Once upon a time, before I accidentally became a computationalist, I was educated as a classical metallurgist. Consequently, I spent a decent amount of time in machine shops and foundries. I spent a summer working for Large Manufacturing Company, and spent a decent amount of time interacting with guys who didn't have a college degree, but knew more than I ever would about how machines work. And while my parents are engineers, my mom's family and Mr. ME's family are mostly very blue-collar people. Not all of them have a college education, and several have degrees that have nothing to do with their careers. College wouldn't have gotten them where they wanted to go in life.
College gets more expensive every year (Mike the Mad Biologist has some lovely numbers here). The Chronicle of Higher Education asked the question "Are too many students going to college?" Most of the panelists seem to avoid the main question, but as academics, there's a certain amount they have invested in getting more students in the door. They focus on things like the wage premium. However, that wage premium is relative to all people without degrees. What about the difference between a bachelor's degree and trade school? I think the gap narrows dramatically then.
We need welders. We need plumbers, electricians, car mechanics, glassblowers. But we also need to stop telling every high school student that they should go to college. I had friends in high school, who were academically gifted, but knew that what they really, really wanted to do with their lives was fix things. They were lucky to have parents who supported that, and to live in a school district that had courses that would help them get their technical certification. There are some people who are not suited to a desk job. There are some people, who after 12 years in the US educational system, want to learn something practical, not theoretical. Why are we trying to convince them to go to college, an increasingly expensive proposition? Why is making money more important to our definition of success than being satisfied with your job? When did going into a trade stop being considered a good option?
This is also one of the things I love about the steampunk community. It's very much a maker's movement, with a strong appreciation from craftsmanship. Instead of throwing things away when they broke, building them well, and fixing them. My college education has taught me a lot about thermodynamics and Newtonian physics, but that won't help me fix my car.
Showing posts with label industry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label industry. Show all posts
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Thursday, May 26, 2011
From Academia, Looking Out
Unlike a very large number of graduate student, I'm not in a relationship with a fellow graduate student or with someone in a completely unrelated field. I am, in fact, engaged to a fellow engineer who is working in industry. Unlike many of my straight-into-graduate school peers, I have a pretty solid impression of the daily life of an entry level engineer. It's very interesting to compare the disparities between our routines and responsibilities, and compare what we actually are doing to what we were told as undergraduates.
For clarity, Mr.ME is a component release engineer for a large manufacturing corporation. He's very much on the practical side of things. I, on the other hand, do computation, making me very unpractical.
Mr. ME has at least one meeting daily. I have 1-2 meetings weekly. However, his meetings often involve decision-making. My meetings often involve my advisor going of on odd tangents (recent example: the history of VW Beetle, the properties of polar bear hair, and bicycling trips in central Illinois).
Mr. ME is responsible for quality control decisions that can shut down entire plants. He has a specific list of widgets he is directly responsible for, and a boss who gives him specific things to work on. Most days, my responsibilities are very unclear. My real responsibility is to myself, to make progress that I am happy with, in the absence of clear advisories directives. This is one of this biggest areas in which we find discrepancies from what "everyone" says things will be like. Going into industry, you're told to expect very little real responsibility and lots of drudge work and spread sheets. Going into graduate school, I was told that I would be working long hours on research, and on whatever my advisor told me to do.
Graduate students are assumed to be poorly paid, with horrible benefits and worse hours. While the hours have held true, Mr. ME's first job here paid less than I made, required him to go into work at 5:30AM every other Saturday, and had no benefits. That being said, his new job is much better on both fronts.
Looking out at industry, I sometimes long for the coherent since of direction, and real deadlines and responsibilities. On bad days, I remember about being paid time-and-a-half for overtime hours... On the other hand, I'm learning vast amounts, and I have much more flexibility in my hours and work. It's often up to me to find things to do, which can be problematic when key equipment is broken (like the login server...). I can be more confident in my decision to do graduate school, because I have a clearer view of the most probable alternative. There's still days when I question it all, but most of the time, I'm glad I'm here.
For clarity, Mr.ME is a component release engineer for a large manufacturing corporation. He's very much on the practical side of things. I, on the other hand, do computation, making me very unpractical.
Mr. ME has at least one meeting daily. I have 1-2 meetings weekly. However, his meetings often involve decision-making. My meetings often involve my advisor going of on odd tangents (recent example: the history of VW Beetle, the properties of polar bear hair, and bicycling trips in central Illinois).
Mr. ME is responsible for quality control decisions that can shut down entire plants. He has a specific list of widgets he is directly responsible for, and a boss who gives him specific things to work on. Most days, my responsibilities are very unclear. My real responsibility is to myself, to make progress that I am happy with, in the absence of clear advisories directives. This is one of this biggest areas in which we find discrepancies from what "everyone" says things will be like. Going into industry, you're told to expect very little real responsibility and lots of drudge work and spread sheets. Going into graduate school, I was told that I would be working long hours on research, and on whatever my advisor told me to do.
Graduate students are assumed to be poorly paid, with horrible benefits and worse hours. While the hours have held true, Mr. ME's first job here paid less than I made, required him to go into work at 5:30AM every other Saturday, and had no benefits. That being said, his new job is much better on both fronts.
Looking out at industry, I sometimes long for the coherent since of direction, and real deadlines and responsibilities. On bad days, I remember about being paid time-and-a-half for overtime hours... On the other hand, I'm learning vast amounts, and I have much more flexibility in my hours and work. It's often up to me to find things to do, which can be problematic when key equipment is broken (like the login server...). I can be more confident in my decision to do graduate school, because I have a clearer view of the most probable alternative. There's still days when I question it all, but most of the time, I'm glad I'm here.
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