Dec 1, 2011
Dear schools,
We do NOT need more Teachers, Pharmacists or Communication Majors. Please “communicate” this to your career counselors, your students and your students’ parents living their dreams vicariously through their pubescent children!!
Back in the late 1990’s and early 2K’s there was a HUGE push for colleges to produce more Teachers and Pharmacists. When I was in college, half of everyone I knew was in one program or the other. Fast forward to 2011/12 and NO NEW GRADUATES CAN FIND WORK IN THEIR FIELD – not to mention, they’ve got debt coming out their ears. Like – $50K + in debt (if you went to a public university) because both of these professions require advanced degrees. What happened? There are many theories, but my theory is that we went from a deficit to an oversaturated surplus. THESE POOR MIS-GUIDED PEOPLE WHO ARE STILL IN SCHOOL FOR UNNEEDED DEGREES!
So while I’m on my soap box, I’m going to offer some KEY advice. Are you listening??
- Take a hint from our buddies in Asia and INCREASE THE CALIBER OF YOUR MATH AND SCIENCE PROGRAMS!!!! Produce graduates who feel confident about algorithms and calculus, the periodic table, physics equations, geometrics.
- START ENCOURAGING CAREERS IN ENGINEERING!!!!
Right now only the smartest of the smart “elite” students even THINK about pursuing an engineering degree, and there is such a deficit of engineers (Mechanical Engineers, Electrical Engineers, Chemical Engineers, etc etc) that it’s making my job painful.
I may be unpopular for saying this, but I believe that an Engineering Degree is today’s equivalent of a plain old Bachelor’s degree from the 1950’s. By today’s standards, a plain old BS is almost equivalent to your high school diploma. Students, if you can make it through an engineering program, you will almost 100% guaranteed have a job BEFORE you walk across the stage to accept your diploma (much the same that happened with our plain old Bachelor’s degrees). A standard degree just doesn’t cut it anymore. It’s no longer as marketable as it once was because SO MANY people are attending college.
Just to give you an example, these are the jobs I am hiring for RIGHT THIS MINUTE in Engineering:
- Mechanical Engineer
- Mechanical Project Engineer
- Mechanical Design Project Engineer
- Manufacturing Mechanical Engineer
- Manufacturing Engineer
- Forging Engineer
- Process Controls Engineer
- Reliability Engineer
- Quality Engineer
- Applications Engineer
- Product Engineer
- AutoCAD Drafter
- Solidworks Drafter
- Mechanical Technician
