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Any thoughts? I am not looking for an argument. Just an exchange of ideas.
06-19-2012, 05:56 PM
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n/a posts
I don't see this often.
But, when I do, it seems to be little more than envy - envy that the college grads get to drive nicer cars, live in nicer houses, work better hours. It gets passed off as anti-elitism (because nothing says "elite" like a degree from State U and a new Toyota in the driveway), but really, it's just envy.
most of college student i know are not college material. that could be a factor.
most want an advanced gen ed university degree, almost all just need a trade. america does not need 20 million more managers.
My first experience with college graduates was in the Navy. Military officers are all college graduates. Most officers were fine. There was always a few who carried with them an attitude that because they went to college, they knew more than us. A few weeks after working with us in the engine room, their attitude began to change. They begin to learn how much they don't know and we did know. My favorite officer to work under on his first day told us he doesn't know what we do and that all he ask is that when he ask us questions about the equipment that we not lie to him. We answered his questions and he quickly learned the job. We respected him for his honesty and his level of knowledge. But those other officers rubbed us the wrong way with their attitude. We'd been working with the equipment for years, some for nearly 20 years, and train daily with this equipment. Our training included emergency drills used to train us on how to properly respond to emergencies which could severely damage the ship or kill sailors. My next bad experience was in a coiled tubing plant. The blue prints showed a large diameter pipe making a 90 degree turn off a filter in a 6 inch space between the filter and the steel wall. We told the engineer that it won't work and showed him why it wouldn't work. His answer,..."but it works on paper". Sorry, but what works on paper doesn't always work in reality. My next bad experience was with some nurses at work. The majority are fine. There are some who have this attitude that those who are not degreed medical staff then you are they're servants. For example, we had a roof leak letting in a drip in a non-patient care area. Though we were able to catch the leak to prevent equipment damage, the floor nurse told me "I'm ordering you to go out on the roof and put out tarp!". OK, here's some background. The hospital was built in 1963, it has a flat roof, the section of roof where the leak was happening stretched long enough to hold 24 large patient rooms underneath, and besides the usual roof, there was also a helicopter landing pad, two large elevator mechanical rooms (four elevators total), fire fighting equipment, ventilation fan units, and cell phone tower equipment. Also going on was we were in the middle of a vicious thunderstorm. Our hospital is 11 floors tall. There's no way one person (me) can throw out tarp on a roof this large in the middle of a thunderstorm.
I think the biggest problem us non-college working joes have is some college graduates have this personal belief that because they have a degree and we don't then our thoughts and opinions and years of hands on experience are not worth their time. With more than 40 years combined hands on experience and vocational school training I am positive we know more about the job than someone who recently graduated college. There have been many times we've had to show the engineers how the equipment works and why it doesn't work the way they say it does. We've even had to modify some equipment to make it work. We know we don't have the technical knowledge to engineer and develop these equipments we use but we know how to make things work. We're perfectly willing to work with the engineers to help them find the problems and solutions but that's not going to happen if they have the attitude their degree overrides our decades of hands on experience. Thankfully, most of the engineers we've worked with didn't have that attitude. The best first hand example I can give was an engineering firm who BS'ed our hospital's engineer saying they could improve our HVAC energy efficiency. They went around changing the drive pulley on our air handlers to a smaller size. When we were told what they planned on doing, we respectfully disagreed with the plan and laid out our concerns which were dismissed by both the engineering firm and the hospital's engineer. Not long after they finished, the hospital's engineer left for an engineering job at a casino. We were proven correct. By reducing the size of the drive pulley, they reduced the air being supplied into the hospital. The exhaust fans were still running at normal speed which means that the hospital was now under negative pressure instead of positive pressure. This caused south Louisiana's hot humid air to be sucked into the building through drafty windows and doors leaving the hospital feeling humid and muggy. It took us about a year working to put all drive pulleys back to normal. Am so glad we've gone through a major renovation so those drafty windows and the majority of the ancient ventilation system is gone.
Being around over-educated people *a lot*, I'd say that there is an assumption that those who don't have a college degree aren't smart enough or as smart as the degreed, as opposed to my stance that it is one way the middle class pays its kids to run away from home.
An education does not improve the IQ of a person. Sometimes you wonder how the person who does not know the alphabet was able to get the degree. I was not kidding with that statement.
I have experience as a machinist and machinery maintenance. I have friends with HS and doctorate degrees. I never assume someone is dumb just because they do not have a college education. I also have a degree in Environmental Science and work as a scientist.
I was going to tell as sad story from ‘Nam but it is still too personal. Let’s just say someone that thought he knew what was happening did not ask questions. His fear, pride and ignorance got him and a couple of us killed that fine summer morning.
Unless you're applying for a job, who even knows if you have a degree or not? I can't remember anyone I know asking me about my level of education in a casual conversation.
On the other hand, if one were to go around announcing their educational pedigree, that could explain why some non-college educated folks would find them unlikeable and look down upon them.
Any thoughts? I am not looking for an argument. Just an exchange of ideas.
Formerly most of the college students of my generation did manual labor jobs summers and holiday; therefore, their was not such a sense of a divide between college grads and those who had not gone to college. With the lack of part-time jobs for young people that commonality has probably vanished.
Also, the U.S. has for almost its entire history a strong anti-intellectual streak, for one thing. So, to the extent that this feeling may exist it may just be a bit knee-jerk. Rather like hating the French and everything French without having been there or knowing anything about France.
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