Educational Inflation

My daughter wrote a paper on this recently, but I gave her the name

Lately in industry, and I cite numerous threads here as examples, it seems that your educational dollar is getting you less and less distance, career-wise. Oh, sure, there are still the two, four and six year degrees, and the costs go up every year, but that's not what I mean.

When I was little, my grandfather could remember a day when a high-school diploma carried some real worth, and the man with that degree of education could get a supervisor job, while his uneductated peers did the grunt work.

But by the time I was ready to pursue a career, a HS was BS, and I don't mean Bachelors, either. The number of people with high school diplomas was so huge, it had ceased to have any meaning in the workplace. Now, a HS is minimal just to get hired as an operator.

So I went with the next best thing, an Associates degree! And it did get my foot in the door, and experience has kept me employed since then. But if I look at the papers, or here, I quickly discover that my AAS is no longer covering my a**. Now, it's bachelors that the company wants, and no one else will do.

What really sparked this little rant was a buddy of mine whose girlfriend just graduated college as a physical therapist. Not PLC related, true, but consider this - under the new hiring standards in florida hospitals, you must have a Masters degree in PT to get hired.

How long before the automation industry follows suit?

TM

Tim - To add to your rant, let me just tell you an example which goes farther than your HS/BS troubling facts.

Lets say I want an MBA. What are my options. First would be to spend 3 years in school and study hard... Second would be to get into night school and again study hard with my day job eating away my energy... Third but not last, get into a special high tempo MBA course. I get 25k$ out of my check book and start going to a local hotel where they rent a room for me and maybee a dozen others with such a nice checking account. The course will last a little over a full year. I will tell everybody how hard it is and how difficult it is to follow such a fast speed course.

But in the end, do you really think that I can flunk this course? Remember that I gave them 25K for it. They got 300K for one room every weeks with one teacher ...

Who are "They"? Any "Respectable" University. Most of them do this.

Do you ever wonder why there is so many MBAs around. Do you really think that today, an MBA means something?

I see many people on forums looking for fast paced PLC trainning. I see many very bad technicians on the road. Is it related. You bet!

Remember not long ago, some teacher ask about PLCs, starting his thread with... "I have had no exposure to PLC programming. I will be teaching... "

See, not only does the diploma are becoming worthless, so are the ones responsible to issue them. Shame!

I agree with you on the trend.

As the percentage of 4-year grads rises, the relative worth of such a degree is diluted. AA degrees- being considered a lower level is going to suffer accordingly. I believe that the percentage has risen from the mid-teens to mid- twenties in the last 30 years. This flooding of the market is going to continue until costs rise enough to stop it.
Some in our society are now considering a college education a right. This will just exacerbate the problem.

During Vietnam, due to student deferrment, many people who would not have gone to college did. I know someone who got his electrician's liscense, got drafted, went to college and is now an EE.

I know quite a few people with only HS or AA education levels that can run circles around people with BS's, but as long as HR people are the first screening level, only BS's are going to get considered for jobs.

The best computer troubleshooter I have ever met barely got his HS diploma. He managed to get a job in the IT department at a division of Motorola and he runs circles around guys with all kinds of degrees and certifications. The best story he has is of a guy with a docking station. Everytime he connected his laptop to his docking station it wouldn't boot up. The resident tech guy worked on it for a month and couldn't figure it out, finally he decided just to buy a new docking station. The guy with the problem described it to my freind who within a few seconds replied "Try taking the floppy disk out of the disk drive" Docking station worked perfectly after that.

The thing that gets me as that my freind feels inferior to all of these people with degrees even though he continually proves that he is smarter than them.

Unfortunately it's not what you know but what a peice of paper says you know.

Unfortunately it's not what you know but what a peice of paper says you know. [/B][/QUOTE]

Well said.

I must also agree. Although I am an EE, I never had one course in controls or automation. One of the best controls engineers that I have worked with, was from Germany. Over there, you can't get an electrical engineering degree without having 2 years of the hands-on trades. This is what needs to happen more in the U.S.

I was lucky enough to be in an internship program where I worked at a local plant between semesters for a total of 18 months.

Hey Rob D,

I would have loved to get a BS in engineering, but I didn't take any math (advanced) in high school. But my Dad kept pushing me when I had to take a math course in college, and the next thing you know, I got a math minor. Now I'm 34 and I have the capacity to learn these "advanced" concepts. This is why I think of a job as a place they "sometimes" pay you to learn. Where going to college nowadays cost about 5 times as much as it did 15 years ago, and your probably getting a little better education than years past.

What did you get from your BS in EE? I know you must take a lot of advanced math and physics. Is there different kinds of emphasis programs in EE? They didn't teach you anything about automation in college? Which college?

It seems like timing is everything, being in the right place at the right time, knowing the right people. But some people are just driven (or obsessed) to learn their trade and don't need all the certifications, degrees and papers to prove what they are worth.

My 2 cents.. Interesting topic....

"What did you get from your BS in EE? I know you must take a lot of advanced math and physics. Is there different kinds of emphasis programs in EE? They didn't teach you anything about automation in college? Which college? "

I did get a paper that basically said "I did it". I really did get a lot out of the physics and math. I think those types of classes help you think logically for design(eg. can a piston push 10,000 pounds repeatedly).

Emphasis programs: I had chosen to study topics in the fabrication of semiconductors, optics and advanced physics. These are a few of many in the arena of electrical engineering.

I went to Penn-State (go Lions!), which is a great university, but I really had no good direction from my advisors about what goes on in the real world of manufacturing. I'm not sure if many of them did either (because many were grad students just teaching theory).

If I didn't go out searching for what I wanted, I wouldn't be where I'm at now. It wasn't going to just land in my lap.

Coordinates

Hey Davey T
I just had to look up your Coordinates to find out where in the world 44.94 deg N, 93.63 deg W is.
Looks like Lakeminnetonka is a cool place.
I went to MapTech.com to find out.

Anyone who finds this thread interesting should read Kurt Vonnegut's novel 'Player Piano'. One of the subplots deals with a character with a doctorate in Real Estate who finds his entire lifestyle threatened because a check of his college records reveals that he lacks a semester of Physical Education, and is thus ineligible for his degrees.

Are students getting what they paying for?

Rob D. said:

I went to Penn-State (go Lions!), which is a great university, but I really had no good direction from my advisors about what goes on in the real world of manufacturing. I'm not sure if many of them did either (because many were grad students just teaching theory).

If I didn't go out searching for what I wanted, I wouldn't be where I'm at now. It wasn't going to just land in my lap.

Click to expand...

Note to students. You are the customer! If you are paying full tuition you should demand more than graduate students teaching theory.

The last line is precious too.

Rob D. said:

I was lucky enough to be in an internship program where I worked at a local plant between semesters for a total of 18 months.

Click to expand...

Where did you go to school at? I am in a similar program through Kettering University......I'll probably end up with about 30 months experience when I graduate.

Kettering University, ouch dude you'll end up with a 70 grand loan too. Not to mention the experience of living in Flint Michigan.

I was lucky in the fact that at the college I went to the Engineering department agreed that the Professors would teach all the classes no TA's were allowed to teach a class. Most of the time that was good but my circuits II class had a TA that was better at teaching than the Prof.

glaverty said:

Kettering University, ouch dude you'll end up with a 70 grand loan too. Not to mention the experience of living in Flint Michigan.

I was lucky in the fact that at the college I went to the Engineering department agreed that the Professors would teach all the classes no TA's were allowed to teach a class. Most of the time that was good but my circuits II class had a TA that was better at teaching than the Prof.

Click to expand...

I wish I'd end up with a 70 grand loan. I'm already 26.5k in debt after one year....and I will need another 20K loan by October. And yes, living in FLint is quite the experience, I recommend never visiting there........its not too often you see people carrying a gun down the street anywhere else, is it?

Wow, that is a lot of money. You could buy a house with all that money. I suggest you don't ever fail a class, if you do it is going to cost you a lot of money. I hope you think your education there is worth that kind of cash because you are going to be paying for it for a really long time.