I'm not sure if you have children or not, but do you expect some magical entity to teach their impressionable children, or are we going to pretend that the WFH wave is still a thing and someone can homeschool their children in the household while also dealing with their anal-retentive co-workers.
I already spoke on this above.
Because of the switch to whole language, the prevalence of screens, litigious parents, chaotic classrooms, etc - Dumb kids are finishing high school without the ability to read and do 8th grade mathematics. It costs schools money to fail kids, so it makes more sense to use "social promotion".
These kids do not do well at 4 year schools.
They don't do well at 2 year schools.
If high school grads with poor academic skills somehow end up in trade school - they will quickly realize how important all that math was.
Most won't figure out how important it was to understand how to parse difficult text like Jane Eyre and sign any piece of paper in front of them.
This is happening to Black, White, Latino, and everyone else.
To further the point, lotta kids that go to all white rich suburban schools CAN'T READ. Covid ain't got nothing to do with it.
There's an idea about how children learn to read that's held sway in schools for more than a generation — even though it was proven wrong by cognitive scientists decades ago. Teaching methods based on this idea can make it harder for children to learn how to read. In this new podcast, host Emily...
features.apmreports.org
Once those kids get to 18, society says they are on their own. I wish them well.
If you want to talk about the American school system in general, not specifically about what to major in college - please start your own post, I'll participate.
But this post is not about the mass/the average, and I won't let y'all derail it.
This post is about the smart kids, the nerds.
Smart kids in high school or the early years in college often pick majors with poor economic prospects. Plentiful jobs with low salaries and no realistic options to make a decent - or high salaries and very few jobs.
Lotta folks saying "elite institution", "well I made it..", "my friends made it", "gotta go in with a plan", "gotta network", "they studied X for 4 years and got a job in Y..." - lots and lots of COPE. (Like how do folks go to a 4 year school and not learn to meet an argument full on, instead of focusing on tangents? That's English 101)
I'm making the point, that these kids should not even entertain a lot of these very popular and well regarded majors, because the #'s are truly against them.
Pick something that has a better chance to make money.
