I saw an article about jobs in The New York Times (it was long enough ago that I’ve lost the link).
It started with the premise College graduates, on the other hand, often do not have the right skills to be successful on a factory floor.
I find that a completely bogus argument. Someone who truly educated themselves at university should have learned essential skills for living such as how to research, how to think, how to write coherent thoughts, how to communicate. They should have some math and science, as well as some literature and philosophy.
Speaking as someone with that above education who also worked on the factory floor in one function or another for about 20 years, the failure lies elsewhere. Probably in expectations.
Try this statement presented as one of an n=2 examples (journalism):
The country is flooded with college graduates who can’t find jobs that match their education, Mr. Hetrick said, and there are not enough skilled blue-collar workers to fill the positions that currently exist, let alone the jobs that will be created if more factories are built in the United States.
Society has spent about 50 years telling young people to a specific training at university and then get a nice, cushy white collar job leading to CEO within 15-20 years, if not sooner. Unfortunately, the markets and economy did not cooperate with these predictions.
This initiative, however, does directly address a flaw in our system.
The Business Roundtable, a lobbying group whose members are chief executives of companies, has started an initiative in which executives collaborate on strategies to attract and train a new generation of workers in skilled trades. At an event last week in Washington, executives commiserated about how hard it was to find qualified people and swapped tips onstage for overcoming the gap.
My grandfather taught me a lot about manufacturing before I was even 10 years old. He talked about being forced to drop out of high school (about 1915) and apprenticing as a machinist at the old Monarch Machine Tool Company. He had a number of jobs with increasing responsibility and opportunity. During World War II he was a production superintendent in a GM plant that was converted to the manufacture of aircraft machine gun bolts. He employed a number of strategies that I later learned were similar to Lean Manufacturing. GM sent him to take college courses while he worked for them. (OK, you win, this is n=1; adding me, the journalist n=2.)
Their ideas included combing through existing company job descriptions to prioritize relevant experience over college degrees and recruiting high school students as young as sophomores for experiences that could draw their interest in manufacturing careers.
“For every 20 job postings that we have, there is one qualified applicant right now,” said David Gitlin, the chairman and chief executive of Carrier Global, which produces air-conditioners and furnaces and services heating and cooling equipment.
By the 1960s companies had farmed out their apprenticeship programs demanding public schools to provide compliant workers. The public school skills training programs thrived to a degree, but also faltered under parental wishes for their children to become rich, college-educated people.
I believe university education (short of PhD track) even in technical training such as engineering really exists to help a willing individual learn to research, think, write clearly, and acquire a background deserving an educated person. Where they work? Well, that’s up to serendipity and drive.
