YES - Apprenticeship programs (OJT and paid schooling), are the BEST (perhaps ONLY) way to get TRULY qualified actual MACHINISTS (not ‘machine operators’, but the ones that can program, set-up AND run the machines, hit precision tolerances, and deal with whatever engineering problems come up. (Be glad my husband isn’t here to give input on some of the engineers that come into the trade who also have no real-world application experience. LOL)
So many ‘kids’ coming into the field today have no clue about real-world application of theory they learned in school. They may have the “book skills”, but book skills are one thing - turning that around to actually applying those skills and being competent is a whole ‘nother ball of wax.
[If my DH was home right now, I’m sure he’d have a lot more to input here...]
Also, I don’t know why this whole thread turned into a thread about IT and Programming jobs - that is decidedly NOT what this article was about. Learning a programming language (which I’ve done on my own myself) is COMPLETELY and absolutely different than learning to be a good, skilled machinist (how many can teach themselves Trig, for example). It takes a different skill set than the ones they are talking about with these jobs.
The navy used to be real good at training and OJT for machinists and such, but a lot of the SeaBee rates have been dropped.