Comment by jasode | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jasode | Hacker News Reader

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>If what Seimens et al want is flexibility, I can certainly understand why they skew towards candidates with college degrees.

The story isn't really about Siemens. It's about trying to convince readers of what a "college degree" can mean in the future. If you look at the background of the author Jeffrey J. Selingo[1], you'll see he previously wrote about traditional college coursework not serving the needs of blue-collar workers that don't need 4-year degrees. He echoes many of the same sentiments by Mike Rowe ("Dirty Jobs")[2] about giving apprenticeships and factory jobs more respect.

To go back to Siemens as one example, the article states:

>, Siemens in 2011 created an apprenticeship program for seniors at local high schools that combines four years of on-the-job training with an associate degree in mechatronics from nearby Central Piedmont Community College.

Today, that type of 2-year training is not as prestigious as a traditional 4-year degree. The writer is simply using Siemens as a case study of changing the public's attitude about "higher education".

[1] http://jeffselingo.com/book/college-un-bound/

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzKzu86Agg0&feature=youtu.be...

No, the story isn't about redefining college degrees. The model used by Siemens and Switzerland is certainly not about reshaping college degrees to better serve technicians, but about updating apprenticeship programs (esp in the US) and applying them to more than the traditional building trades.

It's also about the need for preparing the 70% of students who are not destined to white collar college jobs with the essential skills to work at a higher intellectual level than old-school US heavy industry manufacturing demanded. The days of unskilled assembly on the line are gone, everywhere. It's common today, esp. in China, for factories to adapt quickly to fabricate new lines of product in smaller batches, and do so without having years of experience in doing that already. This model of rapid development AND production appears to be the new model for production lines everywhere. As such, manufacturing now requires substantial computerization, and those running the machines aren't just lifting parts into place and wrenching bolts any more. The next generation of production worker needs to be computer literate and capable of quickly learning and adapting to a changing environment -- like training a robot. And the current models of training in high school and college do not serve that need.

>No, the story isn't about redefining college degrees.

You're misunderstanding what I wrote. I'm not saying that universities like Harvard and Yale need to add "Bachelor's of Science in Air Conditioning & Plumbing" in addition to "B.S. Physics" and "B.S. English" to their curriculum to serve blue collar workers. I'm also not saying that existing college degrees' curriculums need modification to accommodate future factory workers.

This is what the author is saying:

1) regardless of what you label it, there's a new crop of "training" emerging to educate future factory workers to run more sophisticated machines. (E.g. John Deere and Siemens were examples.) Some of the new machines require more complex math and more complicated interaction. This new knowledge is not a traditional 4-year college degree but something like a 2-year Associate Degree in Mechanical Operations.

2) A problem still remains: that training and related career is a lower social rank than the traditional 4-year bachelor's degree even in a classless society like America. (E.g. see the Mike Row video I linked.)

3) To try and counteract that negative social stigma, the author is trying to convince us to expand the meaning of "college degree" to include that non-traditional apprenticeship training so high-school kids who choose the JohnDeere/Siemens Training path do not feel like losers in society compared to the kids who go to university and study Accounting/Law/Physics/etc.

"Bachelor's of Science in Air Conditioning & Plumbing" that would be thermofluids very useful if you want to work for a f1 team aerospace nuclear etc :-)

My comment wasn't about Seimens either. It's about the central problem. Which is that companies, and society, want "flexible" employees, but we currently turn out "trained" employees. So there is an impedance mismatch there. And that is what puts society in the bind.

For instance, in the Seimens program you mentioned, what happens if Seimens closes up shop and moves to Brazil? Is the vo-tech grad with years of Seimens specific training and experience going to be flexible enough to take a job at another tech firm? I'm honestly unsure that would be the case. Whereas, if he had a math, science or engineering degree from Georgia Tech, Nebraska or Arkansas... I would be a COMPLETELY comfortable hiring him.

So we're getting into this unemployment situation because factories or other jobs move, and leave behind workers who are not flexible enough to thrive in a different industry.

(By we, I meant society.)

I'm not so sure it's about flexibility. If these roles are changing to involve more computers (software is eating the world) and require more computer skills, it's something many traditional apprentices lack while they are good with their hands. I wish the author had given more concrete examples of what these real world requirements are.

  For instance, in the [Siemens] program you mentioned, what 
  happens if [Siemens] closes up shop and moves to Brazil? 
  Is the vo-tech grad with years of [Siemens] specific training
  and experience going to be flexible enough to take a job at 
  another tech firm? I'm honestly unsure that would be the case.

One difference between the programs described in the article and apprenticeships as they work in Switzerland or Germany is that in the latter countries, the professional degrees are standardized as well, so you don't get a degree as a "Siemens Widget Wrangler", but as a "Polymechanic" (despite having done the same combination of working for Siemens and going to school that you might have done in the US). The standardization is supposed to make it simpler to move between employers.

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