How right you are - my kid wants to be a movie director. Yet he had a run-in with reality by doing an internship with the cities’ PR department as a sophomore in high school. He hated it! I asked him why. He had to do what someone else directed! He hated it! He indeed thought he would go to college and upon graduation be hailed as the next Stephen Spielberg.
Well - it was a VERY valuable lesson. He is now in college majoring in Mass Media Production. He has a National Merit Scholarship, and chose a school that would make that award pay for perhaps 2/3rds of his costs.
He still wants to direct movies, but realizes he won’t be starting at the top. He right-sized his expectations to his financial realities and will graduate from college owning no-one money. Our small savings for his college tuition are going to cover all expenses above the scholarship. He put this all together himself.
Yeah - I’m proud of him. However, the point of the story is more to agree with you that unless more of this current generation opens their eyes - it is going to be a RUDE lesson.
“Instead of millions of mew college graduates driving cabs, we need TRADE SCHOOL graduates, (since apprenticeships seem to have disappeared) working for themselves and their families instead of working to pay back student loans. “
Spot on.
You could not be more right!
I was sitting in a restaurant waiting for a table the other night and I overheard two guys sitting next to me who work in the Eagle Ford shale oil/gas fields in TX.
They were talking about the fact that they cannot find enough skilled tradesmen (or even unskilled workers who are willing to be trained) to take the jobs that they have available in the oil and gas fields.
They said that someone straight out of high school could start an apprenticeship (which the employers are willing to pay for) and could easily be making 100K+ within just a few years.
No takers.
But a high school graduate (and his co-signing broke family) will gladly become an indentured servant... going tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of dollars into lifelong, non-dischargable student loan debt, in order to further enrich liberal professors and multi-million-dollar salary college presidents, while being indoctrinated for 4 years in the art of victimhood/entitlements/guilt and graduate with a worthless degree that qualifies him to work at Starbucks.
Then, he’ll cry to his fellow underemployed, over-indebted adult-child “friends” on Facebook and Twitter night and day about how unfair the system is.
Sad, sad days in America.
I heartily agree, but we also need something we don't have all -- polytechnics -- sort of high-end trade schools focused on job training, but giving a broader education than a simple trade school. Let universities go back to being universities instead of misconceiving of their purpose as job training, rather than education. What most people seem to want from college is what a polytechnic offers.
I went to a major state university (in the ACC conference) where I learned to look down my nose at kids who either skipped college for work, joined the military, or went to community college. I had a bit of a rude awakening when I graduated after six years with a double-degree and discovered that the grads from the local technical school were getting all the jobs in my field (graphic design). They were trained on graphics software that my school didn’t even have. I, however, had in-depth knowledge of art theory, socialism, “sustainability,” and keg stands. Cutting-edge computer graphics software skills? Yeah, not so much.
That’s all true. Also true, though, is one needn’t get his education from college to be a software engineer, firmware engineer, inventor, or a CEO of a successful firm for that matter. I’ve known and worked with many self-taught autodidacts from all of those categories who are gifted and brilliant.
“Today’s kids are being seduced into thinking that everyone can be the CEO or a top executive.”
Yet there are corporations that have the view that the valid only career goal for a degreed corporate professional is executive or upper management. Such it was at a major engineering firm where I had at one time worked.
My thought exactly.
Kid down the street loves to mess with trucks and snowmobiles. Has owned five or six vehicles during just the past year. He just loves machinery that moves.
I doubt anyone in his family has ever attended college, but his folks have worked hard and would really like Dustin to go. What the kid needs is a good apprenticeship in a repair shop.
I'm sure he's comfortable with computers and he's got the knack for machinery. I hope he doesn't try to make his parents happy by doing something that he might not be suited for.