a college degree in 2025/2026/2027 ... don't

the setup

I found myself sitting at a table with three "muggles".  We introduced ourselves.  Our hostess was working a few part time jobs, including this gig of hosting us.  The other woman was a software engineer.  The other fella was ...   i hope i remembered correctly ...   an "AI manager" (somebody that gets AI to do stuff).   I think I said I was a retired software engineer.  


the question

At some point the hostess says that she dropped out of college and is thinking of returning.   The driving force is that when she looks for work, the highest paid jobs are for software engineers.  

The three of us all say:  don't.

The three of us agree:  in six months there will be a 20% reduction in software engineers as a lot of the work that needs to be done is moved to AI.  The workers that will be kept are the best workers that are using AI to get more done.   In two years, the earliest she might be getting out of college, software engineering jobs will be less than half of what they are now.  There will be no hiring of engineers fresh out of college.  


the next question

So she asks what will be the jobs of two years from now?  What should she study?

Again, the three of us agree: nothing.

We couldn't think of anything that won't be done cheaper than AI or bots with AI.  She would be wiser to stick to her current work and try to save up to prepare for the changes.

I said "if you have a humble home and a large garden, these problems are a lot smaller."

What I didn't do, was talk at length about gert.  Or skip.  Or ERE. Or FIRE.

I hear from many people (and see it all over the internet):  gotta stop AI; gotta stop the bots ...    "DEY TERK ER JERBS!"    ...   it strikes me as twisted to desire jobs so much.    

I met couples that both had professional jobs and no kids (DINKs) and yet, they still seemed to be barely getting by.  Lots of travel, lots of excellent restaurants, a big, lavish home with a beautiful kitchen ...  Lots of arguing about money ... lots of feeling spent/depleted/exhausted ....  

I don't mention gardening to them.  They don't have time to even think about gardening.

If one of them loses their job, they will be in a very desperate place in three months.


the crystal ball

I look forward to getting a bot.  I want to think of a clever name for my bot.  I will teach it to build hugelkultur and what to plant.  To cut snowberry down to 4 inches.  At a certain point, pluck grass.  All the grass.  Every day.  In the winter, shovel the snow and build the fire.  Build a wofati.  Can peaches. Dry plums.  Cook a glorious meal.  Take care of me when I am old and feeble.  

The world will be very different.  A lot of people will be forced to live very humbly because there are hardly any jobs.  A bot will cost $20k and last ten years.  It might need $100 worth of electricity each year. Hard to compete with that.

Those that saved up and went into humble mode before the change are in good shape.  


the answer

Retire early.

I provide acres and the bootcamp and there are openings.  

The SKIP program is free.   Compared to the number of people going into $100,000 debt to go to a four year college ....    oh my.  

Early Retirement Extreme:  I would think there would be a run on this book right now.  

Building a Better World in Your Backyard instead of being angry at bad guys:  I sell a dozen per month.  I feel like this provides powerful guidance.

Gert:  a humble home and a large garden

apples in safeway:  the story of making money, then more money, then more money, and the final answer is gertitude.

permaculture:  a more symbiotic relationship with nature

Gardening Gardeners:  I like to think that someday there will be 100,000 homesteads in the US and they will be open to a "gardening gardeners" program.  Allowing 20 people to come onto their land and experience gardening and natural building.  Of course, I need to get it to work at my place first.  



I don't know how the next six months will play out.  It sounds like the layoffs have started.  

We have openings in the bootcamp, so I guess people have not yet connected the dots.  My guess is that soon the bootcamp will be full.  

Of course, I could be wrong.  



My guess is that there are a lot of other solutions.  I would love to add some more permaculture solutions to my list.  Anybody have some more solutions?

I love college education so much that it really hurts me to agree with you. I've spent my life defending my own extended college education even though I've never worked in the field of my degrees -- I was doing it to become an educated person, not attend vocational school. And I still think that's how it ought to be, but the reality is that it's unaffordable. My daughter graduated about a year and a half ago with $100k of debt and is now not at all living big, trying to pay it down. I showed her your bootcamp and she spent a couple days really excited, figuring out what she needed to do before heading to Montana. And then she ran the numbers -- she isn't free to pursue something cool like that because she yoked herself to this debt. She already wishes she'd made different choices in a way that I never did.

The machines took over my industry in the mid 1700s.  And yet, I made a living creating textiles without machines.  There are two things that stand out here.

1.  
A Living is a loaded idea.

For me, it's about a third of the poverty line, and on that amount of money I can live a luxurious life compared to my friends making 10x the poverty line (30 times my income).  But I don't pay $200 a month for cell phones, credit card intrest rates, cinima, events, streaming,...I don't eat out because I like my cooking better and I trust where my food comes from.

The biggest part of A Living, is I save up to buy things, which increases the anticipation joy, and stops me from going into debt.  And if I don't have the money at that time, I go without. I don't consider my retirement savings to be money I can spend which is another thing that separates me from my friends.

2.
Doing what the machines cannot.

The other factor in making a living Handspinning and Handweaving cloth is that I made what the machines could not.  Each yarn has a story and human element.   My yarn was both better quality and less than machines.  It held up better than machinen yarn, but since machine yarn is perfect, I added lumps.

Humans are storytellers.   We need story to be truely human.  To feel connected to the world.  AI cannot give us that yet, if ever.  

There was no schooling or books that tought this.  

So redefine the job description to be something the machines cannot (or willnot) do.  Make that perceived imperfection of human made stuff into an asset you can charge more for.


Although I must admit, AI seems a bit backwards of most machine advancements.  Usually it replaces drudgery work so we can spend more time doing what we enjoy.  AI seems more eager to replace middle to higher paying work so we can spend more time doing drudgery jobs.

My experience is that people tend to make basic mistakes when it comes to college and employment.  College is a great place to get an education. I am less convinced that it is a  place to get a job. If one is looking for a career in a specific area, it may be the best option. If one is looking for employment, there may be better choices. Getting a job at a corporate owned McDonalds and staying there for 4 years will probably leave you in a better place than 4 years of college if you are only seeking employment.

If one is seeking a student loan, shop for it.  Both my wife and I found loans that had waiver clauses… and we used them.

We also shopped for scholarships, grants, etc.  In the early 70s I was making a small fortune attending college.  I found a book listing seldom used scholarships.  To invent a few “People over 6ft tall with brown eyes”, “people born in Bunkum County Michigan”, “people whose mother is named Debby”, etc.  It takes work to find these, but similar ones exist.  And, more often than not, when I applied, I was the only applicant.

But my biggest career regret is that I had the chance to work as an apprentice for a genuine old school cobbler, and I turned him down.

I am basing my McDonalds comment on some old stats:  the average employee lasts 6 months, and the average employee who lasts 2 years enters management at $62,000 (estimates are all over the place from a low of 50 to a high of around 100).   Average salary of a new teacher with a 4 year degree is $50,000. That new teacher has an average debt of $30,000.

i recently gave a presentation on making a living in a field that is getting dominated by AI (supposedly). There is much talk about our demise, I'll believe it when I see the proof. In the meantime, the best thing we can do is LEARN SKILLS. How to do and make things and how to think for ourselves. For me that means how to grow food, train animals, build, fix and make things with my hands.

I have a kid graduating college next year. I have always encouraged her to also learn as many skills as possible- from lab technology (where she currently works) to how to ride a motorcycle and use power tools. You'd be amazed how often she's come over to borrow my tools because boyfriend's dad was trying to hang a TV on the wall and "someone needs to do it right". I have never regretted any skill I learned, and I'm amazed how often they come in handy.

I hope Bootcamp gets full of people learning more skills. It's a great opportunity for the basics, like you said- shelter, heat, food, health. All of those are areas most people could stand to learn more in.

Conventional college routes haven't made sense for most of us for quite some time. But there's still the community college to cheap state school route and that can make financial sense. The degree makes it easier to find jobs and the fixed costs of living make jobs tough to do without.

For me property taxes and utilities are about $1000 a month combined. Without my employer, health cost sharing plans would probably start at around $500 a month for my family. Miscellaneous capital repairs and other costs would average about $500 a month. So even assuming no mortgage, no cars and no groceries, there's $24k that needs to come in annually.

A decade ago I started looking into real estate investing as a way to get that number without depending on a job.  I've gotten about halfway there since.

But my philosophy about work has also changed. There are still jobs that are worth doing and need to  be done. And I think the possible crunch coming in the white collar sector isn't just a signal to head back to the land. There are other layers of infrastructure that have hollowed out as everyone and their mother have signed up for air-conditioned desk jobs. For example, I work in law enforcement and we never have enough applicants to fill openings. I used to be a teacher in a rural school district and they had the same problem. Likewise bus drivers, truck drivers, retail management, short order chefs, nannies, janitors, landscapers... The trades have more barriers to entry but they are hurting for people too.

Hi Tereza,

Early in my career I had a wise person tell me “Never turn down a piece of paper.”  He was referring to diplomas, certificates, etc.  

Christopher Weeks wrote:My daughter graduated about a year and a half ago with $100k of debt and is now not at all living big, trying to pay it down. I showed her your bootcamp and she spent a couple days really excited, figuring out what she needed to do before heading to Montana. And then she ran the numbers -- she isn't free to pursue something cool like that because she yoked herself to this debt. She already wishes she'd made different choices in a way that I never did.

Yes, debt and the bootcamp don't mix.  This path is for those that are debt free.

I've heard this story a thousand times:  student debt locks you into the need to come up with the money to pay it back.

Those are some interesting perspectives.
Some two and a half decades ago I was in Community College, intending to continue on at a University afterward.
I am grateful for the experience of being in the classes of some wise professors and the socializing with peers.
However, I decided then that I would probably never make enough money to be able to pay off student loans with any career I liked.

I instead started a rigorous reading program to further my education in multiple subjects in which I was interested.
I called it "The School of George."  I made syllabuses for myself that I followed for a couple more years, while working in a kitchen.
I did feel 'left out' and 'like a drifter' at times, being around friends on the College Track, but then I've always been a bit odd.
I did some Natural Building School, but decided that was not going to be my career either.

It was at this time that I became enamored by the idea of Permaculture and returned to the family farm.
Talking on and on at Sunday breakfast with the extended family about all the different fruit trees I wanted to plant, my Grandpa piped up with a, "Well shut up and start planting!"
Getting my hands and feet in the dirt again, making tangible steps toward a secure future made me feel better about my 'lack of education'.  Though there were some struggles with my Grandpa - him thinking my projects 'looked like a jungle'.

I still don't 'make a living' from the farm, but we do save tons of money on food bills.
I don't know what to recommend to young people considering extensive college education today, other than what Paul and others have said already.  I wish them and everyone luck and hope they learn how to grow some food whatever else they do.  

My Son is now 30. He got a diploma at Community College in Mechanical Engineering. He felt pressured by some people to get the full degree, but he now regrets that, even though it did not saddle him with debt due to a fund his Grandfather had started for him, plus the fact that he could live at home. The Diploma was all he needed to land a secure job in our community.

Canadian Community Colleges have subsidized programs for certain in-demand skills. They are a fine place to start if you want to learn a practical skill like welding, but the danger identified by Paul about AI taking over many of the "official" welding jobs, will still likely relegate the skill to "fixing things under the table". But if you need to make a bit of money while mostly living off your land, having some official training isn't the worst thing for people who learn better in that sort of setting.

There was a time when only about 10% of people graduating from high school went to University. Then, that number grew and kept growing as if University was a gift that would keep on giving. That is no longer true. We don't need more University grads who can't find good enough jobs to pay their debt - we need people who know how to do shit that can put food on their table! SkIP and learning from local experienced people can get you those skills without spending money you don't have.

That said, there are some fascinating courses available at our local University. If I wanted to learn for the sake of learning, and do so in a group, there's nothing stopping me from saving up and signing up for a single course, simply for the intellectual stimulation. You can do it cheaper by what they call "Auditing" the course. It wouldn't get me a job (besides, I don't need one, I'm semi-retired), but learning in a group can be stimulating and fun. The internet can be isolating as a teacher. It's time to look at Colleges and Universities as a resource, to be used to meet an identified need, rather than something every citizen should do. The cost/benefit ratio has long been proven that it has tipped the wrong way.

I’ll set aside my thoughts about whether (and how) generative AI will be as transformative as some hope and others fear and assume for the sake of argument that it will be around to some degree going forward.

for better or worse, the stuff uses a truly staggering amount of electricity. data centers, server farms, cloud computing, crypto, and cetera were all plenty power intensive before gen AI made a real splash, but things seem to have passed an inflection point where ideas that would previously have been outlandish are now taken seriously and even carried out. decommissioned nukes being recommissioned. retirement of uneconomical coal plants delayed or reversed. net-zero goals and policies watered down or abandoned entirely. nuclear fusion discussed with straight faces.

there are political and cultural factors involved that aren’t useful to discuss here (but that I don’t want to minimize the significance of). regardless, the demand for electricity is increasing rapidly and that increase is plausibly predicted to accelerate. however things shake out mid- to long-term, this could present a possible career path and guide a reasonably prudent course of study.

that could mean many different things to different people. study electrical engineering. nuclear engineering. mechanical engineering. civil or environmental engineering. lineman apprenticeships. home energy efficiency consulting and contracting. niche home-scale alternative energy design. leading workshops on adopting low-energy lifestyles. making art or tools out of scrapped electric clothes dryers. a great many other options and variations on these.

not all of those routes involve formal education. for those that do, the amount and cost could vary from getting paid while receiving it to requiring loans that could remain a burden for decades. for myself, I was comfortable taking on a modest amount of debt to get a couple of degrees. on the order of $10k (USD). I worked a variety of jobs and internships while I got an undergraduate degree and I got paid for a masters degree. I got a handful of small scholarships. I had decades of practice living cheaply (and happily) by the time I decided to get those degrees. all of these things helped me avoid more loans.

probably most importantly, I had a strong community and network of support. some of that existed before I went to a university. some I built along with likeminded folks I met in school. all of it helped in one way or another. entirely independent of the support during school, my community is a tremendously important part of my life both before and after. from my point of view, the community a person joins/creates/cultivates/maintains/inherits/falls into/tolerates grudgingly is much more important for a person’s success (as I idiosyncratically define that) than their choice to get a degree or not. I don’t mean to suggest that the self-reliant/independent/hermit life isn’t a reasonable option, but I don’t personally have anything to offer a person of that persuasion.

like Christopher Weeks, I really liked college. the hodgepodge of classes I took at a community college in the years after high school (including at least botany, math, drama, history, literature, anthropology, photography, psychology, political science, and logic) was a whole lot of fun. very little of it was directly useful for the farming career I had at the time, but it was all useful in some degree for living a full life the way I wanted (and want) to.

later, at a state university, I kept up the same habit of taking interesting and edifying classes with no consideration of leveraging the experience into advancing a current or future career. in class and out, I met and learned from a wide variety of folks with a shocking (to me at the time) range of histories, ideologies, strengths, struggles, stories, and plans. I did that until my registration was blocked for having too many credits with no major, at which point I declared the least constrained major I could find to keep up the adventure a little longer. it meant using resources for school that I could have put toward other things that were important. this was in the mid oughts, so into the era of tuition increasing, but obviously not to the current extremes. never did get a degree from that school and never regretted any of it. would I recommend going deeply in debt to pursue a similar experience? I would not.

apart from the letters behind their name, the things a person gains from college are available via other, often cheaper, routes (with varying levels of effort involved depending on more variables than I care to try listing). college is hard to beat for getting them all in one place, though.

very few people ask for my advice about college, careers, or really anything at all (for good reasons, I’m sure). if anyone did, I wouldn’t advocate for or against a degree, at least not until I knew a fair amount about what’s important to them, what their current circumstances are, what they enjoy and find interesting, and how well they know themselves. in any event, I don’t think the choice has to be between college and the ideas paul included above. seems like a “why not both?” situation to me.

I don’t personally find the highest salary consideration the host mentioned to be very compelling, but I have some small sympathy for that point of view for the purpose of optimizing the balance of square job time and real life time when those two can’t or don’t overlap much. don’t see any of this changing much however the current shakeup around AI settles out.

I do want to briefly mention that there are still a number of places in the world where a college degree is either free or nearly so. as I understand it, it is also rather simpler to get by without a college degree in many or most of those places. there’s a lot to say about the wisdom and impact &c of such an arrangement, but it’s at the very least interesting to consider that there are other ways to handle post-secondary education. if one of those places appeals, immigration might be an option. just as likely it won’t be an option, I suppose.

thanks for coming to my self-indulgent ramble-thon. I hope you enjoy the rest of your day. don’t beat yourself up for expending so much of it reading my nonsense.

tel jetson wrote:
I do want to briefly mention that there are still a number of places in the world where a college degree is either free or nearly so. ... if one of those places appeals, immigration might be an option.

Funny enough, that is exactly what we did! moved to a place that has free federal universities with top-flight science and engineering, if you can pass the entry exam.

I liked my college experience in the US, but I can't imagine having paid full price for it (luckily I received many scholarships and fellowships, along with work study and jobs on the side-- and back then it was relatively cheap!! I shudder to think about what it costs today).
Even with an almost-free ride, I graduated with 20K USD in debt (gotta eat something and sleep somewhere even if school is free...). Thankfully I was able to pay it off with my first job, but I know talking to my peers that I was very, very lucky to owe "only" that.
I really didn't want that for my daughter. It was a big gamble, since it's hard to tell what a kid will want to study, but it was a big factor when we decided where we wanted to live long-term. Not a choice for everyone, but something I've never regretted.

One of the reason I married dear hubby was that he was in air conditioning and I felt that air conditioning had a big future. He went on to bigger and better thing.  I still feel that air condition still has a future.

Next to air conditioning is the cell phone business.  The technology end of that.  I don't see that going away in the near future.

Next, the internet. Maybe I am wrong though I feel there are thousands of jobs related to the internet. Installing, the technology end, etc.

By the way, acting as a career choice is going away ...



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilly_Norwood

paul wheaton wrote:My guess is that there are a lot of other solutions.  I would love to add some more permaculture solutions to my list.  Anybody have some more solutions?

Wendell Berry, in his essay collection Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community, suggests identifying a need in the local community and pursuing that. I would add that a good option would be to focus in the licensed trades, such as electrical or HVAC contractor. Ask around and find the current needs of your community.

Where I reside, there are no building permits or inspections. However, most people are hesitant to deal with their own electrical work due to the risk. Being confident and licensed helps make connections that may turn into ways to offload some of the homestead excess such as eggs or meat. You may also be able to barter work in your trade for another trade.

For example; I built a wheelchair ramp for a friend down the road. I did not charge him for my labor, instead we bartered the time. He is a great BBQ cook and cooks for us every time we have a group in town.

I suppose it doesn't matter, but I will explain how I got there.  

Somebody sent me a hard drive full of 1800 files that I needed to get to andres.  I compressed them into one giant file that would take more than a week to send from home.  But there is a thing in missoula called "a work lounge".  you pay $25 and you get to sit on a comfy couch (or a comfy work desk) and use their gigabit internet.  The file transfer took 3 hours.

As I was finishing, the hostess called us all over to a table with heaps of food.  Apparently I happened to be there on the day of their twice-a-month "party".  There were a lot of other people there that kept working or went home.  Just the four of us came to the table.

My favorite part:  all four of us proclaimed that missoula is the best city in the world  :)

If food prices rise, it would be easy for a homesteader to compete.  After all, AI and AI-bots won't change the need for soil, water and sun.  

25yrs ago, my higher education policy professor Dad encouraged me upon going off to college to study a wide range of subjects. The PhD and Master’s students he worked with that had specialized early on were intellectually inflexible and less resilient.

When it came time to choose a major, he said fundamental and broadly applicable fields like physics and philosophy would be the best foundation, and any worthwhile employer would see these as indicators of an intelligent, inquisitive problem solver. I was already into philosophy and anthropology, so I followed those interests. I went on to get a master’s in adventure education with a focus on Wilderness Service Learning as a mode of self realization.

None of these degrees led to me making much money by American standards. Still, what I learned and who I met while getting them have helped me see through a lot of expensive BS, live a great life, and likely saved me hundreds of thousands of dollars and thousands of wasted hours. I am debt free with beautiful land, a nest egg and a big garden. I may have been able to learn some of what I did in college just independently reading, but I would have missed out on the learning community that I gained much more from. At a good school, we learn more from other students than we do from teachers and texts. Of course, this should not cost a parent a year+ worth of their income per student, but more people engaging in dynamic learning communities would be a good thing for society.

Back in the early 70's I was going to a Community College here in Montana trying to get all the basic courses out of the way and then head off to college.  I wasn't sure what I wanted to do yet, but was definately leaning to outdoors work like forestry.  
I had the opportunity to cross the Bob Marshall Wilderness on XCountry skis and hiking one spring.  3 weeks. Departure was 1 week before spring finals.
One of my 6 instructors let me take the final exam early, the other 5 said "No way, not here, no grades."
I really had a wonderful time in the "Bob".
Wasn't the last of my schooling.  I didn't go back to formal education tho.  While in the Army in Europe I took several college courses offered through the military, thinking maybe of becoming an officer.
That didn't pan out as I was able to run a ski area in the Alps for the Military.

Learning new things has always been a goal of mine,  I believe it keeps my mind sharp........ maybe only like a blunt stick, but sharp as needed.  lol

When I tell you about my past and present, you might be surprised at what I'm about to say.

I spent my entire career in the corporate jungle as an engineer. This life meant living in various states and working for different companies.

I also experienced layoffs. Having a family financially dependent on me, I was unable to pursue a "passion." I could not live where I preferred to live. I had to move to where the jobs were, even if it was located in the State of Hell. Since I needed to put bread on the table, I did not have the luxury to wait for the "best" job.

Needless to say, I did not plant many gardens. I was an indentured servant to Corporate America.

That is the life that a college degree creates.

Society (government, industry, educational institutions, etc.) has brainwashed us into getting certified by diploma and "working for someone else." Heaven forbid we work for ourselves.

I have four engineering degrees, including a Ph.D. I did not pay for all those degrees. The first B.S. degree was paid for by Uncle Sam on VA benefits, due to the death of my father, who was a pilot in the Air Force. The second degree (M.S.), I paid for through a graduate teaching assistantship. The third and fourth degrees (M.S. and Ph.D.) were paid for by the companies I worked for at that time. Fortunately, I did not go into debt to get those degrees, unlike many students today.

Last year, I was strongly encouraged to retire (i.e., I had no choice) during a massive Grim Reaper layoff at the company where I had worked for the last 27 years, where I had produced multiple patents and trade secrets for the company. That "going above and beyond" for the company didn't even save my ass.

Rest assured that neither my brain nor my body has retired. "Retirement" is a dirty word invented during the Industrial Revolution.

In addition to the religion of the Empire of AI eliminating jobs, age discrimination is a real issue. You can have all the college diplomas you like, but if you are over 40, you will face this secret age-discrimination monster, even if you can find a corporate job that requires a college education that you are qualified for.

Judging from the news and social media, there is currently an employment bloodbath among the college-educated, driven by a multitude of factors, including AI. All of this is occurring at the same time that the stock markets are reaching all-time highs, while corporate executives who summoned the layoff Grim Reaper are enriching themselves.

I recently joined the Adjunct Faculty (i.e., part-time) at a local college. I will teach an engineering course starting in January.

Here is my unlikely advice:

DON'T GO TO COLLEGE!

[Of course, I need to be careful not to say that inside the college classroom. ]

Most college students either go deeply into debt or spend their parents' retirement money to party for four years. At least their parents can brag that little Johnny Blow and Sally Sue have been "socialized."

Then they can't find a job, unless it's asking people, "Would you like fries with that?" So, they move back in with their parents, play video games, and become depressed and suicidal through social media.

If you need intellectual entertainment, pick up a damn book and read it. You don't need to sit inside a classroom listening to old professor Einstein to learn something useful. You can also use AI to help research topics of interest on the internet.

Forget certification by diploma. Concentrate on self-learning.

An alternative for young people is to consider learning a trade. Trade schools typically require apprenticeships, where you get paid to learn. And you graduate debt-free in two years. Currently, the trades are in high demand, unlike college graduates.

AI is not going to replace electricians, plumbers, and mechanics anytime soon, and those jobs cannot be farmed out overseas. And you likely can choose to live in any location you desire.

You could also use those trade skills to start a business eventually. I have dealt with several contractors who did that.

Advice for parents: Train up your children to work for themselves. Otherwise, they might become indentured servants of Corporate America.

Here is a young success story:

My next-door neighbor (over the hill and through the woods) has a son who is a high school junior. He is a straight-A student. The kid started an external house-washing business. I hired him to wash the outside of my country house. His company is expanding, and he was recently featured on a local TV station. He also recently picked up some contracts with apartment complexes.

He works part-time during school and on weekends, and full-time during the summer. He is making a lot of money and not spending it since he currently lives with his parents (until he graduates high school).

I asked him what he plans to do when he graduates. He said he will continue with his business and has considered trade school. He will NOT attend college. Good for him!!

Here's the bottom line:

Forget college, plant a lot of gardens, and work for yourself. Barter with neighbors who are doing the same.

When possible, avoid Big Ag for food. If you don't raise it yourself, avoid the middleperson and go directly to a trusted farmer (or neighbor).

Otherwise, go to college, go into debt, and learn to be a good corporate slave, and hope that the layoff Grim Reaper doesn't whack off your head and cast you into the street where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.

If you major in engineering, you can always hold up a sign on the side of the road that says, "Will Engineer for Food."

If you want a job that isn’t guaranteed to be replaced by AI (might eventually, but not for a while) become an electrician or plumber or other blue collar you like and is needed where you want to live.

AI is coming for most of the white collar jobs, or changing them so rapidly that current college is less than worthless.  

I also used to be an engineer. When I got laid off, I decided to get off the merry go round. I didn’t want to move to a big city with a family and there was a fundamental shift coming in technology so I didn’t want to retrain. I paid everything off and took a blue collar construction job. Money is tight, but life is so much better.

The AI robots will have the knowledge and skill of a thousand first class plumbers.  They will probably be 20 times more trustworthy and reliable at a tenth of the price.

Yes, but not as soon as they replace accountants.  

I agree on all your points except price. They will charge the same, or more, because people will pay it to get faster/better service.

I say in six months we could be looking at ai's bubble bursting.

Why and how?

Think about the following after the USSR collapsed, where did the engineers, people in science go to? Any place that would pay well.

If company lays off all of there software engineers, corporate workers and other people in related fields. Who built the AI to takes over there jobs. Would you as a unemployed AI software engineer want to F with the AI. To quote Paul Atreides "He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing".  Software engineers could have back doors into the AI. Corporate workers would know a few things that could take out the AI.

With that in mind here is what I think will happen in the next few months.

1. AI will work for about a month or so. When black Friday (a big shopping day) happens in the USA 28 November 2025 issues will start small then grow bigger. The AI system may go down, consumers mad at companies lack of service and companies mad because of lost money. Then a "fix" will happen and it would look like things are working better. Rumors of groups or people hacking AI systems could start at this time

2. In January 2026, reports from the Christmas season would show a drop in buying due to the AI not working well. Consumers returning items now very mad at the AI service. Talk of a boycott of companies that use AI begin and reports of AI hacking are in the news. Companies reports less earning than last year, CEO publicly talk about again fixing issues with AI.

3. Months later groups or people who worked in AI do TV, podcasts etc. do tell alls. Companies report earning down again and may look into rehiring people that they tried to replace with AI. Unemployed workers now have jobs at the competitors trying to break the AI that they built at the old company. Some places promote AI free and talk to a real person.

In short, if you have a garden, rocket oven and a ok job that is hard to be replaced by AI. Then sit back and watch the fireworks. If not start a garden, build a rocket oven, build a nest egg, learn more skills.

There is no panacea to life the universe and everything. In 2009, I got my BA in History. I thought that people would be wanting to hire me, after two years no job. In 2025, after a long (too long to talk about it here) road I have an ok job, planning my ERE, building skills and thinking about the next ten years.  

I'd say, it depends.

Do you like building stuff, are you about fresh outta highschool, and can get an applied math or mechanical engineering degree at a community college without acquiring much debt?

Do it.

Also, recently heard there's probably gonna be a shortage of surgeons by 2030. As someone who is still alive because I got an emergency bowel resection surgery within 2 days of symptom onset, I wouldn't try to talk anyone out of that...but maybe go abroad where the bureaucracy isn't skimming quite so hard, and make the connections to shadow a successful one for a decade.  One stands a decent chance of dodging medschool debt...  There's a few occupations where meritocracy outside of certificates will dominate, as a matter of life and death😂

Also, I had a fantastic experience in college.  Learned lots by reading and writing fucktons, an esoteric amount I never, ever would have done without having paid for deadlines to be enforced.

I don't think there's "one right answer" here.  Try and keep an open mind👍

John Hutter wrote: Also, recently heard there's probably gonna be a shortage of surgeons by 2030.

And our local hospital is raising money to buy a robotic surgeon. I think it will be guided by a human, but health care has been changed hugely, first by covid bringing in "virtual appointments", and now with a lot more online connections and reports.

The danger of such things being hacked is scary to me, but there's no good way around it. Our GP's used to work between 60 and 80 hours a week and the next generation isn't willing to do that, and I don't blame them. Work/life balance needs to be supported.

I work in an industry that is tied to the housing market. So I have been laid off a number of times. And whenever that happens I have been able to move a bunch of projects forward. I don't have any debt, so that has been a big help. And I live in a great family village with some land to work.

Last time I was laid off I built our big deer-proof garden fence. That garden produces a lot of our food now. I'm not retired and Gerty. I have a job. But I have eggs in both baskets.

Paul, I see you mention how AI robots will take the place of humans. I see both impressive AI takeovers and AI abysmalism. I think both are possible -- incredible feats and incredible stupidity. Both have certainly been demonstrated.

In time, though, I think AI will grow more and more powerful... possibly. Either way, I think it's very unhealthy, and a path of our own replacement. It's true that some of the jobs AI replaces maybe shouldn't have existed in the first place. I also think that even the most mediocre mid-level manager jobs are slightly more meaningful than a language model crafted by every scrapable book, and donated to by anyone writing online without a paywall. Our creativity has created our replacements. Our generousity to mankind has trained it.

Anyway, I guess you could say I'm a software engineer. I've had that title before. Not sharing this to gloat, but I am very good at what I do. I did not go to college. I started my own online business that pretty much runs itself, and I live off of it. But I worked at a few different companies and got to experience a range of what's out there.

I've known, aside from AI, that the tech market is a bubble. There's too many white collar jobs already. But AI does facilitate the shrinking even more, perhaps smaller than it ought to be, for how the market is. People are replaced by newly started nuclear reactors powering GPU farms. It's pretty crazy.

I've always been on the conservative side, fiscally. I got out of the system way earlier than most. Part of it was luck, and part a deep rooted mistrust in the system. I'm now picking up skills that don't involve typing. Some tech people fantasize about this, and some worship tech. I think a lot of people in tech feel like a lot of it is a big lie. Or maybe some of it is good, like early internet days when people mostly just communicated on Usenet and shared ideas/experiences. But now the personal element is gone. The commercial-free element is gone. It's no longer sharing and collaborating with humans. It's sharing and collaborating to train your replacements. The Internet and modern computing are probably much worse for humanity than they are good, on the whole. There's certainly less-bad, and even good ways to use it, though. And avoiding sponsorship of the bad things is a good way to be. Taking the easy road for a quick AI answer helps us tumble down the mountain just a little faster.

I wish exiting the system were easier for most. It's such a shame how hard it is to get decent land and build something to live in. Paul, I really appreciate what you're doing. Some day I'll try to get out there. In the mean while I'm trying to make sure my family is taken care of here in a way that is as dependency free as possible.

Jay Angler wrote:
And our local hospital is raising money to buy a robotic surgeon. I think it will be guided by a human, but health care has been changed hugely

That's kinda scary for reasons.  Imagine you're dying, and the nurses stick a tube down your nose and into your stomach, to treat you for constipation.  And, 16 hours later, you tell the nurses for the 12th or so time, it's not getting better (apart from the initial IV painkiller).  The nurses change shift again, you tell the new nurse the new news; your breathing is getting shallower and more painful.  The nurse confirms you don't ever suffer from indigestion and have no healthcare history, and she puts a call in for a PA.  The PA runs through the same details.  A surgeon is going to come look at you and your CT scans.  

In spite of the clear CT scans, the surgeon makes the call: we're going to stick a camera in your gut and look. It takes them about 5 minutes to spot a fatal birth defect that up and decided to kick up shit at age 38🤣

A robot, going by the book, probably won't work out there...

Yikes. Good luck.  Maybe keep the eggs in both baskets!

Not for nothing, I'll add a couple thoughts here. I rarely do these days, but steaks are just going on and I finished the paying work for the night.

The AI thing has been so big lately, being pushed all over the place and being talked about like it's such a huge fancy replacement for everything. My experience, limited at best, is that it's horrible at "thinking". It can perform simple tasks, and even sequences of simple tasks lined up in such a way as to appear complex, but it's still just a lot of simple stuff in sequence. I've spent a little time on the latest AI chat bots trying to get some basic things done to no avail. I'll detail the best example.

I needed to scrape some 10,000 official product images that I could "more easily" load into a client's square inventory. The AI told me it could do this with a spreadsheet of product names plus SKU and GTIN numbers. Then it said it couldn't. After several iterations of this kind of nonsense, I had it develop a perl script that would presumably do the task, scraping the images and renaming them according to specs for "easy" manual importing on my end. The script was a total failure over and over, failing to run, then failing to save the images, then failing to rename them, then failing to run again. This went on and on until I gave up and just wrote my own script, from scratch.

I spent probably 6 hours "playing" with the AI trying to get this task started, but ended up spending about 1 hour writing up a script in a language I have never used before to do the task.

So trying to use AI hurt more than helped with what to ME was a simple task but was actually way too complex for the AI itself to perform itself due to it's inability to "think". It just regurgitated search results from stackoverflow in various combinations.

My take at this point, after much thought and some experimentation, is that AI is not coming for "our jobs". Instead, what's happening is people are losing jobs for non-performance and misunderstandings of what AI is actually capable of doing in their place. People can think, but AI can only do what it's told (and it's not even very good at that).

We're heading right off the edge of a cliff right now, and things are going to become a complete mess if those in charge don't slow down a little and do a feasibility study first.

Robots, on the other hand, are definitely going to take over lots of manual tasks. They already have in many ways. Thinking will become a job very much in demand over the next several years, and I fear we don't have enough people with the skills to fill those jobs.

Just my two cents (or what...$200 adjusted for inflation?)

Tristan Vitali wrote:
I needed to scrape some 10,000 official product images that I could "more easily" load into a client's square inventory. The AI told me it could do this with a spreadsheet of product names plus SKU and GTIN numbers. Then it said it couldn't. After several iterations of this kind of nonsense, I had it develop a perl script that would presumably do the task, scraping the images and renaming them according to specs for "easy" manual importing on my end. The script was a total failure over and over, failing to run, then failing to save the images, then failing to rename them, then failing to run again.

Yes! To be fair, when I was trying to do more complex image processing/statistical analysis in R, AI did save me time. But it never once gave me a working script - I always had to debug to take it the rest of the way.

I recently read something along the lines of “it seems like AI is thinking, but it’s not. It is predicting, based on the data it’s been trained on, what the next word is likely to be”. That is why it sometimes produces fictional references.

What I have found in practice is that it is good at things like, say, writing a form letter. It is also good at producing specialized content that seem correct on the surface, but is subtly wrong.

Example: until recently, I worked as a researcher in biology. I was working on a paper with a colleague who is fascinated by AI. He was playing with it by feeding the method and results section of our draft into AI and asking it to write the discussion. Then he mistakenly mixed up the drafts, so that, after some months of not looking at it, I ended up  with the AI augmented draft.
It was an interesting experience. I was reading through it, thinking “this doesn’t feel right - was it put in by one of the chemists, who doesn’t quite understand the subtleties of the biological side?” and “wait, did I write that? What was I actually trying to say?” It wasn’t until a suggestion for future experiments included one that was physically impossible given the technique we were using that I realized what had happened. Once I did, I decided that it was working on the level of a college student trying to cram an essay by speed reading a lot of sources, then bsing the essay during an all nighter.

So my take - ai can replace a lot of “grunt” white collar jobs, like filling out forms, writing generic letters, etc. But even though it has read every paper in my field, it cannot synthesize that information correctly. It can spit something out that sounds right to a non expert, but isn’t actually correct.

Obviously, this might change. But for now, I think real, deep expertise in a valuable field is still needed. Frankly, I am more worried about how to educate myself in areas I don’t know well. With so much AI content going up online, I am afraid of using an AI source that sounds like it was written by an expert, but is actually wrong.

Just last week I started back to school. Mainly because my employer pays my tuition. But by the 2nd week and little sleep, lots of stress and missing my garden, I decided I don't need to pursue a Master's degree. What I want to do is play in my yard, set up my new chicken coop and make it cozy for my future tenants.
Education is great, but if it's not aligning with your current life, is it really worth it?
I had also decided that I needed less stuff and more savings for retirement, which sadly will not be an early one.

If I was advising a young person today, I'd point them to work that can't be done by AI, plumbing, electrician,etc. Those jobs will last longer and the skills are useful for life.

Sorry, I did not read all comments (I stopped reading when r.ranson said she makes textiles without machines. I hope she will make some new youtube videos about her life ...)

I am 'retired' and I'm living amidst other people who (almost) all agree: don't go to college!
Some of them are somewhat afraid of AI, but most of them do not care. Some even like to use AI.

Most of those people are not young, but some are the children of people my age. And also these 'children' (in their twenties, thirties and fourties) agree: you don't need college, the really usefull things are not taught there.
Most of them do have a 'worky job', if possible part-time, so there's still time for the more important things. The job is to get the needed money, and that's all. For such jobs a college education is not needed.

Before my retirement I had jobs like that. First I didn't have a paid job, I was a 'stay-at-home-mom'. Then, after the divorce, I did a one-year schooling to learn more about working with computers (for writing, making lay-out of texts, a.a.). The first job I got was administration at a school, what I did for a year. Later for a few years I could only get cleaning jobs, but no problem. After some years I was able to get an office job again, data-typist for an insurance company.

All of these jobs were part-time (20 - 25 hours a week), but most of the time I got plenty of money to live. Even when my two sons still lived with me. Only when the youngest son caused some financial problems and I had to pay for it, then that was a bit of a problem. But these problems got solved ...

I think the most important thing is: to be frugal. Do not buy anything you can not pay. Never buy something you do not need. Avoid debts (if possible)!
Gardening can help a lot. But it takes time. Not only the gardening itself, also preparing your food with the products of the garden. So: find that time! Time is worth more than money!

Sandy Kemp wrote:If I was advising a young person today, I'd point them to work that can't be done by AI, plumbing, electrician,etc. Those jobs will last longer and the skills are useful for life.

Yes, I totally agree.
AI doesn't have hands!

BTW if you're interested in studying, in learning more on a certain subject ... and it's a subject that's taught in college/university ... you still don't have to go to college.
I found out that by 'studying' yourself, in your spare time, by reading books and articles (most of them can be found on the internet) you can learn so very much! You can go on learning about interesting subjects for all of your life, in fact even for all eternity (there will always be more to learn about!)  :-)

Another aspect. At college these days the students teach each other how to use AI. The goal is to get AI to do all the work without it looking like AI did all the work. Which will probably be valuable skill. I remember earlier days when we all used wikipedia even though we weren't supposed to. "Cite scholarly sources." So we cited wikipedia's sources.

And though the administrators make all kinds of threats against "cheaters" they don't really follow through. After all, the students are the customers.

Reading through the comments, I see much speculation about the good and bad of AI.

Regarding the current wave of massive company layoffs, AI is not the issue in many cases. There is an economic issue. For example, in my previous post where I talked about being "encouraged" into retirement, AI had nothing to do with the layoffs. The layoffs were due to our customers stopping purchases of our product during an industry recession.

The company is indeed experimenting with AI. But it is not yet developed or implemented to the point of replacing many jobs. Also, at least for this one company, the current focus of AI is on developing tools to help the customers, not replace employees.

However, out in industry la la land, there IS a push to eventually replace employees, provided there is a reduction in costs and an increase in efficiency.

In my opinion (which is well-founded — ha ha), the disciples of AI are overstating their case. These are the Silicon Valley carnival barkers who have attracted trillions of dollars in investor capital to build this Tower of Babel. To keep the money flowing, they create hope and make promises.

Of course, the news media and journalists focus on anything sensational to line their pockets with advertising dollars. Most of them don't know their rear end from an AI hole in the ground.

The current "promise" is AGI (Artificial General Intelligence). And there is a race to the top by companies invested in this technology. AGI is the ultimate "god." The primary purpose is to replace humans, regardless of what the carnival barkers say.

While humans are being replaced, these elite businesspeople will be lining their pockets with dollars. In other words, THEIR jobs will not be replaced. They will be the Emperors of AI.

These wizards of iniquity imply that AGI will solve climate change, cure cancer and other diseases, and lead to paradise on earth. Based on these promises, disciples of AI are creating (figuratively speaking) a religious technology cult based on wishing upon a rainbow. And CEOs, politicians, academics, and others are falling for this storyline.

On the religious nature of this endeavor, here is an interesting quote from Sam Altman of OpenAI, who is one of the wizards and spokespersons leading this show:

"I heard this from Qi Lu; I'm not sure what the source is. It got me thinking, though -- the most successful founders do not set out to create companies. They are on a mission to create something closer to a religion, and at some point, it turns out that forming a company is the easiest way to do so."

Here's the problem:

Achieving these AGI goals requires massive amounts of energy (electricity) to run data centers and train algorithms, not to mention an enormous supply of computer chips, such as GPUs, etc. The amount of energy needed to accomplish these nefarious goals is NOT yet available.

Then there is the side issue of cooling, where massive amounts of water are diverted to cool the data centers.

The current U.S. electrical grid cannot handle the load. Data centers are already driving up electricity costs for customers in various locations around the country. Natural gas is also being diverted to power these data centers, not to mention almost defunct coal-fired facilities being brought back online.

There is a lot of talk and research into nuclear energy and micro-nuclear reactors to supply the required energy. But it takes a lot of time and money to build this out, not to mention potential regulatory issues.

I will attend a presentation in November by a guru who will discuss this resurgence in interest in nuclear power. The goal is to encourage colleges and universities to divert STEM students into nuclear energy programs. Believe it or not, the secret force behind this interest is partly driven by organizations associated with "clean energy" that have been hoodwinked by the Emperors of AI, who promise a solution to climate change.

If you want to find hidden agendas, follow the money.

If the big-money investors in AI ever smell a rat and don't realize a return on their investment, there is going to be a technology market crash like we've never seen. And there will be financial blood in the streets.

I, for one, am keeping my finger on the sell button of my investments related to AI.

And we have not even discussed the ethics of AI, which is another elephant in the living room.

Here is a book I recommend reading, which is very revealing of the dirt underneath:

"Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's Open AI" by Karen Hao

Look it up on Amazon.

Jay Angler wrote:

John Hutter wrote: Also, recently heard there's probably gonna be a shortage of surgeons by 2030.

And our local hospital is raising money to buy a robotic surgeon. I think it will be guided by a human, but health care has been changed hugely, first by covid bringing in "virtual appointments", and now with a lot more online connections and reports.

The danger of such things being hacked is scary to me, but there's no good way around it. Our GP's used to work between 60 and 80 hours a week and the next generation isn't willing to do that, and I don't blame them. Work/life balance needs to be supported.

I heard about a robot doing surgery. But in fact it was a surgeon, a (human) doctor, who did it, but he was far away from the place where the operation happened. It was like remote control. The real work, making decisions based on real thinking and knowledge, wasn't done by the robot, but by the doctor.

Inge Leonora-den Ouden wrote:AI doesn't have hands!

Yet.