Posted on 04/24/2014 10:31:19 AM PDT by PJ-Comix
he economy is tough, especially if you have a liberal arts degree, writes Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel. While liberal arts majors are forced to take low-paying jobs, pipeline welders are making six figures thanks to the country’s oil and gas boom.
“Too many young people have four-year liberal-arts degrees, are thousands of dollars in debt and find themselves serving coffee at Starbucks or working part-time at the mall,” Mandel wrote in the Wall Street Journal. “Many of them would have been better off with a two-year skilled-trade or technical education that provides the skills to secure a well-paying job.”
“A good trade to consider: welding. I recently visited Pioneer Pipe in the Utica and Marcellus shale area of Ohio and learned that last year the company paid 60 of its welders more than $150,000 and two of its welders over $200,000,” Mandel said, adding that the company has actually had to turn down orders because there aren’t enough skilled welders to fill them.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailycaller.com ...
Would a liberal arts major know the difference between flounder and founder?
Not everyone can weld pipelines. Not only are you welding from all kinds of angles but the welds must meet some very stringent requirements and they are almost always xrayed for defects. Weather plays a major factor also. Laborer are making anywhere from 65K to 80K so a skilled welder would make somewhere near there.
Poetic justice — welders prosper while liberal arts majors learn to hate their heritage and acquire useless kills.
Once upon a time, the liberal arts were oriented around the study of "the true, the good, and the beautiful," more-or-less in that order but with the underlying classical/Platonic/Judeo-Christian understanding that, in the end, the unity of the good meant that a study of one led to the others. If you learned something serious and systematic in any of these areas, and learned to think critically and write clearly, you were thought to be equiped to lead a better life. I think this is still largely true.
The tradition lingers, but unfortunately the rot is pretty far advanced on most campuses. Grievance studies are based implicitly on the idea that education is all about ME -- not the good, true, or beautiful, but ME, and people like me, driven by identity politics and undisciplined egos. A sad decline.
Good craftsmen will always make their money, and often on their own terms.
I am not the only one who cringes at the use of flounder.
Founder is more appropriate here. It is what the Titanic did after the iceberg. 50K-100K in student loans with a liberal arts degree makes these student's personal Titanics.
Good hand eye coordination, common sense, decent eysight and the ability to not mind getting dirty or breathing semi nasty fumes.
Had all my certifications (all rods, all thicknesses, all positions) back in the day.
Hard work, newest guy in a shop gets the crappy tasks (as it should be) but race/religion/gender don’t matter, all that does is having your weld pass inspection and getting the job done.
Whining minority group studies
I learned welding at age 46 to stay in the Army Reserve. My welders kept busier than the truck mechanics.
MIG welding is fairly simple, stick welding takes more practice, TIG is fun once you get the hang of it, but pressure joint welding to me is an art, some just have the knack for it. My uncle built home heating propane tanks & made good money.
Pipeline welders have to be extremely good at pressure joints. That’s where the high pay is, IMO
It couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of people. (sarcasm on)
Meanwhile, Governor Andrew Cuomo is not allowing fracking in New York state, otherwise it could literally bring potentially billions of dollars in revenue to the state and revive many faltering cities in upper New York state.
The hottest job in the summer, and the coldest in winter. Don’t worry, you can always get replacement knees.
The problem isn’t the liberal arts degree. Its the mis-perception that there should be a job tied to every degree.
Get your liberal arts degree if thats where your interests are. Then go get a job on the shop floor and learn the business from the ground up. If you are bright and you work hard you’ll do well. Of course if you don’t have a liberal arts degree, but you are bright and work hard you’ll also do fine.
The point of an education isn’t just getting a job.
Job prospects for the top five majors are the worst but best for the the bottom five.
However, the kicker, is that the most popular majors with the least amount of job prospect had the highest GPAs. A cynical person would opine that colleges have cupcake majors to pay for inflated university budgets without actually providing a service to the student.
That does give it a decent umbrella to explain everything.
Hussein is trying to do away with that.
77% of today’s liberal arts grads spend 2 years unemployed after graduation.
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