malcontent wrote: ↑Mon, 01 Aug 2022 10:29 am
Back in HS, I had a totally different mindset. I did not care what I scored, and that was reflected in my results. I dropped out of the academic stream and took the vocational stream… mainly because my last two years of HS would be half days; for the morning half they would bus us over to a vocational school and there was zero study there, all hands on. While I did take the ACT with the rest of my HS class, my results were not stellar. The question I have to ask myself, did any of this have an long-term effect on my outcome? I have to say honestly, no. When I got into community college, I quickly caught up and by my final year of university I was making the dean’s list. I credit that not to hard work, but taking a full roster of classes that I was actually interested in. Yes, I may be the exception to the rule, but I always knew I had it in me… whether I worked hard or not, it was going to happen. This is why I always say, the cream rises to the top, some bits a little slower than others, but the destination is the same. And while I’m not the top brass, I’ve certainly done better than the vast majority of my HS class, despite doing far worse that them back in those days. I have no regrets and wouldn’t change a thing.
I don't disagree, there are hardly any jobs that require top mark subject knowledge across 8-10 subjects. You need to know a bit about what you are actually doing, and have drive/resilience/people skills to get things done. Some people from Harvard couldn't run a lemonade stand if their life depended on it. But they could write a 100 page paper about how to theoretically do it.
The sheer size and geographical differences of the US economy have ensured there are many great opportunities without top "credential" education. At it's core, the fundamentals of what you say are still true, although I do believe the odds of things or the range of opportunities have shifted over time there. You likely graduated (I'm guessing 25-30 years ago) when fewer people "invested" in education. Even though you did it later, you still did it. Now, these people are everywhere. I'm not suggesting that fundamentally what you describe isn't true anymore, but I think you also need to recognize time hasn't stayed still either.
In summary, any educational track/starting point is neither a necessary condition nor a sufficient condition to guarantee success (or more broadly happiness). Many that fly high early are surpassed later on. But there is a spectrum of what options people have along the way, and for better or worse some of these have a strong mapping to educational achievements. Whether any one individual thinks it matters enough or is worth it to pursue this or that is up to them.
Edit: If there is a societal error, it is that people correlate or assume a person's skills/ability too much to education. This could be said about the different classes of schools/unis (elite, good, mid, lower, etc) or just the "degree" itself. Many in the West thought there was a very large or infinite return to education. I think the truth was more that smart, driven, and adaptable (= successful) people just happen to get degrees in the early days.