It’s very, very hard for anyone to push themselves to their full capacities, whether intellectually or physically, without someone else urging them on, and showing them the mistakes they are making. That’s why even Olympic athletes have coaches.
Have to disagree there. I initially trained as a vehicle mechanic, but over the course of my career in that trade I learned to be a welder, fitter and turner, panelbeater, spray painter, auto electrician, and in unrelated trades learned 240v electrical, carpentry, cabinet making, house construction, house painting, interior decorating, plastering, roofing, plumbing, computer use, first aid to paramedic level and many other trades. Education isn’t dictated by the institution, but by whether you want to learn stuff or not.
Who would have a better chance of getting a job in the real world, me or someone with a degree in “media studies”?
Lots of great replies there, thanks everyone.
In the UK there certainly is a political frenzy about uni education. It was one of Tony Blair’s big platforms, and he has succeeded in indebting many many thousands of young people with uni loans that would never have bothered going to uni in the past. Now, of course, a uni qualification is about as much guarantee of a job as betting in Lotto is of becoming a millionaire.
The Aussie PM is pretty big on it as well, though what else would one expect from lawyers?
I have no beef with intelligent people going to get a degree in a profession that will benefit society eg medicine, science, engineering etc. My problem is with those that want to graduate in “Hip Hop”, flower arranging etc.
I grew up in the Antipodes, but yes, British culture ( when I was young ).
When I was at school, uni was regarded as somewhere to go and get pissed a lot- the “chunder games” were the highlight of the academic year, apparently.
I have a film degree, a great job, and I get solicited for interviews fairly often (talked to five people last week) even though I’m not actively looking for something new.
Again, you can’t game a major. A few generations ago, idiot kids were studying obscure machines of use to a handful of businesses. These became our computers. A few years ago,
People trained like mad to for the prestigious, in demand job of piloting airplanes. Today, it’s a job that often doesn’t clear 30k a year. Not everyone should go to college. This is true. But everyone should have that choice.
If you’ve spent your whole life being told you can’t learn unless you go to school then that’s the result you will get. School is a resource, and often a very good one, but it’s not the only choice.
Having a bunch of trade skills isn’t a panacea for never being unemployed. A lot of your skills are tied to the housing and construction industries. Those industries have been hit pretty hard since the 2008 financial crisis and a lot of people involved in those industries have had a hard time finding work.
What do you think Dre has his doctorate in?
If you aren’t paying for their tuition, how is it your problem?
Point taken.
However, I still think having a degree helps you to maximize your flexibility. Heaven forbid if you were to injure your back or lose the dexterity your hands. Rightly or wrongly, having a degree makes you eligible for more positions that require the use of your brain over your body–which is doomed to break down.
It depends. If all you have is a degree in media studies, you probably aren’t going to go far. But this is true if you only have a certificate in a whatever trade. Success hinges on contacts, personality, ambition, skills, and experiences. Get a degree in media studies, score a couple of good internships, learn something n marketable and meet the right people? You are likely to go a lot further than someone who just has a certificate in something. It depends on a lot of stuff.
I don’t know why people slam the arts so much. It’s starting to annoy the hell out of me.
I listen to music constantly. I don’t think I’d be able to live for very long without it. What about you?
And what is the first thing I notice whenever I go to my yoga studio? The beautiful floral arrangments scattered everywhere. The studio hires a woman to come in weekly and decorate. I saw her working one day. She was well-dressed and didn’t look like she’s been living off ramen. So she’s got a lucrative business. There are a ton of carpenters and electricians who wish they could say the same.
When was the last time you required the services of a doctor or a lawyer? Now tell me, when was the last time you listened to music? Hip hop or otherwise? Or laughed at a cartoon? Or watched a film? Or bought an art poster?
We need scientists, doctors, and lawyers. We need tradespeople too. AND we also need artists.
I’d hope that a college education would lead people to realize he was responding to the “physical jobs” line and not the tradespeople line. His point is that physical work is becoming more and more obsolete, so you need to bring something to the job beyond that.
As for valuing said people, who said we don’t? That doesn’t mean we want people to pursue that job when there are other options, as said people will eventually be replaced. It’s not good for them to only be able to do a job that can be done more efficiently by machine. It doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate their work. Just like I’d appreciate the machines’ work.
And, again, none of this has anything to do with people who work trades. Trades are pure physical work, pretty much by definition.
Yeah, but most artists seem to be able to become such without needing an education in liberal arts. I know from experience how bad colleges are at teaching people to be artists.
The people who actually use their liberal arts degrees tend to not be the artists.
It used to be teachers only had to graduate from high school. Now we expect them all to have Master’s degrees.
Yet and still, there are still a lot of crappy teachers out there.
All this means is that having a degree is not sufficient enough to establish one’s competency. This goes for everything, though. Not just the arts.
Wrong.
Not true, especially when you look ahead to the future.
I work in the construction trade and I have a college degree, my own business and a steady six figure income and consider myself lucky to have “fallen into” something so cool.
I work with companies that specialize in building and renovating luxury homes and apartments…most with a 10 million+ budget.
On any given day at one of these construction sites, you will see WAY more people working on laptop computers than you do swinging hammers.
HVAC ( heating/air conditioning ) systems are all computerized in these home, with microprocessor driven valves and elaborate zoning via specialized thermostats. The lighting is wired to server panels or RF devices and controlled by computerized keypads throughout the house. Shades are motorized and controlled the same way. LED lighting is used extensively, requiring a bewildering array of power supplies, drivers, analog interfaces and specialty dimming equipment – which the contractor has to be able to engineer. Audio is distributed in the same way then all these different networks are networked together again so the homeowner can control everything from i-Phones, i-Pads and wall mounted touch screens.
The technologies for ALL these products changes every few months, changing the parameters of the equations constantly.
Painting used to be pretty straighforward and some of it still is, but a lot of it involves elaborate glazing processes that have to be customized for each job. The hundreds of luxury finish products such as countertops and flooring materials often have highly specialized handling and installation requirements.
There is window glass that can go partially or fully opaque at the touch of a button and soon there will be all varieties of “smart” paint.
The businesses that handle this stuff all have college-educated owners and workers, and if its a family business the children go to college before coming into the business.
Now you don’t see this stuff in run of the mill ranch house or apartment construction but these technologies historically work their way down and will only become more prevalent.
I would say that the value of a liberal arts education lies not in the facts taught but that students learn how to learn and develop critical thinking skills and the creative strategies that are ever so useful for mechanical work. The technology pace is currently moving so fast that takes effort and knowledge and education just to know how to stay current.
It’s hard to explain to people whose entire self esteem is wrapped up in their college education.
Don’t mistake that as a problem here. It would seem to me that Ann’s self-esteem might be what led her to be open to unusual directions for traditional women. Her advanced education was only one of the credentials that she has. You have no way of knowing the origin of her self-esteem.
I believe that self esteem is valuable in learning to do quality tradesmanship. There are some countries where tradeschools make self esteem, appreciation of quality workmanship or quality service a priority. They are not looked down on for their occupation. Generally, their expertise is admired.
Please don’t assume that anyone’s self-esteem is wrapped up only in getting a degree. None of us know the source of a specific person’s self-esteem. Set that aside as a reason that your posts don’t quite explain the things you want them to.
Try again.
It has nothing to do with “looking down” on people. One problem with trade jobs is that they usually require highly trained people to perform highly technical tasks. So there tends to be a lot of economic pressure to either automate those tasks or simplify them to the point where an untrained high school dropout can do them. For example, there is no such thing as a “tv repairman” anymore. Televisions are essentially now black boxes with no repairable parts. And they are cheap enough that if they break, you just replace the whole thing.
I don’t think there are too many people like that. It sound more to me like the tradesfolk in this thread are suffering from a case of the "you think your better than me?"s.
I get that a lot of trades are highly technical and complex. But the benefit of an education goes beyond just training someone to be a competent technician.
IMHO, one of the big problems about education these days is that it has created this attitude of entitlement. Yes, college is supposed to be creating the leaders of tomorrow. But that doesn’t mean that you can come out of a 4 year program with a bullshit degree and be qualified to lead people. Even if you have a degree in engineering or something business related, you will be working with similarly educated people who have been doing it for decades.
So yes, I think that education has become somewhat “over-intellectualized” in that a lot of young people think that it disqualifies them from ever having to do real actual work.
But that’s a specific job. Lots of specific jobs become obsolete. You don’t see typing pools anymore. Most farmers were made redundant. Switchboard operator isn’t much of a future now.
There remain a lot of trades - and a lack of people to do them is a serious economic problem. Around here welders are in ridiculously short supply; there are companies that need a dozen or more welders and they simply do not exist to be hired. That’s lost productivity, lost efficiency, and lost business. But the government, so far as I am aware, has no plan to fix it.
Why? It’s already been said; it’s looked down upon, and people like BigT don’t understand anything about it, thinking it just a “physical” job. In fact, it’s a challenging job indeed, and the long term implications of not having enough welders - or machinists, or millwrights, or for that matter truck drivers, all underfilled jobs - are significant. The welders of yesteryear were in a lot of cases the entrepreneurs of today; after doing the trade for awhile they started and grew businesses and employ dozens of people now. But without fresh talent, how’re you going to keep that going?
And you need them. The fancy office building you work in wasn’t put together overseas or built with Lego.
The guys who used to be TV repairman are now “home entertainment installers” or the like. The jobs changed, they didn’t disappear.
Go back and re-read Ann Hedonia’s post regarding paint, finishes, and surfaces in modern construction. Being a painter is more technical than it used to be.
I’m over 55 years old and I have a bachelors degree in Technical Theatre from a state run party school, my education is really irrelevant at this time of my life, I am respected enough in my field that I haven’t had to interview for a job or produce a resume in 25 years.
The training that I received in college was really invaluable when I was younger. I’m in the “computerized lighting” part of the construction process I described and those technologies were pioneered in the theatre. When I first started typing this sentence I started to say that my degree was invaluable but that’s not precisely true, the degree itself doesn’t mean much to me and it probably ceased to matter in terms of my making a living about 30 years ago…it was the actual education that made a difference.