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> Almost a third of American factory workers now hold four-year college degrees, a trend that reflects the increasingly cerebral nature of the work. Wow.
by danmaz74 10y ago
> Almost a third of American factory workers now hold four-year college degrees, a trend that reflects the increasingly cerebral nature of the work.
Wow.
- sandworm101 10y agoIm waiting for "one third of factory jobs require a four-year degree" before getting to excites about cerebral natures. There are a great number of people with degrees out there. I want to see that the jobs require the education to do the work, not that market forces mean that unnecessary degrees make an applicant more competative.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- jessriedel 10y agoHow would you tell the difference?
- sandworm101 10y agoThe job postings say "must have undergraduate in X".
- jessriedel 10y agoOh OK, but this doesn't really distinguish between "market forces mean that unnecessary degrees make an applicant more competative" and "the job actually requires the knowledge/skills learned in college" (my words). Lots of businesses will just say "requires a college degree" on the job ad as a filtering mechanism.
- sandworm101 10y agoA factory won't just casually add a degree requirement. That has implications. In a union environment this may require a higher pay scale. If they increase the minimum standards for a current job they may have to retrain people. There may also be a trickle effect on managers who may too now need degrees. So whereas a startup may just start requiring degrees to weed out candidates, a large employer like a factory (or government) won't do so unless necessary. I'm just starting that rare job that insists on a "four year degree plus other post-graduate education" but isn't specific as to which degrees they want. That really cuts down on candidates. Of the dozen interviews, I will instantly be higher up in the organization than ten of the people who interviewed me. They didn't take the education requirements lightly.
- cylinder 10y agoDon't you remember how much cerebralism you learned in college? /s
- reacweb 10y agopeople remain longer at school because they have no hurry to work ?
- valuearb 10y agoOr it reflects the low actual utility of college degrees.
- Analemma_ 10y agoIt's probably a bit of both, but much more the former. Factories have become very automated: the stuff that doesn't need a degree is now being done by robots.
- valuearb 10y agoAlmost nothing on a factory floor requires a degree. The article went over in painstaking detail how Airbus trains it's workforce. Do you really think that someone who didn't go to college is untrainable? Somehow college dropouts built the PC industry, and the internet economy, and we still worship a diploma that is almost only ever used as a point of entry to the job market, then discarded immediately.
- strictnein 10y agoThere was an article a couple months ago about this. > “People on the plant floor need to be much more skilled than they were in the past. There are no jobs for high school graduates at Siemens today.” These jobs also pay well (for factory work). $40k for a starting job at a John Deere factory. $50-$80k pay range at a Siemens factory. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/30/education/edlife/factory-workers-college-degree-apprenticeships.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/30/education/edlife/factory-...
- valuearb 10y agoThat's an article about how Siemens offers internships to high school graduates, so unless you don't count internships as jobs, there is at least one loophole in that statement. Clearly Siemens sets high standards for who they want to hire and attempts to use college degrees as a filtering mechanism. But the entire article is about how trainable the workforce needs to be, and starts by talking about how high school graduates are flunking basic math skills needed. You can learn anywhere. There is nothing special about university for the vast majority of people to learn there. Fortunately thanks to the internet it's easier than ever to learn technical skills today, if you have any sort of work ethic and desire.