Posted on 04/04/2006 9:58:28 AM PDT by stainlessbanner
My husband jokes that I should have been an electrician. In this age of outsourcing and job insecurity, the trades seem to us to be the best professions of the future. To be sure, most aren't glamorous and are often physically demanding. But a number seem to have financial security and stability, and their job portability doesn't hurt, either. Many of us white-collar employees don't get to choose where we will live; we must go wherever our employer requires us. Many folks in the trades can command a good income, choose their own hours, and put down roots in a community and stay as long as they choose. I wish I had this luxury.
Both my husband and I are Ph.D. chemists. I'd once wanted to be an opera singer. I come from a long line of writers and musicians, but I had the (mis)fortune of being good at science. In college, the thinking was that the sciences (and an advanced degree) would guarantee me some sense of employment security. Pursuing opera would subject me to the unemployment line, I thought, at least until my career took off. I could sing on the side, but by making medicines that make people well, I could make a meaningful difference in the world.
I could never have predicted the difficulties that I'd face. I followed my husband from Virginia (where we went to graduate school) to Maine, where my husband found a job, and then to Oregon, where we live now. In Maine, I was out of work for almost a year. I went to four temp agencies before I found one that would place me. I was turned away from administrative-level positions because I didn't have "admin experience." I worked retail and part-time jobs. Eventually, I learned to leave my Ph.D. off my resume, which helped me land my first serious job. It didn't pay well, but at least it was serious.
When we moved to Oregon, where my husband had accepted another job, and I found myself interviewing again. I worked for a biotech company, handling their patents and licenses, but this company didn't care about my expensive chemistry degree. I now work at an advertising agency where I (Shhh!) barely earn above minimum wage. The agency ran an ad for the assistant position I now hold and received 60 applications the next day.
It just doesn't seem right. I was valedictorian of my high-school class of 600, summa cum laude from my university, and graduated with distinction from graduate school. And none of this seems to have made the least bit of difference in helping me to build a career. At age 30, I feel grateful to have a job at all, because there are few in my part of Oregon.
My situation is hardly unique. My husband and I know plenty of people with advanced degrees (Ph.D., MS, J.D., and MBA) who have had this problem. In many cases, it's the "two-body problem," where both spouses hold advanced degrees. For some, it's because they choose to live in smaller cities, where opportunity is limited. But often it seems as if the job market isn't able to absorb all the advanced-degree holders at the pace colleges and universities are churning them out. Where are all these people going to work?
I am planning to go back to school this fall. Another doctorate. I have decided to make use of my Ph.D. in medicinal chemistry and become a pharmacist. I still dream of being able to make my own destiny, to carve my own path. A person of some intelligence who worked hard and had the right attitude used to be able to do that. Right now, my Ph.D. and $3.65 gets me a Cinnamon Dolce Latte at Starbucks, and not much more.
My dad often used to say, "Life does not reward us for efforts expended." I have learned the hard way that there are no guarantees in life, and that you can have all the determination in the world, and sometimes the opportunities just aren't there.
In this new world order, where jobs of every stripe are outsourced, and job security or opportunity can be a scarce commodity, one could do a lot worse than to be a electrician.
Good grief, how do you make that one fit into those little boxes on the rebate form?
While the software may be developed there, the specifications and requirements for advanced software can be written here, by folks just like this woman.
You are crazy again. Apparently, there aren't many opportunities for a Ph.D. in medicinal chemistry in the portion of Oregon where this woman lives. Heck, I wonder what the opportunities for a Ph.D. in medicinal chemistry are in Chicago. I do know that increasing tariffs on imports isn't the answer.
Secondly she seems to have the attitude that if you have a degree, then you are entitled to a job. The degree simply states that you have met the minimum requirments for a degree at a university. It says nothing about your work ethic or your ability to hold a job or to follow orders in a real world job. All it says is that you are at a certain level of education in that field, a level that many people who go into that field right out of high school are more proficient at after working as lower level technicians in the field.
Typically, she is blaming everyone else for her inability to find a job. Well there are plenty of jobs out there. Not likely in rural Oregon, but if she's willing to work in a large city there are going to be a lot of opportunities. She does not seem willing to start at the bottom or to leave her precious environment. Hence she is unemployable.
I used to have a job as a Janitor at a high school in a very desireable and liberal university town. I was the only janitor in that school (other than the head custodian) who did not have an advanced degree from a university. Everyone except the head custodian was a college graduate. The problem was that being in beautiful and desireable university town, there were more degrees than jobs. Anyone who wanted to use their degree to earn a living had to leave. Eventually we all did -- except the head custodian who was there because it was the best job he could get with his qualifications.
I had a guy in my reserve unit who was a vocational school machinist in Virginia back in the 90's. He told me that they were closing vo-tech machine shops and that the "educators" were sending him all the druggies and other assorted criminals since they obviously weren't college material.
He had a real problem with the ed-specs for being completely unable to see the value of craft and trade. I'm wondering if we need ed-specs.
These guys don't make good machinists and you don't want them operating a million dollar mill working on a $50k piece of metal. At the time entry level was making $15-17 an hour.
Here in PA they are playing radio advertisements for the local community college saying that 90% of all job openings only require a two year degree or certificate.
I'm planning on sending my son. Tuition is only about $5k a year.
Hey wait, I thought we weren't turning out ENOUGH science and tech graduates?
Science and high tech are todays buggy whip industries.
"I have a BS in Engineering and have been fully employed or worse..."
I was in Kauai on my honeymoon and loved it, but as an engineer, I was wondering where the heck we would work if we lived on the island. I saw a sugar factory and that was about it.
This is the key salient point for all those disaffected advanced degree holders on this thread. Someone else mentioned that the only safe bets were government and big business.
Now, combine education and government, and what do you get? Subsidized student loans and the Univ of Phoenix going like gang-busters.
Get a clue - if you want to go into business, follow the money. In this case, get into the education business. To paraphrase Patton: "Don't be the poor sap who wasted their time & money acquiring an advanced degree with no marketable skills; Help the other suckers be the poor saps who waste their time & money acquiring advanced degrees with mo marketable skills".
You've got the right idea. Let him get a degree where he can actually produce. He will find plenty of employers who will help him get an advanced degree - on their dime.
Slim's Rule of Employment:
Never take a job you're qualified for, it's boring.
"My best friend (PhD ten years, over a hundred scientific publications in molecular biology, brilliant man and EXTREMEMLY hard working) just turned forty two and has never made over $38,000 a year... "
That sounds extremely odd, since a grad student with a few publications can make more than that on top of full tuition. Starting salaries are double that.
I assert that one should not look upon their education as a path to a career. Rather it should ultimately lead one to become an entrepreneur in the field they have chosen.
You become an engineer to one day manage many engineers and ultimately an engineering business.
How many doctors spend their whole career working as a hospital employee, rather than as a partner in a medical firm?
"There is an education industry in this country that feeds itself. It is way too expensive, way too much nonsense taught having nothing to do with what someone needs to know for their career, and I dont even have to explain the political bias we all know."
Currently I'm trying to get a private Christian boys school off the ground in my small hometown that will focus on science, technology, economics and commerce. Preliminary inquiry says there is a lot of potential there.
It's funny how far a private or homeschool or even a good public school education can get a young person these days. Couple that with being savy with math, tools, and having some practice using them, and the future for boys can be made much more profitable than going to college and getting a degree they most likely won't use.
I try and tell parents how much demand there is for patternmakers--even with Computer Assisted Manufacturing--and they usually don't want their sons to learn a trade. They believe a college degree should be the goal. And it is for the parents.
A lot of boys and adult males would rather work outside or in a shop or small business than go to college and waste their time and money.
A lot of boys who left school early are really first class self taught mechanics and craftsmen who earn a lot more, and are a lot more happy, than college graduates with crappy, essentially dead end jobs.
Boys who learned the so called hard way, which is a lot more fun, will survive and prosper much more so than a vast majority of college grads seem to in our working world.
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"Also, if it is really that difficult to find a well paying job, should one spend $3.60 on something that can be made at home for 10 cents?"
THERE you have it. Good old fashioned SENSE!
"But why should they do that???"
Just ask IBM. They are moving most of their software work to India. That includes the writing scope of services (specifications). If they can have it done cheaper they will do it.
"The fact is that the US is cranking out way too many PhDs. The demand's just not there."
That's right; the demand is overseas. Most overseas graduates are financed either by large pools of extended family money or by the governments of their homelands.
The US taxpayer is financing the world trade and science explosion we're now undergoing.
Another thing we seldom hear about is that the colleges and univerities prefer foreign students not only for their money, but because the American educational system produces few prime candidates for undergraduate and graduate courses.
I hope to help change this in my hometown by letting boys be boys, learn to use their minds and hands together, and try to retain some of our advanced work, manufacturing, and research capability.
It will be relatively soon when our Politically Correct post secondary education system begins to fall down with a loud, long anticipated clatter.
The degeneration is fun to watch, especially if there is greater hope for young adult males to better themselves in a less stressful, more successful, common sense, real world way.
Isn't IBM a chinese company anyway now? Lenovo and such?
Besides, the point is, if they can get it done cheaper in India, why shouldnt they. IBM is under no obligation to pay more for the same services, frankly.
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