White collar pencil pusher (hee hee) Tom Purcell takes his class to task for glorifying desk jobs at the expense of blue collar trades. At one level, we could see this as simply a populist rant of "darn all those rich lawyers!", but at another level, it makes a lot of sense. How much more prosperous wouldour country be if we did less paperwork and more real work? To borrow a phrase from my line of work, entering data into Oracle is not a value added operation.
We could start to implement Purcell's idea by ending federal funding for student loans altogether.
Know Your Lifts: The Romanian Deadlift (RDL)
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From an economic libertarian standpoint, eliminating funding of student loans makes sense. But the unintended consequence is that only non-manually gifted people who are already rich will be able to use their callings -- woe betide the guy who's not gifted in blue collar ways, and doesn't have the cash to go to college. He'll be stuck in a job that he's not good at, unable to excel. Or, to put it another way, all our doctors, teachers, engineers in fields that require higher education, and lawyers will be exclusively the children of the rich. Not sure how desirable that is.
The law of unintended consequences works even with the RIGHT ideas, in a fallen world.
I meant, "...people who are already rich will be able to use their gifts to pursue their callings."
That certainly is a static way of thinking.
Just because someone utilized a student loan does not mean that was their only option.
This is true; however, if we are following Bert's point that defunding student loans is good in part *because* not so many people should be going to college, then it's necessary to realize that some of those "so many people" are precisely the ones who SHOULD be going to college -- the net doesn't just catch those who don't "belong" there or would be better off elsewhere.
Also, things being what they are, loans are absolutely necessary for some people. Granted, there are ways that the whole system could be reformed form top to bottom to eliminate that, but then we shouldn't simply make offhand remarks about eliminating student loans -- we should talk about reforming the whole system. If you pull one brick out from the house, the whole house is going to fall down, regardless of whether that brick should have been pulled out because the brickwork should have been redone anyway.
All I'm saying is that whenever you suggest something, ANYTHING, there are real world consequences to real people, usually including bad ones, *regardless of how good the idea is in itself.*
one advantage: white boys would learn the value of sweat, callouses and blisters, relieving the need for all those migrants to do the labor for them while thys work a desk job that nobody needed to be doing in the first place.
so many jobs require college today because they can, and thats all there is to it.
if your skills are in a non manuel direction, you'll end up there. and you shouldnt need a college degree to work as a paper pusher at some corporation.
Penta, reject the "poor me" excuses, if a person doesn't have the drive to go to college then they are not the ones "who SHOULD be going to college".
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Wow, Gino you certainly are bliss.
Adequate quality systems require sufficient documentation, especially in, for example, the medical device industry. Trust me.
And writing test protocols and reports also requires designing and building test systems... and executing the testing... troubleshooting...
With regards to whether poor people could get to college without student loans: well, both of my grandfathers, as well as my great aunt and great uncle, worked their way through college well before government got into the student loan business. The waffle recipe I put in here a few years back came from my grandfather's job as a pastry chef in Iowa City. Think also of George Washington Carver and others who made things work.
krod: you are confusing a degree with technical skills.
and...
do you really think it takes a degree to work the counter at the department of motor vehicles? but its the only way you are going to get hired.
Regarding the quality angle, somehow I seem to have a lot of things from 50-100 years ago that are still giving me great service--when the quality department was simply a man who knew his trade. In the same way, I'm throwing a lot of pretty new things away.
Seems that my trade--that of the quality engineer--needs to remember something about basic craftsmanship, and ask the question of whether all that edumucation is doing much for us.
Gino: you are confused and are in complete utter bliss.
You are wrong if you think I am defending a liberal arts degree. I am not.
I do indeed defend a Bachelor of Science degree in engineering. (biased? yes.)
Like a co-worker used to say: "Every swinging dick thinks he is a design engineer..."
Just because you think you are smart enough does not make it so; get the skin and then show your worth. If you can show your worth, then get the skin and complete what others regard as an essential requirement. I know many that have and others that haven't gotten the degree.
I do indeed admire for some for their vast knowledge, degree or not.
Gino, your strawman of a DMV job should be burned in effigy.
BB, many things were done with more quality in yesteryear than today... my great grandmothers tatting for example... my great grandfathers automobile not so much...
Yes, a restored Model A is nice, but a brand new Challenger or Impala or Kia is much better in almost every respect.
In summary, some things are better and some things not so much. Some things we have sorrily lost and some things we have gratefully gained.
But the value of a "real" degree/trade that adds value has and always will be appreciated.
Agreed on cars...consumer electronics, on the other hand, seem to fail in a year or so....thanks "Six sigma Quality."
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