hamvendor:jackiegaytona: intjint:blackqueerblog:every year we have to say it Trade school is ok!Am
hamvendor:jackiegaytona: intjint:blackqueerblog:every year we have to say it Trade school is ok! American college/academic culture is so weird. Idk if it’s just because I’m from a low socioeconomic background but here in Australia it’s extremely common for people to leave school and go straight to work and never attend uni at all. I’m the first and only person in my immediate family to go to university. I only know of one highschool friend who went to uni, and ended up dropping out anyway. Nobody is seen as a failure here if they don’t go into further study, and apprenticeships or traineeships are even encouraged (which I think is kind of the equivalent of community/trade college in the US? Except you’re in a paid job doing hands-on work while learning). I finally finished a bachelor degree last year at age 32, and it’s very common for people to come back and do uni later in life, many after retirement or after being in a trade job or retail job etc for years. Most of my classmates in psychology were mature aged students, many were women who had raised kids and wanted to do something for themselves now that their kids were grown up! Buddy it’s because the only way to obtain a decently paying job that’s not the trades or civil service in this country is to go to college. And even that’s questionable. My cousin has a masters degree working for the state of Indiana as a mental health counselor and she has to work a second job dispatching asphalt trucks to make ends meet. Australia has a WAY higher minimum wage than pretty much any state in the US, so yeah you probably don’t have to go to college to get by down there. I think non-Americans wildly underestimate how bad income inequality is in the US. We really are a corporate oligarchy that grinds working class people into paste to feed the machine of capital. -- source link