Future of colleges and universities

[razz]

OK, Catherine, do I need to remind you about you making your own clothes?

[iris lilies]

I would choose DH and Diana in Wisconsin as my luxury items on a desert island. Those two would keep me fed and housed.

likely they would boot me off, though, as an ornamental log. Or eat me.

[ToomuchStuff]

I wonder how many females would really be comfortable going into some heavily male blue collar trade, because it's more macho and rougher than say being an engineer (male dominated, but white collar). But yes if they will pay you to learn it and apprentice (and this does exist in some trades), it is probably indeed in demand. Other trades like much construction, you will just be competing with a bunch of illegal immigrants and how promising is that really - they aren't exactly making bank off it, though their employers may be.

I've known a few. We had a gal that would have loved to be a mechanic, her biggest issue was not being able to say no, to watching her grandkids, during work time. Woman I proposed to, was very hands on, we remodeled, landscaped, etc. together and it was part of what I loved about her (not afraid to get her hands dirty). Then when we were kids, we knew a couple who the wife did all the mechanical work (change the oil, brakes, construction) and the husband did all the laundry, cooking, kid rearing type of duties.
Years later, as more of this was seen, culturally, things like all the girl calendars from both tool and beer companies, went away.

I'm with you. Too busy reading, probably like you.

By the time I was an adult, I couldn't cook, couldn't garden, couldn't knit, had no mechanical sense, and I flunked my only test at woodworking: building a birdhouse.

Then I hear my DIL telling me about her mother (now deceased unfortunately) who ran a bakery business out of the local general store, relocated a staircase in their home, played the piano and painted beautiful oil paintings (in her spare time raising 3 children), and was a wonderful host to NYTimes crossword competitions in her home. (That's what I have to live up to

My sense is that the more skills and knowledge people have, the more agency they feel they have, and the happier they may be. But that's just my humble opinion.

So much of business is basic math and finding people you can trust for skills you don't have (tax man, etc). I learned a lot of skills growing up as at 14, I started taking care of grandmothers house. (fixing things, landscaping, painting, etc) For me it was more because I had no one to rely on, but myself. Things come down to time and money and when you didn't have money, you used the time (and resources such as TOH, or the public library) to learn how to do things.
Because of that, she used to take me down to her mechanics, where they would teach me how to do things.
Where my parents, were the type that looked down on us doing blue collar work, and my father said things, such as "you can work on your own car, when you have your own tools and house to work on them." and things such as "you want to start mowing yards, then go buy your own mower, you're not using mine".
Life needs to be somewhere in the middle, as I found I could work, 24/7, doing blue collar work, and get burned out, always fixing other peoples problems, same with white collar.

As to the apprenticeship thing, my former neighbor, was an apprentice woodworker in Austria, before coming over to America. I have no idea (never asked), how he learned to become a chef (what he did professionally, here), but when I look at him, or another chef friend, or my grandmother, I know I can feed myself, but it is not the same thing as cooking.
When I was close to graduation, I was working in a restaurant, where a friend and his father frequented. I was always jealous, as they built houses. I didn't even have the real skillset to get a job with them. My chef neighbor, saw me swinging a hammer, when I was in my 30's, and taught me about waste of motion, etc. He was surprised at how much I had to teach myself. I learned more about power tools, on my own, after school, where we didn't have overcrowded classes, causing shoddy work, because you didn't have time to sneak up on a cut, etc.
EDIT: I see a lot more Universities, going online only, and going into financing the way Sears, etc. etc. etc. did with credit cards. We will still have actual hands on ones for things such as medical school, etc.

[gimmethesimplelife]

Many people in the trades make more money than people with college degrees. Many people enjoy the challenge in that type of work and it definitely takes skills and intelligence. Germany definitely has the right idea.

Plus about a million. Going to college guarantees nothing - it took me years before I ended out in even slightly degree appropriate work. Trades more and more seem the way to go. Rob

[gimmethesimplelife]

DH has a Master’s degree +30 and is happiest working as a carpenter/handyman.

R- E - S - P - E - C - T. Rob

[JaneV2.0]

I only worked in one job requiring a degree--my editing gig--and I'm not absolutely sure it required one.

[happystuff]

I think my degree got me my job in programming; I think having ANY degree was what they were looking for on resumes. But I haven't had any other job where I believe it actually made a difference.

[Teacher Terry]

All of my degrees were job specific so needed them to work in a specific job.

[catherine]

My degree was in Theatre/Drama Criticism, which is, of course, how I wound up in pharmaceutical market research. To be perfectly honest, the skills I learned in college have absolutely given me my abilities in data analysis. And my acting skills have definitely worked well for me in interviewing patients and doctors.

This is why I believe in a liberal education. Various intelligences and skills you learn in the process of being educated as a "whole person" can be applied across many disciplines, not just what you get your degree in.

[ApatheticNoMore]

That I do not get. Why people make such a big deal out of a degree got ages ago, in something that may only tangentially relate to anything they do, for a few years of their life (well unless one is fresh out of college), like they have not learned anything since then in the whole of actual full blown adulthood.

How much does anyone even remember from a degree got ages ago, in their youth, when they probably had ten million other things on their mind in addition to studies (like how they would ever make it in the adult world, like dating and socializing, like what to do with their life, like how to best manage still dealing with the parental overseer to some degree perhaps).