

A Different Road To Work, Bypassing College Dreams - septerr
http://www.npr.org/2012/07/26/157033600/bypassing-college-dreams-a-different-road-to-work

======
wickedchicken
HN has a subtle anti-college bias, so I want to put my point out there: my
college experience was not defined by my classes or by my professors, but by
the serendipitous connections that I made by being mixed in with a bunch of
smart people who like to tinker. In addition, being a part of an institution
makes it much easier to find out about and get access to lines of research and
thinking I normally wouldn't have thought about. I entered as a kid who wanted
to design chips, and I left an amateur computational linguistics researcher
(emphasis on the amateur). This was something I 'fell into,' not something I
sought out.

Also, if you discover something and want to find out more, emailing the person
who worked on it is a great start. If this person happens to be part of your
institution, you have a 'free pass' to just email them. Compare to if you were
just someone off the street: you have to work harder to get a response. It's a
little silly, but a very real effect -- once you're "in" people will be more
open to you about their work.

This doesn't mean you can't do any of these things if you choose not to go to
college, but if you're making that decision then you should know that the
experience is more than just 'expensive and ineffective vocational training.'

~~~
Zimahl
Agreed. The anti-college bias here is astounding. College is an incredible
time to learn _everything_.

What are you even interested in? I went to college thinking chemistry or
chemical engineering. Found I just didn't like either and moved to computer
science. At 18 it's hard to even have a clue.

It's hard to feel sorry for the kids coming out of school with loan debt and a
sociology degree. That's a career, but you need to know your field is full of
people and it's going to be tough to find a job. Kids today need to adjust
their expectations.

But the article is rubbish. 4 year apprenticeship for an associates and your
journeyman card? Fine, anyone can find a machinist school (won't cost $44k per
year) and be a machinist but that doesn't make you a materials scientist who
came up with the alloy. You aren't going to be doing that without college.

~~~
potatolicious
Can we have this self-discovery process _without_ the giant 6-figure bill?

As someone who went to college myself, I agree that it was a tremendous time
for personal growth - it was also expensive as all hell, and I'm lucky I chose
a field where paying it off is a piece of cake.

In any case, I think there's a false dichotomy here: there's the
apprenticeship/trades camp, and the pro-college camp, but really the truth
lies somewhere in between. The economy is moving towards knowledge-based jobs,
but for the most part people studying for these jobs have _completely_
abdicated their responsibility to seek apprenticeship and mentorship (in the
non-regulated sense of those words).

A programmer with a CS degree and no internships, no open source, no working
under experienced talent, is (nearly) worthless. An English major aspiring to
write for magazines who has never published anything nor worked with a
professional editor is (probably even more) worthless.

The problem here is that so many in the pro-college crowd see a degree as an
end-run around having to bust your balls and apprentice with skilled
professionals when apprenticeships (or internships if you want to call them
that), regardless of college/no-college, is absolutely necessary.

~~~
jshowa
>> The economy is moving towards knowledge-based jobs.

>> A programmer with a CS degree and no internships, no open source, no
working under experienced talent, is (nearly) worthless. An English major
aspiring to write for magazines who has never published anything nor worked
with a professional editor is (probably even more) worthless.

Seems you contradict yourself when you claim there is a move towards knowledge
based jobs, yet in the very next sentence, advocate that knowledge without
experience is "nearly/even more than" worthless.

So are you implying that a person with a CS degree who probably did tons of
programming exercises and at least 1-3 projects (i.e. requiring design, doc.,
etc.), who was taught by these "under experienced" PhD's who have studied the
subject, wrote about it, and have done projects for 10+ years of their life
produce something that is "nearly" worthless?

Holy cow, either the students priorities were very screwed up or there goes
logic and rationality out the door.

~~~
zanny
I just graduated from a private school with a CS degree. Went there on a full
boat with only subsidized Stafford loans to cover the cost of my room.

I am now getting into foss since I failed to get in on any of my internships /
summer of code last summer, since my piece of paper is effectively worthless.
I do have project experience (a course scheduler in C# for .net, a tower
defense game in swing, wizard design for a seismometer program the school
contracts) but employers don't care about that, especially the projects the
school contracted on that I can't show the source to.

So yeah, I've been job hunting for ~4 months (some nice folks on HN even gave
me some phone interviews, but it never got past that) and the lack of job
experience drives away a vast 99% of employers. I have a good gigabyte and
around a million lines or more of assignment and project code I could throw at
them, they are just not interested :P

~~~
EricDeb
I just finished a Master's in CS and am facing the same problem. Just suck it
up (hate that expression) and play the recruiter/interview test games.
Memorize the basics of all areas of CS (stuff that you would normally look up
in 30 seconds) and practice a little whiteboard coding and you'll be fine :)

------
gergles
From the "stunningly obvious" department...

Seriously, college is practically useless for what people are using it for
today (vocational training.) It was not intended to serve that purpose.

The reason that everyone started going to college was that lazy companies used
BA degrees as entrance exams because being able to go to college used to be a
proxy for 'good breeding'. Therefore, having a college degree was a sure
ticket to get a(n office) job. Therefore, everyone started going to college.
Therefore, a college degree became a checkbox requirement for a job, not
anything that actually helps you get one.

~~~
MrVitaliy
I think companies started asking for BA degrees precisely because college
education is readily available and almost everyone they are interested in has
a degree.

Yes, college is over-hyped, yes we're in tuition bubble not unlike the housing
bubble from not-so-distant past but if most of the crop has college education
and you're interested in hiring the cream of the crop, requiring a college
degree is given.

~~~
tokenadult
_if most of the crop has college education and you're interested in hiring the
cream of the crop, requiring a college degree is given_

I will agree with you that this is how many hiring managers think. I happen to
know counterexamples (people who declined to finish college degree programs
even though they were admitted to college on financial terms affordable with
their family resources) who have nonetheless obtained paying work based on
college-graduate-level skills they developed despite lack of a degree. But you
correctly state the general state of mind of hiring managers.

That said, the general state of mind of hiring managers is wrong. Preferring
people with degrees to people who lack degrees is less supported by research
than quite a few other hiring criteria. I last posted my FAQ for Hacker News
on company hiring procedures

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4270768>

seven days ago, so rather than repeat all those keystrokes here, allow me to
say that hiring managers have more reliable criteria to look at for hiring job
applicants than college degrees or any other kind of biographical data about
the applicants. Check the FAQ

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4270768>

for more details.

~~~
aidenn0
Where I work we wouldn't fail to at least interview someone without a 4yr
college degree with some form (formal or otherwise) of related experience.

However, college degrees do have some advantages:

From the POV of hiree: we recruit on college campuses because that's the only
place you find any significant population of qualified people who don't
already have full-time jobs.

From the POV of hirer: GMA tests aren't allowed, but when hiring programmers,
a CS general knowledge test is, and when comparing dozens of people who all
went through exactly the same CS program, it's a pretty darn good proxy for a
GMA test.

~~~
ericd
CS general knowledge tests of people going through the same program are not at
all a good proxy for a GMA test - there is a lot of variance in how people
actually go through the same program, even with the same grades. You can't
abstract that down to a test and assume the difference is the result in a
difference in intelligence.

------
pitt1980
The average tuition cost is approximately $16,000 per year. Plus assume
another $10,000 in living costs, books, etc. $26,000 in total for a complete
cost of $104,000 in a 4 year period. Some people choose to go more expensive
by going to a private college and some people choose to go a little cheaper by
going public but this is an average. Also, a huge assumption is that its just
for a 4 year period. According to the Department of Education, only 54% of
undergraduates graduate within 6 years. So for the 46% that don’t graduate, or
take 10 years to graduate, this is a horrible investment. But lets assume your
children are in the brilliant first half who finish within six years (and
hopefully within four). Is it worth it? First, let’s look at it completely
from a monetary perspective. Over the course of a lifetime, according to
CollegeBoard, a college graduate can be expected to earn $800,000 more than
his counterpart that didn’t go to college. $800,000 is a big spread and it
could potentially separate the haves from the have-nots. But who has and who
doesn’t?

If I took that $104,000 and I chose to invest it in a savings account that had
interest income of 5% per year I’d end up with an extra $1.4 million dollars
over a 50 year period. A full $600,000 more. That $600,000 is a lot of extra
money an 18 year old could look forward to in her retirement. I also think the
$800,000 quoted above is too high. Right now most motivated kids who have the
interest and resources to go to college think it’s the only way to go if they
want a good job. If those same kids decided to not go to college my guess is
they would quickly close the gap on that $800,000 spread.

There are other factors as well. I won’t be spending $104,000 per child when
my children, ages 10 and 7, decide to go to college. College costs have
historically gone up much faster than inflation. Since 1978, cost of living
has gone up three-fold. Medical costs, much to the horror of everyone in
Congress, has gone up six-fold. And college education has gone up a whopping
tenfold. This is beyond the housing bubble, the stock market bubble, any
bubble you can think of.

So how can people afford college? Well, how has the US consumer afforded
anything? They borrow it, of course. The average student now graduates with a
$23,000 debt burden. Up from $13,000 12 years ago. Last year, student
borrowings totaled $75 billion, up 25% from the year before. If students go on
to graduate degrees such as law degrees they can see their debt burden soar to
$200,000 or more. And the easy borrowing convinces colleges that they can
raise prices even more.

[http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2010/02/dont-send-your-kids-
to-...](http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2010/02/dont-send-your-kids-to-..).

[http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2011/01/10-more-reasons-why-
par...](http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2011/01/10-more-reasons-why-par..).

[http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2011/01/8-alternatives-to-
colle...](http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2011/01/8-alternatives-to-colle..).

~~~
jackpirate
_only 54% of undergraduates graduate within 6 year_

I'm guessing the people who don't graduate within 6 years are not paying
fulltime tuition, and have an outside job to pay for their degree. So your
point is way over-exaggerated.

------
zwieback
One problem with apprenticeships in the US is that they aren't really tied in
with larger employment landscape. In Germany apprenticeships are an integral
part of a highly regulated system of guilds. You can't really run a business
as a painter or plumber unless you've gone through an apprenticeship and then
followed that up with a "Meister". At that point you can be licensed to have
apprentices of your own.

Here in the US everything is more freeform and unregulated so apprenticeships
are mostly an informal way of companies and employees to augment the existing
labor market.

The other aspect that usually goes unmentioned is that there's a glass ceiling
for workers without a university degree, both in Germany and the US. The pay
might be more equal in more regulated countries but the status of a university
degree is much higher.

What's also interesting is that the relative cost of a university degree is
much lower in Germany yet apprenticeships remain popular.

~~~
velodrome
The US needs to start pushing vocational schools as much as college. People
need an alternative. If college is not for some people, they have a viable
alternative.

The German system is something that would work in the US. Unlike the Finnish
system, it does have a lot of variation and would have a better chance of
working in a larger country.

Also, some for-profit colleges are a scam. It is really hard to tell which are
good. They also over promise (employment, etc) results.

~~~
SoftwareMaven
At least in my area, vocational training is absolutely being pushed. The
problem I see is there aren't enough state-funded schools providing
inexpensive training for things liks Medical Assisting. There are lots of $20k
private programs, but the earnings from the job can't (rationally) justify
that.

------
matmann2001
The truth of the matter here is that the girl in the article settled for
something other than what she originally wanted to be. Sure, she may have
acquired some job security at a fairly young age. But she'll always be a
machinist, not an engineer with a focus on international studies, a machinist.
I think these apprenticeship opportunities are fantastic for those who
absolutely cannot afford college, or those that would only end up earning a
useless degree. But if you can afford college, even with loans, it is an
experience that you cannot replicate if you do it right.

Here on HN and in the tech/startup community, there has been a ton of college-
bashing recently. While I agree that the cost of a college education in
America these days is ridiculously high, I still see it as a worthy investment
in most situations (I'm glad I was fortunate enough to make that investment).
It's an environment where knowledge flows openly and the mistakes of learning
are less costly. It's a time where young adults learn about themselves and
their place in the world. It's an invaluable source of connections and
relationships. In the end, that kind of experience can enable people to become
exactly who/what they want to be. That has always been the inherent goal of
higher education, but we seem to have gotten lost along the way.

Now in this thread and all over the internet, I've heard story after story of
people who went to college and claimed no benefit from it. Many of them state
that they never learned anything useful at all. I feel that often this problem
is more the fault of the individual than the university system. If a person
can claim they went through college without learning, then I must conclude
that they didn't try hard enough. Learning is not a passive activity. It
requires dialogue, critical thinking, rehearsal, connection-making, and
questioning. Learning is something you choose to do.

Now, that is not to say that our colleges and universities are without flaws.
Far from it. Current education techniques have become antiquated in face of
new technology and a better understanding of how knowledge is acquired. The
"sage on the stage" style of lecture is no longer an effective means of
enriching young minds. Meanwhile, large universities operate more like
corporations than institutes of education. They build huge recreational
centers and football stadiums to attract students, while the educational
facilities stagnate. High ranking officials take pay raises, while our
teachers and professors are paid scraps compared to how important their jobs
are. Admission decisions are affected by who you know and how much tuition you
can be milked for. Research universities continue to hire brilliant minds from
all different fields of research, but whom lack the ability/concern for
actually teaching. Furthermore, education in technical fields completely
ignores "soft skills" that make for truly great
engineers/scientists/mathematicians. Meanwhile, tuition rates continue to
rise.

I have seen all of the above, firsthand. Education has hardly changed since
the Cold War, and it's time for a revolution. Abandoning the higher education
system is not an option if we wish to continue developing ourselves and to
grow as a species. This community here is full of some of the most intelligent
and creative individuals that I have ever interacted with. Surely, we can fix
this.

TL;DR The girl in this article gave up on her dream. If utilized to its full
potential, a college education is a very beneficial experience, for those that
can afford it, and should not be passed up. Our education system has A LOT of
flaws, but abandoning it is not the answer. We need to fix the system to
ensure a brighter future.

------
rm445
Slightly offbeat question about this article: does it seem strange that the
featured apprentice, good at maths, was planning to go to university to study
International Relations?

Of course, she's just one person so it could be pure chance, but lots of
Americans seem to study (or major in) communications, business, subjects that
seem to lurk around the social sciences. I mean, if this apprentice is good at
maths and doing well working for Siemens, why wasn't she guided towards a
course in mechanical or electrical engineering?

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
You're kidding, right? You haven't read _any_ of the many posts on HN about
women in CS or engineering?

------
bowmessage
Speaking as an 18 year old almost done with my first Summer internship, I
could not agree more. I went into college with a pretty solid grasp on Java
(competed on the national level) and didn't learn a thing my first year.
However, as soon as I stepped into my internship, I was learning from day one.
You just can't learn the same lessons in school as you can from writing code
that silently deletes database records when they should be getting updated...

Yeah. Internships are important. :)

------
leoedin
I completely agree. There are obviously degrees which teach useful skills, but
the majority of people studying humanities at a large university shouldn't be
there. They're learning very little which is applicable to their life, and
they're not bright enough to continue in that area of academia. The actual
useful skills that you learn doing an english degree could probably be covered
in a single semester.

~~~
varikin
What is a useful skill? How do you decide if it is useful? Why can't those
people spend the time learning what they want to learn? Why does everything
have be applicable to life in the way you imply?

Do you know what someone learns from an English degree? How is all that
different from a single semester of an English class?

------
pessimizer
More like college is overrated and apprenticeship non-existent. You need to
both be connected and wealthy to get an unpaid internship, where you will get
experience in data entry and coffee-making. Any actual apprenticeship program
has people breaking their necks to get in.

$25-$30K a year to learn a trade? I could find you 10,000 candidates within
the hour, even if it was located in BFE, Montana.

~~~
wtvanhest
I went to a big party college, and I cold called small businesses until I got
my first paid internship. That turned in to a full time offer which turned in
to business school (massive student debt, worth every penny), which turned in
to multiple offers from excellent finance companies.

I am neither wealthy or connected (orignally). Now I'm on my way to being
both.

People want to do the easy stuff, the hard stuff is putting yourself out there
and picking up a phone. You can always find 10,000 people that want an easy to
get opportunity.

~~~
pessimizer
You did what you had to do, and any success you have is hard earned. It is
also not scalable and an enormous waste of productivity.

~~~
krschultz
Not scalable? That's what _most_ people are doing for salaried jobs. There is
a tiny sliver of people that found their jobs on Monster.com, there is also a
tiny sliver of people with 'connections' (they're not the 1% for nothing).
Everyone else muddled through job fairs, online listings, and cold calls to
get their jobs.

My work history and how I got the job, pumping gas (family), McDonalds (cold
called), ski shop (cold called), engineering internship (cold called), startup
internship (cold called), fortune 500 company (college job fair), startup
(cold called).

Cold called = email, showing up in person, or picking up the phone. But it
means 'the job was never listed anywhere'.

My girlfriend has had many more positions, but the main ones were temp (temp
agency), 1st internship (cold called), better internship (bosses at both
internships were married, when husband at first internship could no longer pay
her, the wife hired her elsewhere), temp job (temp agency), crappy job (listed
online), awesome startup job (cold called).

------
cletus
Australia--particularly Western Australia and Queensland--is currently
undergoing the largest resources boom in history thanks to China's insatiable
appetite for petroleum and iron.

Because of this there are two industries that are big winners: construction
and the direct resources sector. EVeryone else--including software--are
losers. So you might earn A$100-150K (base) as a senior (5-10+ years
professional experience) software engineer in a capital city but you will have
an extraordinarily high cost of living.

To put this in comparison, my nephew at 17, was a deckhand on a tugboat in a
mining port making $120K+. Now that he has a license to captain a vessel up to
25 metres I believe he's rapidly approaching if not exceeding $200K.

Now this isn't without expenses either. A crappy home in a mining town can
probably put you back $1000/week or more in rent (20 years ago they couldn't
give these houses away at $50,000).

He's not a special example either. Those who did apprenticeships (eg
electricians, plumbers, fitters and turners) are particularly well-off.
Australia is highly regulated when it comes to these jobs. If you say you're a
licensed electrician and you're not you can go to jail. The only way to get
licensed is to do a 4 year apprenticeship.

The plus side of this is that the standard for Australian tradesmen, at least
in my experience, is exceptionally high. The UK is essentially unregulated
here (by comparison) and if you're in the UK, hiring a licensed Australian
tradesman is really your best bet if you want quality work.

Now, software engineers are on the high end of the salary scale for those who
must (or generally do) go to university. You could easily end up in other
disciplines only making $50,000 a year. Trust me when I tell you that in
Australia this is a pretty low standard of living now unless you were lucky
enough to have bought a house 10+ years ago.

So what you're seeing in this post is nothing new to Australia and it's even
more pronounced in Australia.

I actually think this is an economically structural problem. Building a new
house now (both my brothers-in-law are in construction) costs about $1500-2000
per square meter (for single storey, add 50% for two-storey). New apartments
in West Perth now sell for up to $10,000+ per square meter. This is insanely
high and well beyond local living standards (for all but a few).

Anyway, picking up one of these trades in Australia at least instead of going
to university has been lucrative for many years and shows no signs of abating.

~~~
revelation
The devastating effect a natural resources boom can have on an economy are
known as:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_disease>

~~~
msrpotus
Almost identical to the financialization that's been going on with Wall
Street.

~~~
dredmorbius
Usually termed "rent-seeking". I'll have to think a bit on whether / how this
is related to Dutch disease.

Off the top of my head, though, DD is exploiting a resource to create, but
concentrate, wealth. RS is exploiting a market anomaly or manipulation to
create a self-directed wealth stream, though often or usually decreasing
overall societal wealth in the process.

DD is economically beneficial activity with an inequitable distribution of
gains.

RS is economically _harmful_ activity with an inequitable distribution of
gains.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent_seeking>

------
codegeek
While I definitely don't undermine college degrees, it only gives you a
foundation to get out there in the real world. As far as corporate or job
related skills are concerned, you pick most of them up on the job. That is why
I personally think that the usual 4 year structure needs a serious overhaul.

------
yakshaving
Apprenticeships used to be the way that people became masters at anything.
Master craftsmen, master artisans, master chefs, and master sushi makers
(<http://www.magpictures.com/jirodreamsofsushi/>). It wasn't until reading
this story that I truly thought about the relationship between apprenticeships
and the batches of graduates from "accelerator" programs.

Today, accelerator programs are largely exclusive. In fact, their popularity
has risen in part to their exclusivity and privilege. The exclusivity stems
from the fact that after the period of "acceleration" is over, the ability to
raise capital is much higher. After the apprenticeship, the apprentice just
has a "job", most likely for the master.

Accelerators have done a great job exploiting their "artificial scarcity" to a
great extent, making them highly desirable. The "masters" or "mentors" in the
accelerator model differ from apprenticeships in that they are multifaceted
and have a variety of different backgrounds. In an apprenticeship, usually the
masters are focused uniquely on one trade.

According to the article, "apprenticeships are still fighting an image battle.
Only 0.3 percent of the American workforce are apprentices, according to a
report from American University economist Robert Lerman."

This sounds like the job of a great design and marketing team. A project I
worked on as a student in Design School called the New Options Initiative
(<http://www.newoptionsproject.org/home>) sponsored by the WK Kellogg
foundation sought to create new alternatives for people who dropped out of
school. The project recognizes that school isn't for everyone, and we need
alternative career/job paths for people that are similar to the apprenticeship
model.

It'd be interesting to see what happened if we just changed the words
apprenticeship to accelerator, and provided more means for self-employment and
entrepreneurship to the participants. I'm willing to bet that more people
would consider it a viable alternative.

------
greghinch
The headline is a bit of an attention grab, the article doesn't really get
into any negatives about college, but I think this concept is spot on and why
many 20 and 30 somethings find themselves unemployed or underpaid these days.
You can gain a lot from college if you use it correctly, but it's become the
thing you "have to do" when you finish high school. The problem is, many high
school grads don't know what they want, or how to make college work for them,
and so they end up floundering between majors and eventually graduating with
some general degree. This of course means they are facing 2 huge challenges
for finding a job upon graduation: 1) they likely have no real employable
skills 2) they likely have nothing to differentiate them from the thousands of
other candidates who also graduated in a similar position.

High school students: if you don't know what you want to get out of college,
don't go. Or put it off for a few years. Apprenticeship, entry-level work
(where you learn a skill or trade, not flipping burgers), travel: these things
will help you figure out a goal for your life. The adults around you telling
you that college is the only way to get a job are out of touch with the
realities of your position as a young, inexperienced adult entering the
workforce.

~~~
thronemonkey
How are people who might struggle to afford to go to college supposed to
afford to just "travel" as you put it?

~~~
greghinch
I'm not sure how you read that as I was suggesting just travel. Travel was
suggested as one alternative, but so was working entry level or finding an
apprenticeship, the implication there being you'll learn a skill and get paid.

I do think everyone should find time to travel at some point in their life,
and it's usually easier when you're young. You'd be surprised how cheaply you
can travel if you're willing to live on a budget. But if you just have no
money, by all means work. And save.

But what I'm tired of seeing is the legions of teenagers who end up $50k+ in
debt with a meaningless degree in communications or something, who then
complain they can't get a job. They ended up in that place because they went
to college because they were "supposed to", but had no idea how to make it
useful for themselves. Doing other things for a few years will help you gain
perspective into how you might use college for yourself, or realize that you
don't need it.

------
khyryk
A minor point:

"And so one of my goals ultimately in this company is to become an engineer,
and possibly, you know, travel around the world, go to other Siemens
factories, and maybe, you know, work with other engineers from other
countries."

It sounds like she has the degree-bearing, recognized-by-law engineer in mind.

------
benthumb
I've been a jack of trades in the web dev/IT space for an embarrassingly long
time (considering how little money I make). Two years ago I decided to go back
to school to finish college (I'm 45), this time w/ the aim of pursuing a
degree in computer science. So far so good: I'm less mystified/intimidated by
math than I was and the intellectual stimulation of the academy is a
refreshing change from corporate software engineering shops where innovative,
forward-looking ways of doing things is not necessarily embraced as a virtue.
Anyway, nothing ventured, nothing gained I say.

------
emeidi
That's what we Swiss knew for a long, long time already ...

------
kenster07
It depends on the profession. In some professions, college is useful, in
others, not so much.

What colleges should NOT be used for is a proxy to measure the intelligence or
diligence of people (unless you're in one of those very few jobs where a
college environment mimics your work environment).

It is dreadfully inefficient, significantly inaccurate, and in net, almost
certainly reducing overall economic output.

------
andrewcooke
don't (at least some people) do both any more? does industrial sponsorship
still exist for university students?

i got sponsorship from british aerospace. they paid part of my fees and in
return i worked for them for a year before university (in the apprentice
program) and over the summers.

i'd recommend that approach for anyone - even if (like me) you go on to an
academic career (i continued for a phd). and i should admit that although i
was on the apprentice scheme, as a future university student i wasn't held to
the same standards as the people who would be working in the workshops (for
example they had to get closer tolerances when machining things).

BUT the college courses we took as part of the apprenticeship (at the local
polytechnic) were pretty bad. i don't know how anyone would have learnt much
there. so it's not all perfect. it seems like the ideal world would have both
university-quality courses _and_ practical experience (and don't vocational
university programs include industrial experience anyway - at least for
engineers?)

~~~
UK-AL
When my dad had a apprenticeship, there were two types, technical, and craft.
Craft apprenticeships were machinists, and they had no chance of ever going to
university. They often stayed on the shop floor for the rest of their lives.

Technical apprenticeships(Often requiring o-levels and such, and came from
grammar/technical schools), never touched the shop floor and many went on to
university. Example Apprentices - Draughtsman and such.

Obviously different companies operated differently, if you was operating as a
machinist... on the university track...

The image of CNC machine operator going on to engineering at an elite college
may be nice, but often it's just PR to get people to apply for the jobs and a
fairly exceptional career path. Most don't.

~~~
andrewcooke
i don't completely follow your argument, so forgive me if this is irrelevant,
but i wasn't saying that cnc operators should go to elite universities. my
points were, i guess, that: (1) even if you're going to university it's a
pleasure to get workshop experience and (2) the taught part of the
apprenticeship (at the poly) was very poor quality.

i don't mean by (2) that it would stop a cnc operator from going to an elite
university. what i mean is that i am sure future cnc operators hated it just
as much as we (future grads) did, because it was very difficult to understand
or learn anything.

~~~
UK-AL
I wasn't saying anything really other than the fact it's often used as PR. I
was just saying the if you was on the technical track, at my dads old company
you would not be training to be a machinist at all.

I also agree we need make sure that education is top quality as well. We
should not let them down with bad quality education. They should have high
quality education that can lead onto serious study if that's what they want to
do.

------
renegadedev
Like someone else already said, you get a generalized education with colleges,
unless you know what you want to do for the rest of your life at 17. The other
flip side to apprenticeships, particularly in the US, a year into it company
management could decide to shut down this cost center and then what?

------
RandallBrown
An apprenticeship isn't a generalized education like going to college is. Even
though I majored in computer science, I still took physics, chemistry,
english, psychology, and more classes.

If I did an apprenticeship, I feel like my career choices would be limited to
that one field that I worked on.

~~~
heretohelp
You can learn computer science, programming, physics, chemistry, english,
psychology and more...in your own home. You don't need a B.A. or a B.S. for
that.

You cannot learn the skills companies like Siemens are offering like that,
definitely not in a way that would get you a job.

Closest to it is how my dad got started, by tinkering with motorcycles in his
youth and eventually getting a start in manufacturing, but it was a really
really long time before he got a decent job.

~~~
UK-AL
You don't know what you don't know. You may think you know computer science,
but you could be missing critical parts. That's what formal courses are for.

~~~
heretohelp
I thought that was what books and bibliographies were for.

~~~
jshowa
Try asking a book a question. Even so, text books cost a butt load. Might as
well be a part of a college when you can ask profs even after walking out the
door.

------
santigepigon
I can't help but be reminded of PG's essay, "Why Nerds are Unpopular," where
he talks about teenage apprentices in the Renaissance. Also, his point about
specialization seems appropriate here.

<http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html>

------
nathansobo
We need more of this. We need post-secondary education that focuses on giving
people real-world, practical skills. There's only so much room in our economy
for psychologists and communications majors.

~~~
disgruntledphd2
You know, psychologists get an awful amount of bashing places. Speaking as a
psychologist (almost PhD qualified) working in web analytics, it really isn't
deserved.

A good psychology program will give you:

Good communication skills and some insight into how organisations work.
Relatively OK statistics skills (no statistician, but at least knowing about
the problem with multiple comparisons)

Excellent experimental design and analysis skills. Good human interaction HCI
skills (sometimes).

These are extremely useful skills for web analysts and market researchers. And
while market research is not expanding that much, web analytics is. I could
easily have done the job I'm doing now with just my undergrad (though they
might not have hired me), the major problem was that I didn't even know what
web analytics was when I finished my degree.

That being said, i spent 9 months unemployed a few years after finishing my
degree and during my doctorate I focused on giving myself statistics and
programming skills so that I would never be unemployed again, so maybe I'm not
typical of psychology students.

------
bitserf
The Australian dollar is currently at parity with the US dollar, so it is as
high as you think.

------
quinndupont
Replacing unions, one apprenticeship at a time!

------
baritalia
We could go on days and days about this matter (and maybe we should).

But we live in the times where nobody knows what will be going on in 30 years
time†, so I believe this quote is spot on: "Education is what remains after
one has forgotten everything one learned in school."-AE

† to all who don't agree with this statement - we can't report weather for 5
days in advance, let alone know the economy and everything else in 30 years

------
vtry
Software Engineering should the same really. Apprenticeship.

~~~
UK-AL
They exist in the UK. They essentially amount to working towards java certs
([http://education.oracle.com/pls/web_prod-plq-
dad/db_pages.ge...](http://education.oracle.com/pls/web_prod-plq-
dad/db_pages.getpage?page_id=458&get_params=p_track_id:JSE7Prog)) or .net
certs.

Not exactly a well rounded education in cs...

I would hate to miss the cool stuff in cs, and just become specialised in
corporate software...

