American Millennials are among the world's least skilled

[Ruptga]

Hang on, so the youngest generation, those with the least work, life, and education experience, are the least skilled? Fucking crazy.

 

[mmntech]

this is all a result of mommy and daddy telling their little jimmy that he is special. it's a result of kids getting participation ribbons for coming in last place. it's a result of schools dumbing down curriculum so that the dumb kids don't feel dumb.

The education system is fundamentally flawed for sure, because it values mediocrity instead of mastery.

With math in particular, moving kids along so they stay with the class is the worst possible thing to do. If they don't master the fundamentals, they'll never get more the abstract-analytical concepts of algebra and calculus. This was always my problem with mathematics when I was growing up. Had extra help been available to me, I would have done better. There's no such thing as someone who's naturally bad at math. Only teachers who are bad at teaching it.

Worse still, you have lazy educators trying to place struggling kids into the boxes of "learning disability" or "ADHD", when in reality there's nothing wrong with them.

I really do think North America would benefit from adopting an Asian style education system. Focus on mastery and academics. In Japan, kids are even made to clean their own schools. Teaches responsibility and respect. Two other things that are severely lacking in society today. The fact that so many people would consider making kids do that degrading is a clear reflection of the problem.

 

[maddogchen]

Strange, but here in the Silicon Valley, I've seen Millenials coming out of school with more education than the previous generations.

My generation and the ones before in the work force here might have a Masters and a few with PhDs or even MDs. But the ones we are hiring now, all have PhDs with a Post Doc in some field, some even have MD and PhD together (yeah that smart bastard worked to get both in school...)

And they are taking lesser position jobs too because there are so many of them out there trying to find a job. But I guess since starting salaries are 100k+ they don't seem to mind. Much better than the 40k-60k they were making as post docs.

 

[Vdubchaos]

The education system is fundamentally flawed for sure, because it values mediocrity instead of mastery.

You can say the same about our Companies as well. Our entire society does above.

 

[Vdubchaos]

Strange, but here in the Silicon Valley, I've seen Millenials coming out of school with more education than the previous generations.

My generation and the ones before in the work force here might have a Masters and a few with PhDs or even MDs. But the ones we are hiring now, all have PhDs with a Post Doc in some field, some even have MD and PhD together (yeah that smart bastard worked to get both in school...)

And they are taking lesser position jobs too because there are so many of them out there trying to find a job. But I guess since starting salaries are 100k+ they don't seem to mind. Much better than the 40k-60k they were making as post docs.

you are assuming that level of education = intellectual levels or hard work or skill

Not the case.

It's not what degree they got, it's about what they actually learned and how useful that is to the employer.

Now you see why so many companies value WORK EXPERIENCE over "degree". Especially in day and age where degree is equivalent to high school diploma.

Everyone and their mother has one....

 

[maddogchen]

you are assuming that level of education = intellectual levels or hard work or skill

Not the case.

It's not what degree they got, it's about what they actually learned and how useful that is to the employer.

Now you see why so many companies value WORK EXPERIENCE over "degree". Especially in day and age where degree is equivalent to high school diploma.

Everyone and their mother has one....

Everyone has a PhD with a Post doc? no...

In terms of working hard, I'm pretty sure if you got both a MD and a PhD that you worked hard and aren't a slacker...because you coulda just "slacked off" and only got a MD.

In terms of skill, they pass our tests before we interview them. Our tests have become harder and harder over the years. When we look at them, we laugh because most of us might not have passed the current test back when we first started.

For work experience, everyone coming out of school has limited work experience. My company hires them so that they can gain work experience while we can use them for cheaper....

 

[BoberFett]

Good example of why so many people use a tip calculator app these days. I hit 31 next month so I am at the beginning of the Millennial generation and I just have to laugh some days. So many can't even do basic simple math tricks like calculating a 20% tip which anybody should be able to do in several seconds on any bill - so many try and do that math on 20% (which isn't difficult either although besides the point) and can't figure out how to take grab 10% and double the number. It's a simple trick but beyond so many these days,

Oh well, at least it leaves more high paying positions open for me to grab.

I have trouble calculating tips sometimes. But that's usually because it's 1:00am and I'm having trouble reading the bill.

 

[Vdubchaos]

We have taught several generations that they are owed things, that rich people are evil doers that got their money by ripping people off and breaking laws and not by doing work.

What else would you expect from a population that has this beaten into their heads by nearly every school and media outlet 24/7?

-KeithP

good point as well

I still think it's funny how many here still think this ONLY applies to millennials.



I've worked with Americans of ALL ages, I find them all lazy (especially in none physical labor areas). Most Immigrants ont he other hand, bust their ass.

It's almost as if people are in a race of "who can do less shit and get the most out of it".

 

[JM Aggie08]

Time for this thread again?

This can be said for every new generation. Fast forward 20 years, rinse and repeat.

 

[Vdubchaos]

Everyone has a PhD with a Post doc? no...

In terms of working hard, I'm pretty sure if you got both a MD and a PhD that you worked hard and aren't a slacker...because you coulda just "slacked off" and only got a MD.

Not PhD, I'm sure they worked hard.

In terms of skill, they pass our tests before we interview them. Our tests have become harder and harder over the years. When we look at them, we laugh because most of us might not have passed the current test back when we first started.

Nice, so you give people tests and expect them to past.....that you can't even do yourself.

Sounds about right when it comes to American companies.

For work experience, everyone coming out of school has limited work experience. My company hires them so that they can gain work experience while we can use them for cheaper....

At least you are honest.

Clearly, shit is FUBAR

 

[gotsmack]

Purely anecdotal, but I have a cousin who graduated from college with a Bachelor's degree in Microbiology last summer. She moved back in with her parents, got a PT waitressing job at Applebee's and began looking for a job. She was eventually offered a job in her field but it required her to move about 40 miles away and "only" paid about $35k.

Her parents supported her decision not to take the job because "she could barely afford a one bedroom apartment on that! She has medical problems too like gluten intolerance and the medical insurance premium is too high! It would be too hard!!!"

So almost a year later she still lives at home, works part time as a waitress, with a microbiology degree collecting dust that she likely went $30k+ into debt for.

Had I been her father I would have said "honey, you need a job in your field so you can start using your degree and establishing a career for yourself. If that means you take this job and work part time as a waitress on top of that, so be it. You're welcome to come home on the weekends and do some laundry, eat a few meals, etc. to save money but you have a chance to get your career started and you have to take it."

As much as we like to pick on the millennials themselves, it really is the parents who are failing them.

Your cousin can cry me a river. My first job out of grad school in NJ (7 years ago) paid $47k the first year and I lived at home commuting 60 miles door to door. Took 80 minutes driving on the NJ Parkway each way.

 

[edro]

yolo

 

[Ban Bot]

Dullard, you are correct however ive never seen a loan that said "pay only XX for each XXX borrowed" they simply state borrow up to X at y% rate per year

Hardly a finance question, but fairly simple to compute ((12*103) - 1000)/1000 = 23.6% but it's hardly a clear question when they describe the loan term as "Payable in 12 equal monthly payments". Who writes out a loan term like that? Makes me question the test a little too.

The problem is simple but I also didn't like how the question was formatted. There are so many "loan" vehicles (credit cards, amortized home loans, line of credits, etc.) and until the last line it seem implied the payments were for the interest only. The last line indicates fulfillment in 12 months (but not explicitly stated as the term) but the only time I see it expressed this way are those cheesy TV sales gimmicks where you can purchase a crap gizmo for 4 equal payments which I consider a purchase on credit terms and not a loan. Car loans aren't a good example as they are usually presented as APY. Home loans all layout their terms and rates. Structure of the lending model is as important and should always be stated.

I am probably overly touchy about lending details as we bought a home in November and it took us 1 visit with a mortgage company to demand up front loan details before we wasted time on their loans as giving only partial info really didn't mean anything. I am still surprised how so many lenders weren't keen on giving the explicit figures and let us decide on our own (ahem, they were too busy pushing whatever program netted them the best bonus...) And hence why you always ask for the exact term, rates, and payments. Also probably touchy due to all the spammy credit cards constantly thrown at us with nasty details in the fine print (Hey, get a big box store CC with 0% for 6 months... oh, and if you don't have a 0 balance after 6 months you pay 24% interest on all purchases in that 6 months, even if paid off...) No thank you, I will keep my bank credit card I pay off every month and never pay any interest and avoid your gimmicky trap card aimed to sucker consumers.

 

[xeemzor]

Time for this thread again?

This can be said for every new generation. Fast forward 20 years, rinse and repeat.

The difference now is that economic opportunity is much, much lower for millennials.

 

[JM Aggie08]

The difference now is that economic opportunity is much, much lower for millennials.

Very true. But hey, let's hold the 20-somethings accountable. Past generations had no hand in royally fucking the current economic climate.

 

[CPA]

this is all a result of mommy and daddy telling their little jimmy that he is special. it's a result of kids getting participation ribbons for coming in last place. it's a result of schools dumbing down curriculum so that the dumb kids don't feel dumb.

This isn't always the case. It's also social media fueling the fire of indifference, intolerance of any type of authority, including parents, and the lack of desire to do anything outside of the computer/phone.

Take a bunch of crying babies and place them in a room. Do you think any of them will stop and say "ok, enough is enough, time to buck up"? No, they cry harder.

 

[CPA]

Your cousin can cry me a river. My first job out of grad school in NJ (7 years ago) paid $47k the first year and I lived at home commuting 60 miles door to door. Took 80 minutes driving on the NJ Parkway each way.

LOL, my first job in my field paid $18K and this was in 1993! But, it paid off, 3 years later, I was making $45K at a different company, and wouldn't be where I'm at now if it wasn't for that job.

 

[Genx87]

I can only offer my anecdotal evidence with my experience surrounding younger employees. I am shocked at how technically illiterate they are in the work place. I figured most of these people grew up with computers and the internet from birth they should be pretty solid in these areas. Ask them to use either is amazingly difficult. People in my generation or older have a better grasp of technology. No idea why!!!

As for the rest of the issues. I dont have the answers but clearly we are not getting our moneys worth out of public education within this country. I am willing to bet we spend the most per capita for those results.

 

[Scarpozzi]

I can only offer my anecdotal evidence with my experience surrounding younger employees. I am shocked at how technically illiterate they are in the work place. I figured most of these people grew up with computers and the internet from birth they should be pretty solid in these areas. Ask them to use either is amazingly difficult. People in my generation or older have a better grasp of technology. No idea why!!!

As for the rest of the issues. I dont have the answers but clearly we are not getting our moneys worth out of public education within this country. I am willing to bet we spend the most per capita for those results.

The difference between me and my dad's technical abilities are very stark. He can build complex circuits and read schematics....fix just about any kind of equipment you can imagine....except for PC/Server repair....

It's really an issue that he worked on mainframes and as things became more and more throwaway, he just didn't care to work on the newer technologies. So I was a Sys Admin for years and he couldn't picture troubleshooting tech between systems, networks, and following the OSI model. It's just a different world.

New kiddos out there seem to be in the micro-electronics and consumer electronics phase. They don't use Desktops and are pretty much all video game system, laptop, tablet, and smartphone kids. They can text 50 words per minute....but probably type slower than that on a REAL keyboard. Troubleshooting hardware isn't possible because they only know how to turn their tablets on and off....there are no moving parts to troubleshoot. If it breaks, they replace it. It's a new era.

 

[unokitty]

this is all a result of mommy and daddy telling their little jimmy that he is special. it's a result of kids getting participation ribbons for coming in last place. it's a result of schools dumbing down curriculum so that the dumb kids don't feel dumb.

‘Kids Like Me Deserve Something Special.’

My child is a great example for other children to follow.
I would not be surprised to learn that my child has extraordinary talents and abilities.
Without my child, his/her class would be much less fun.
My child deserves special treatment.
I would find it disappointing if my child were just a “regular” child.
My child is more special than other children.

A study conducted by researchers at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands and Ohio State University suggested that parents who overvalue their children raise children who overvalue themselves — narcissists, in the commonly used, nondiagnostic sense of the word...

The narcissist children of the study are those who feel better than others, rather than equal to them, and believe they deserve special treatment.

Who'da thunk it?

Uno

 

[vi edit]

I can only offer my anecdotal evidence with my experience surrounding younger employees. I am shocked at how technically illiterate they are in the work place. I figured most of these people grew up with computers and the internet from birth they should be pretty solid in these areas. Ask them to use either is amazingly difficult. People in my generation or older have a better grasp of technology. No idea why!!!

I think Gen X is going to be the most "traditionally" IT savvy group. We grew up with PC's. By that, I mean we literally were born and blossomed along with them in the golden age of computing. We grew up with Commodore 64's. Know what a Packard Bell was. Remember having to dial up to use the internet. Welcomed computer lab days where we could play Oregon Trail or Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego off of the 5.25" floppie disks. Remember how amazing it was that you could eventually burn your own CD's and that you had to turn off your flying toasters screen saver before starting a burn unless you wanted a $1 beer coaster when you overran the buffer on it. We had to make boot disks back in the old DOS days to run our PC games. Had to blow dust off the cartridges of the contacts of the Nintendo games to make them work. Used to be able to run web severs directly off our computers when cable internet first came online and before ISP's locked things down.

And so on. We grew up with raw technology that wasn't perfect. People older than us were scared of it. People younger than us never had to deal with all the quirks. Most of them were figured out and fixed by us

 

[Belegost]

I think Gen X is going to be the most "traditionally" IT savvy group. We grew up with PC's. By that, I mean we literally were born and blossomed along with them in the golden age of computing. We grew up with Commodore 64's. Know what a Packard Bell was. Remember having to dial up to use the internet. Welcomed computer lab days where we could play Oregon Trail or Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego off of the 5.25" floppie disks. Remember how amazing it was that you could eventually burn your own CD's and that you had to turn off your flying toasters screen saver before starting a burn unless you wanted a $1 beer coaster when you overran the buffer on it. We had to make boot disks back in the old DOS days to run our PC games. Had to blow dust off the cartridges of the contacts of the Nintendo games to make them work. Used to be able to run web severs directly off our computers when cable internet first came online and before ISP's locked things down.

And so on. We grew up with raw technology that wasn't perfect. People older than us were scared of it. People younger than us never had to deal with all the quirks. Most of them were figured out and fixed by us

Completely agree with this. I "fondly" recall the hoops that needed to be jumped through to get a program running in DOS, hours spent ensuring the autoexec.bat and config.sys loaded memory with the right things to leave enough memory for what I wanted to do (generally play a game.) And of course the hardware was about as reliable as a meth-addict. Replacing and repairing parts was a monthly thing to keep my machine going.

And there was little to no help, my computer was what I bought used with money I made doing yard work and my parents had no idea how to use it. My grandfather had a computer, but he was tied to reading thick manuals to do anything, and when it didn't work called the support line(an option I didn't have with a used machine.) This forced learning of not just how to use a computer, but how the computer worked.

My kids on the other hand, they can click/tap on an icon, and that's about as far as they understand. For them, everything just works, and despite my efforts to impart more understanding, listening to dumb old dad lecture about how the stupid computer works is nothing like needing to work it out on their own or not play the game at all.

It's an interesting problem, because the knowledge I gained from 8-18 by just wanting to have a working computer was invaluable later, and with easy to use systems today taking away much of the motivation to learn more, I feel like it will be hard knowledge for later generations to gain.

 

[Sonikku]

WW2 Generation was probably the greatest and last "good". After that it was all bunch of spoiled brats having kids and spoiling them as well. It makes sense, those that grew up during great deperssion didn't have anything, so they wanted their kids to have EVERYTHING...which has a HUGE backfire effect.

So in a way, this is all their fault. :hmm:

 

[Aikouka]

If I asked that last step today, of even my best students, I'd see virtually every one of them reach for a calculator.

Seriously? Is it just laziness or do they not understand what dividing by 10 does to a number and that they just perform that action 3 times?

When I lived in Brazil and Italy as a kid I had to do ALL my mathmatical work in my head and was only responsible for the right answer on the page. When I got to the US I was told I failed the entrance exam to a private school because I didnt write out any work. I asked the teacher to ask me any question from the test and I explained the work.

I think you might be looking at it incorrectly. At least in my experience from when I was in school, teachers wanted you to show work so they could point out where any mistakes were made. They might have preferred if I used their method for solving the problem, but they mostly cared that my answer was valid and that my steps matched.

Also, to note, I was never penalized for not writing out my work. However, if my answer was wrong and I had no work, I would lose all the points. If I did write out the work and the teacher saw that I made one dumb mistake and that lead to the wrong answer, they would usually give partial credit.

There's no such thing as someone who's naturally bad at math. Only teachers who are bad at teaching it.

As someone that has tutored math and computer science, I don't agree with this. In my experience, people just don't think about problems the same way, which is why they have so much trouble with them. These people are teachable, but they will require lessons tailored to their mental strengths, which is often too much to ask when you're dealing with dozens of students. Those that are "wired" to think a certain way about math and its related sciences are just downright better at it.

Thinking about this brought back some memories of CS tutoring. The hardest part of tutoring is trying to provide good clues to help nudge someone along, but sometimes, it's really hard to give a good clue without being painfully obvious. ...and it's even worse when they still don't get it. I remember saying something along the lines of, "Now, we need to perform that action multiple times. What do we need to add to do that?" Loops. Stuff taught at the beginning of CS101.

 

[Spungo]

I also think all the psychotropic drugs do not help either/I never understood why these drugs are so rampant.

Because most parents are idiots, and most children are accidental (because the parents are idiots). Some people have real medical problems, and I personally take hardcore antidepressants, but it's amazing what some parents will do to their kids. You see reports of parents giving Haldol to their 10 year old son because he wants to run around instead of sitting in a chair for 3 hours. Are you serious? That's called being normal. Little boys like running around, and they don't like sitting still. Will they also give him drugs when he finds himself attracted to girls at age 15? Will they give him 5 other drugs if he suggests he might be attracted to other boys from time to time? How screwed up will that kid's brain be by the time he's 20?

There's no such thing as someone who's naturally bad at math. Only teachers who are bad at teaching it.

This is just wrong. We have mountains of research showing that men have better spacial reasoning than women, and that women can actually see more shades of color. There are very clear biological differences between people. Some people are naturally good at music. Some people are naturally good at math.

The fact that so many people would consider making kids [clean schools] degrading is a clear reflection of the problem.

Or constantly mocking people for having minimum wage jobs. What does that teach kids? That you should never work for minimum wage. That you should never start at the bottom of the ladder. That you should feel ashamed when you have a minimum wage job. It would be better if parents praised minimum wage jobs. Get excited when your kid has a job. Praise them. Say they're doing the right thing.