What Happened....

[LizzieMaine]

It's a life experience not unlike serving in the military in wartime, only in the sense that both life experiences bring you into contact with personalities and experiences that if you're prudent in learning from them can be helpful in the future to understanding the perimeters of your immediate experiences.

The years I spent in radio were like this -- I learned more from the people I worked with, about how the industry really worked, and about the world outside the studio, than I ever could have learned in any classroom. I worked alongside grizzled old veteran broadcasters who were on the air in the 1930s, and I worked with wacky hippie-type characters who would tell stories about sleeping on the floor backstage at rock concerts at Boston Garden, and I worked with cocaine-sniffing gun-packing psychopaths who claimed to be on the run from the mob. Well, maybe only one guy like the latter, but you get the idea.

A textbook can tell you how to approach a microphone, or the way to write a script, or the basics of broadcast libel law. But it can't come close to giving you the kind of education I got from these people. I'd interview kids looking for jobs who'd just graduated with honors from Emerson, and had a nice shiny demo reel and dressed sharp for the interview, and I'd tell them, "you did well in school and that's nice. But now let me tell you about how this really works..."

 

[ChiTownScion]

And let's face it: there are some who are slackers who will never exert the effort necessary to squeeze the best out of any opportunity- be it in college or in "the real world." And not necessarily trust fund babies: I saw a lot of working class kids in college who were content with the Gentleman's C.

 

[Harp]

And let's face it: there are some who are slackers who will never exert the effort necessary to squeeze the best out of any opportunity- be it in college or in "the real world." And not necessarily trust fund babies....

Those trust fund babies I found inside the university typing room whom could neither type nor compose term papers-Lake Forest, Kenilworth, Beverly Hills, and the Gold Coast-cash down payment
and graduated price scale as to subject and desired grade. Keynesian law of supply and demand. And all of it non-taxable, of course.

 

[ChiTownScion]

Those trust fund babies I found inside the university typing room whom could neither type nor compose term papers-Lake Forest, Kenilworth, Beverly Hills, and the Gold Coast-cash down payment
and graduated price scale as to subject and desired grade. Keynesian law of supply and demand. And all of it non-taxable, of course.

I won't say that I never saw it happen, but those who actually had to work their way through generally didn't view college as one big glorified four year summer camp. (I don't mean the ones whose parents are footing the bills and who took a summer job just for beer and pizza money, but the ones who had to get out and earn or there really will be no higher education for them.) There is a lot of fun recreational stuff to do on a campus, and after ten hours at a desk it isn't unrealistic to want to blow off a little steam. But the ones who majored in Party: that seemed as if they were setting themselves up for lifetime attitudes and habits that would throw their whole heads out of kilter. All work and no play may make Jack a dull boy, but all play and no work seemed to produce one that was stuck on "stupid."

Thing is, I think that's determined before college and what you bring to the table. A person like Lizzie (and I've read the rants of her and others about drug or alcohol obsessed wastrels littering up campuses) ... that would never be her style. It couldn't be. Isn't a part of her character. She'd be the type who'd harangue and cross examine the prof after class... driving the lazy and protected tenured types mad, but reminding the real scholars why they chose a career in academia in the first place. Other students see pupils like that, and the ones who are bright but perhaps need motivation get inspired to push themselves a little harder and a little farther.

Which is the real tragedy, I think, that occurs when the best and brightest decide that they'll forgo college: the can- do student types are the ones who will do the most to motivate others. Not the profs, not the parents: the peers who encourage and motivate others.

How to make it all as relatively affordable for kids now as it was for us, Brother Harp: that is the challenge for the likes of us.

 

[Paisley]

There was a big push to get every kid into college and the myth that not only would a college degree be a ticket to financial security, but the lack of one meant penury. Not so then, and not so now.

A college degree doesn't necessarily make you smarter, give you critical thinking skills or prepare you for a job. I know it's supposed to, but I'm going by my observations of college graduates. The benefit of studying a wide variety of subjects (like a liberal arts education) is to give you a broad range of knowledge and different ways of thinking. Thinking about something with only one perspective and the accepted line of reasoning can make it seem to perfectly fit together, but having a different set of facts and a different way of looking at it can make the accepted way of thinking about it fall apart. It's a great skill set to have, but not really something you can put on your resume.

Even so, two of the biggest knuckleheads I've worked with had English degrees. Engineers have a well-earned reputation for being into woo-woo--problem solving and critical thinking being two different skills. If you take Bubba and put him through medical school, what you get is Dr. Bubba. I'm not knocking college, it's just that there are unspoken limits to what it can do, and that there are a lot of students who who are wasting their time and money there.

Where does that leave young people starting out? You can learn critical thinking, various skills and a wide range of other subjects at the library and on Youtube, although you don't have the benefit of someone evaluating your work. If college is going to be a huge cost (and it's very difficult to default on student loans in the US), it's going to be a huge risk, and you'll have to carefully consider what you'll do if the degree doesn't turn out to be all that valuable to employers. There are other fields that pay well and need smart people but don't require a degree.

Where do we get actors, writers, and teachers (in areas that don't pay well)? From the pool of people who either don't need much money or are willing to take a risk.

 

[Harp]

... but those who actually had to work their way through generally didn't view college as one big glorified four year summer camp..

I wish I had tried for a baseball scholarship somewhere down South at a small college, in a small town, with a car, reasonable rent, and lots of pretty girls.
Or stayed in my Honolulu Makikki Heights crash pad chasing frisbees, wahinnies, and waves at Kaneohe Beach.
But I know I made the right choice and college was worth every penny and drop of sweat equity spent.

 

[HudsonHawk]

Even so, two of the biggest knuckleheads I've worked with had English degrees. Engineers have a well-earned reputation for being into woo-woo--problem solving and critical thinking being two different skills. If you take Bubba and put him through medical school, what you get is Dr. Bubba. I'm not knocking college, it's just that there are unspoken limits to what it can do, and that there are a lot of students who who are wasting their time and money there.

The most practically dumb person I ever worked with had a PhD in astrophysics from MIT. Somewhere he learned enough skill to solve equations put before him, but the man could not think his way out of an empty room. He had no problem solving ability whatsoever. None. Nada. Zilch. Highly "educated", but utterly worthless at thinking or figuring anything out. I know many, many engineers like this. They are good at completing the mechanics of what you put before them, but cannot solve problems on their own.

 

[kaiser]

The most practically dumb person I ever worked with had a PhD in astrophysics from MIT. Somewhere he learned enough skill to solve equations put before him, but the man could not think his way out of an empty room. He had no problem solving ability whatsoever. None. Nada. Zilch. Highly "educated", but utterly worthless at thinking or figuring anything out. I know many, many engineers like this. They are good at completing the mechanics of what you put before them, but cannot solve problems on their own.

I have to agree with you on that, I have a guy that works for me that has an engineering degree as well as a masters degree that exhibits the same traits. A very nice young guy, but really worthless when it come to solving problems or, and I think this is really worse, seeing things in relation to each other.

 

[EngProf]

As someone who has been involved in engineering education for close to twenty-five years, I'm concerned about all these engineers who can't solve problems. Coming up with creative solutions to problems is the very reason for the existence of engineers.
My first reaction is wondering why the companies who employ these people don't fire them and get some competent (creative) engineers. The second reaction is concern for the people themselves, since it seems that they had no aptitude for the field from the word "go", and were poorly-taught after that.
A good engineering education stresses that there are two aspects of engineering: "Things you need to know." and "Things you need to figure out." The former is the basis for the latter, but the second is *far* more important, since it is the true nature of engineering.

I always tell my people that the right answer to the wrong problem is misleading, at best, and potentially lethal at worse.
Defining the correct problem is engineering - getting a correct numerical answer is just calculator-manipulation.

Creativity and imagination are the most important traits of a good engineer. Maybe these pseudo-engineers are people who went into it just for the money.

 

[Paisley]

An engineering degree (in my experience, at least) is a whole lot of theory and very little practical application. Engineering is such a broad field that there's no way you can prepare someone for anything they might encounter.

Further, engineering companies (again, IME) simply aren't willing to train people. In every other industry I've ever worked in, they train people. Engineering firms expect people to come in, sit down, and magically know how to do the work. Ask questions, and you get one-word answers and a look like, "Are you stupid or something?"

Why don't they fire incompetent engineers? Have you seen help wanted ads for engineers? They have a mile-long list of qualifications that very few people meet. And since employers are not willing to train, well... Unfortunately, this practice has spread to other industries, and now employers whine that they just can't find qualified people, when they really just can't find perfect people.

 

[Paisley]

The most practically dumb person I ever worked with had a PhD in astrophysics from MIT. Somewhere he learned enough skill to solve equations put before him, but the man could not think his way out of an empty room. He had no problem solving ability whatsoever. None. Nada. Zilch. Highly "educated", but utterly worthless at thinking or figuring anything out. I know many, many engineers like this. They are good at completing the mechanics of what you put before them, but cannot solve problems on their own.

One of my gamer buddies was a college physics teacher. He's written programs for the game that I can barely understand. He's unemployed and living with his parents now.

 

[Fading Fast]

One of my gamer buddies was a college physics teacher. He's written programs for the game that I can barely understand. He's unemployed and living with his parents now.

I have no idea of your buddy's specifics, so this is not directed at him, but sparked by your comment. Finding and holding a job and building your career over years requires different skills than those needed to be successful in one's job. Right or wrong, one must have some social skills so that you can interact with co-workers / managers in a positive way. Over time, networking (fancy word for meeting people in your field and staying in touch with them) and developing a reputation as a good worker, team player, one who can "get the job done," etc. requires both work skills and social skills. Being good at looking and finding better positions is also part of this.

There are some people who are so incredibly skilled at what they do that they will be hired and promoted inspite of not having any of the above referenced capabilities, but for the 99+% rest of us, "managing" one's own career is a separate and necessary skill to the actual skill required to do one's work. This is why, I think, sometimes, talented people can't find work / don't get promoted - they lack "career" skills - and why, sometimes, average skilled workers do very well as they have really good "career" skills.

At the extremes, this stuff becomes crazy as sometimes talentless hacks move up pretty far as they are incredible self-promoters or, conversely, really, really smart people are unemployed as they are not good at all at managing their careers, but in general, for most of us, it's just another thing one must do in life.

 

[MikeKardec]

An engineering degree (in my experience, at least) is a whole lot of theory and very little practical application. Engineering is such a broad field that there's no way you can prepare someone for anything they might encounter.

Gosh, I see that "theory" issue in most of the college grads I run into, at least for the first few years. So much of what they are taught (this is particularly significant in contemporary liberal arts "studies" studies) centers on abstractions that getting them to focus on the real world is very difficult. So many of their profs have never worked (or done much of anything) off-campus that it's no wonder that they think reality is all in there heads. There's a real education in APPLYING the things you learn in the real, dirty, competitive and uncaring world!

I guess apprenticeships would be a good idea if we really want to improve out workforce. Companies training their own seems a requirement if they really want things done right.

One of the most amazing examples is in the Motion Picture business, young people are taken in (it's hard to get a break but this is after that) and trained very personally by their superiors, often shifting from department to department until they land somewhere they like. If you don't work hard and keep your head down, you are out, and everyone knows it. The social cred or prestige of the jobs in that community is high so kids who are perhaps not so interested in money are motivated. Since it's very common to get brought along onto another crew as a show disbands, switching departments is easy (in the beginning) and crew people can often find themselves working FOR someone who was a junior member of their team on the last show or even leading a department of veterans ... depending on who brought who onto the job. As you move up and gain seniority your department and specific union area means more but it's all pretty fluid at the entry level.

The system weeds out the people who can't do their jobs or redirects them to jobs they can do pretty efficiently ... there are always idiots but some of them develop skill sets that let them be idiots. I remember seeing two or three people walk into a room plug in a telephone and in three or four days set up a corporation, start a draw down of cash, and hire a dozen department heads. In two weeks you could be in preproduction and in a month be shooting. A speedy assembly of blisteringly competent people who would assemble a complex, out of order, ever changing and utterly subjective product who would then disperse and move on. I took it for granted at the time but now, in hind sight, I find it totally amazing. It wouldn't be possible if everyone wasn't an expert in the practical application of what they had to do ... but it was all based on experience and being taken under the wing of people with experience.

 

[Fading Fast]

I did not come from a home that thought of "education" as some life-expanding experience. My dad barely made it out of high school (claims he graduated, a degree was never found amongst his things - my call is it's a fifty-fifty bet) and, to him and my mom, the only reason to go to college was to get a better job, period, full stop. Nobody was talking about "expanding your horizons," "becoming a more well-rounded or 'educated' person" as there was a low-grade antipathy to "educated people with their fancy degrees" in my house.

My parent thoughts were, after high school, you either trained for a trade or went to college to get a skill to get a job (and this was always squishy as, in truth, what did they know about it). I considered becoming an electrician after high school, but was a really good student and, even though I didn't know what (and it scared me), I thought college would lead me to a better future. My parents badgered me so much about "what are you going to do out of college" that I moved out in my freshman year and never moved back home. Fortunately, it was a different time (early '80s) and my State University school was very affordable and working during school and the summer allowed me to pay for all of it without debt (can't be done today).

It was only when I was at college that I realized I could "expand my horizons," "become a more educated person," have a "life expanding experience." I gobbled it up - took courses in many disciplines, added two options to my major (a concentration in several senior level courses in a sub-discipline of the major) and far exceeded the minimum requirements for my minor. I also learned how to "think," because of a few incredibly talented professors, I learned how to examine the world in abstract thoughts, how to look for causes and effects / patterns / etc. and test premises against results, and on and on. I wouldn't trade my college experience for anything as it has helped me every single day of my life since.

But that's me. I have several friends who I went through college with that didn't take those things out of the experience. I have other friends who were singularly focused on getting the best job they could out of college or getting into law or medical school and, to them, college was just a hurdle to be overcome. Everybody is entitled to his or her own choices. Also, while some friends did take out loans (and I always wondered about that as they could have gotten the same mediocre job I had and not taken out loans, but to each his own), nobody was going into deep debt for their degree.

All that leads me to the conclusion that college, like everything else in life, depends on who you are, how you approach it and what you want it to be for you. I assumed college would give me the chance to compete for "better" jobs, but I had no / absolutely no expectations that college would lead to some guaranteed "good life." And if my only option had been a private college, I very much doubt I would have gone as the debt would have scared me too much. I am sorry to read in this thread that so many kids are sold the idea of going to college so that they "can be set."

That's wrong in reality - life is too uncertain to ever offer that kind of guarantee - and wrong in initial approach. It sends the kid off to school with the wrong mindset as, IMHO, you get out of college what you put into it and and are willing to get out of it. If you go to learn, to expand your horizons, to be exposed to many disciplines and (and this is the big one) you work hard, study hard and take it seriously, my guess, any college will be a success for you as you will have broad skills and exposure to help you through life.

Some get that exposure and those skills on their own, but if you work hard while at college, you can develop them at a young age. It is that - the well-rounded education, the skills to think and analyze, the exposure to so many disciplines - that has helped me in life and, IMHO, would help many others. Through every life set back - and there have been many - I pushed through, in part, because I had a disciplined approach and goal-oriented view empowered by my education.

I learned my actual job skills on the job - dealing with the rest is where college helped the most. Last thought, I am a big advocate of trade schools as many aren't oriented to getting a lot out of college - it's not their thing - and it just becomes a waste of time and money. How that is vetted, I don't know, but I do know a few of my friends who went to college and, then, went to trade school - not one of them gives a hoot or says a good thing about their college education today. Two really good friends openly say they wasted their time and parents' money on college. Again, the tough thing is having to decide so early in life.

 

[HudsonHawk]

As someone who has been involved in engineering education for close to twenty-five years, I'm concerned about all these engineers who can't solve problems. Coming up with creative solutions to problems is the very reason for the existence of engineers.
My first reaction is wondering why the companies who employ these people don't fire them and get some competent (creative) engineers. The second reaction is concern for the people themselves, since it seems that they had no aptitude for the field from the word "go", and were poorly-taught after that.
A good engineering education stresses that there are two aspects of engineering: "Things you need to know." and "Things you need to figure out." The former is the basis for the latter, but the second is *far* more important, since it is the true nature of engineering.

I always tell my people that the right answer to the wrong problem is misleading, at best, and potentially lethal at worse.
Defining the correct problem is engineering - getting a correct numerical answer is just calculator-manipulation.

Creativity and imagination are the most important traits of a good engineer. Maybe these pseudo-engineers are people who went into it just for the money.

90% of the engineers out there aren't creative at all. They can massage the numbers you give them, follow the steps in the plan, and tell what the computer says is the answer, but they cannot figure things out or usually even know which questions to ask. They are simply human calculators. But that's what most industries need. 90% of the actual "engineering" is done by 10% of the engineers.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Again, the tough thing is having to decide so early in life.

That's a real nail-hitter-onna-header. A sixteen or seventeen-year-old doesn't even know what she's going to wear tomorrow, let alone what she wants to do with the rest of her life. The world is full of smug middle-aged people who insist on pushing children with incompletely-formed brains into making adult decisions with lifelong implications -- and then mock and ridicule them for making poor ones.

 

[Fading Fast]

That's a real nail-hitter-onna-header. A sixteen or seventeen-year-old doesn't even know what she's going to wear tomorrow, let alone what she wants to do with the rest of her life. The world is full of smug middle-aged people who insist on pushing children with incompletely-formed brains into making adult decisions with lifelong implications -- and then mock and ridicule them for making poor ones.

Two thoughts (1) I bet you are the only person who read through my long ramble (I'd buy you lunch if you lived near by as a reward) and (2) while I believe what I wrote - it's hard at that age to make meaningful life decisions - there is a contra thought I have which is that we keep kids / teenagers / young adults "children and young" too long.

We learned in WWII that young adults can handle large responsibilities and perform under very stressful situations. I knew, absolute knew, that I had to support myself after high school, so these decisions were very serious to me, but since many parents (and many of them are my friends) tell their children - "I'll help you, just follow your heart even if you need help after college, I'll be there -" the kids, through no fault of their own, don't really feel the seriousness of the decision.

After all, mom and dad feed and clothes them, buy then all their technology (and they are on their parents' cell / data plans etc. and their parents' car and health insurance - Obamacare lets kid stay on until 26 I think), so they don't feel that it is all that serious - the safety net is quite secure. And other friends who can't do that much, still help their kids a lot. I am not arguing that every kid should be thrown out of the house at 17 (that is not my point at all) - but there is a balance to everything - and from my anecdotal experience and from what I read about "helicopter" parents, etc., it is possible we are coddling our kids for too long and that takes too much pressure off.

 

[Paisley]

Hey, I read your posts, FF!

Unfortunately, I feel like my degree in engineering was just four and a half wasted years. There was no concept of lattices of knowledge of various subjects, no study of critical thinking, and not much of a market for the degree. And unless you're working as an engineer, there's rarely much need in life to think like one (the notable exception being Dr. Richard Bernstein--it's easy to see from his book that he studied engineering before medicine). The curriculum doesn't prepare you for anything else. If I'd known that a STEM degree was an expensive lottery ticket, I'd have cleaned out my locker and left. Like FF, I had to shift for myself. I didn't expect job offers to come rolling in when I graduated, but I didn't expect to be working two jobs to keep the utilities on and scrape together a mortgage payment on a two-bedroom bungalow, either.

Re: self promoters. My supervisor at the last CPA firm where I worked couldn't run anything but her mouth. I could tell some stories, but I'm not people would believe me.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I never had any kind of a safety net myself -- I paid $25 a week rent to live at home from the time I was fourteen. But I also know that when I was fourteen or fifteen I had only the vaguest notion of what I expected to do with my life -- the idea of "the rest of your life" was just a nebulous thing that I knew was there, and while I had ideas of what I thought I'd do or that I hoped I'd do, they were the ideas of a kid, not the ideas of an adult. The idea of someone that age having sufficient self-awareness to be able to form a solid vision of what they want to do for the next sixty or seventy years, and to be able to act on it, is rather unrealistic.

Science tells us that the parts of the brain that control "common sense" aren't fully formed until the person is in their mid-twenties, at the earliest. Whether this has changed thru evolution or if it's just the hormones in the drinking water is for someone else to debate, but it certainly seems to be a scientific consensus. The question is, are we evolving as a society to the point where we can effectively meet the challenges of that reality?

 

[Paisley]

Re: engineers who can't engineer.

Maybe they're complete knuckleheads, but IME, at least, that's pretty rare. I'd venture to say there's no training or professional development where they work to get them from the theoretical to the practical. Vendor lunch & learns don't count. Rather, they're hired for projects and then laid off, with a strong possibility their next job will be with a competitor. Hence the attitude that by training them, you're just training the competition. But whenever somebody took the time to show me something I needed to know, I always appreciated it.

By contrast, I've worked for CPAs for 14 years. Entry-level accountants get a lot of supervision, they spend down time and plenty of their own time studying for the (very difficult) CPA exam, and get evaluations after every project. This, even though most of them go to work for clients after a few years. It's really rare for someone to jump ship to work for a competitor, at least at the places where I've worked. It's very structured, whereas every engineering firm where I've ever worked seemed to be run by the seat of someone's pants. As a result (again, IME), CPAs who've made manager tend to be very competent if they're with a firm that runs a tight ship.