Having grown up in the San Fernando Valley just after the aerospace heyday, my family had a lot of friends in the aerospace industry who got absolutely slammed when everything was shut down. So many of them went from being very successful engineers on high-tech, super-secret projects to…selling Amway (not kidding) or teaching part time at the junior college, etc. for a tiny fraction of what they once made. Many of them had worked decades in the aerospace industry, and had no real options to change careers at that late stage in their lives. It was truly devastating. I guess the “engineering degree = success!” meme doesn’t really sit well with me.
Whenever I hear about ++millions++ of Chinese and Indian kids going into engineering or related fields, I can’t help but think that is the LAST major we should be pushing our kids into. Sounds like it’s going to be a very saturated field in coming years.
A lot of our success in the U.S. comes from having a flexible and diverse workforce. What works today, won’t necessarily work tomorrow. To push all of our kids into a couple of narrow fields sounds like a recipe for disaster.
I think we need to bring vocational tech back to high schools in a big way. We need more people who can **DO** things, rather than just think them up.
———-
Flu,
You can’t blame these kids for wanting to be “the big boss” when they finish school. All their lives, they were told that if they went to school and studied XX, they’d be successful. After many years, lots of work, and lots of money (too much debt?!?), they really believe they deserve to land at the top.
Also, look at what we revere in this country: Wall Streeters who do NOTHING productive are being bailed out with trillions of taxpayer dollars, while unions (productive workers) are being blamed for the mess that Wall Street created! Professional gamblers (traders) and executives are the highest-paid people in our country, and they do very little to benefit society at large. They are behind the dismantling of the middle class in America, and they are being richly rewarded for it!
I think we need to shift our priorites, and teach young people that hard WORK is noble, and that gambers and paper shufflers are a drain on society (and I’ve been a gambler and paper shuffler for most of my life). We need to encourage our kids to go into different fields and become the **best** at what they do, whatever it may be. That is what has and what will make this country great, IMHO.
