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oh so please tell me what this utopian environment will look like in say 40 years when the millenials are 'in charge'.. I know that the thought of 'single payer' health care and a universal basic income gives you and many millenials a wet dream as well as preferential treatment for minorities to correct 'past injustices'.. You do realize that the period from end of WWII - the 1970s culminated in soaring interest rates, double digit inflation rates and out of control crime or you probably weren't alive back then (late 1970s- 1982)
Millennials who aren't getting a large inheritence are in for a rude awakening when they realize that they have nearly nothing saved for retirement because they spent whatever they made on rent, the latest iphone and flat screen TV's and rolling over car loans or leases every 2 or 3 years to so they drive the newest $50,000 SUV
The way things are going, the Boomers and Generation X-ers will have tanked the economy by the time it's time for Millennials to retire, so we won't be able to then for obvious reasons (i.e. bankrupt Social Security, Medicare, and possibly the currency itself.)
Bachelors degree is what the high school diploma was back when I was a kid. No suprise you see so many degree holders working sub $15 an hour jobs. The jobs that high school grads got now go to college grads, and the high school grads work fast food or are unemployed.
The exception is if you majored in something like computer science, or engineering. Or course not everyone has the aptitude for that, but if you do the sky is the limit. If you study liberal arts it is important to attend a higher tier college because of the networking opportunities that exist.
I thought only about 20% or so of people hold a Bachelors degree so how could it be the new high school diploma already? If you mean that they keep requiring far higher degrees than are needed just to try and weed people out with Taleo, etc, software, then you have a point.
back then, high school grads were willing and able to work a job without being babysat and had enough skills to work entry jobs
it takes them another 4 years to mature now so they have a BA to reach same point
all the countless articles on growing up slower, 40 is the new 30? well, 22 is the new 18... when 22 year olds have the same life skills as 18 year olds back then
even recently the news had stories that the average age of young parents are about 6 year older than what they were in past generations, they are starting life at a later age. And screw everyone who keeps blaming the economy on a late start in life. Since when has poverty ever stopped people from growing up?
The problem is, employers USED to train and now they want you coming out the door with experience already when you graduate and they want it in X, Y, and Z and it had to be in A and not A' where A' is very close to A but not A. They are poaching off foreigners and existing workers, but that party will end someday. (Of course, they plan to use the Fed Ed/Workforce Common Core, College and Career Ready, Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, Perkins Funding, Higher Education Act, etc, to push everyone into college and/or push them to be trained, likely on taxpayer funds, to be trained to X, Y, and Z in A' (but not much else) so that the greedy employers will be happy. Using that strategy, they can just let older workers die off once they get single-payer as employers will just keep training younger people (who command less wages) and/or foreigners. BTW, think employers oppose single-payer? They might if they are actually conservative, but if they are Leftists or corporatists, they'll be glad to have the government regulations requiring them to pay for you X, Y, and Z for insurance and this and that as the government (AKA the taxpayer) will pay for it all.)
Some jobs have a lot of down time. Decades ago, when the big three automakers were dying the slow death, autoworkers enjoyed long periods of watching movies and reading magazines. Management figured it was better to have them at work doing some work, than paying 90% of their salary to sit at home and do nothing. This happens in some white collar jobs today, but certainly it is not the norm. Someone who suggests this probably has a poor understanding of what it takes to work and compete in today's competitive global economy.
I HATE the words "compete in global economy". It's the words the evil globalists and corporatists use to push us around and justify their screwing us over and their villainous policies.
The way things are going, the Boomers and Generation X-ers will have tanked the economy by the time it's time for Millennials to retire, so we won't be able to then for obvious reasons (i.e. bankrupt Social Security, Medicare, and possibly the currency itself.)
Gen X could not vote in 1980. Don’t pin this on us: we are such a small demographic that half of the articles I read just completely ignore that anyone was a child under Reagan and Carter.
Believe me, my generation has been getting screwed from day 1. They perfected all the screwing on us before they got you all with a hot iron in the wrong end with ARMs and student loans and so on. A more cynical, bitter and hopeless group you will not find in the demographic.
Also, if you think Gen X gets to retire... heh. We have 30-40 years to go, kiddo, unless we are in the top 1%-2% or want to live large in a hurricane-prone trailer park. In fact I would say that Boomers aren’t doing so well themselves and many of those on the tail end won’t ever retire either (the youngest are in their 50s and are going to work until hospice).
Oh but the bleeding hearts and mainstream media never talks about this --- you know that the workplace is MUCH DIFFERENT than academia where you have social promotion, grading on curve, being able to get extra help to complete assignments, and of course cliques and fraternities in college.. Many of these kids realize that the real world is not fair and doesn't care if you succeed or fail (unlike the environment in that $60,000 a year private college that daddy is usually paying in full for)..
It isn't really all that different. There is just as much, if not worse, of cronyism, favoritism, and incompetence in the workplace. In my experience, private sector management is a lot more disorganized than even the most incompetent professor.
I really don't care if you believe me or not. But let me try to explain to you why I think some people can pass through the rigors of engineering school and still suck at being an engineer in real life.
In school, everything is structured. When your professor gives you a problem, 99.99% of the time there's a right answer. And 99.99% of the time there are a set of steps that you can go through to get to the right answer. Here is problem A, look at chart B and you get the answer C. My BS was in physics and my MS was in engineering, so I have gone through all the classes necessary.
The rigors of the real world are different than the structured environment of school. For example, suppose you are an engineer and you have been assigned to 2 separate projects at the same time. One project is for the tollway and the other project is for the department of transportation. You are assigned to plan out a schedule for a traffic switch at Ramp A while having a lane shutdown at location B to accommodate for an asphalt paving operation. It just happens that there is a conflict between the traffic switch at ramp A and the paving operation. The foremen for those operations need you to tell them which operation takes precedent. If this is the tollway project, which operation should you give precedent to? What if this is the DOT project?
I guarantee you, you will not find a clear answer from any text book or spec anywhere. The example I just gave was a real life situation, by the way. The dumbass of an engineer I assigned this to completely messed it up because he had NO COMMON SENSE. This was the PE and SE guy I was talking about. No amount of calculus helped him with this problem.
Real life situations sometimes can be a lot more complicated than any professor can prepare you for. Sure, engineering schools try their best to prepare the students to succeed in real life. But every once in a while, a few with absolutely no critical thinking skills slip right through the cracks because they have just the right combination of habits to let them pass their classes. As one of my past mentors told me, you either have it or you don't.
Keep in mind that I have made these observations from the perspective of someone who has gone through engineering school and have passed the PE and SE. So, no, I'm not a past operator who became an employer. I just have had enough real world experience to have observed people who have slipped through the cracks in academia and are now unable to perform in the real world.
How prolific is this and where do we draw the line? Creating an antagonistic view point of prospective employees becasue 0.01% bad engineers will make it through seems self defeating. If hit a deer in the road I am not going to stop driving forever because there could be another deer out there waiting.
Also the job you described does not even sound like engineering, it sounds like managment or coordionation which is not nessicarily an engineering skill set. Now timing the lights to reduce congestion that would be engineering and pretty cool since traffic behaves like a wave . Why is an engineer even dealing with a foreman, I have never dealt with foreman or laborers etc. I have dealt with operations folks some of whom are also engineers.
It sounds like you are assigning things out that are not even engineering and which these people dont have a skill set for. Its like the military requiring pilots to be officers, completely different still sets, which is why when my buddy was in pensicola the major of the flight school said its becoming a major quagmire (no pun intended) to find good pilots, duh, because good pilots are not nessicarily good leaders, the military can spin it how ever they want, that there needs to be a squadron leader or what ever, but we won WW2 with enlisted pilots. Being an officer and a leader of a large group of people is MUCH different than a sqaud leader of 5 or 6 other planes of which they are all pilots thinking on a similar wave length. Thats just an example.
With a degree in physics I would figure you would be at los alamos not dealing with the DOT on some road project, seems really strange.
The problem is, employers USED to train and now they want you coming out the door with experience already when you graduate and they want it in X, Y, and Z and it had to be in A and not A' where A' is very close to A but not A. They are poaching off foreigners and existing workers, but that party will end someday. (Of course, they plan to use the Fed Ed/Workforce Common Core, College and Career Ready, Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, Perkins Funding, Higher Education Act, etc, to push everyone into college and/or push them to be trained, likely on taxpayer funds, to be trained to X, Y, and Z in A' (but not much else) so that the greedy employers will be happy. Using that strategy, they can just let older workers die off once they get single-payer as employers will just keep training younger people (who command less wages) and/or foreigners. BTW, think employers oppose single-payer? They might if they are actually conservative, but if they are Leftists or corporatists, they'll be glad to have the government regulations requiring them to pay for you X, Y, and Z for insurance and this and that as the government (AKA the taxpayer) will pay for it all.)
i get trained all the time, get continuing education provided, etc
the people who say they do not get trained, they want a mentor who sits there and babysits them
why would employers train someone with a BA degree like they would a high school degree? if you have a college degree, you should at least be more skilled than the HS grad no? but the two are not more skilled at doing the same type of work when they both apply for the same entry level jobs. BA degrees are kind of a let down if thats all they can do after four years is do something slightly better than a hs grad
if you get into fields where the BA degrees are expected to know ABC instead of only A, then employers will train them to do EFGH, you are still stuck on getting to BC. employes train high school grads in ABC...
tell me, why do college grads feel they are overqualifed baristas? their degrees are not in coffee making, what exactly qualifes them to be better at it than anyone else? where do they get the gull to call themselves overqualifed? its as laughable as saying i am a overqualifed racecar driver because i play mario kart
I heard you. Most architects and engineers I know are working for government. Working in private sector is too unstable. They got laid off many times and they couldn't find jobs in their field. They are sick and tired of it. Most of them end up working for government. One engineer I know couldn't find job probably due to age discrimination. He is in his later forty. He found job as a college instructor. Don't think having STEM skills is a ticket to have a golden life.
People should save and save and invest when they are young. So they can become financial independent at age forty or fifty. Otherwise, you will not like working minimum wage at Targets or a grocery bagger in a supermarket in latter half of your life.
You have to agree to work in those jobs in the first place. I refused to work those jobs in high school why on earth would I work them as a degreed engineer, I wouldnt, I dont care what the consequences were.
How prolific is this and where do we draw the line? Creating an antagonistic view point of prospective employees becasue 0.01% bad engineers will make it through seems self defeating. If hit a deer in the road I am not going to stop driving forever because there could be another deer out there waiting.
Also the job you described does not even sound like engineering, it sounds like managment or coordionation which is not nessicarily an engineering skill set. Now timing the lights to reduce congestion that would be engineering and pretty cool since traffic behaves like a wave . Why is an engineer even dealing with a foreman, I have never dealt with foreman or laborers etc. I have dealt with operations folks some of whom are also engineers.
It sounds like you are assigning things out that are not even engineering and which these people dont have a skill set for. Its like the military requiring pilots to be officers, completely different still sets, which is why when my buddy was in pensicola the major of the flight school said its becoming a major quagmire (no pun intended) to find good pilots, duh, because good pilots are not nessicarily good leaders, the military can spin it how ever they want, that there needs to be a squadron leader or what ever, but we won WW2 with enlisted pilots. Being an officer and a leader of a large group of people is MUCH different than a sqaud leader of 5 or 6 other planes of which they are all pilots thinking on a similar wave length. Thats just an example.
With a degree in physics I would figure you would be at los alamos not dealing with the DOT on some road project, seems really strange.
Um, life isn't a straight line.
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. Why is an engineer even dealing with a foreman, I have never dealt with foreman or laborers etc. I have dealt with operations folks some of whom are also engineers.
