there is an argument to be made about how college is a unique time in life where people find themselves or at least have experiences they couldn't have had otherwise and the learning comes secondary. Life isn't just about career success so I wouldn't be yoo hasty in pushing people towards success when the motivation doesn't come from within.
True. But imo we can mean more into raising the expectations of young ppl vs telling them they have forever time
As a father of 2 girls I'm much happier with this post than the previous one where Ruxandra was advocating use of technology to extend a woman's fertility window.
I really see the benefits of girls leaving education young and harnessing what seems to be a feminine urge to 'explore' (contrasted with our 2 boys' urge to 'achieve') before they become weighed down by the responsibilities of adulthood.
However, care needs to be exercised. Some careers are much more constrained by credentials than others and many of the former are the lower risk ones that 'sensible' capable women tend to opt for.
By way of anecdote, our youngest graduated high school a month after her 17th birthday then opted for a 3 year 2x STEM degree with excellent grades from hard papers. Her reward to herself was to travel internationally (on her own dime) during which she landed a FAANG SWE job, though now instead of being a year ahead, her immediate peers are now 3 and 4 years older. Contrast this with the likes of Medical professions or Law where the credential is essential and women start professional roles in their late 20's at best.
This is an oddly American problem.
In Europe undergraduate law and medicine degrees exist.
My aunt was working as a physician at the age of 24.
Yeah and i don't think European physicians are worse!!
I'm not American. None of the following are American:
WRT medical professions, I have a niece who chose to specialise in oncology. While she was working [while studying for her speciality] from about her mid 20's she only became an oncologist at 32 (I think) at which point she had a child and went 'part-time'. Another niece (now about 40 and childless) did a 4 year pharmacy degree and went into hospital pharmacy. I recall she qualified after 2 years in that role then went into management in a multinational.
WRT Law, another niece qualified for law with a 4 year degree then got called to the bar the following year (which was quick). She had also done accountancy and her career has been with a multinational. After she became a Team Leader she had 2 kids (in her 30's) and shifted to part-time. She continues part time with her husband working full time.
This is very common
Granted. Yes, the opportunity cost of having children is very high for highly capable women in modern society.
Wow, I had no idea! We should definitely change to be more like Europe there.
Why not both?
We started having kids when my wife was in her late mid 30's. She says it would have been physically easier if she had had them in her 20's. Also because she had 4 kids in fairly quick succession (all planned on her part) she was out of her science career for a prolonged period then couldn't restart it, which she regrets.
Maybe if her fertility window could have been held open longer by technology she would have had the kids more slowly and worked part time, though she did tell me before we married she wanted her kids close in age. Also after the first, that her priorities had changed somewhat and she has subsequently worked with kids, but without a credential.
Yeah but 4 kids in such a short period of time is quite unusual. I think 2 is easier :)
We were kind of oblivious. Once the house is covered, kids start out cheap so adding more didn't directly affect us (me, that is!). Though, from the 3rd we stopped taking international flights as ticket prices got too high to justify. My wife wasn't working [edit: she tried out MLM which turned out to be a cost centre] and she liked babies so the expense of day care wasn't the constraint, though we used it, and the kids did entertain themselves somewhat, but it would have been helpful to have Grandparents around (the closest set were an 8 hr drive away). We holidayed with them a few times.
As teenagers they mostly got around by public transport and essentially self funded through Uni (2 took out loans to supplement work income).
It only felt unusual after my wife was invited into the informal Evangelical Christian mothers group at school as she is more atheist than I am.
I think encouraging of gap years, long/multiple postdocs, etc. can stack up years that make it more challenging for women. But I am wary of too much pushback against credentialism when it goes as far as the bachelors degree.
Science is complex, and underlying background knowledge is important. Some of this needs to be acquired through self-study, but my experience is that more and more people enter research without a solid understanding of the fundamentals which is still best cohesively delivered through some amount of classroom instruction for almost everyone. I actually think in many ways the US system--which encourages undergrads to get in the lab and do original research in an extracurricular fashion and has the resources to accommodate this while they are taking classes (as well as offering a bit of freedom about what classes they take)--is probably the best balance (people who are really set to excel in science, especially at a high level have the time management skills to balance this). One issue I have with Australia and the UK is there are limited opportunities for undergraduates to work in the lab in an open ended fashion while they are pursuing their bachelors degrees. There are lots of reasons for this, some bureaucratic some cultural.
There are exceptional people who can make contributions without formal instruction, but my experience is molecular biology and chemistry both benefit from formalized instruction along with time in the trenches in lab. Which just requires time.
People like Peter Thiel have a bad track record with understanding the underlying issues with R&D in biology and are often a bit hubristic. It's more complicated than developing a tech product.
I actually was a lot closer to your POV when I was a PhD student and early postdoc than I am now, btw. Perspective has made me appreciate my education, inefficiencies and all. I also more and more appreciate the American model for education, especially at some of the undergraduate focused liberal arts schools even if it is an expensive and probably unsustainable model for most.
yeah tho this is a tech internship. I sorta agree re biology but I still think so much time is wasted
I disagree though not vehemently. Paid TA roles can provide good 'lab'/tutorial experience as soon as the semester after completing the relevant paper. There are also full time paid summer semester research and lab roles for undergrad students, especially now when fewer internships are being offered by businesses due to economic constraints.
Glad you / someone finally attacked this problem head on. Gender imbalance confusion in higher / greedy careers echoes the tone deaf confusion around class imbalance in PhDs (imho):
"where are the talented low income people? Why don't they want to spend their time getting a PhD?" While at the same time salaries don't cover the cost of living.
"Where are all the women in professorships / VC / high banking" while at the same time job expectations do not allow for women to have a family.
Directly to your arguments though, I've thought about a few norm shifting workarounds for this as well. Some make me uncomfortable.
1, Good) intergenerational families become the norm and women have children / marry younger. Women could continue avidly pursuing greedy careers if a sixty year old with more bandwidth who also unambiguously loves them lived in the same house. Grandparents are here for a reason and I think the norm of making it to seventy so that you can play golf and atrophy while watching your kids / grandkids from a distance is a bummer (unfairly paraphrased, but directionally accurate). I frankly think it'd be fun to move with your children and grandchildren at sixty five anyway.
2, Good - okay) employers reduce the reward for relocation / travel. Couples could pair up sooner and have kids a few blocks or at least in the same city as extended family. This is the norm for any "normal" / non-greedy job and the sharp women I grew up with who chose to do this all seem fine.
3, Bad) women marry men ten years or so their senior and have children at a younger age but with enough money to support a greedy career. Salaries grow with age and it is a simple fact that youth offers women different options than it offers men. Women could marry / have a family with a man almost a generation their senior and then pay for a lot of the childcare work that disproportionately falls on women (for biological reasons, breastfeeding, infant care, etc). Something about this feels rather dystopian to me (like surrogacy) but within the confines of the present rules this solution doesn't invoke institutional change.
-- got a PhD in stats / chemistry and founded a tech company. Have been with wife for a decade and we're both frustrated with the issues you talk about here.
This is interesting. If you can elaborate, what issues are you and your wife dealing with?
Want to start a family, but don't want to park our imagination / focus in boring work forever. If we started now / in the next two years almost certainly one of our careers would become irreparably side tracked — re-engaging with a greedy career after a four or six year break / backseat seems like an uphill battle.
We would start if family lived nearby, but mine is in rural America and hers is not in America. Money / a larger place would help family, or at least her mother, be around but it's not an option now. It would be an option if grandparents shared our conviction in intergenerational families but it's definitely an afterthought for them.
The biologically most sensible time to start a family coincides with the time that has the largest marginal impact on our careers. With family nearby or with institutional norms that paid better respect to well adjusted humanity (is it really healthy to opt out of a family for a job? What kind of institution / learning happens when it is populated only by people that made that decision) we would likely be able to do both
It is straightforward to skip 2 years - have your kids do college in high school / Running Start, which starts them in college when they would have gone to 11th grade. This does require the parents to make sure that they have advanced their math enough to take or have taken calculus by or in 11th grade. If they take transfer level classes for their target major, they will gain 2 years. I had planned this for my daughter and son. But my daughter got in to the university via early admissions after 10th grade (she had just turned 15). My son did do this. They both had their MS's when they were 21 - my daughter in structural engineering, my son in Management Information Science - Data Security.
The STEM fields are still pretty much meritocratic, as are the harder areas in the Business schools. Unfortunately, businesses are not into career development of their employees as much as they were 50 years ago, so I don't really count on them.
This sounds amazing
I would note that pushing the math may take considerable parent involvement. I am a physcist with an engineering Ph.D, so I knew what was needed. I had my daughter take Geometry and preCalculus by correspondence over two earlier summers, with me serving as tutor. My daughter is an Aspie and did not like the social environment of the school and wanted out - I told her how to do it and supported her.
Again, amazing. I did my education in Romania. What you describe wouldn't have been possible
https://mathacademy.com/ being available is a game changer in this regard.
Looks interesting. It wasn’t available when I was having to work with my kids on math. Parents currently facing these same issues should investigate it.
One of my friends graduated from school at 15 and applied for direct entry to Med School. They told him he was too young even though he had met the academic requirements. (This was decades ago in a non-USA Anglophone country). So he redid his final [school] year and scored a national scholarship (one of a few 100 a year). He was then accepted.
Back then if you had achieved 'Uni Entrance' you could start at 16 (without any need for special dispensation) and it was relatively common to do so. I was friends with a girl who was awarded her PhD [in chemistry] when she was 21. I felt she was smart but not unusual.
The med schools want the additional maturity of age - if only to deal with patient uncertainty concerning unusually young medical students. Students who did early admission would have to do a year or two of research assistant work after graduating before applying to medical school.
In NZ in the 1970's you could go directly into Medical School if you passed the entrance exam and the interview stage, I presume from High School. My friends parents were both Medical specialists so were familiar with the process. Nowadays AI tells me a year at Uni is required but I suspect there is still a discretionary element to this.
Skipping college if you want to get married and have kids is not a good idea. College is an excellent place to find a husband. Nearly all my married friends with kids met in college although I do know one that married her high school sweetheart.
All the marriageable men will be in college, pretty much. "Working" class men are less likely to marry and less likely to be able to support a family, and their genes probably aren't as good (on average). And even if you just lurked around college educated men some other way than actually going, college educated men don't marry down anymore; they want an educational equal these days.
I think if you skip college and work in a high end career w/ peers of ~ same age, you'll find a partner
What is this career, and why is everyone there the same age?
Shortening timelines in a *systematic* way makes sense, per the quoted bit. Here in the UK a medical degree is an undergraduate degree. Copying that serms great.
Individually choosing to do this in the current environment where this is not supported is not likely not getting you a good career or a nice family, let alone both.
(It's true I ended up not really having much of a career before starting our family, but I wouldn't have been able to start a family at all if I hadn't gone to higher education. All the men I met in "the real world" when I took a year off were complete trash, and it's doubtful I would have met any at work given I work remote.)
I just gave an example of an entire scheme (the Palantir one) and said it might open the Overton window to other such schemes. I'm obviously proposing smth societal wide
Meritocracy is a huge threat to self-perpetuating elites. The advent of selective state secondary schools in the UK forced previously mediocre fee-charging high schools to up their academic game, but the introduction of comprehensive schools* then helped the mediocre to keep uppity plebs at bay.
The real clincher in arresting social mobility has been to combine requiring higher-level academic credentials even for work like childcare with lengthening the time that talented/hardworking-but-poor kids have to do unpaid study in expensive-to-live places in order to gain access to the best-paid/highest-status jobs.
Since self-perpetuating elites run things, they are going to be extremely resistant to any attempt to lower these barriers. But you're right that it's in wider society's interests for them to be brought down.
*Oddly enough, more grammar schools were closed by Margaret Thatcher than by any other UK Education Minister.
What explains the thatcher thing
Good question. Mostly she happened to be Education Minister at the peak of the effect of the comprehensivisation programme started by Labour.
The problem with expecting companies to train people is that they don't much because you can't contractually bind people to it. You spend £5k training someone and they can hand in their notice when it finishes.
The other answer is shorter qualifications. You don't need 3 years of study to start work in software. One year is fine. And you could probably get people doing it younger. Skip A levels, do your certificate in software/marketing etc.
Yeah I think there are a bunch of solutions. My main general point is pushing ppl away from credentialism
My daughter will turn 18 the summer before she starts college and she’s be the youngest in her class group. A large minority will be 19 and a few will be 20.
I don’t think she’ll be immature, in fact I’d really love to telescope the system and have her finish even another year earlier.
Sounds great
I agree this sounds like a good idea in theory! But I was wondering whether you know any examples of this actually leading women to be able to have an impressive career while achieving their fertility goals? I looked up the two women you mentioned but neither seems to have children.
If there aren’t any actual examples, that would imply the fertility bottleneck lies elsewhere.
They're still quite young...
I think undergraduate and post-graduate work are too monolithic in general. It just can't be true that every undergraduate needs exactly four years to learn what they need to perform as a professional, and it makes it too much of an obstacle to go back to school later. We could make BAs three years, or we could make a diversity of degrees that support different life changes at different stages.
How about this: We fix basic education so it's done by the end of 8th grade. High school becomes the new college-track and technical school becomes an even more common alternative. Then we may college a thing you might do more often and in smaller chunks -- at 18, but also in every decade of life.
I just met someone in Scotland and they did this with a software engineering role at JP Morgan. So sounds like folks are trying it out in places with labor market shortages.
No one is mentioning the apprenticeships here, or in broader American society. The Swiss have the best model, where apprenticeships are present in white coller careers, not just the trades. Earning while learning is going to have to become the default if the West is going to retain its astronomically high housing prices.
This piece seems to take as given that college is a waste of time and there are few if any costs to forgoing it.