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The author's story makes me incredibly grateful for the current situation for developing engineers. I went to a cheap state school and had paid internships. Als

• sudosteph 9y ago
  That was my path as well. Pretty much every smart, working class or middle class student at my high school picked engineering or science routes. Unfortunately many of the science routes led to academia, which everyone I've talked to seems to hate from a financial perspective. Of about 5 people I know personally, all but one has dropped out and picked up a mostly unrelated jobs or research gig. I went back and checked LinkedIn for some of my old HS people, and it's interesting how different that patterns are. The children of doctors are doctors or lawyers. Some of the really motivated children of first-generation immigrants ended up equally successful though. Both groups tended to go to private institutions though. I wonder if the difference is how risk is evaluated. Middle classes see hard sciences and engineering as reliable, accessible, career paths that minimize risks of joblessness and allow them to leverage existing connections by staying in state while studying (since most working and middle class folks have a family support structure local to the area, also in-state discount) without burdening their family more by picking a field where paid internships are rare. Meanwhile, richer folks are not worried about needing to work while studying, and they don't need to stay in any one place, especially if the careers of their parents gives them connections to in-demand places for jobs and study (or maybe money just makes connections unnecesary).