

The College of Lost Arts - alistairSH
http://www.citylab.com/work/2015/02/the-college-of-lost-arts/385644/?utm_source=SFFB

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_delirium
It'll be interesting to see if the trend towards historic preservation (maybe
supplemented by the "artisanal [x]" trend) really supports these traditional
skilled-construction jobs long term. A major reason people have no longer been
training in areas like traditional masonry or ironwork is that the jobs
weren't there. There was a huge downturn in demand due to changes in
construction methods, so for a period there was a large glut of highly trained
people with very little work, making it unappealing to try to break into an
already overcrowded market as an apprentice. As the older generation are now
mostly retiring, and there's at least a small upswing in demand due to more of
a shift towards renovation (vs. the tear-down/rebuild style that characterized
American redevelopment of the 1950s-80s), these trades might be worth going
into again. I think there are still some pretty large question marks on the
demand side, though. There will always be _some_ demand for traditional
building techniques, but how big and how steady a niche it will be requires
some forecasting.

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alistairSH
Trade school meets Bachelor's Degree.

I posted this because there have been a steady stream of student debt and
other higher ed stories.

While I do see the value in providing this type of training/education, I'm not
convinced we should be creating new entities to provide it.

It seems like there is an opportunity for local community colleges to expand
their curriculum into this area.

~~~
rmason
What I've learned from one lobbying success is that the community college
wants to hear from a broad swath of industry that the jobs will be there. In
our case some of the larger companies actually committed to taking X amount of
new graduates per year.

