Where does Art get his numbers?
Threeducks
make $80,000/year. According to:http://www.ptdi.org/careers/america.htm
the starting salaries for "long-haul" truck drivers is
$22,000-$26,000/year, and average earnings are $36,000/year. This is a
LONG way from his claimed $80,000/year.
From: http://www.aacc.edu/cdl/
"CDL-A graduates go on to...
* Drive tractor-trailers for both short-haul and long-haul deliveries.
* Earn $30,000 to $50,000 during their first year, and up to $16
per hour with experience.
CDL-B graduates go on to...
* Drive straight trucks, dump trucks, school buses, and motor coaches.
* Earn $10 to $12 per hour as a starting salary, and up to $16 per
hour with experience."
Straydog
You haul, in car carriers, a carrier full of Mercedes.
Like I said many times, you don't go looking for "average" jobs. You go
looking for high paying jobs, learn where those markets are, and get into
them.
I've known many people who told me this. I've given many examples over the
years. I've known the details, figured out the cuts, etc.
I have also cited examples of waitstaff in high end and medium level
restaurants making $200 in tips for a four hour period of work. I've seen
people lay down tips, counted the tables that a waitstaff served,
considered the start and end times I and my party were present.
You guys just go look up some database and look at average pay and you
don't look at the standard deviations. There are real people out there at
the high end, making those bucks and they know how to get into those jobs
and keep them and from all I can see, they are low stress jobs, easy work,
better job security, and the high pay.
You can call my testimony "claims" I'm just telling you what guys tell me,
and what I figured out from knowing what jobs take what time, what
materials and overhead can be estimated, what they charge customers, and
what is left goes into the wallet.
There are all kinds of smart asses in the world that go look up some
database and the first thing they look at are the average numbers and they
figure, mentally, that that is what all of them are making. The average.
Guys who are smart will look at the high ends of those ranges and try to
figure out how to get there.
There are all kinds of young guys in the world who think they are smarter
than some old guys who really have the extra real life experience of
talking with people and living life, and the young guys, in my experience,
can almost never be taught anything by the old guys because the old guys
somehow don't know anything or are senile or don't know what they are
talking about. I can talk authoritatively about this since I was a young
guy once, myself, and it was so obvious to me (at the time, but I don't
know why) that I knew more about things than guys much older than me who
were trying to tell me something. Get my drift?
===== no change to below, included for reference and context =====
Thomas Bartkus
"Straydog" <a...@panix.com> wrote in message
news:Pine.NEB.4.63.06...@panix1.panix.com...
> (see original post quoted below)
>
> than some old guys who really have the extra real life experience of
> talking with people and living life, and the young guys, in my experience,
> can almost never be taught anything by the old guys because the old guys
> somehow don't know anything or are senile or don't know what they are
> talking about. I can talk authoritatively about this since I was a young
> guy once, myself, and it was so obvious to me (at the time, but I don't
> know why) that I knew more about things than guys much older than me who
> were trying to tell me something. Get my drift?
Are you claiming to be "Old too soon and wise too late" ;-)
If only time travel were real so I could have that conversation with my 25
year old self ;-)
Thomas Bartkus
rick++
However this is a small fraction of the market limited
to governement and auto cos.
The rest has deregulated to $10-$20 an hour.
phdcareerclinic
There are engineer contractors who earn twice as much as salaried
contractors.
Numbers quoted and published may reflect an average. I can believe that
there are truck drivers who can earn $80K a year. They may not be the
norm, but they may not be in the minority either.
rrc
> (see original post quoted below)
>
> You haul, in car carriers, a carrier full of Mercedes.
>
> Like I said many times, you don't go looking for "average" jobs. You go
> looking for high paying jobs, learn where those markets are, and get into
> them.
I think the key here is the notion of the average ChemE making $60-80K,
thereby making it better than trucking which is the essence of
Threeducks quip. The truth, however, is that mainly the elite 3.5+ GPA
ChemE have a shot at those jobs and subsequently, they're in danger of
being pigeonholed into titles like bioreactor engineer, oil exploration
engineer, etc which then limits their lateral movement into other areas
during mid-career.
Trucking, on the other hand, has the $30-50K jobs available to
practically anyone, 2.0 to 4.0 GPAs, but also allows for more
enterprising individuals to do far better w/o being pigeonholed and
thus not being able to move around and take options like lower pay for
better hours or some other combination of tradeoffs. I knew an MD,
who'd actually done a distance undergraduate degree in biology, while
driving a rig for a decade, and he saved up enough cash to attend
medical school on his saving alone with no med loans whatsoever. He'd
started medical school at 28, finished at 32, and was earning $160K/yr
by 38. Now, he's in his mid forties and is employed for life.
Straydog
Yeah, and I've gone over all this many many times in the last 5-6 years.
The electrician that wired my retirement home works out of his house (no
overhead, no boss "cut," no other costs except his truck) and he charges
$60-65 an hour. I talked with other guys who hired work, knew the guy
worked out of his house, and how much was the job and how many hours did
the guy work on the job. Its simple arithmetic.
I gave the figure for doing a siding job on my house, the skylight job,
etc. All real figures. Do the arithmetic. $50-100/hour minus the costs of
the truck and if the guy wants to pay his insurances out of that $50-100,
its his choice or put the money in the bank.
Anyone who works for a company, with an office, support staff, boss,
manager, owner, etc.,...all taking their "cut" is going to make 1/3 or
less of what "the company" charges.
We've got solo lawyers here in my town who work out of their houses and
charge full list rates against lawyers working for bigger firms with
branch offices in every local town (3-4 lawyers per office, 2-3
paralegals) who charge the same full list rates ($175/hour) and probably
get $50-60/hour on a salary. The guys who work out of their houses are
making out like bandits.
Fine, I don't measure people's lives by the money they make. There is a
fun side, a professional satisfaction side. But, you also can't throw out
the practical and dark sides of careers. So, when a guy asks what can be a
better BS degree than ChE with a starting salary of $60,000, I'm going to
make my comparison with much broader job ranges that more people can get
into and make as much or more.
I've had "professional" tree trimmers come out twice now. Cut a tree down
(65 feet high), and just cut it into pieces. Number of guys on the job:
three. Time on job: one hour. Cost: $375. Do the arithmetic. Cost of doing
the business: one truck, wear and tear on chain saws, plus a bucks worth
of gas. You can can rent a truck for $50/hour.
I want to know where these guys get off on the theme that since BLS and
surveys show all the crapworks pay $12-15/hour, therefore that is where
people should look ONLY for the crapwork jobs. And, then they brag about
their $90,000 faculty jobs.
rrc
> So, when a guy asks what can be a
> better BS degree than ChE with a starting salary of $60,000, I'm going to
> make my comparison with much broader job ranges that more people can get
> into and make as much or more.
Adjustment needed here... BS ChemE with 3.5 GPA, makes $60K/yr for five
years, then is pigeonholed. If his sector contracts, but others stay
open, he's not able to get another $60K/yr job and is competing against
entry levels with co-ops.
Hence, the risk can be avoided via applying for PA school after
sophomore yr in ChemE.
> I want to know where these guys get off on the theme that since BLS and
> surveys show all the crapworks pay $12-15/hour, therefore that is where
> people should look ONLY for the crapwork jobs. And, then they brag about
> their $90,000 faculty jobs.
Don't forget, anywhere from 300 to 700 PhDs can apply for perhaps 5-6
assistant professor positions in the country in ChemE per year. And the
applications can come from all over the world as well. I think I'd take
the PharmD path with the same pay for a better outcome.
Straydog
On Wed, 17 May 2006, rrc wrote:
> Straydog wrote:
>> (see original post quoted below)
>>
>> You haul, in car carriers, a carrier full of Mercedes.
>>
>> Like I said many times, you don't go looking for "average" jobs. You go
>> looking for high paying jobs, learn where those markets are, and get into
>> them.
>
> I think the key here is the notion of the average ChemE making $60-80K,
> thereby making it better than trucking which is the essence of
> Threeducks quip. The truth, however, is that mainly the elite 3.5+ GPA
> ChemE have a shot at those jobs and subsequently, they're in danger of
> being pigeonholed into titles like bioreactor engineer, oil exploration
> engineer, etc which then limits their lateral movement into other areas
> during mid-career.
And, you also have to look at the drop-out rate for those degree programs,
and the fact that some guys should have never even thought about college.
> Trucking, on the other hand, has the $30-50K jobs available to
> practically anyone, 2.0 to 4.0 GPAs,
And, they don't even need college. Just 1-2 months of trade school
program.
but also allows for more
> enterprising individuals to do far better w/o being pigeonholed and
> thus not being able to move around and take options like lower pay for
> better hours or some other combination of tradeoffs. I knew an MD,
> who'd actually done a distance undergraduate degree in biology, while
> driving a rig for a decade, and he saved up enough cash to attend
> medical school on his saving alone with no med loans whatsoever. He'd
> started medical school at 28, finished at 32, and was earning $160K/yr
> by 38. Now, he's in his mid forties and is employed for life.
>
Good choice.
Bet lets look at that waitstaff job that gets $50/hour in tips. Don't even
ened any college, no 1-2 month program, just get the job and be nice to
people. Its pretty easy to pick up (jaw with other waitstaff).
rrc
> Bet lets look at that waitstaff job that gets $50/hour in tips. Don't even ened any college,
> no 1-2 month program, just get the job and be nice to people. Its pretty easy to pick up
> (jaw with other waitstaff).
True, which is the reason why we have to stop this '60s to mid-'80s
mentality of everyone going to college (and opting a technical
education). All that this brainwashing accomplishes is leave
twentysomethings with $100K+ student loans, mediocre and shrinking
white collar occupations, and an oversupply of tech workers. Today's
college attendants should have clear and attainable white collar career
trajectories in govt, law, sales-to-MBA, or health care.
Straydog
On Wed, 17 May 2006, rrc wrote:
> Straydog wrote:
>> Bet lets look at that waitstaff job that gets $50/hour in tips. Don't even ened any college,
>> no 1-2 month program, just get the job and be nice to people. Its pretty easy to pick up
>> (jaw with other waitstaff).
>
> True, which is the reason why we have to stop this '60s to mid-'80s
> mentality of everyone going to college (and opting a technical
> education).
Ahhhhhh....but its the "thing to do" and "all my friends are going to
college"
All that this brainwashing accomplishes is leave
> twentysomethings with $100K+ student loans,
Yeah, makes the banks rich.
mediocre and shrinking
> white collar occupations,
Going to India, China. We'll be getting more Kamal Prasads. Doesn't that
make you feel warm and fuzzy inside?
and an oversupply of tech workers. Today's
> college attendants should have clear and attainable white collar career
> trajectories in govt, law, sales-to-MBA, or health care.
Another one that will not become obsolete: car repair. Unless they get
Star Trek "transporters" so they can transport the broken car to India to
have Indian mechanics fix (would they fix it?) it and transport it back to
you, at $5/hour service fee. Oh, excuse me, they will charge you $30/hour
($29 for the overhead, $1 goes to the Indian).
Hey, you're going into medicine, right? Do you have a good idea how the
credentialing, re-credentialing, provider databases, contracting, and
voice menus are running these days on the phone lines? Have much experience
with the 800 numbers? From our office, its looking like "information
melt-down" is right around the corner. You know how the conservatives
always bash government for inefficiency and incompetance (to which I
always try to get them to understand that all that is also in private
industry vast bureacrasies, too)? I got some beautiful
red-tape-generated-by-private-insurance-systems (I say systems because
there is a vast overly complex bureaucratic infrastructure out there that
is growing out of control) horror stories to tell you.
Threeducks
ChE departments aren't getting any 300-700 PhD applicants per job unless
it's a top 25 and even then I'd be skeptical.
Threeducks
Can, but on average do they?
>
> I've had "professional" tree trimmers come out twice now. Cut a tree
> down (65 feet high), and just cut it into pieces. Number of guys on the
> job: three. Time on job: one hour. Cost: $375. Do the arithmetic. Cost
> of doing the business: one truck, wear and tear on chain saws, plus a
> bucks worth of gas. You can can rent a truck for $50/hour.
So if these jobs are so great, why do we have "working poor", people
flocking to work for 1st world sweatshops like Wal-Mart, millions on
welfare, etc. If it's really so easy to get and keep these great jobs,
what's to problem?
What kind of house do these guys live in, what kind of car do they
drive? What kind of medical and/or retirement plan do they have?
>
> I want to know where these guys get off on the theme that since BLS and
> surveys show all the crapworks pay $12-15/hour, therefore that is where
> people should look ONLY for the crapwork jobs. And, then they brag about
> their $90,000 faculty jobs.
>
You've lost me here. Maybe that is how you take it when someone doesn't
bitch about failing at something, but stating that I have a certain job
and a certain salary isn't bragging in my mind.
BMJ
<snip>
>> True, which is the reason why we have to stop this '60s to mid-'80s
>> mentality of everyone going to college (and opting a technical
>> education).
>
>
> Ahhhhhh....but its the "thing to do" and "all my friends are going to
> college"
Or, worse yet, "My kid's going to university." That way, the education
of one's son or daughter becomes yet another status symbol and another
weapon in the unending war of keeping up with the you-know-whos.
I'm sure I had many students whose parents pushed them to attend the
tech school I taught at. Unfortunately, the students themselves didn't
want to be there.
<snip>
Threeducks
> Straydog wrote:
>
>>(see original post quoted below)
>>
>>You haul, in car carriers, a carrier full of Mercedes.
>>
>>Like I said many times, you don't go looking for "average" jobs. You go
>>looking for high paying jobs, learn where those markets are, and get into
>>them.
>
>
> I think the key here is the notion of the average ChemE making $60-80K,
> thereby making it better than trucking which is the essence of
> Threeducks quip. The truth, however, is that mainly the elite 3.5+ GPA
> ChemE have a shot at those jobs and subsequently, they're in danger of
> being pigeonholed into titles like bioreactor engineer, oil exploration
> engineer, etc which then limits their lateral movement into other areas
> during mid-career.
>
You are a terrible mindreader. What has been exposed in this thread is
Art's obvious double standard, taking the absolute best job from a
certain catagory and comparing it to the average job in a science or
engineering field. He's been beating the drum of too many fishermen and
not enough fish for 10 years, but he proposed exactly that! Fish amount
thousands for a few elite jobs in a field that only a small minority can
have.
rrc
> Or, worse yet, "My kid's going to university." That way, the education of one's son or
> daughter becomes yet another status symbol and another weapon in the unending war of
> keeping up with the you-know-whos.
This is the primary, underlying reason. I think many people aren't even
sure about the white collar jobs nowadays since in the past, paralegals
were associate degree holders and the same for many govt type of
clerical positions.
The bachelors degree, and esp one in a technical field, classfies
someone as a better than a common laborer. And this is the reason why
that thirtysomething guy, the one with a successful family business,
had to go back to school for a BS in engineering. He was convinced that
he needed to show to others that his intellectual capabilites were at a
par with people who'd worked in office buildings. And although he never
found that full-time desk engineering position, at least he was
confident that no one could snub his nose at him since with the family
business intact, he had money along with an engineering diploma.
Pathetic, if you ask me.
Threeducks
> (see original post quoted below)
>
> You haul, in car carriers, a carrier full of Mercedes.
How many of those jobs are available and how many fishermen are there?
>
> Like I said many times, you don't go looking for "average" jobs. You go
> looking for high paying jobs, learn where those markets are, and get
> into them.
Ok, so let's play your game. If you get a PhD in a science or
engineering field, you could potentially do very well. If you look at
the top of the academic pyramid, what do you see? Tenured faculty with
jobs for life, lots of permanent funding through things such as endowed
chairs and secret funding lines from their pet government agency.
>
> I've known many people who told me this. I've given many examples over
> the years. I've known the details, figured out the cuts, etc.
>
> I have also cited examples of waitstaff in high end and medium level
> restaurants making $200 in tips for a four hour period of work. I've
> seen people lay down tips, counted the tables that a waitstaff served,
> considered the start and end times I and my party were present.
So?
>
> You guys just go look up some database and look at average pay and you
> don't look at the standard deviations.
You don't mention them in your posts, either.
> There are real people out there
> at the high end, making those bucks and they know how to get into those
> jobs and keep them and from all I can see, they are low stress jobs,
> easy work, better job security, and the high pay.
The same can be said of PhD science and/or engineering jobs. What's
your point?
>
> You can call my testimony "claims" I'm just telling you what guys tell
> me, and what I figured out from knowing what jobs take what time, what
> materials and overhead can be estimated, what they charge customers, and
> what is left goes into the wallet.
>
> There are all kinds of smart asses in the world that go look up some
> database and the first thing they look at are the average numbers and
> they figure, mentally, that that is what all of them are making. The
> average. Guys who are smart will look at the high ends of those ranges
> and try to figure out how to get there.
Actually, my numbers were from truck driving schools, who are going to
spin the numbers to be the best they can be.
Aging_Recycled_Scientist
talked directly with, it is a hard lonely job, and sometimes hazardous.
Hard on family life. Truckers can be prone to problems of bad diet and
sedintary life style unless they take steps avoid truck stop junk food
etc.
Straydog
"Can...on average...they" get a ChE? Throw some calculus equations at the
average HS grad and tell the guy "Hey, get this great ChE job, pays
60,000, but you have to work with this stuff [point to equations, need to
get an A average in math]"? How many kids can do those guyrations?
>>
>> I've had "professional" tree trimmers come out twice now. Cut a tree down
>> (65 feet high), and just cut it into pieces. Number of guys on the job:
>> three. Time on job: one hour. Cost: $375. Do the arithmetic. Cost of doing
>> the business: one truck, wear and tear on chain saws, plus a bucks worth of
>> gas. You can can rent a truck for $50/hour.
>
> So if these jobs are so great, why do we have "working poor",
1. They don't know any better.
2. They can't do anything except work behind a cash register at a
convenience store.
3. They don't try
4. If they did, the supply of services would be swamped and the tree guys
would be charging $10/hour instead of $50.
people flocking
> to work for 1st world sweatshops like Wal-Mart, millions on welfare, etc. If
> it's really so easy to get and keep these great jobs, what's to problem?
See above. Is a ChE easy?
> What kind of house do these guys live in, what kind of car do they drive?
> What kind of medical and/or retirement plan do they have?
I had a long conversation with the guy, and his assistant who was my
mover. You know, truck, and move furniture. Load the truck at location A,
drive, unload at location B. He gave me his home address. His house was in
a MORE expensive neigborhood and bigger than mine. Same numbers. I know
what I paid him for him and his assistant (something like $1100) for seven
hours of work. He worked out of his house, said he owned the truck and
cost him like $2000 in repairs per year. And, he's booked up solid 5+ days
per week. You do the numbers.
>>
>> I want to know where these guys get off on the theme that since BLS and
>> surveys show all the crapworks pay $12-15/hour, therefore that is where
>> people should look ONLY for the crapwork jobs. And, then they brag about
>> their $90,000 faculty jobs.
>>
>
> You've lost me here. Maybe that is how you take it when someone doesn't
> bitch about failing at something, but stating that I have a certain job and a
> certain salary isn't bragging in my mind.
Well, you were the one who was puffing up how your students were
gettingjob offers of $60K, and your own, what was it, $90K, as if the only
way to get this is follow in footsteps like your own?
I'm waiting for you to explain what happens to the majority of guys, not
you with your tenure-guarantee, don't-have-to-worry-about-grants, and not
a chance for department politics problems, and they-will-never-offshore my
teaching job to India, but what is across a broader swath of PhD jobs that
are not even tenure track. Go look up the adjunct situations, too.
Straydog
On Wed, 17 May 2006, Threeducks wrote:
> rrc wrote:
>> Straydog wrote:
>>
>>> (see original post quoted below)
>>>
>>> You haul, in car carriers, a carrier full of Mercedes.
>>>
>>> Like I said many times, you don't go looking for "average" jobs. You go
>>> looking for high paying jobs, learn where those markets are, and get into
>>> them.
>>
>>
>> I think the key here is the notion of the average ChemE making $60-80K,
>> thereby making it better than trucking which is the essence of
>> Threeducks quip. The truth, however, is that mainly the elite 3.5+ GPA
>> ChemE have a shot at those jobs and subsequently, they're in danger of
>> being pigeonholed into titles like bioreactor engineer, oil exploration
>> engineer, etc which then limits their lateral movement into other areas
>> during mid-career.
>>
>
> You are a terrible mindreader. What has been exposed in this thread is Art's
> obvious double standard, taking the absolute best job from a certain catagory
> and comparing it to the average job in a science or engineering field.
The average job in an S&E field, which not everyone gets to even apply
for let alone get a job offer in, is itself applying a "sellection" method
to the population. What fraction of entering college students even get
their BS? What fraction are in an employable S&E? What fraction get the ~A
average to get those $60K job offers?
He's
> been beating the drum of too many fishermen and not enough fish for 10 years,
> but he proposed exactly that! Fish amount thousands for a few elite jobs in
> a field that only a small minority can have.
Well, what are YOU doing for the majority? The same minority can get the
high pay without the 4+4+more years of costly study! And, their 4+4+more
years don't have any guarantees: you don't get your money back, and you
don't get your time back, either.
BMJ
I've noticed that a lot of technologists went on for engineering
degrees. Some may have done so because they weren't sure they could
succeed in university, so they went to tech school first. Others may
have done it for the reasons you stated.
rrc
> What fraction of entering college students even get their BS? What fraction are in an
> employable S&E? What fraction get the ~A average to get those $60K job offers?
Art, an ordinary bachelors degree isn't hard to get provided you have
the tuition money. As for engineering, at least 1/2 the class can't
even get through introductory frosh/soph classes at schools like Univ
of Illnois/UC, nevermind complete the upper level coursework to get a
BS ChE. That's where all this controversy comes from, if ~50% isn't
even on the same page as a ChE graduate with a B-/C+ average (and
thereby no interviews in the profession), then this field is definitely
a career ruiner for many aspirants and in higher percentages than
community college grads who opt for a paralegal career.
BMJ
I was interviewed by two junior colleges last year to teach first-year
engineering. Whenever I mentioned that there was a high failure rate in
the early years of undergrad engineering, I received dirty looks.
It appeared that one of my duties would have been to make sure that all
of the students I would have had passed. Never mind that many of them
probably would have had brief careers in engineering, assuming they
eventually made it to convocation. Never mind the fact that I'm a
senior practioner of my profession. Never mind the fact that undergrad
engineering studies is also a test of character. (I completed my first
year at a similar junior college. Nearly half of my classmates didn't
make it into third year, with about half of them quitting voluntarily.)
Straydog
I'm not surprised at any of this but, why is 3D blowing the horn so hard
about how damned good ChE is (i.e. as he said "name a 4 year BS program
that is as well paid") when it's not even a feasible program for the
majority of kids that go to college. And, he accuses me of a "double
standard" and "sellecting subpopulations of data"?
And, then, what does he do with the "C" students? I'm still waiting for an
answer on that one. Or, would he say "Oh, the guy becomes a great car
salesman and makes $60K, therefore I'm right"?
Straydog
On Wed, 17 May 2006, Threeducks wrote:
> Straydog wrote:
>> (see original post quoted below)
>>
>> You haul, in car carriers, a carrier full of Mercedes.
>
> How many of those jobs are available and how many fishermen are there?
Throw in the BMWs, Porshes, Lexuses and that is four times as many fish.
>>
>> Like I said many times, you don't go looking for "average" jobs. You go
>> looking for high paying jobs, learn where those markets are, and get into
>> them.
>
> Ok, so let's play your game. If you get a PhD in a science or engineering
> field, you could potentially do very well.
Remember the waitstaff getting $50/hour in tips. No college needed. No 3-4
years. No loan debt.
If you look at the top of the
> academic pyramid, what do you see? Tenured faculty with jobs for life, lots
> of permanent funding through things such as endowed chairs
Oh, lets look at this for a minute. How many endowed chairs are there and
how many faculty slots? Do you know for a fact that all endowed chairs
do not carry requirements for productivity? Do you know for a fact that
all endowed chairs have enough principal to generate a fully funded
institutional base salary?
and secret funding
> lines from their pet government agency.
You mean because they have a "buddy" inside earmarking the money?
>> I've known many people who told me this. I've given many examples over the
>> years. I've known the details, figured out the cuts, etc.
>>
>> I have also cited examples of waitstaff in high end and medium level
>> restaurants making $200 in tips for a four hour period of work. I've seen
>> people lay down tips, counted the tables that a waitstaff served,
>> considered the start and end times I and my party were present.
>
> So?
Well, you were the one who was saying (or implying that) all the other
jobs in life were shitty. I think not.
>>
>> You guys just go look up some database and look at average pay and you
>> don't look at the standard deviations.
>
> You don't mention them in your posts, either.
I've mentioned several times that the jobs are out there. I've described
the work. You don't get into this stuff by working for someone else. You
work for yourself, work out of your house, cut out the "cuts" that others
get, and you are not only your own boss but you make as good or even
better than a lot of college profs. And, if you are even better at it,
then you can really be richer, like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, who are
both college dropouts. And, I'll bet both of these guys are very happy
with what they are doing, too.
>> There are real people out there at the high end, making those bucks and
>> they know how to get into those jobs and keep them and from all I can see,
>> they are low stress jobs, easy work, better job security, and the high pay.
>
> The same can be said of PhD science and/or engineering jobs.
Nope, the richest people, as I've suggested elsewhere, are NOT the PhDs.
What's your
> point?
See above.
>>
>> You can call my testimony "claims" I'm just telling you what guys tell me,
>> and what I figured out from knowing what jobs take what time, what
>> materials and overhead can be estimated, what they charge customers, and
>> what is left goes into the wallet.
>>
>> There are all kinds of smart asses in the world that go look up some
>> database and the first thing they look at are the average numbers and they
>> figure, mentally, that that is what all of them are making. The average.
>> Guys who are smart will look at the high ends of those ranges and try to
>> figure out how to get there.
>
> Actually, my numbers were from truck driving schools, who are going to spin
> the numbers to be the best they can be.
In my verbal conversations with the teachers of the courses, they seemed
realistic. The had no reason to say otherwise. Yes, if you take a cross
country job, its a crappy job. However, you do this to get your one year
of experience in. Once that is part of your "track record" you have a
reference. Smart guys figure out better jobs and get into them and keep
them. One guy, a black guy, I spent an hour talking with him. He and his
two black brothers and his black sister all own their own dump trucks
($120K each). They all drive their own trucks. They have all been doing
the work for some two decades. Its all local work. Start from home at the
beginning of the day, home at the end of the day. He says to me: even in
the summer time, all his trucks are air-conditioned (he says in the summer
time you can tell how many have it by noticing in hot weather how many
have their widows shut). Very credible story. Told me a lot of things
about trucks.
I'm not going to say "trucks uber alles" however. The one big common
problem they are all afraid of is accidents. The black guy told me how he
handles it is that he is constantly looking for an "out" in front of him
if the guy in front of him suddently stops or slows down. It means if he
has to drive into a ditch or front yard in order to avoid an accident. So,
that is the major disadvantage and unlike some other people here (who I
won't mention by name), I'm not affraid to talk about the disadvantages of
this alternative career.
The other disadvantages are the crappy truck driving jobs where you are
not just the driver but you are the loader (at the start) and the unloader
(at the end of the trip) and they don't pay you for that (only for
delivering the load). And, if you get a delivery on one direction, but not
a load on the way back (you have to try to collect for round trip). There
are other disadvantages (eg. Mexican drivers are coming into the USA
taking jobs away from locals, and there are some very very poor truck
driving schools that teach nothing and take your money [you have to find
a program that actually has an 18-wheeler <for a class A license, a class
B license is not an overnight cross-country license> and you get time
behind the wheel!]) that all have to be taken into consideration.
My own prefernce would be, however, for something like that licensed
electrician job where you can charge $60/hour and work out of your house.
All you need is something like a pickup truck or van.
rrc
> My own prefernce would be, however, for something like that licensed electrician job
> where you can charge $60/hour and work out of your house. All you need is something
> like a pickup truck or van.
Art, don't forget, with all the typecasting of ChemE jobs:
extruder/membrane maker, oil exploration engineer, bioreactor engineer,
etc, the chances for being a long term independent consultant in the
field is very difficult because few experiences can be generalized
across regions. It's only when things like petroleum are hot that
ChemEs have specific consulting projects on drilling platforms,
refining, and transport issues, etc. Other times, the pickings are
pretty slim. At least an electrician can consistently bill out his work
at $60/hr and service all kinds of places.
Phil Scott
--
Phil Scott
Ideas are bullet proof.
"Straydog" <a...@panix.com> wrote in message
news:Pine.NEB.4.63.06...@panix1.panix.com...
>
>
its going to get wierd fast in the US...
I can see that I need to renew my contractors license and
learn to speak spanish.
Phil Scott
Straydog
You might have to have plastic surgery, too, to have Mexican facial
features and slightly darkened complexion and maybe fake documents to
"prove" you are from a poor country, thus be eligible for a below standard
wage scale and then and only then will you get offered a job.
Straydog
Well, electrical and other codes don't change that much, that fast. So,
you have basically a low-tech career where your knowledge does not become
obsolete like it does in high tech or science (especially for grant
funding where the fad cycles are about a decade long). But, we've been
talking about two different levels--in 3D's context--first, the market for
BS ChEs and second, the market for PhD ChEs. The BS guys all go into
commercial environments, but the biggest market for PhD ChEs should be
academia. What I have not seen in 3D's perceptions is: i) how the growth
in distance learning is going to impact his job, ii) how the offshoring/H1B
options are going to affect the market for his department's BS students,
and iii) any really extensive knowledge of where BS ChEs really end up and
how long they stay and what happens to them afterwards. And, even in all
of this we have the groupings of BS graduates into two broad categories:
a) the A to maybe B+ students (who do get those $60K jobs) and b) the B
minus to C students who are sufficiently marginal that they might get
passed over for jobs relating to engineering and maybe should not have
even graduated in the first place, and who maybe end up with jobs making
notably less than $60K and when you get into that range, then the question
is: was that degree worth the time and money? And, you read how 3D talked
about it: "average pay: $60K" and where was the _range_ (low to high)
mentioned? It's even been brought up in this NG way in the past: people
talk about average pay as if people think that everyone in that cohort
gets THAT pay within a small range of values and more often than not,
there are quite a few people doing much better as well as much worse. In
the roughly extra three decades of additional life experience I have over
his, I've run across dozens of parents whose kids got some kind of
engineering degree, and spouses of engineering degree recipients, and they
just could not find jobs relevant to their degrees. What did they end up
doing? They took what they could find.
In 3D's field we don't know the graduation rate (supply) and we don't know
the job creation rate (accounting for expansion-contraction of
departments, retirement-tenure denial rates of existing faculty) and so
its hard to come up with a picture of how hard or easy it is to get AND
keep a job (unless he can cite or do a study of his own). But, the Massy &
Goldman study did cover quite a bit of engineering as well as mostly
science and they showed PhD overproduction everywhere, but in bio-meds it
was double the job creation rate. Half of those guys are not going to be
making either money or work as it relates to their studies. And, I had
references to other articles where that was born out in fact.
Then there was that astronomy career paper we discussed to death here
about 5-6 years ago; it showed that only 1/3 of astronomy PhDs ever ended
up in permanent jobs relating to their major. And, a little over 1/3
eventually totally left astronomy for non science jobs. The rest had
nothing but temporary jobs and that is for a world-wide sample population.
rrc
> On Wed, 17 May 2006, rrc wrote:
> > Other times, the pickings are
> > pretty slim. At least an electrician can consistently bill out his work
> > at $60/hr and service all kinds of places.
>
> Well, electrical and other codes don't change that much, that fast. So,
> you have basically a low-tech career where your knowledge does not become
> obsolete like it does in high tech or science
Yep, and this distinction clearly makes being an electrician,
independent contractor or salaried personnel, a more viable, long term
option.
> What I have not seen in 3D's perceptions is: i) how the growth
> in distance learning is going to impact his job, ii) how the offshoring/H1B
> options are going to affect the market for his department's BS students,
> and iii) any really extensive knowledge of where BS ChEs really end up and
> how long they stay and what happens to them afterwards. And, even in all
> of this we have the groupings of BS graduates into two broad categories:
> a) the A to maybe B+ students (who do get those $60K jobs) and
First of all, I don't see why industry needs anyone with a high GPA,
it's not like the work is anything special to begin with. Much of it is
maintenance work with a few new pilot plant support roles. In addition,
I don't see what an A/A-/B+ gets for being in the field because after 5
yrs, my friend at Exxon-Mobil was in pretty much a dead end track since
they didn't want him in management. I don't see any upside to this
profession other than having an inflation indexed paycheck for the
first 5-7 years, provided you busted your tail in undergrad for those
grades and co-ops.
In addition, many BS ChemEs will not become consultants in the field
unlike IT where many consultants have only BS degrees. Of course, if
one can finagle a sales-to-MBA career out of it then it might be all
right but I think even that's easier to maneuver in IT.
> b) the B minus to C students who are sufficiently marginal that they might get
> passed over for jobs relating to engineering and maybe should not have
> even graduated in the first place, and who maybe end up with jobs making
> notably less than $60K and when you get into that range, then the question
> is: was that degree worth the time and money?
Nope, it wasn't worth the time at all. Learning for the sake of
learning, despite having a lower GPA, is for the independently wealthy,
not the middle class aspirant who needs to earn a living. In the past,
60s and 70s, B- to C ChemE grads would be in sales or tech support but
now, they're simply unemployed and blackballed for full time
accounting, PA, and pharmacy programs because of their GPAs.
> But, the Massy &
> Goldman study did cover quite a bit of engineering as well as mostly
> science and they showed PhD overproduction everywhere, but in bio-meds it
> was double the job creation rate. Half of those guys are not going to be
> making either money or work as it relates to their studies. And, I had
> references to other articles where that was born out in fact.
3Ds got his so why does he care about anyone else?
Also, if his dean's list students can get theirs, why should they care
about anyone else? Yes, a lot of my former classmates, who BTW are now
complaining about their careers, used to think like that. Now, they've
finally learned that the lack of a true professional association has
actually rendered their work fruitless in the long term. Many have
opted for the MBA as a way out of the meat grinder. The only problem is
that w/o a sales background, MBA's are pretty much useless because
engineers really don't know how to b.s. their way to the top.
Straydog
On Thu, 18 May 2006, rrc wrote:
> Straydog wrote:
>> On Wed, 17 May 2006, rrc wrote:
>>> Other times, the pickings are
>>> pretty slim. At least an electrician can consistently bill out his work
>>> at $60/hr and service all kinds of places.
>>
>> Well, electrical and other codes don't change that much, that fast. So,
>> you have basically a low-tech career where your knowledge does not become
>> obsolete like it does in high tech or science
>
> Yep, and this distinction clearly makes being an electrician,
> independent contractor or salaried personnel, a more viable, long term
> option.
And, yet, a large fraction of college kids consider these jobs as low
prestige occupations when in reality they will have quite good longivity.
And, there are reasons for these attitudes. Our media all glorify,
romanticize, and hucksterize as "high prestige" certain _images_. In Star
Trek, the camera is always focused on Captain Kirk, and his inner circle.
The "grunts" down the heirarchy don't get much attention. Cell phones
and iPods _look_ sooooooo "cool" that plain old hammers, which have been
around for thousands of years (and may be for thousands of years after
iPods become extinct [I'm also seeing people with Borg "implants" now
<cellphones carried entirely in an ear>]). What next? Dark glasses with
a cell phone built into the ear forks?
>> What I have not seen in 3D's perceptions is: i) how the growth
>> in distance learning is going to impact his job, ii) how the offshoring/H1B
>> options are going to affect the market for his department's BS students,
>> and iii) any really extensive knowledge of where BS ChEs really end up and
>> how long they stay and what happens to them afterwards. And, even in all
>> of this we have the groupings of BS graduates into two broad categories:
>> a) the A to maybe B+ students (who do get those $60K jobs) and
>
> First of all, I don't see why industry needs anyone with a high GPA,
> it's not like the work is anything special to begin with. Much of it is
> maintenance work with a few new pilot plant support roles.
I'll defer to you and 3D to "defend" and/or "define" the meaning/purpose
of high GPA relationships to the value of a major subject (but, then, when
a company hires a guy who just graduated, they don't have anything else to
go on but once the guy leaves his first job, I have heard of infinitesimal
numbers of cases where grade track records are sought out.)
In addition,
> I don't see what an A/A-/B+ gets for being in the field because after 5
> yrs, my friend at Exxon-Mobil was in pretty much a dead end track since
> they didn't want him in management.
Did HE want to get into management?
> I don't see any upside to this
> profession other than having an inflation indexed paycheck for the
> first 5-7 years, provided you busted your tail in undergrad for those
> grades and co-ops.
Well, I would be more interested in the long term viability of XE careers
in general (since I know in the academic sciences there is the half life
[from published papers], and in the corporate world the bias is, just like
academia: hire young, preferentially and the major factor is they want to
pay, preferentially, entry level salary (or less, hence the cry for
H-1Bs).
> In addition, many BS ChemEs will not become consultants in the field
> unlike IT where many consultants have only BS degrees.
Consulting, I think, is much more heterogeneous than regular jobs. You
look at guys like Drucker and Peters and they are working their butt off
on the constant self-promotion gig and do all of their learning by
listening to their clients spill the beans on proprietary information. For
all the consultants I've read about, its the name of the guy that matters
more than his formal education.
Of course, if
> one can finagle a sales-to-MBA career out of it then it might be all
> right but I think even that's easier to maneuver in IT.
From what I gather, the MBAs that do the best are the ones who already
have some experience running a company. I listened to a fairly detailed
coversation between one pres of a small company and another pres of
another small company (I was consultant for one of them) and the one guy
was making all of his money by buying failing companies on the cheap and
then do a turn-around, then sell the turned around company to someone who
had a bundle, then our "hero" would go on to another company. A variation
on the small "start-up" that gets patents AND demo of feasibility, and
then markets the package to, say, Microsoft or J&J, etc.
>> b) the B minus to C students who are sufficiently marginal that they might get
>> passed over for jobs relating to engineering and maybe should not have
>> even graduated in the first place, and who maybe end up with jobs making
>> notably less than $60K and when you get into that range, then the question
>> is: was that degree worth the time and money?
>
> Nope, it wasn't worth the time at all. Learning for the sake of
> learning, despite having a lower GPA, is for the independently wealthy,
> not the middle class aspirant who needs to earn a living.
So, how do you get this message across? Remember RL? Who saw the empty
glass as half full? Or, more?
In the past,
> 60s and 70s, B- to C ChemE grads would be in sales or tech support but
> now, they're simply unemployed and blackballed for full time
> accounting, PA, and pharmacy programs because of their GPAs.
And, I've seen a couple of articles about how BS guys are going back to 2
year programs to get a marketable credential. Learning the hard
(expensive) way?
>
>> But, the Massy &
>> Goldman study did cover quite a bit of engineering as well as mostly
>> science and they showed PhD overproduction everywhere, but in bio-meds it
>> was double the job creation rate. Half of those guys are not going to be
>> making either money or work as it relates to their studies. And, I had
>> references to other articles where that was born out in fact.
>
> 3Ds got his so why does he care about anyone else?
Oh, I'll grant that he has to romanticize his field. I think a lot of
people do this. When I finally got my first real job after my postdoc, I
too figured that finally, after all the years of paying my dues, "I got
mine," too, and felt good about it. And, as I was credibly assured at the
time, it was a permanent job. Little did I know till two years later that
a major reorganization would take place and 1/3 of all those permanent
jobs were mass flushed. A couple of bad people were flushed, but I knew
good people who were flushed, too. I survived, but the next shock was that all
the surviving jobs all became temporary jobs and the "gardening" (knocking
off people one or two at a time, ugly ugly ways, too.). And, the next
shock after that was that even if you were doing the job you were supposed
to be doing, they could still flush people. And, they did.
> Also, if his dean's list students can get theirs, why should they care
> about anyone else? Yes, a lot of my former classmates, who BTW are now
> complaining about their careers, used to think like that.
And, then we have the clash over the "nobody-owes-you-a-job" mindset,
which is fine for all the guys who have a job that is either safe or they
think its safe.
Now, they've
> finally learned that the lack of a true professional association
...or (strong) union.
has
> actually rendered their work fruitless in the long term.
There is a book I cited on my website that went into the history of guilds
going back 500 years. Quite interesting how guilds, which were much
broader in control AND much much more powerful in controling business and
commerce (including price fixing!!), had as primary function both the
protection of the whole business field AND the livelihoods of the people
who were in it. The doctors and lawyers (and especially the lawyers) all
looked out for their own rear ends. And, although engineering has a
history going back thousands of years, they never ever got together to get
any real guild power. But, look at all the talk, today, about any kind of
desk job not being safe from offshoring. I'd somehow like to put a clever
sarcastic sentence together involving one or more of any of three birds:
chickens, ostritches, turkeys, and the idea of heads in the sand _or_ the
survivors look the other way as their brethern go to the chopping block.
But, in the end, the only thing an individual can do is CYA.
Many have
> opted for the MBA as a way out of the meat grinder. The only problem is
> that w/o a sales background, MBA's are pretty much useless because
> engineers really don't know how to b.s. their way to the top.
Well, my "take" on the MBA is that the best thing to do is learn how
business works, take 5-10 years and save up a bundle, talk extensively to
people, and make the plunge and start your own business and don't sell it
if it makes money and don't ever take it public or you'll lose it for
sure. There was a story in one of the "inc" magazines that as soon as
vulture capitalists come into the picture, they replace YOU with one of
THEIR guys and that guy cleans up and you get the booby prize. The book
"IPO" went into exciting detail in one case, but mentioned that lots of
other IPOs flop. I was doing business with one company that attempted an
IPO and they decided to call off the IPO before it went up in smoke and in
the end they spent just ten times as much money as they estimated it would
cost and they never told anyone about it, but it leaked out and fell into
a sidebar in CFO magazine a few months ago. What idiots in charge.
Sure, we all read about the Steve Jobs and Bill Gates and Martha Stewarts
out there. But the early flops are much more common and a lot of small
companies heavily invested in high risk (read: high tech) have a lower
survival rate than the low tech, established track record, simple-boring
work. I like the intellectual stuff, too, but its ducks in a shooting
gallery (no pun on 3D, but maybe that is the square root of the cat with
nine lives?).
Threeducks
Nice. You sent up a great smokescreen, but failed to answer my question.
>
>>>
>>> I want to know where these guys get off on the theme that since BLS
>>> and surveys show all the crapworks pay $12-15/hour, therefore that is
>>> where people should look ONLY for the crapwork jobs. And, then they
>>> brag about their $90,000 faculty jobs.
>>>
>>
>> You've lost me here. Maybe that is how you take it when someone
>> doesn't bitch about failing at something, but stating that I have a
>> certain job and a certain salary isn't bragging in my mind.
>
>
> Well, you were the one who was puffing up how your students were
> gettingjob offers of $60K, and your own, what was it, $90K, as if the
> only way to get this is follow in footsteps like your own?
Stating that one succeeded at something is not "puffing". I certainly
didn't say anyone should follow in my footsteps, either. The problem is
you are so biased in your own little world that you immediately jump on
anything that isn't "square" with your universe. Try reading the words,
for what they are instead of what you think they are.
>
> I'm waiting for you to explain what happens to the majority of guys, not
> you with your tenure-guarantee, don't-have-to-worry-about-grants, and
> not a chance for department politics problems, and
> they-will-never-offshore my teaching job to India, but what is across a
> broader swath of PhD jobs that are not even tenure track. Go look up the
> adjunct situations, too.
Like I said before, I was responding specifically to a question about
ChE. I'll stick with the field where I have first-hand knowledge.
Threeducks
>
>
> On Wed, 17 May 2006, rrc wrote:
>
>> Straydog wrote:
>>
>>> What fraction of entering college students even get their BS? What
>>> fraction are in an
>>> employable S&E? What fraction get the ~A average to get those $60K
>>> job offers?
>>
>>
>> Art, an ordinary bachelors degree isn't hard to get provided you have
>> the tuition money. As for engineering, at least 1/2 the class can't
>> even get through introductory frosh/soph classes at schools like Univ
>> of Illnois/UC, nevermind complete the upper level coursework to get a
>> BS ChE. That's where all this controversy comes from, if ~50% isn't
>> even on the same page as a ChE graduate with a B-/C+ average (and
>> thereby no interviews in the profession), then this field is definitely
>> a career ruiner for many aspirants and in higher percentages than
>> community college grads who opt for a paralegal career.
>>
>
> I'm not surprised at any of this but, why is 3D blowing the horn so hard
> about how damned good ChE is (i.e. as he said "name a 4 year BS program
> that is as well paid")
Well, name one then! I'm saying exactly that. If you think ChE sucks,
name a 4 year BS degree that is better. I'm not saying ChE is great.
I'm saying "you, Art Sowers give me one example of a better 4 year
degree because you are telling me ChE stinks." Don't tell me about
truck drivers, MD programs, MBAs, etc. Stick to the standard 4 year
degree program. The fact that you can't shows you really don't know
much of anything about undergraduate education (in any field) or in
undergraduate students and their job prospects.
I'm not "blowing my horn". I'm asking you to answer a simple question.
> when it's not even a feasible program for the
> majority of kids that go to college. And, he accuses me of a "double
> standard" and "sellecting subpopulations of data"?
I'm not accusing you of it. You do it all the time. It's a fact.
>
> And, then, what does he do with the "C" students? I'm still waiting for
> an answer on that one. Or, would he say "Oh, the guy becomes a great car
> salesman and makes $60K, therefore I'm right"?
The AVERAGE starting salary for someone with a BS in ChE is $58,000+.
It is the highest average starting salary of any 4 year degree. As you
say, "do the math". Some students will earn more, some less, and some
the average.
rrc
> On Thu, 18 May 2006, rrc wrote:
> > Yep, and this distinction clearly makes being an electrician,
> > independent contractor or salaried personnel, a more viable, long term
> > option.
>
> And, yet, a large fraction of college kids consider these jobs as low prestige
> occupations when in reality they will have quite good longivity. And, there are reasons
> for these attitudes. Our media all glorify, romanticize, and hucksterize as "high
> prestige" certain _images_. In Star Trek, the camera is always focused on Captain
> Kirk, and his inner circle. The "grunts" down the heirarchy don't get much attention.
And yet, it doesn't make sense to me because in the MD world, we've got
honors MD graduates opting for dermatology: boring work, high pay, but
9-5 w/no on-call. S&Es would consider derm below their level and not
try for it.
And we all know that the Emergency Med and Surgeons are wannable Navy
Seals/Workaholics so their personality profiles are pretty clear but
even they wouldn't do it without the high paycheck.
> I'll defer to you and 3D to "defend" and/or "define" the meaning/purpose
> of high GPA relationships to the value of a major subject (but, then, when
> a company hires a guy who just graduated, they don't have anything else to
> go on but once the guy leaves his first job, I have heard of infinitesimal
> numbers of cases where grade track records are sought out.)
Just hiring anyone at random would do the trick for many of these types
of positions.
> > my friend at Exxon-Mobil was in pretty much a dead end track since they didn't want
> > him in management.
>
> Did HE want to get into management?
Originally, he thought that staying technical was good thing but
discovered that it was dead end and if they decide that they don't want
one in management (think cronyism), one's career is in the doldrums
waiting for the next headcount reduction cycle.
> and in the corporate world the bias is, just like
> academia: hire young, preferentially and the major factor is they want to
> pay, preferentially, entry level salary (or less, hence the cry for
> H-1Bs).
Entry level ChemE salaries are pretty much what 4-5 yr ChemE salaries
are when adjusted for inflation. There's not this graduating scale
where a person with x no of years experience in y is z times more
valuable than an entry level person. This is in sharp contrast to
accounting, legal, and actuarial career paths. Part of the reason for
it is that the field's so boom/bust that there are well entrenched old
boys clubs (a.k.a. the bust survivors/cliques of the early 80s or even
90s) who earn solid, big salaries, keep the titles/credits for
themselves, and essentially have $55K-$75K/yr associate engineers that
they make expendable from layoff cycle to layoff cycle. My Exxon-Mobil
buddy had discovered this during his time there. Others, in analogous
ChemE environments, reported similar bifurcation mechanisms. If you're
not among the in-crowd, who gets moved into management to replace the
retiring cronies, then you're pretty much expendable.
> Consulting, I think, is much more heterogeneous than regular jobs. You
> look at guys like Drucker and Peters and they are working their butt off
> on the constant self-promotion gig and do all of their learning by
> listening to their clients spill the beans on proprietary information. For
> all the consultants I've read about, its the name of the guy that matters
> more than his formal education.
True, however in IT, consulting actually means doing some sort of work,
not just giving advice on strategy or implementation. In ChemE, very
little of that work exists for regular professionals. Most ChemEs are
just staff engineers at a Dow, Chevron, DuPont, etc.
> > Of course, if one can finagle a sales-to-MBA career out of it then it might be all
> > right but I think even that's easier to maneuver in IT.
>
> From what I gather, the MBAs that do the best are the ones who already
> have some experience running a company.
Here's the problem, those guys don't really need to attend b-school.
The ones I'm referring to are the guys who can actively promote a
company's product portfolio but not really be able to run those
companies themselves.
> > Nope, it wasn't worth the time at all. Learning for the sake of
> > learning, despite having a lower GPA, is for the independently wealthy,
> > not the middle class aspirant who needs to earn a living.
>
> So, how do you get this message across? Remember RL? Who saw the empty
> glass as half full? Or, more?
Well, the costs of attending college will drive the message home for
the next generation.
> > 3Ds got his so why does he care about anyone else?
>
> Oh, I'll grant that he has to romanticize his field. I think a lot of people do this.
Well, here's where I depart... albeit, in front of clients and
colleagues, one has to be upbeat and spin doctor oriented, however, on
src, we're trying to go a little beyond our day to day existence and
focus on the bigger picture, our society and its direction for S&E
careers and plausible economic ramifications.
Threeducks
Wrong again. The biggest market for PhD ChEs is industry.
> What I have not seen in 3D's perceptions is: i) how
> the growth in distance learning is going to impact his job,
Zero impact.
> ii) how the
> offshoring/H1B
> options are going to affect the market for his department's BS students,
Little impact. No one in industry is very interested in sponsoring H1B
visa. I've been seeing this among foreign students over the last 10 years.
> and iii) any really extensive knowledge of where BS ChEs really end up
> and how long they stay and what happens to them afterwards. And, even in
> all of this we have the groupings of BS graduates into two broad
> categories: a) the A to maybe B+ students (who do get those $60K jobs)
> and b) the B minus to C students who are sufficiently marginal that they
> might get
According to Rob, who is one person who left ChE many years ago. I know
you love his posts because they square with your idea of S&E careers
being crap.
> passed over for jobs relating to engineering and maybe should not have
> even graduated in the first place, and who maybe end up with jobs making
> notably less than $60K and when you get into that range, then the
> question is: was that degree worth the time and money? And, you read how
> 3D talked about it: "average pay: $60K" and where was the _range_ (low
> to high) mentioned?
You never mention a range in your alternative careers. Why is ChE so
special?
> It's even been brought up in this NG way in the
> past: people talk about average pay as if people think that everyone in
> that cohort gets THAT pay within a small range of values and more often
> than not, there are quite a few people doing much better as well as much
> worse. In the roughly extra three decades of additional life experience
> I have over his, I've run across dozens of parents whose kids got some
> kind of engineering degree, and spouses of engineering degree
> recipients, and they just could not find jobs relevant to their degrees.
> What did they end up doing? They took what they could find.
>
> In 3D's field we don't know the graduation rate (supply) and we don't
After their junior year, the graduate rate is nearly 100%, but many are
lost in the previous two years. There are approximately 10 times fewer
ChE grads at the BS level every year compared to chemists, so the supply
is much smaller.
> know the job creation rate (accounting for expansion-contraction of
> departments, retirement-tenure denial rates of existing faculty) and so
> its hard to come up with a picture of how hard or easy it is to get AND
> keep a job (unless he can cite or do a study of his own).
I'm going to write papers and grant proposals. You know, the stuff that
matters to my university.
> But, the Massy
> & Goldman study did cover quite a bit of engineering as well as mostly
> science and they showed PhD overproduction everywhere, but in bio-meds
> it was double the job creation rate.
Ok, so don't go into bio-med. No one ever disputed that statement.
> Half of those guys are not going to
> be making either money or work as it relates to their studies. And, I
> had references to other articles where that was born out in fact.
>
> Then there was that astronomy career paper we discussed to death here
> about 5-6 years ago; it showed that only 1/3 of astronomy PhDs ever
> ended up in permanent jobs relating to their major. And, a little over
> 1/3 eventually totally left astronomy for non science jobs. The rest had
> nothing but temporary jobs and that is for a world-wide sample population.
Oh yeah, that one. Like the job situation in Astronomy has any
relevance to ChE or chemistry.
Threeducks
One of my friend's in college had a father who was a truck driver.
Load, drive, unload. He was mainly an in-state driver. He hardly saw
his father growing up and it certainly affected him. My neighbor is a
pilot and is away from home a lot. He has a couple of kids who don't
get to see him much. His teenage son especially is paying the price.
BMJ
<snip>
> And, yet, a large fraction of college kids consider these jobs as low
> prestige occupations when in reality they will have quite good longivity.
> And, there are reasons for these attitudes. Our media all glorify,
> romanticize, and hucksterize as "high prestige" certain _images_. In
> Star Trek, the camera is always focused on Captain Kirk, and his inner
> circle. The "grunts" down the heirarchy don't get much attention. Cell
> phones and iPods _look_ sooooooo "cool" that plain old hammers, which
> have been around for thousands of years (and may be for thousands of
> years after iPods become extinct [I'm also seeing people with Borg
> "implants" now <cellphones carried entirely in an ear>]).
Yeah, but hammers don't have the same esteem as light sabres. Besides,
Luke Skywalker didn't carry one, so why should any of these junior Jedis
that the schools are turning out nowadays?
What next?
> Dark glasses with a cell phone built into the ear forks?
Wearable computers. Talk about a complete waste of resources. The
computer is in a vest of some sort and one wears a helmet with a visor
onto which a heads-up display is projected. On the outside of the
helmet is a camera, so when the user walks up to someone, the camera
takes a picture of that person, and then one can search a database in
the computer to bring up all the information on that individual.
Whatever happened to the ultimate in implanted computers: one's brain?
<snip>
> I'll defer to you and 3D to "defend" and/or "define" the meaning/purpose
> of high GPA relationships to the value of a major subject (but, then,
> when a company hires a guy who just graduated, they don't have anything
> else to go on but once the guy leaves his first job, I have heard of
> infinitesimal numbers of cases where grade track records are sought out.)
It took me a while to figure out why certain job ads required
transcripts. The companies didn't want to mention they were looking for
new graduates.
>
> In addition,
>
>> I don't see what an A/A-/B+ gets for being in the field because after 5
>> yrs, my friend at Exxon-Mobil was in pretty much a dead end track since
>> they didn't want him in management.
>
>
> Did HE want to get into management?
A while back, I looked through the professional register to see what
happened to some of my undergrad classmates. Many of them were
managers, including three corporate vice-presidents. Of those who ended
up in management, most didn't have high GPAs. By comparison, of those
whose names I found, several had master's degrees, but nobody had a Ph. D.
>
>> I don't see any upside to this
>> profession other than having an inflation indexed paycheck for the
>> first 5-7 years, provided you busted your tail in undergrad for those
>> grades and co-ops.
>
>
> Well, I would be more interested in the long term viability of XE
> careers in general (since I know in the academic sciences there is the
> half life [from published papers], and in the corporate world the bias
> is, just like academia: hire young, preferentially and the major factor
> is they want to pay, preferentially, entry level salary (or less, hence
> the cry for H-1Bs).
While I was teaching, the early salary increases that came with each new
contract were much larger than those in later years. Towards the end,
those increases were more or less meant as cost-of-living adjustments.
>
>> In addition, many BS ChemEs will not become consultants in the field
>> unlike IT where many consultants have only BS degrees.
>
>
> Consulting, I think, is much more heterogeneous than regular jobs. You
> look at guys like Drucker and Peters and they are working their butt off
> on the constant self-promotion gig and do all of their learning by
> listening to their clients spill the beans on proprietary information.
> For all the consultants I've read about, its the name of the guy that
> matters more than his formal education.
A former colleague of mine used to work for an engineering consulting
firm and his comment was that most of the projects were low-key
variations of the same theme and quite dull and boring.
<snip>
> So, how do you get this message across? Remember RL? Who saw the empty
> glass as half full? Or, more?
And, sometimes, would argue whether there was a glass at all and, if
there was, that it contained water.
<snip>
> Oh, I'll grant that he has to romanticize his field. I think a lot of
> people do this. When I finally got my first real job after my postdoc, I
> too figured that finally, after all the years of paying my dues, "I got
> mine," too, and felt good about it. And, as I was credibly assured at
> the time, it was a permanent job. Little did I know till two years later
> that a major reorganization would take place and 1/3 of all those
> permanent jobs were mass flushed. A couple of bad people were flushed,
> but I knew good people who were flushed, too. I survived, but the next
> shock was that all the surviving jobs all became temporary jobs and the
> "gardening" (knocking off people one or two at a time, ugly ugly ways,
> too.). And, the next shock after that was that even if you were doing
> the job you were supposed to be doing, they could still flush people.
> And, they did.
I learned about that soon after I had my B. Sc. People were expendible,
unless one was well-connected with upper management. I never became too
comfortable at any of my employers after that. As it turned out, it was
a good policy as I seldom was there for more than a year before I was
either laid off or a contract wasn't renewed.
<snip>
> There is a book I cited on my website that went into the history of
> guilds going back 500 years. Quite interesting how guilds, which were
> much broader in control AND much much more powerful in controling
> business and commerce (including price fixing!!), had as primary
> function both the protection of the whole business field AND the
> livelihoods of the people who were in it. The doctors and lawyers (and
> especially the lawyers) all looked out for their own rear ends. And,
> although engineering has a history going back thousands of years, they
> never ever got together to get any real guild power. But, look at all
> the talk, today, about any kind of desk job not being safe from
> offshoring. I'd somehow like to put a clever sarcastic sentence together
> involving one or more of any of three birds: chickens, ostritches,
> turkeys, and the idea of heads in the sand _or_ the
> survivors look the other way as their brethern go to the chopping block.
> But, in the end, the only thing an individual can do is CYA.
While I was teaching, people used to laugh at me for always saving most
of my money. I've been on my own for the past four years and I'm better
off now than I was while I was working. Most of my former colleagues,
however, remain as wage slaves.
<snip>
>
> Sure, we all read about the Steve Jobs and Bill Gates and Martha
> Stewarts out there. But the early flops are much more common and a lot
> of small companies heavily invested in high risk (read: high tech) have
> a lower survival rate than the low tech, established track record,
> simple-boring work. I like the intellectual stuff, too, but its ducks in
> a shooting gallery (no pun on 3D, but maybe that is the square root of
> the cat with nine lives?).
>
>
I worked in that business for several years. I heard a lot of
work-hard-and-the-company-will-succeed, along with
when-the-company-succeeds-you-succeed. I worked hard. I worked hard to
keep my job. I was given the boot anyway when things turned rotten.
Many of those who remained ended up running those firms into the ground,
but they still managed to skedaddle with their booty and carry on elsewhere.
Straydog
On Thu, 18 May 2006, Threeducks wrote:
> Straydog wrote:
>>
>>
>> On Wed, 17 May 2006, Threeducks wrote:
>>
>>> Straydog wrote:
>>>
You all might want to re read the folowing which I did not write....
All you other guys out there that have been reading this, can you figure
out if I "...failed to answer..." 3D's question (was it about what kind of
car? what kind of medical? what kind of retirement?), then is that MY
problem if the example I gave showed that the guy owned a more expensive
house in a more expensive neighborhood than I had and in my neighborhood,
and you can do the numbers and see that a lot of these guys are making as
much or more gross than BS and even a lot of PhD ChEs, then they can take
their gross and either sock it into their own investments, own health
plans or just put the money in the bank and pay for their own medical
bills, and if they are saving whatever fraction they want, then they have
their own resources for retirement, already.
So, does that satisfy you or are all these examples "inferior" because
these guys are not affiliated with some big prestigeous name institution
that gives them an ego boost?
>>>>
>>>> I want to know where these guys get off on the theme that since BLS and
>>>> surveys show all the crapworks pay $12-15/hour, therefore that is where
>>>> people should look ONLY for the crapwork jobs. And, then they brag about
>>>> their $90,000 faculty jobs.
>>>>
>>>
>>> You've lost me here. Maybe that is how you take it when someone doesn't
>>> bitch about failing at something, but stating that I have a certain job
>>> and a certain salary isn't bragging in my mind.
>>
>>
>> Well, you were the one who was puffing up how your students were gettingjob
>> offers of $60K, and your own, what was it, $90K, as if the only way to get
>> this is follow in footsteps like your own?
>
> Stating that one succeeded at something is not "puffing". I certainly didn't
> say anyone should follow in my footsteps, either. The problem is you are so
> biased in your own little world that you immediately jump on anything that
> isn't "square" with your universe. Try reading the words, for what they are
> instead of what you think they are.
And, you take the "what 4 year BS program does as well as ChE" question
(to which I named several with credibly "comparable" remuneration) as if
eveyone or anyone who goes in the front door is going to "walk in the
park" to that $60K job? And, you and maybe others, snub your nose at that
dirty-boring-lonely truck driver job though not everyone going in the
front door might like it for many years later? Lets go ask some truck
drivers who are reliable, accept the work, do a decent job and have been
in it for say 2-3 years and ask them "Say, Mr. truck driver, how would
you like to pound those math books, grind for four years in classes, plunk
out $100K in costs or get into debt so you could get a nice, clean, desk
job? And, don't ask me 'If I don't get the best grades, do I still get
the job?'" and you think a lot of these guys are going to say "Gee, I
didn't know that it was that easy and guaranteed like falling off a log,
where do I sign up?"
>>
>> I'm waiting for you to explain what happens to the majority of guys, not
>> you with your tenure-guarantee, don't-have-to-worry-about-grants, and not a
>> chance for department politics problems, and they-will-never-offshore my
>> teaching job to India, but what is across a broader swath of PhD jobs that
>> are not even tenure track. Go look up the adjunct situations, too.
>
> Like I said before, I was responding specifically to a question about ChE.
> I'll stick with the field where I have first-hand knowledge.
Yeah, I was thinking about just this about an hour ago. And, one thing
that came to my mind was a slick PR magazine I read from one of the major
oil companies that was laying around in a waiting room for some reason.
Once of those PR touchy-feelie things lots of outfits send out to
shareholders once or twice every year and it profiled 4-5 BS ChEs over
about 6 pages. How interesting. One woman and the rest were men.
Photographs of them (all pretty young), and gave a few paragraphs of what
they did. What were they doing? Writing patents! Each one had gotten, the
previous year, anywhere from 7-9 patents (didn't say whether their name
went on as inventor, but I'm sure the patents were "assigned" to the oil
company). That's all they did. Little minutiaizing over details of
chemical processes for all manner of petrochemical products, refining,
altering, whatever. Not much details, but lots of variation (you know what
patent flooding is, don't you?). Year after year after year after
year.....nothing but patents. Full time. Maybe they are happy and I'm
sure, well paid, and with non-compete clauses and anti-competitive clauses
and anti-trade secret clauses in their contracts if they ever think about
quiting.
But, it is credible to me that you are happy with your job, well paid, and
that you are confident that no stumbling blocks will impede you from
continuing in your career and nothing else on the planet matters.
Straydog
On Thu, 18 May 2006, Threeducks wrote:
Care to cite a reference?
>> What I have not seen in 3D's perceptions is: i) how the growth in distance
>> learning is going to impact his job,
>
> Zero impact.
Why?
>> ii) how the offshoring/H1B
>> options are going to affect the market for his department's BS students,
>
> Little impact. No one in industry is very interested in sponsoring H1B visa.
You are not following the lobbying in DC for expansion of all the visas
and reducing the exclusions. Do you know that H-1Bs are not just for CS
and IT? They can be used in ANY field, ANY kind of job.
> I've been seeing this among foreign students over the last 10 years.
I was on the H-1B mailing list. The L-1 doesn't have the restrictions.
More guys coming over here. I cited the BW article on engineers coming out
of Mexico and GE and another big company was hiring them, in Mexico
(hundreds of engineering jobs not being filled inside the USA). Intel has
1000 Russians on their payroll in Russia. Another 1000 jobs not being
filled in the USA. Do you think if one of your students, BS or PhD applies
for a job in a foreign country that they are going to get it?
Maybe not today, but 5-10 years from now if the exchange rate does not
come into balance, that dive in CS enrollment is going to be followed by
dives in the engineerings.
>> and iii) any really extensive knowledge of where BS ChEs really end up and
>> how long they stay and what happens to them afterwards. And, even in all of
>> this we have the groupings of BS graduates into two broad categories: a)
>> the A to maybe B+ students (who do get those $60K jobs) and b) the B minus
>> to C students who are sufficiently marginal that they might get
>
> According to Rob, who is one person who left ChE many years ago. I know you
> love his posts because they square with your idea of S&E careers being crap.
Oh, and you think he is just spining out lies? I don't think so.
>> passed over for jobs relating to engineering and maybe should not have
>> even graduated in the first place, and who maybe end up with jobs making
>> notably less than $60K and when you get into that range, then the question
>> is: was that degree worth the time and money? And, you read how 3D talked
>> about it: "average pay: $60K" and where was the _range_ (low to high)
>> mentioned?
>
> You never mention a range in your alternative careers.
I gave lots and lots of information from real people who told me a lot
about their job situations. You can always get BLS data and go answer
advertisments for jobs in the classified sections of newspapers and get
the same jobs where the boss, the office support, the overhead eats up
more than half to two thirds of the gross income from the work. I have
mentioned this a lot of times. A lot.
Why is ChE so
> special?
I don't think its special. Rob doesnt think its so special. But you do
(with your "where can you get a better deal than a BS in ChE" challenge)
>> It's even been brought up in this NG way in the past: people talk about
>> average pay as if people think that everyone in that cohort gets THAT pay
>> within a small range of values and more often than not, there are quite a
>> few people doing much better as well as much worse. In the roughly extra
>> three decades of additional life experience I have over his, I've run
>> across dozens of parents whose kids got some kind of engineering degree,
>> and spouses of engineering degree recipients, and they just could not find
>> jobs relevant to their degrees. What did they end up doing? They took what
>> they could find.
>>
>> In 3D's field we don't know the graduation rate (supply) and we don't
>
> After their junior year, the graduate rate is nearly 100%, but many are lost
> in the previous two years.
Well, how about some exact numbers? YOU should know this, not say "many"
and you should know it for alternative programs. My recollections are that
the drop out rates are highest for the toughest programs. So, why brag
about "how good ChE is" when a higher fraction of the kids just ain't
gonna make it and all those that lost those two years are goign to have to
add 1-2 more years of time, 1-2 more times annual tuition and costs, to
their ticket?
There are approximately 10 times fewer ChE grads
> at the BS level every year compared to chemists, so the supply is much
> smaller.
Maybe good so that instead of hundreds of applications, they are making
tens of applications.
>> know the job creation rate (accounting for expansion-contraction of
>> departments, retirement-tenure denial rates of existing faculty) and so its
>> hard to come up with a picture of how hard or easy it is to get AND keep a
>> job (unless he can cite or do a study of his own).
>
> I'm going to write papers and grant proposals. You know, the stuff that
> matters to my university.
I thought all of us dedicated guys wanted these jobs for their
intellectual stimulation in our specializations of interest and dedication
and that stuff was what mattered to us? Or, are you just in it for the
money and a nice prestigious cushy desk job?
>> But, the Massy & Goldman study did cover quite a bit of engineering as well
>> as mostly science and they showed PhD overproduction everywhere, but in
>> bio-meds it was double the job creation rate.
>
> Ok, so don't go into bio-med.
I tell everyone this. I'm not the only one. But there are articles in the
papers: don't go into CS, don't go into engineering and I didn't write any
of them.
> No one ever disputed that statement.
>
>> Half of those guys are not going to be making either money or work as it
>> relates to their studies. And, I had references to other articles where
>> that was born out in fact.
>>
>> Then there was that astronomy career paper we discussed to death here about
>> 5-6 years ago; it showed that only 1/3 of astronomy PhDs ever ended up in
>> permanent jobs relating to their major. And, a little over 1/3 eventually
>> totally left astronomy for non science jobs. The rest had nothing but
>> temporary jobs and that is for a world-wide sample population.
>
> Oh yeah, that one. Like the job situation in Astronomy has any relevance to
> ChE or chemistry.
Astronomy is not biomed. It should be a good model for physical science
career longivity in a non-biomed area. And, it turns out that there is a
career half-life attrition, there, too, in academia and non-academic
environments. There was even a reference to physics careers in one of the
books. I wish I could have tracked down the source. Only 7% of kids who
start out in physics (at the beginning) ever get lifetime jobs in physics
in academia. I hardly think chem is any better, although the Massy and
Goldman study indicated that tenure award rates in all the engineering
fields was better.
But, as corporations move all their new growth and hiring overseas, their
hiring here in the states is going to slow down. DuPont closed its
Wilmington labs last year, opened a big 200,000 SF lab in China. I don't
think they will be recruiting in the USA for that lab.
Threeducks
No I don't. This is from my experience watching PhD ChEs apply for
industrial jobs and not academic jobs.
>
>>> What I have not seen in 3D's perceptions is: i) how the growth in
>>> distance learning is going to impact his job,
>>
>>
>> Zero impact.
>
>
> Why?
Because distance learning is crap. Engineering programs have labs,
where you actually do things (hard to do over the internet). We have
specialized software for certain classes that would be cost prohibitive
to license for individual students. Industry is conservative, and likes
to hire from their pet universities. Degree by email is not going to be
accepted readily. Finally, these distance learning programs are not
ABET acreditted, which is a major problem.
>
>>> ii) how the offshoring/H1B
>>> options are going to affect the market for his department's BS students,
>>
>>
>> Little impact. No one in industry is very interested in sponsoring
>> H1B visa.
>
>
> You are not following the lobbying in DC for expansion of all the visas
> and reducing the exclusions. Do you know that H-1Bs are not just for CS
> and IT? They can be used in ANY field, ANY kind of job.
I know. Things are different in the chemical industry.
>
>> I've been seeing this among foreign students over the last 10 years.
>
>
> I was on the H-1B mailing list. The L-1 doesn't have the restrictions.
> More guys coming over here. I cited the BW article on engineers coming
> out of Mexico and GE and another big company was hiring them, in Mexico
> (hundreds of engineering jobs not being filled inside the USA). Intel
> has 1000 Russians on their payroll in Russia. Another 1000 jobs not
> being filled in the USA. Do you think if one of your students, BS or PhD
> applies for a job in a foreign country that they are going to get it?
>
> Maybe not today, but 5-10 years from now if the exchange rate does not
> come into balance, that dive in CS enrollment is going to be followed by
> dives in the engineerings.
CS enrollments were artificially high and went bust. CS was stealing
students who would have gone into other engineering majors, so the boom
and bust for them won't be nearly as pronounced.
>
>>> and iii) any really extensive knowledge of where BS ChEs really end
>>> up and how long they stay and what happens to them afterwards. And,
>>> even in all of this we have the groupings of BS graduates into two
>>> broad categories: a) the A to maybe B+ students (who do get those
>>> $60K jobs) and b) the B minus to C students who are sufficiently
>>> marginal that they might get
>>
>>
>> According to Rob, who is one person who left ChE many years ago. I
>> know you love his posts because they square with your idea of S&E
>> careers being crap.
>
>
> Oh, and you think he is just spining out lies? I don't think so.
I think he is bitter about how things went for him and he is just one
guy with some personal experience. Valid on some level, but not the
absolute truth about ChE. Who knows, maybe in 10 years he'll be back
and say medicine sucks.
>
>>> passed over for jobs relating to engineering and maybe should not have
>>> even graduated in the first place, and who maybe end up with jobs
>>> making notably less than $60K and when you get into that range, then
>>> the question is: was that degree worth the time and money? And, you
>>> read how 3D talked about it: "average pay: $60K" and where was the
>>> _range_ (low to high) mentioned?
>>
>>
>> You never mention a range in your alternative careers.
>
>
> I gave lots and lots of information from real people who told me a lot
> about their job situations. You can always get BLS data and go answer
> advertisments for jobs in the classified sections of newspapers and get
> the same jobs where the boss, the office support, the overhead eats up
> more than half to two thirds of the gross income from the work. I have
> mentioned this a lot of times. A lot.
>
> Why is ChE so
>
>> special?
>
>
> I don't think its special. Rob doesnt think its so special. But you do
> (with your "where can you get a better deal than a BS in ChE" challenge)
No, why do you have special rules for responses about ChE, while you can
say whatever you like.
>
>>> It's even been brought up in this NG way in the past: people talk
>>> about average pay as if people think that everyone in that cohort
>>> gets THAT pay within a small range of values and more often than not,
>>> there are quite a few people doing much better as well as much worse.
>>> In the roughly extra three decades of additional life experience I
>>> have over his, I've run across dozens of parents whose kids got some
>>> kind of engineering degree, and spouses of engineering degree
>>> recipients, and they just could not find jobs relevant to their
>>> degrees. What did they end up doing? They took what they could find.
>>>
>>> In 3D's field we don't know the graduation rate (supply) and we don't
>>
>>
>> After their junior year, the graduate rate is nearly 100%, but many
>> are lost in the previous two years.
>
>
> Well, how about some exact numbers? YOU should know this, not say "many"
> and you should know it for alternative programs.
Really? How many undergraduate classes did you teach? Do you act as
advisor to each student?
The fact is, we (the people who actually collect this data) don't even
know how many students we have in the program until the get to the first
ChE class, which happens at the end of their sophmore year.
Of those students, the washout rate is about 30%.
> My recollections are
> that the drop out rates are highest for the toughest programs. So, why
> brag about "how good ChE is" when a higher fraction of the kids just
> ain't gonna make it and all those that lost those two years are goign to
> have to add 1-2 more years of time, 1-2 more times annual tuition and
> costs, to their ticket?
I really don't see what your problem is. Maybe they should all just go
to a cushy med school and get some good malpratice insurance.
>
> There are approximately 10 times fewer ChE grads
>
>> at the BS level every year compared to chemists, so the supply is much
>> smaller.
>
>
> Maybe good so that instead of hundreds of applications, they are making
> tens of applications.
>
>>> know the job creation rate (accounting for expansion-contraction of
>>> departments, retirement-tenure denial rates of existing faculty) and
>>> so its hard to come up with a picture of how hard or easy it is to
>>> get AND keep a job (unless he can cite or do a study of his own).
>>
>>
>> I'm going to write papers and grant proposals. You know, the stuff
>> that matters to my university.
>
>
> I thought all of us dedicated guys wanted these jobs for their
> intellectual stimulation in our specializations of interest and
> dedication and that stuff was what mattered to us? Or, are you just in
> it for the money and a nice prestigious cushy desk job?
I find writing papers to be quite intersting, thank you. Honestly, I've
had a good time writing my latest grant proposal, too. Yes, it is
intellectually stimulating to write a good proposal. I don't have a
problem doing somethings I don't like in order to guarrantee that I can
continue doing the things I really want to do.
>
>>> But, the Massy & Goldman study did cover quite a bit of engineering
>>> as well as mostly science and they showed PhD overproduction
>>> everywhere, but in bio-meds it was double the job creation rate.
>>
>>
>> Ok, so don't go into bio-med.
>
>
> I tell everyone this. I'm not the only one. But there are articles in
> the papers: don't go into CS, don't go into engineering and I didn't
> write any of them.
Do believe what you want and do what you want. I'm not going to tell
anyone to do something that don't want to do.
>
>> No one ever disputed that statement.
>>
>>> Half of those guys are not going to be making either money or work as
>>> it relates to their studies. And, I had references to other articles
>>> where that was born out in fact.
>>>
>>> Then there was that astronomy career paper we discussed to death here
>>> about 5-6 years ago; it showed that only 1/3 of astronomy PhDs ever
>>> ended up in permanent jobs relating to their major. And, a little
>>> over 1/3 eventually totally left astronomy for non science jobs. The
>>> rest had nothing but temporary jobs and that is for a world-wide
>>> sample population.
>>
>>
>> Oh yeah, that one. Like the job situation in Astronomy has any
>> relevance to ChE or chemistry.
>
>
> Astronomy is not biomed. It should be a good model for physical science
> career longivity in a non-biomed area.
No, it should not. What industry hires Astronomy PhDs? I can't think
of one. There are plenty of industries that hire mechanical engineers,
though.
> And, it turns out that there is a
> career half-life attrition, there, too, in academia and non-academic
> environments. There was even a reference to physics careers in one of
> the books. I wish I could have tracked down the source. Only 7% of kids
> who start out in physics (at the beginning) ever get lifetime jobs in
> physics in academia.
Yes, we all know it's impossible to get a tenure-track physics job.
rrc
> > Wrong again. The biggest market for PhD ChEs is industry.
>
> Care to cite a reference?
Considering the major reduction of DuPont and Kodak's R&D, I'm
wondering how long that's going to last?
> >> What I have not seen in 3D's perceptions is: i) how the growth in distance
> >> learning is going to impact his job,
> >
> > Zero impact.
>
> Why?
The so-called confidence of hand-ons with unit operations labs and
testing out of pilot plant studies. I think Univ of Delaware, your big
neighbor, is heavy into that stuff.
> > Little impact. No one in industry is very interested in sponsoring H1B visa.
>
> You are not following the lobbying in DC for expansion of all the visas
> and reducing the exclusions. Do you know that H-1Bs are not just for CS
> and IT? They can be used in ANY field, ANY kind of job.
It has something to do with "today, I don't see it widely practiced in
my field" but strangely enough, I've met ChemEs on work visas, here in
America, and I'm sure that not all of them have fallen in love and
married an American and afterwards, decide to get a ChemE job to help
with the mortgage payments.
> > According to Rob, who is one person who left ChE many years ago. I know you
> > love his posts because they square with your idea of S&E careers being crap.
>
> Oh, and you think he is just spining out lies? I don't think so.
What about our other comrades: Thomas Bartkus and BMJ? I think they're
just as much in the know about ChemE and Applied Chemistry work.
> Why is ChE so
> > special?
>
> I don't think its special. Rob doesnt think its so special. But you do
> (with your "where can you get a better deal than a BS in ChE" challenge)
Art, the perfect blend of thermodynamics, unit operations, applied
mathematics, and chemistry. How can you not say it's special?
> >> In 3D's field we don't know the graduation rate (supply) and we don't
> >
> > After their junior year, the graduate rate is nearly 100%, but many are lost
> > in the previous two years.
Yeah, because they're almost done with college.
> > I'm going to write papers and grant proposals. You know, the stuff that
> > matters to my university.
>
> I thought all of us dedicated guys wanted these jobs for their
> intellectual stimulation in our specializations of interest and dedication
> and that stuff was what mattered to us? Or, are you just in it for the
> money and a nice prestigious cushy desk job?
Ouch!
> But, as corporations move all their new growth and hiring overseas, their
> hiring here in the states is going to slow down. DuPont closed its
> Wilmington labs last year, opened a big 200,000 SF lab in China. I don't
> think they will be recruiting in the USA for that lab.
So many projects in the US chemical industry are on life support
nowadays.
rrc
3D, on the average, I'd agreed with you here, however, you may want to
take a look...
Straydog
On Thu, 18 May 2006, Threeducks wrote:
> Straydog wrote:
>>
>>
>> On Wed, 17 May 2006, rrc wrote:
>>
>>> Straydog wrote:
>>>
>>>> What fraction of entering college students even get their BS? What
>>>> fraction are in an
>>>> employable S&E? What fraction get the ~A average to get those $60K job
>>>> offers?
>>>
>>>
>>> Art, an ordinary bachelors degree isn't hard to get provided you have
>>> the tuition money. As for engineering, at least 1/2 the class can't
>>> even get through introductory frosh/soph classes at schools like Univ
>>> of Illnois/UC, nevermind complete the upper level coursework to get a
>>> BS ChE. That's where all this controversy comes from, if ~50% isn't
>>> even on the same page as a ChE graduate with a B-/C+ average (and
>>> thereby no interviews in the profession), then this field is definitely
>>> a career ruiner for many aspirants and in higher percentages than
>>> community college grads who opt for a paralegal career.
>>>
>>
>> I'm not surprised at any of this but, why is 3D blowing the horn so hard
>> about how damned good ChE is (i.e. as he said "name a 4 year BS program
>> that is as well paid")
>
> Well, name one then! I'm saying exactly that. If you think ChE sucks, name
> a 4 year BS degree that is better. I'm not saying ChE is great. I'm saying
> "you, Art Sowers give me one example of a better 4 year degree because you
> are telling me ChE stinks."
I never said ChE stinks. You said something like name a better 4 year
degre than ChE. However, I think you can't say that because a lot of
kids won't be able to handle the math if they got in and another lot
already know they can't and will want something easier. So, for a lot of
kids that BS ChE isn't even an option.
I did, in a post a while back, give examples of comparable degrees. One
is nursing. Also, there are specializations in an area with sub
specializations called special education (for learning disabilities and
there are several sub categorizations for these and they, I'm told, are
very well paid and it is because they are mandated by laws in many
school districts and there is a real shortage. I'm told you can almost
write your own ticket). I think that most of the other engineering fields
will also pay close to ChE, but maybe the averages in the surveys will
show somewhat less. Lastly, out of the CS-IT trade periodicals I've been
reading for 6-7 years, I am still seeing claimed starting salaries for
those various US jobs that are still possible to get by US graduates as
being no less than $40sK for tech support and going up to 80-90K for
higher-valued CS jobs. Whether those surveys are really valid and
realistic is a debateable issue, too. I think the real issue is that
many critical details need to be examined including the job, the
individual, the applicant to job ratio, how many ChEs don't get $60K
jobs (or do you think that they all get that salary?), and many others.
Don't tell me about truck drivers, MD programs,
> MBAs, etc. Stick to the standard 4 year degree program. The fact that you
> can't shows you really don't know much of anything about undergraduate
> education (in any field) or in undergraduate students and their job
> prospects.
Here is a quote of where our discussion originated from. Please read it
again.
---------------- beginning of quote------
From a...@panix.com Mon May 15 13:10:02 2006
Date: Mon, 15 May 2006 13:09:59 -0400
From: Straydog <a...@panix.com>
Newsgroups: sci.research.careers
Subject: Re: Outsourcing jeopardizes U.S. chemical industry, expert says
On Mon, 15 May 2006, rrc wrote:
> threeducks wrote:
>>
>> What I was getting at is:
>>
>> 1. Is there currently a better 4 YEAR degree (not advanced degree) than
>> ChE?
What I was getting at is start with the cost (money) and time (4 years)
and how long it will take to pay that off and see what else is out there
that is just as remunerative, safer from layoffs, safer from
age-discrimination, safer from having to move accross the country if you
lose your job, and many more, and you don't have to be an Einstein genius.
-------------------------------end of quote-----
> I'm not "blowing my horn".
I'm sorry but when you ask, as you did above, "Is there currently a better
4 YEAR degree....", you really are implying that its the best.
> I'm asking you to answer a simple question.
You presented what you were "getting at" and I presented what I was
"getting at."
>> when it's not even a feasible program for the majority of kids that go to
>> college. And, he accuses me of a "double standard" and "sellecting
>> subpopulations of data"?
>
> I'm not accusing you of it. You do it all the time. It's a fact.
OK, your not "accusing" me in the first sentence, then in the second
sentence you just say I "...do it all the time." and the third sentenc
says the second sentence is right. So, you take a program (ChE) that VERY
FEW people can or will want to do and hold that up as what everyone should
drool over, but when I point to real and credible cases that I can find
without too much difficulty, you say its a double standard and sellecting
subpopulations. But, its OK for you to pick out something that VERY FEW
can or will want to do and present it as if anyone can get it.
>>
>> And, then, what does he do with the "C" students? I'm still waiting for an
>> answer on that one. Or, would he say "Oh, the guy becomes a great car
>> salesman and makes $60K, therefore I'm right"?
>
> The AVERAGE starting salary for someone with a BS in ChE is $58,000+. It is
> the highest average starting salary of any 4 year degree. As you say, "do
> the math". Some students will earn more, some less, and some the average.
Well, I gave my examples above (and in other posts), both for 4 year
programs and a few jobs that don't even need college but pay as well or
better because I knew what the guys charge for the work, how much time they
put in, and what their costs were. For many, I witnessed the time put in
and I know what I wrote in the checkbook and I can estimate pretty well what
their costs of doing business were. The big secrets are: you are your own
boss, you work out of your home, you market yourself to people who are
more affluent, and you do things that are niche business services.
And, I think Rob has extensively and credibly discussed a lot of decent,
indoor, clean, well-paying jobs that are as good or better careers than
academia from the perspective of certain issues (such as lateral
mobility and demand). Academia is a good place for intellectual
stimulation and persons who want that "ivory tower" ego
boost satisfaction, but, quite frankly, you can get most of that
intellectual stimulation by reading books and journals in or from
libraries, too. I'm doing a lot of this now. And, instead of expressing
myself in publications in peer-reviewed journals, I very much enjoy
playing "diarrhea-of-the-keyboard" right here on SRC. And, I don't have to
worry about some snot getting back to someone on my tenure review commitee
who might think "hey that guy is a bum for that remark, I'm going to give
him 'thumbs down' on tenure" and don't think that stuff doesn't happen.
rrc
>
> light sabres. Besides, Luke Skywalker didn't carry one, so why should any of these
> junior Jedis that the schools are turning out nowadays?
Ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid.
> > I'll defer to you and 3D to "defend" and/or "define" the meaning/purpose
> > of high GPA relationships to the value of a major subject (but, then,
> > when a company hires a guy who just graduated, they don't have anything
> > else to go on but once the guy leaves his first job, I have heard of
> > infinitesimal numbers of cases where grade track records are sought out.)
>
> It took me a while to figure out why certain job ads required transcripts. The
> companies didn't want to mention they were looking for new graduates.
Sometimes they want 2 yrs experience plus transcript so that they know
that the person's been shit on earlier and wouldn't develop delusions
of grandeur at the job like some sheltered kids with a 4.0 GPA/43 MCAT.
> A while back, I looked through the professional register to see what happened to some
> of my undergrad classmates. Many of them were managers, including three corporate
> vice-presidents. Of those who ended up in management, most didn't have high GPAs.
> By comparison, of those whose names I found, several had master's degrees, but
> nobody had a Ph. D.
The problem is that one needs to be in management or face losing one's
"technical" career during a headcount reduction cycle.
> A former colleague of mine used to work for an engineering consulting
> firm and his comment was that most of the projects were low-key
> variations of the same theme and quite dull and boring.
Sounds familiar.
> And, sometimes, would argue whether there was a glass at all and, if
> there was, that it contained water.
A bit like quantum theory.
> I learned about that soon after I had my B. Sc. People were expendible,
> unless one was well-connected with upper management. I never became too
> comfortable at any of my employers after that.
Believe it or not, but a lot of people I knew have been going through
this realization during their thirties. It's part of my reason for
going into medicine; I need a professional association watching my
back.
> While I was teaching, people used to laugh at me for always saving most
> of my money. I've been on my own for the past four years and I'm better
> off now than I was while I was working. Most of my former colleagues,
> however, remain as wage slaves.
I've saved as much as I could before med school because I'd sensed a
career change in the future with 4 years of paying tuition while not
earning a living.
Straydog
Then you don't have a strong, rigorous basis for your claim.
>>
>>>> What I have not seen in 3D's perceptions is: i) how the growth in
>>>> distance learning is going to impact his job,
>>>
>>>
>>> Zero impact.
>>
>>
>> Why?
>
> Because distance learning is crap.
Hate to tell you that offerings are expanding and enrollments are
skyrocketing. The articles say full time, on campus enrollments are flat.
Engineering programs have labs, where you
> actually do things (hard to do over the internet). We have specialized
> software for certain classes that would be cost prohibitive to license for
> individual students. Industry is conservative, and likes to hire from their
> pet universities. Degree by email is not going to be accepted readily.
> Finally, these distance learning programs are not ABET acreditted, which is a
> major problem.
Well, the articles say this is changing, too.
>>
>>>> ii) how the offshoring/H1B
>>>> options are going to affect the market for his department's BS students,
>>>
>>>
>>> Little impact. No one in industry is very interested in sponsoring H1B
>>> visa.
>>
>>
>> You are not following the lobbying in DC for expansion of all the visas and
>> reducing the exclusions. Do you know that H-1Bs are not just for CS and IT?
>> They can be used in ANY field, ANY kind of job.
>
> I know. Things are different in the chemical industry.
Yeah, I heard that one before, too.
>>
>>> I've been seeing this among foreign students over the last 10 years.
>>
>>
>> I was on the H-1B mailing list. The L-1 doesn't have the restrictions. More
>> guys coming over here. I cited the BW article on engineers coming out of
>> Mexico and GE and another big company was hiring them, in Mexico (hundreds
>> of engineering jobs not being filled inside the USA). Intel has 1000
>> Russians on their payroll in Russia. Another 1000 jobs not being filled in
>> the USA. Do you think if one of your students, BS or PhD applies for a job
>> in a foreign country that they are going to get it?
>>
>> Maybe not today, but 5-10 years from now if the exchange rate does not come
>> into balance, that dive in CS enrollment is going to be followed by dives
>> in the engineerings.
>
> CS enrollments were artificially high and went bust.
In the media, they were always talking about shortages even before they
were, as you say, artificially high.
CS was stealing
> students who would have gone into other engineering majors, so the boom and
> bust for them won't be nearly as pronounced.
>
>>
>>>> and iii) any really extensive knowledge of where BS ChEs really end up
>>>> and how long they stay and what happens to them afterwards. And, even in
>>>> all of this we have the groupings of BS graduates into two broad
>>>> categories: a) the A to maybe B+ students (who do get those $60K jobs)
>>>> and b) the B minus to C students who are sufficiently marginal that they
>>>> might get
>>>
>>>
>>> According to Rob, who is one person who left ChE many years ago. I know
>>> you love his posts because they square with your idea of S&E careers being
>>> crap.
>>
>>
>> Oh, and you think he is just spining out lies? I don't think so.
>
> I think he is bitter about how things went for him and he is just one guy
> with some personal experience.
Rob, do you want to comment on this?
Valid on some level, but not the absolute
> truth about ChE. Who knows, maybe in 10 years he'll be back and say medicine
> sucks.
That will be his priviledge, and maybe in 10 years that could happen. Who
knows, maybe some PhD in ChE will get sick and tired of ChE and say it
sucks, too.
>>
>>>> passed over for jobs relating to engineering and maybe should not have
>>>> even graduated in the first place, and who maybe end up with jobs making
>>>> notably less than $60K and when you get into that range, then the
>>>> question is: was that degree worth the time and money? And, you read how
>>>> 3D talked about it: "average pay: $60K" and where was the _range_ (low to
>>>> high) mentioned?
>>>
>>>
>>> You never mention a range in your alternative careers.
>>
>>
>> I gave lots and lots of information from real people who told me a lot
>> about their job situations. You can always get BLS data and go answer
>> advertisments for jobs in the classified sections of newspapers and get the
>> same jobs where the boss, the office support, the overhead eats up more
>> than half to two thirds of the gross income from the work. I have mentioned
>> this a lot of times. A lot.
>>
>> Why is ChE so
>>
>>> special?
>>
>>
>> I don't think its special. Rob doesnt think its so special. But you do
>> (with your "where can you get a better deal than a BS in ChE" challenge)
>
> No, why do you have special rules for responses about ChE, while you can say
> whatever you like.
A few minutes ago I posted with a response to this. Basically, you were
presenting ChE as a plum-paying job, but very few kids will be able to get
it (because they can't handle the math) or want it. So, that is you
"saying what you want" and I presented alternatives and mostly those which
don't even need college but are going to be more available to those who
can't or don't want ChE and they will pay as much. And, I gave a lot of
real examples.
>>
>>>> It's even been brought up in this NG way in the past: people talk about
>>>> average pay as if people think that everyone in that cohort gets THAT pay
>>>> within a small range of values and more often than not, there are quite a
>>>> few people doing much better as well as much worse. In the roughly extra
>>>> three decades of additional life experience I have over his, I've run
>>>> across dozens of parents whose kids got some kind of engineering degree,
>>>> and spouses of engineering degree recipients, and they just could not
>>>> find jobs relevant to their degrees. What did they end up doing? They
>>>> took what they could find.
>>>>
>>>> In 3D's field we don't know the graduation rate (supply) and we don't
>>>
>>>
>>> After their junior year, the graduate rate is nearly 100%, but many are
>>> lost in the previous two years.
>>
>>
>> Well, how about some exact numbers? YOU should know this, not say "many"
>> and you should know it for alternative programs.
>
> Really? How many undergraduate classes did you teach?
About five. Hundreds of students. Including labs. I've told you this
before, too.
But what does this have to do with you getting something better than
"many" drop outs? I remember in my undergraduate days a sophomore course
in organic chemistry that I was in. At the beginning of the course, all of
the 300 seats were filled. At the end, 2/3s were empty. The published
figures for my undergrad days were that half of all new enrollments never
got past the first year. Most of them flunked out, too.
Do you act as advisor
> to each student?
I had office hours, some came for a range of help.
I was the major advisor for one PhD student. For how many PhD students
were you the major advisor?
> The fact is, we (the people who actually collect this data) don't even know
> how many students we have in the program until the get to the first ChE
> class, which happens at the end of their sophmore year.
>
> Of those students, the washout rate is about 30%.
Well, that is one out of three that won't even get near that $60K ChE job.
Now, how many of the ChE grads have C averages and what kind of job offers
do they get?
>> My recollections are that the drop out rates are highest for the toughest
>> programs. So, why brag about "how good ChE is" when a higher fraction of
>> the kids just ain't gonna make it and all those that lost those two years
>> are goign to have to add 1-2 more years of time, 1-2 more times annual
>> tuition and costs, to their ticket?
>
> I really don't see what your problem is. Maybe they should all just go to a
> cushy med school and get some good malpratice insurance.
No, I want you to tell me, since ChE jobs are, as you say, such a nice
average $60K/year nice jobs, out of how many students who "go for" that
actually get it. Above, you say 1/3 wash out. So, they blew their wad.
And, what kind of jobs and pay do the "C" grade ChEs get? Are you going to
tell me they get $60K jobs, too. What are the washouts supposed to do with
their 2 years in and costs to go to school? Switch majors to basket
weaving? Put in another 2 years (6 total). To get a job paying, what, Viet
Nam wages?
>>
>> There are approximately 10 times fewer ChE grads
>>
>>> at the BS level every year compared to chemists, so the supply is much
>>> smaller.
>>
>>
>> Maybe good so that instead of hundreds of applications, they are making
>> tens of applications.
>>
>>>> know the job creation rate (accounting for expansion-contraction of
>>>> departments, retirement-tenure denial rates of existing faculty) and so
>>>> its hard to come up with a picture of how hard or easy it is to get AND
>>>> keep a job (unless he can cite or do a study of his own).
>>>
>>>
>>> I'm going to write papers and grant proposals. You know, the stuff that
>>> matters to my university.
>>
>>
>> I thought all of us dedicated guys wanted these jobs for their intellectual
>> stimulation in our specializations of interest and dedication and that
>> stuff was what mattered to us? Or, are you just in it for the money and a
>> nice prestigious cushy desk job?
>
> I find writing papers to be quite intersting, thank you. Honestly, I've had
> a good time writing my latest grant proposal, too. Yes, it is intellectually
> stimulating to write a good proposal. I don't have a problem doing
> somethings I don't like in order to guarrantee that I can continue doing the
> things I really want to do.
I hope you and your grant and paper writings will all be very happy with
each other for the rest of your life.
>>
>>>> But, the Massy & Goldman study did cover quite a bit of engineering as
>>>> well as mostly science and they showed PhD overproduction everywhere, but
>>>> in bio-meds it was double the job creation rate.
>>>
>>>
>>> Ok, so don't go into bio-med.
>>
>>
>> I tell everyone this. I'm not the only one. But there are articles in the
>> papers: don't go into CS, don't go into engineering and I didn't write any
>> of them.
>
> Do believe what you want and do what you want. I'm not going to tell anyone
> to do something that don't want to do.
Yeah, but it was you that that made a big deal out of the ChE 4 year
degree. Sure sounded like you were holding ChE up as "the" thing.
>>
>>> No one ever disputed that statement.
>>>
>>>> Half of those guys are not going to be making either money or work as it
>>>> relates to their studies. And, I had references to other articles where
>>>> that was born out in fact.
>>>>
>>>> Then there was that astronomy career paper we discussed to death here
>>>> about 5-6 years ago; it showed that only 1/3 of astronomy PhDs ever ended
>>>> up in permanent jobs relating to their major. And, a little over 1/3
>>>> eventually totally left astronomy for non science jobs. The rest had
>>>> nothing but temporary jobs and that is for a world-wide sample
>>>> population.
>>>
>>>
>>> Oh yeah, that one. Like the job situation in Astronomy has any relevance
>>> to ChE or chemistry.
>>
>>
>> Astronomy is not biomed. It should be a good model for physical science
>> career longivity in a non-biomed area.
>
> No, it should not. What industry hires Astronomy PhDs?
I can imagine jobs being offered to astronomers in space sub-contractors,
telescope optics support, private weather agencies that would need optical
telescope expertise (one project was measurement of air polution via
measuring star brightness, another for radio propagation studies based on
meteor scattering, give me more time and I'll think of more), and if you
pick up any of several magazines devoted to astronomy (eg. Sky and
Telescope), I'm going to bet some money that a fair number of the people
connected with those magazines, the advertisers, freelance authors of
astronomy books, the manufacturers will have astronomy/astrophysics PhDs.
I can't think of
> one. There are plenty of industries that hire mechanical engineers, though.
>
>> And, it turns out that there is a career half-life attrition, there, too,
>> in academia and non-academic environments. There was even a reference to
>> physics careers in one of the books. I wish I could have tracked down the
>> source. Only 7% of kids who start out in physics (at the beginning) ever
>> get lifetime jobs in physics in academia.
>
> Yes, we all know it's impossible to get a tenure-track physics job.
Not true. I said 7%. That is not "impossible."
>> I hardly think chem is any better, although the Massy and Goldman study
>> indicated that tenure award rates in all the engineering fields was better.
>>
>> But, as corporations move all their new growth and hiring overseas, their
>> hiring here in the states is going to slow down. DuPont closed its
>> Wilmington labs last year, opened a big 200,000 SF lab in China. I don't
>> think they will be recruiting in the USA for that lab.
>>
>>
>>
>
I guess you had no coment about the DuPont lab opening in China and the
DuPont lab in the USA closing.
Straydog
On Thu, 18 May 2006, rrc wrote:
> Straydog wrote:
>>> Wrong again. The biggest market for PhD ChEs is industry.
>>
>> Care to cite a reference?
>
> Considering the major reduction of DuPont and Kodak's R&D, I'm
> wondering how long that's going to last?
I think its a serious long range danger. We're a post industrial economy
and I saw a graph about the very rapid decrease in manufacturing in the
USA in the last five years. All of our big corporations that used to have
400,000-500,000 employees 10-20 years ago are down to 100,000 or less.
They are all turning into "import agencies." Corporate offices in the USA,
while somewhere else has: billing, factories, support, R&D, everything
except the ships, airplanes, and trucks (hint, hint).
>>>> What I have not seen in 3D's perceptions is: i) how the growth in distance
>>>> learning is going to impact his job,
>>>
>>> Zero impact.
>>
>> Why?
>
> The so-called confidence of hand-ons with unit operations labs and
> testing out of pilot plant studies. I think Univ of Delaware, your big
> neighbor, is heavy into that stuff.
Well, they are going to have Indians operating the knobs and
monitoring the dials by internet linked video anyway. So, that goes poof,
too.
>>> Little impact. No one in industry is very interested in sponsoring H1B visa.
>>
>> You are not following the lobbying in DC for expansion of all the visas
>> and reducing the exclusions. Do you know that H-1Bs are not just for CS
>> and IT? They can be used in ANY field, ANY kind of job.
>
> It has something to do with "today, I don't see it widely practiced in
> my field" but strangely enough, I've met ChemEs on work visas, here in
> America, and I'm sure that not all of them have fallen in love and
> married an American and afterwards, decide to get a ChemE job to help
> with the mortgage payments.
Yeah, and I know some Russians who are still here, too.
>>> According to Rob, who is one person who left ChE many years ago. I know you
>>> love his posts because they square with your idea of S&E careers being crap.
>>
>> Oh, and you think he is just spining out lies? I don't think so.
>
> What about our other comrades: Thomas Bartkus and BMJ? I think they're
> just as much in the know about ChemE and Applied Chemistry work.
Oh, maybe its because I am the biggest loudmouth on the NG. So, I get to
be the lightning rod, too.
>> Why is ChE so
>>> special?
>>
>> I don't think its special. Rob doesnt think its so special. But you do
>> (with your "where can you get a better deal than a BS in ChE" challenge)
>
> Art, the perfect blend of thermodynamics, unit operations, applied
> mathematics, and chemistry. How can you not say it's special?
Example two word response: "Paris Hilton"
(sorry, I couldn't resist a smart-ass comeback) ;-)
>>>> In 3D's field we don't know the graduation rate (supply) and we don't
>>>
>>> After their junior year, the graduate rate is nearly 100%, but many are lost
>>> in the previous two years.
>
> Yeah, because they're almost done with college.
Hah.
>>> I'm going to write papers and grant proposals. You know, the stuff that
>>> matters to my university.
>>
>> I thought all of us dedicated guys wanted these jobs for their
>> intellectual stimulation in our specializations of interest and dedication
>> and that stuff was what mattered to us? Or, are you just in it for the
>> money and a nice prestigious cushy desk job?
>
> Ouch!
I was talking about 3D, not you.
>> But, as corporations move all their new growth and hiring overseas, their
>> hiring here in the states is going to slow down. DuPont closed its
>> Wilmington labs last year, opened a big 200,000 SF lab in China. I don't
>> think they will be recruiting in the USA for that lab.
>
> So many projects in the US chemical industry are on life support
> nowadays.
I've got this really great book on my desk:
"Science and Corporate Strategy - DuPont R&D 1902-1980" by Hounshell and
Smith. Massive. 20 pages of refernces. DuPont had some more than a dozen
labs. Bunch in NJ in different locations, and a bunch in Wilmington. Some
sites, from aerial photos, looked like college campuses. Book has graphs,
names, tables, history, everything. Gives dates where smaller labs were
closed, and consolidation at the bigger installations. I picked it up at a
book sale for a buck. c 1988 or 89. Not the last 15 years, but it went
into a lot of manangement & politics. They had many thousands of employees,
large number of patents and publications, and lots of
PhDs (including ChEs). I should quote the blurb. Its an impressive story
of the rise and decline of DuPont. For the last 15 years, there were
several WSJ articles on major reorganizations and downsizings of US labs
and establishment of R&D in India and everywhere else. Kinda sorry I didn't
save these, but almost nobody around here (src) gives a crap. Seems like
its not at all on 3D's radar screen.
The short version is we are the victim of two things: the exchange rates
and the technology to move work to places where the exchange rates allow a
USD to buy a ton of chickenfeed.
BMJ
> BMJ wrote:
>
>>light sabres. Besides, Luke Skywalker didn't carry one, so why should any of these
>>junior Jedis that the schools are turning out nowadays?
>
>
> Ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid.
But a sword doesn't need batteries and a spear doesn't have to be
rebooted. ;-)
<snip>
>>It took me a while to figure out why certain job ads required transcripts. The
>>companies didn't want to mention they were looking for new graduates.
>
>
> Sometimes they want 2 yrs experience plus transcript so that they know
> that the person's been shit on earlier and wouldn't develop delusions
> of grandeur at the job like some sheltered kids with a 4.0 GPA/43 MCAT.
I remember, during my senior undergrad year, some of my classmates said
that many companies didn't want to hire people with high GPAs. I guess
those firms figured that they'd get bored and leave.
I actually got a rejection letter that said that I wasn't going to be
hired because I had a master's degree, citing that very same reason.
>
>
>>A while back, I looked through the professional register to see what happened to some
>>of my undergrad classmates. Many of them were managers, including three corporate
>>vice-presidents. Of those who ended up in management, most didn't have high GPAs.
>>By comparison, of those whose names I found, several had master's degrees, but
>>nobody had a Ph. D.
>
>
> The problem is that one needs to be in management or face losing one's
> "technical" career during a headcount reduction cycle.
True, but the technical capabilities of many engineers who became
managers are diminished as one progresses through the management hierarchy.
<snip>
>>I learned about that soon after I had my B. Sc. People were expendible,
>>unless one was well-connected with upper management. I never became too
>>comfortable at any of my employers after that.
>
>
> Believe it or not, but a lot of people I knew have been going through
> this realization during their thirties. It's part of my reason for
> going into medicine; I need a professional association watching my
> back.
My professional association hasn't done much to help me either get a job
or keep one.
<snip>
BMJ
<snip>
>>
>>
>> What about our other comrades: Thomas Bartkus and BMJ? I think they're
>> just as much in the know about ChemE and Applied Chemistry work.
>
>
> Oh, maybe its because I am the biggest loudmouth on the NG. So, I get to
> be the lightning rod, too.
I've been keeping a low profile lately.
Straydog
On Thu, 18 May 2006, rrc wrote:
> :Because distance learning is crap. Engineering programs have labs
>
> 3D, on the average, I'd agreed with you here, however, you may want to
> take a look...
>
> http://www.cvn.columbia.edu/b/degrees/chemems.htm
Yep, the Columbia Video Network and farther down it says kids can complete
an MS "from anywhere in the world"
> http://www.epp.jhu.edu/catalog/chem.html
>
Yep, I had to look around a little, but they did have a link to "online
courses"
But, 3D isn't worried, right? But, I've been reading WSJ articles since
1982 and noticed a very big interest and expansion in online degrees in
the last 4-5 years.
I also see more big degree gluts in the future, too.
rrc
> > http://www.cvn.columbia.edu/b/degrees/chemems.htm
>
> Yep, the Columbia Video Network and farther down it says kids can complete
> an MS "from anywhere in the world"
Believe it or not, despite Columbia's cachet as Langmuir's home (one of
the founding fathers of Applied Chemistry) and the Ivy by the Hudson,
I'm more concerned about the following programs...
http://www.cvn.columbia.edu/b/degrees/emsms.html
http://www.cvn.columbia.edu/b/degrees/mfms.htm
The above are OR/finance, Columbia's finest offerings... the keys to
the kingdom. Folks who work with JPM, Citicorp, and hedge funds in
NYC/CT have had these offerings at Columbia, Wharton, or MIT during
their time in school. Now, they're open to the world. How long before
the rest of the globe catches up with America, even in financial
engineering?
> > http://www.epp.jhu.edu/catalog/chem.html
> >
>
> Yep, I had to look around a little, but they did have a link to "online
> courses"
Yes, and according to JHU, they want to expand it since a lot of people
don't want to commute to one of the satelite campuses. What a way to
make the university model obsolete.
Straydog
On Fri, 19 May 2006, rrc wrote:
> Straydog wrote:
>>> http://www.cvn.columbia.edu/b/degrees/chemems.htm
>>
>> Yep, the Columbia Video Network and farther down it says kids can complete
>> an MS "from anywhere in the world"
>
> Believe it or not, despite Columbia's cachet as Langmuir's home (one of
> the founding fathers of Applied Chemistry) and the Ivy by the Hudson,
> I'm more concerned about the following programs...
>
> http://www.cvn.columbia.edu/b/degrees/emsms.html
> http://www.cvn.columbia.edu/b/degrees/mfms.htm
>
> The above are OR/finance, Columbia's finest offerings... the keys to
> the kingdom. Folks who work with JPM, Citicorp, and hedge funds in
> NYC/CT have had these offerings at Columbia, Wharton, or MIT during
> their time in school. Now, they're open to the world. How long before
> the rest of the globe catches up with America, even in financial
> engineering?
All this fancy-dancing stuff...they're already getting into it in India,
China, Singapore, you name it.
>>> http://www.epp.jhu.edu/catalog/chem.html
>>>
>>
>> Yep, I had to look around a little, but they did have a link to "online
>> courses"
>
> Yes, and according to JHU, they want to expand it since a lot of people
> don't want to commute to one of the satelite campuses. What a way to
> make the university model obsolete.
Yep. And, they can terminate a whole department of tenured professors and
they don't have a leg to stand on.
All through the 1950s-60s Botany departments across the USA were being
terminated (all profs flushed) and they changed the name of Zoo
departments to Biology departments in the name of "helping" faculty get
NIH grants. 3D who says all his friends have 9 month guaranteed tenure
salary don't know that I had extensive discussions with three departments
at Univ Delaware back when (physics, chemistry, biology integrative) they
were recruiting for a new chair and I got 45-60 minutes of the perspectives
on this from each chair in each department and they had to get grants to
get tenure and only in the old bio dept were most faculty without grants
and the dean wanted to change this. So, the pressure is ON in a lot of non
medicalschool non HSC campuses too. They were prepared to offer the right
guy his own 10 million dollar building. All this is being done in the name
of money.
rrc
> On Fri, 19 May 2006, rrc wrote:
> > The above are OR/finance, Columbia's finest offerings... the keys to the kingdom.
> > Folks who work with JPM, Citicorp, and hedge funds in NYC/CT have had these
> > offerings at Columbia, Wharton, or MIT during their time in school. Now, they're open
> > to the world. How long before the rest of the globe catches up with America, even in
> > financial engineering?
>
> All this fancy-dancing stuff...they're already getting into it in India, China, Singapore, you name it.
Ah... but this is what you're missing, in the recent past, the buzz in
places like Singapore was that you need to discuss asset pricing and
hedging strategies with such and such between Uris and Broadway bldgs.
There was an incentive to hop on a plane to NYC and hang with the big
players and their scholars at Morningside Heights or their downtown
rivals at NYU/Courant. Now, that notion of exclusivity in financial
wisdom is going out the window. Once there's no perceived reason for
being at America's name schools, it'll only be a country club for high
net worth internationals traveling to the US for vacation. Regular S&E
stuff is already going into the toilet, what'll happen when America is
no longer known for finance?
> > Yes, and according to JHU, they want to expand it since a lot of people
> > don't want to commute to one of the satelite campuses. What a way to
> > make the university model obsolete.
>
> Yep. And, they can terminate a whole department of tenured professors and
> they don't have a leg to stand on.
You're a seer.
> I had extensive discussions with three departments at Univ Delaware back when
> (physics, chemistry, biology integrative) they were recruiting for a new chair and I got
> 45-60 minutes of the perspectives on this from each chair in each department and they
> had to get grants to get tenure and only in the old bio dept were most faculty without
> grants and the dean wanted to change this.
Now that DuPont's scaling back across the board, what's the future of
Univ Delaware's crown jewel, chemical engineering? Does it have a
future or will it be the academic version of the rust belt?
Because unlike the Wharton campus, rich people don't hang out and
socialize around PhD engineering programs. BTW, FYI, there are plenty
of Trump and Milken sightings at Wharton.
rrc
> personal experience.
:Rob, do you want to comment on this?
One man standing up for the voices of many.
> Because distance learning is crap.
:Hate to tell you that offerings are expanding and enrollments are
skyrocketing. The articles say full time, on campus enrollments are
flat.
Ever noticed how this thread got awfully silent after our quid pro quo
on distance learning?
S. 'Trash' Ny Fui
rrc wrote:
> I've met ChemEs on work visas, here in
> America, and I'm sure that not all of them have fallen in love and
> married an American and afterwards, decide to get a ChemE job to help
> with the mortgage payments.
What a fallacy. I heard about this attitudes among Americans many
times: if one high-paying industry closes, an American goes to
university or community college or to a training course and retrains
into a new occupation, and starts raking money again. Anyway, this is
the mentality there. I have never fallen for such a mentality. I never
went to retrain for another occupation even if I could not find any job
in the current occupation.
The reason is that it takes years to achieve the stage when you can
"pull your weight" as a professional, and even more years to become
productive. Why the employer should hire me when I am less then
productive ? Well, the social-industrial system is built in such a way
that it accommodates almost all of the society memebrs only if a tiny
fraction of them is productive. I would say more than a half of all
jobs are "non-jobs" in a sense that they are not productive, but the
employer still pays a full-weight salary (e.g. paper-shuffling clerk,
or woman "engineer" in the electronics lab). If it was othervise, the
society would uproar. So, the "retrained" individuals go for this
category of jobs, the "necessary social evil" from the point of view of
an employer. However, there is a problem for me about this kind of
jobs. When there is a crisis in economy, people in this kind of jobs
are the first to be laid off. And it is hard to find a job afterwards.
You get a new job on the strength of your "schmoozing", and not on the
strength of your work skills and competency. (By the way, here is why
there is a shout among recruiters that "schmoozing" and "networking" is
essential for one to get a job; it is aimed at such personalities who
are most of the workforce, I am afraid.) But I am not good at
"schmoozing". Here is why I go the slow and painful way of establishing
and collecting the bits of my professional expertise (which are still
desired by some employers).
\/
rrc
> rrc wrote:
> > I've met ChemEs on work visas, here in America, and I'm sure that not all of them have
> >fallen in love and married an American and afterwards, decide to get a ChemE job to
> >help with the mortgage payments.
>
> What a fallacy. I heard about this attitudes among Americans many times: if one
> high-paying industry closes, an American goes to university or community college or to a
> training course and retrains into a new occupation, and starts raking money again.
> Anyway, this is the mentality there. I have never fallen for such a mentality. I never went
> to retrain for another occupation even if I could not find any job in the current occupation.
What are you talking about? I was referring to 3D's remarks that there
are negligible work visas granted for chemical engineers here in the
US. That's a downright misrepresentation, work visas are granted in all
tech arenas with the majority in the IT sector. My example was tongue
'n cheek on the notion that the ChemEs here were all on marriage visas
rather than work visas.
And the reason why re-training doesn't work for tech careers is
basically age discrimination. Medicine is one of the few "tech" related
areas where being over 40 can actually be an asset whereas if you're a
re-training engineer, forget it. Over 40 engineers are suppose to be in
management or self-employed contractors with a bevy of experiences.
The ChemE field too, hire principally new graduates at ~$60K and
dispose of them 5 to 7 years later for another generation and they tend
to grant experience based work visas to those who've worked at Sasol or
BP before coming to America if they weren't students here originally.
Straydog
Its funny. Today I was at a used book sale and found, believe it or not, a
_catalog_ from a distance learning institution. They even showed a
"cronological" development of their institution including a vast expansion
in the last five years. I snooped at the ToC and found 2-3 Phd programs
and 4-5 masters. All business-related. I would have had to pay 50 cents to
buy it and decided to pass it up. But, I think anyone who wants to can
google on that term. The only question is how much time will go by before
they have 20-30 BS degrees, many more MS degrees, and more PhD degrees and
all manner of options (sub-contractors?) for getting in lab experience.
Also, there was on one of the pages a bunch of stuff on their
accreditation.
Where will graduates end up? I'll leave it for guys like 3D to do a study
and try to find out. I do know that some of the 2 year programs do a
better job tracking their placements than the fancy-schmanzy big campuses.
But, the really big question is what will the US economy look like when
lots of service jobs--including those traditionally high paying--move
offshore, too.
One more thing: just a couple of days ago WSJ had a front page article on
Delphi-GM employees and althouth we all know they are going down the
tubes, they profiled one woman who was a college graduate doing some kind
of die-template work and knocking down $76,000 per year. I'm sure that all
of these jobs are going by the wayside (and if you want to make money,
then you have to get into a CEO career path or lawyer or other economies
of scale exploitation) in the future. All because of the exchange rates.
If it were not for that, job-careers would be stable for many decades.
rrc
>
> The only question is how much time will go by before they have 20-30 BS degrees,
> many more MS degrees, and more PhD degrees and all manner of options
> (sub-contractors?) for getting in lab experience.
Art, that Johns Hopkins part-time/half-distance learning BS program was
only halted because of a lack of interest. Can you imagine? When I was
a kid, a slew of students would have tried for it with a chance of
getting some bioengineering experience to apply for MD or MS-to-PhD in
engineering sciences in the future. It would have been a very popular
choice for my old peers, whereas today, no one sees any value in it.
My... how the world has changed.
The part-time/half-distance MS programs, on the other hand, being
shorter and more geared towards the work world types, either here or
abroad, are expanding their offerings.
> Where will graduates end up? I'll leave it for guys like 3D to do a study
> and try to find out. I do know that some of the 2 year programs do a
> better job tracking their placements than the fancy-schmanzy big campuses.
>
> But, the really big question is what will the US economy look like when
> lots of service jobs--including those traditionally high paying--move
> offshore, too.
The problem is that the US is no longer being seen as a place to even
pick up a degree, nevermind look for a career.
Here's the Univ of Chicago, Singapore Campus executive MBA program.
http://gsb.uchicago.edu/execmba/execlife/singapore/index.aspx
I have a hard time juxtaposing the Univ of Chicago namesake with a
place on the other of the globe from Hyde Park. Nonetheless, it does
imply that "exalted" American campuses don't matter as much as simply
having a brand name for a school.
Now, fast forward twenty years with this business model: Univ of
Chicago-Singapore, Univ of London-Shanghai, Cornell-Taipei, Penn-Delhi,
so where's America's higher education business going other than being
clearinghouses for non-American programs?
Straydog
On Sat, 20 May 2006, rrc wrote:
Maybe this is the other piece of the puzzle. After all, many campuses are
working their butts off trying to rapidly and greatly expand their
endowments (the nest egg to keep the higher-ups employed if the bread and
butter [i.e. the student enrolment] ever drops off). Both my wife and I
have been getting tons of solicitations from our alma matters to donate to
their endowments, and even to departments!
Say, aren't you pretty close to finishing your MD, now?
Threeducks
Funny. My father retired a few years ago after 30 years with the same
company, but is now being hired back in as a contractor and also has as
much consulting work lined up as he feels like doing. Chemical
companies are still investing big dollars, $50-$100 million for the
projects I'm familar with, in the US.
Threeducks
Masters programs are the new cash cow and they can get away with
distance learning or whatever they feel like calling it because MS
programs don't have to satisfy ABET.
Threeducks
No, I'm not worried. My particular college has been very pro distance
learning, e-learning, or whatever you want to call it. It has been a
large expenditure of cash for technology for very little return in
tuition dollars. I consider it to be a huge boondogle.
My experience is that most students like having some kind of personal
interaction with a real professor who actually cares if they learn the
material or not. I may be biased, because I am only talking to the kids
that take my classes, but that's the data I have to work with.
Furthermore, there is a massive infrastructure of traditional colleges.
No one is going to do anything to disrupt that system, which also
employs a large number of non-academics as staff.
Threeducks
Obviously one has to get grants to get tenure. But if you really start
digging on the tenured faculty in various engineering departments, you
will see there are always a few in each department that are no longer
"research active". They teach classes, maybe mentor some undergraduate
research projects, and still get their full 9 month salary. That's just
the way it is in engineering. You get a 9 month guaranteed salary.
Threeducks
If you're referring to me, I have other things to do besides s.r.c.,
like spend time with my family.
Threeducks
> Straydog wrote:
>
>>The only question is how much time will go by before they have 20-30 BS degrees,
>>many more MS degrees, and more PhD degrees and all manner of options
>>(sub-contractors?) for getting in lab experience.
>
>
> Art, that Johns Hopkins part-time/half-distance learning BS program was
> only halted because of a lack of interest.
Exactly why I'm not worried about distance learning. Students like the
standard stuff. They don't want to be the guy the university uses for
some educational experiment.
> Can you imagine? When I was
> a kid, a slew of students would have tried for it with a chance of
> getting some bioengineering experience to apply for MD or MS-to-PhD in
> engineering sciences in the future. It would have been a very popular
> choice for my old peers, whereas today, no one sees any value in it.
> My... how the world has changed.
>
> The part-time/half-distance MS programs, on the other hand, being
> shorter and more geared towards the work world types, either here or
> abroad, are expanding their offerings.
It's all for the money. People at work think they can move up the
ladder or get a better job with more education. I think that this is in
general a mistaken notion. Maybe they can get their employer to pay for
it. Either way, they can probably get some time off on the job to beam
in a class a couple days a week. University gets their tuition dollars
for essentially playing video tapes once the course has been built.
Student gets rubber stamp MS degree of questionable value.
In case you haven't figured it out yet, I'm totally against this type of
thing because I thing it's about as close to educational fraud as you
can get.
Threeducks
> S. 'Trash' Ny Fui wrote:
>
>>rrc wrote:
>>
>>> I've met ChemEs on work visas, here in America, and I'm sure that not all of them have
>>>fallen in love and married an American and afterwards, decide to get a ChemE job to
>>>help with the mortgage payments.
>>
>>What a fallacy. I heard about this attitudes among Americans many times: if one
>>high-paying industry closes, an American goes to university or community college or to a
>>training course and retrains into a new occupation, and starts raking money again.
>>Anyway, this is the mentality there. I have never fallen for such a mentality. I never went
>>to retrain for another occupation even if I could not find any job in the current occupation.
>
>
> What are you talking about? I was referring to 3D's remarks that there
> are negligible work visas granted for chemical engineers here in the
> US. That's a downright misrepresentation, work visas are granted in all
> tech arenas with the majority in the IT sector. My example was tongue
> 'n cheek on the notion that the ChemEs here were all on marriage visas
> rather than work visas.
>
a decade, watching foreign PhD graduates have door after door slammed in
their face because they were not US citizens. These were really top
people in their field, too. I'm sure some work visas are sponsored by
companies working in chemicals, but not many and certainly not on the
level as in CS or IT.
rrc
The problem is that the schools are too expensive to run, international
students aren't coming in droves anymore, and I believe even the upper
middle class Americans are becoming more prudent in their choices. The
end result is that these places need to really shoot for the moon to
make money as global institutes. A concern is that much of what they're
known for is the American branding of higher education. Once that
perception fades to black, well, who knows how valuable a degree from
Univ of Chicago (but not in either Chicago or the continental USA) will
be against Beijing University, the Ivy school of mainland China.
> Say, aren't you pretty close to finishing your MD, now?
Pretty much, was going to start my PGY1 in IM just to keep my horizons
open. There's no need to worry about specializing until the second
year. The good thing is that I don't owe any money so it's just
expenses and the first year salaries are pretty ok for a person with no
obligations. I might possibly get dual licensing thus keeping the
generalist path open because I think that area won't disappear in
either the US or Canada. Also, I'm not planning on going into
dermatology which is right now the most difficult specialty to get
into. It's a far cry from the S&E world where nearly 100% of aspirants
would skirm at the thought of a "lowly" physician handling lesions and
pimples as a career. The difference is that doctors are more practical
than S&Es so the high honors (AOA in medicine/ 240 USMLE boards) types
tend to go into it for the lifestyle and pay. I guess as a former S&E,
I don't really have high aspirations for this career other than making
a living into old age.
rrc
> rrc wrote:
> > Art, that Johns Hopkins part-time/half-distance learning BS program was
> > only halted because of a lack of interest.
>
> Exactly why I'm not worried about distance learning. Students like the
> standard stuff. They don't want to be the guy the university uses for
> some educational experiment.
Well, when I was a kid, there were some bright co-op oriented students
who'd attended UMD or Drexel, in place of JHU because it had suited
their need for getting meaningful experiences (other than the typical
summer stint at Brookhaven, APL, or Kodak) during college and they were
looking for exactly the type of program I was alluding to. If this half
distance/half local offerings at JHU where available to them, they
would have taken it over a regular full time program sans perhaps MIT
since one can work in Kendall Sq while studying at MIT. I think they
are fewer kids like that nowadays.
> > The part-time/half-distance MS programs, on the other hand, being
> > shorter and more geared towards the work world types, either here or
> > abroad, are expanding their offerings.
>
> It's all for the money. People at work think they can move up the
> ladder or get a better job with more education. I think that this is in
> general a mistaken notion.
During the 90s, I'd met a few at Unilever, Merck, and Lucent doing this
program at Columbia and occasionally, they'd even show up on campus.
Apparently, it's no different from the on-campus offerings. They were
pleased.
I suspect that some finance types are doing OR via distance learning
from Citicorp and the CT hedge funds though many of them simply go for
the executive MBA and skip the hard stuff altogether once they're
gainfully employed.
Straydog
On Sat, 20 May 2006, rrc wrote:
> Straydog wrote:
>> On Sat, 20 May 2006, rrc wrote:
>>>
>>> Now, fast forward twenty years with this business model: Univ of Chicago-Singapore,
>>> Univ of London-Shanghai, Cornell-Taipei, Penn-Delhi, so where's America's higher
>>> education business going other than being clearinghouses for non-American programs?
>
>> Maybe this is the other piece of the puzzle. After all, many campuses are working their
>> butts off trying to rapidly and greatly expand their endowments (the nest egg to keep the
>> higher-ups employed if the bread and butter [i.e. the student enrolment] ever drops off).
>> Both my wife and I have been getting tons of solicitations from our alma matters to donate
>> to their endowments, and even to departments!
>
> The problem is that the schools are too expensive to run, international
> students aren't coming in droves anymore, and I believe even the upper
> middle class Americans are becoming more prudent in their choices.
Well, I'd have to see some numbers on all of that.
The
> end result is that these places need to really shoot for the moon to
> make money as global institutes. A concern is that much of what they're
> known for is the American branding of higher education. Once that
> perception fades to black, well, who knows how valuable a degree from
> Univ of Chicago (but not in either Chicago or the continental USA) will
> be against Beijing University, the Ivy school of mainland China.
Where I see the problem is that most of the newspaper articles are talking
about the schools raising tuitions at greater than inflation rates.
>> Say, aren't you pretty close to finishing your MD, now?
>
> Pretty much, was going to start my PGY1 in IM just to keep my horizons
> open. There's no need to worry about specializing until the second
> year. The good thing is that I don't owe any money so it's just
> expenses and the first year salaries are pretty ok for a person with no
> obligations.
Good for you!
I might possibly get dual licensing thus keeping the
> generalist path open because I think that area won't disappear in
> either the US or Canada. Also, I'm not planning on going into
> dermatology which is right now the most difficult specialty to get
> into.
Why is that?
It's a far cry from the S&E world where nearly 100% of aspirants
> would skirm at the thought of a "lowly" physician handling lesions and
> pimples as a career.
So why is dermatology such a big deal?
The difference is that doctors are more practical
> than S&Es so the high honors (AOA in medicine/ 240 USMLE boards) types
> tend to go into it for the lifestyle and pay. I guess as a former S&E,
> I don't really have high aspirations for this career other than making
> a living into old age.
Seems like you should stay with something like family medicine.
>
Straydog
On Sat, 20 May 2006, Threeducks wrote:
> rrc wrote:
>> Straydog wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> So many projects in the US chemical industry are on life support
>> nowadays.
>>
>
> Funny. My father retired a few years ago after 30 years with the same
> company, but is now being hired back in as a contractor and also has as much
> consulting work lined up as he feels like doing. Chemical companies are
> still investing big dollars, $50-$100 million for the projects I'm familar
> with, in the US.
It would be nice to have references to both more than your father's
example AND references to how solidly resistant ChE is to offshoring and
availability to those coming on NI visas. From the H-1B mailing list, and
references to job categories, no job title or function has zero
representation with visa holders.
Straydog
On Sat, 20 May 2006, Threeducks wrote:
> rrc wrote:
>> :Because distance learning is crap. Engineering programs have labs
>>
>> 3D, on the average, I'd agreed with you here, however, you may want to
>> take a look...
>>
>> http://www.cvn.columbia.edu/b/degrees/chemems.htm
>>
>> http://www.epp.jhu.edu/catalog/chem.html
>>
>
> Masters programs are the new cash cow
So is law. Don't need labs or lab space.
and they can get away with distance
> learning or whatever they feel like calling it because MS programs don't have
> to satisfy ABET.
The distance learning catalog I saw yesterday said all their programs
(both MS and PhD) were accredited.
Straydog
On Sat, 20 May 2006, Threeducks wrote:
> Straydog wrote:
>>
>>
>> On Thu, 18 May 2006, rrc wrote:
>>
>>> :Because distance learning is crap. Engineering programs have labs
>>>
>>> 3D, on the average, I'd agreed with you here, however, you may want to
>>> take a look...
>>>
>>> http://www.cvn.columbia.edu/b/degrees/chemems.htm
>>
>>
>> Yep, the Columbia Video Network and farther down it says kids can complete
>> an MS "from anywhere in the world"
>>
>>> http://www.epp.jhu.edu/catalog/chem.html
>>>
>>
>> Yep, I had to look around a little, but they did have a link to "online
>> courses"
>>
>> But, 3D isn't worried, right? But, I've been reading WSJ articles since
>> 1982 and noticed a very big interest and expansion in online degrees in the
>> last 4-5 years.
>>
>> I also see more big degree gluts in the future, too.
>
> No, I'm not worried. My particular college has been very pro distance
> learning, e-learning, or whatever you want to call it. It has been a large
> expenditure of cash for technology for very little return in tuition dollars.
> I consider it to be a huge boondogle.
Most of the programs are 5 or fewer years old. Give them time. Most of the
programs are, in fact, expanding (read the newspapers).
> My experience is that most students like having some kind of personal
> interaction with a real professor who actually cares if they learn the
> material or not.
And, if they can afford less, have day jobs that they can't quit.....
I may be biased, because I am only talking to the kids that
> take my classes, but that's the data I have to work with.
Broaden your horizons.
> Furthermore, there is a massive infrastructure of traditional colleges. No
> one is going to do anything to disrupt that system, which also employs a
> large number of non-academics as staff.
Better pay attention to all the non-traditional things most of the big
ones are getting into.
Straydog
On Sat, 20 May 2006, Threeducks wrote:
Better read the fine print in your tenure contract. I've heard of a lot of
departments that were terminated. Poof goes the tenure.
Straydog
I don't like it either, but its going to be part of the future.
Straydog
On Sat, 20 May 2006, Threeducks wrote:
I've heard of few jobs going to foreigners with PhDs. Rather, the jobs are
going to the H-1Bs, L-1s, with BS degrees.
rrc
> It would be nice to have references to both more than your father's example AND
> references to how solidly resistant ChE is to offshoring and availability to those coming on
> NI visas. From the H-1B mailing list, and references to job categories, no job title or
> function has zero representation with visa holders.
Art, ChemE's a production/manufacturing related discipline so much of
it has already being offsourced, just look at your neighbor Uncle
Duppie. Between now and the next decade, a good percent of it won't be
on American shores. It'll mainly be the energy industry that'll keep
the field going locally.
Also, biotech doesn't really need ChemEs for its pilot plant work
because that industry has simple heuristics which have been work on by
biologists, chemists, biochemists, etc throughout the 80s and 90s. The
traditional chemical engineering discipline has little to do with what
biotech does and regardless of 3D's ascertain that the major is
changing, the chiefs of biopharma really don't care. I can't believe he
doesn't know who makes the development rules and protocols in this
industry, senior cell biologists and molecular biochemists. I've known
ChemEs in tablet making, bioreactors, and purification streams. The
problem is that they're not alone, they work in similar capacities as
other biosciences professionals. So how are they suppose to accrue
power when their job isn't on that much of a higher level than a
technician but with a higher than average math background? Truth be
told, ChemEs aren't all that special in biotech and neither are IT
professionals for that particular industry.
Where ChemEs have an edge, however, is in specialty chemicals and
petrochemicals where no one else is sufficiently trained to properly
analyze and solve the problems in a pilot plant or production capacity.
And if you remember the early 80s, when an energy crisis subsided, a
wave of layoffs hit them at once.
BMJ
<snip>
> Art, ChemE's a production/manufacturing related discipline so much of
> it has already being offsourced, just look at your neighbor Uncle
> Duppie. Between now and the next decade, a good percent of it won't be
> on American shores. It'll mainly be the energy industry that'll keep
> the field going locally.
Much of that overlaps with mechanical and petroleum engineering. There
are few aspects of chemical engineering that is unique to that
discipline. For example, a lot of process equipment design can be and
is done by mechanicals. Since much of that dictated by the ASME Boiler
Code, I've known technologists who designed pressure vessels.
>
> Also, biotech doesn't really need ChemEs for its pilot plant work
> because that industry has simple heuristics which have been work on by
> biologists, chemists, biochemists, etc throughout the 80s and 90s. The
> traditional chemical engineering discipline has little to do with what
> biotech does and regardless of 3D's ascertain that the major is
> changing, the chiefs of biopharma really don't care. I can't believe he
> doesn't know who makes the development rules and protocols in this
> industry, senior cell biologists and molecular biochemists. I've known
> ChemEs in tablet making, bioreactors, and purification streams.
Some, I believe, are in food processing as well, but, then, so are
agricultural engineers.
The
> problem is that they're not alone, they work in similar capacities as
> other biosciences professionals. So how are they suppose to accrue
> power when their job isn't on that much of a higher level than a
> technician but with a higher than average math background? Truth be
> told, ChemEs aren't all that special in biotech and neither are IT
> professionals for that particular industry.
>
> Where ChemEs have an edge, however, is in specialty chemicals and
> petrochemicals where no one else is sufficiently trained to properly
> analyze and solve the problems in a pilot plant or production capacity.
> And if you remember the early 80s, when an energy crisis subsided, a
> wave of layoffs hit them at once.
>
That was because the oil price was quite low (somewhere around $10
US/bbl, as I recall). Exploration couldn't be justified at that price,
which led to production either remaining stable or, in some cases, being
shut in, which, in turn, meant that few new processing facilities, if
any, were built.
Straydog
Well, I think I know all this, and I think you know all this, but I think
3D, besides the example of his father, maybe is "in denial" about the
trends out there.
Straydog
Well, all I'm reading is that there is almost no desk job in the USA that
is not vulnerable to offshoring (except maybe some military jobs).
===== no change to below, included for reference and context =====
Aging_Recycled_Scientist
that cannot be offshored. I believe you are overly pessimistic
regarding the offshorability of everything.
Straydog
I made reference to desk jobs. Where a person has to be physically present
on a job, that job is unlikely to be offshored. But, as far as _desk_ jobs
are concerned, there is going to be, over the next years, vigorous
attempts to offshore those jobs and the people who control those decisions
are not going to care about the quality of what comes back. The offshoring
failure rate is bringing some jobs back and if the dollar falls enough,
more will come back and fewer will be offshored to begin with.
Over the years I've been dealing with big corporations on phones with 800
numbers, there is another growing problem: increasingly long robot voice
menues with voice recognition and the voice recognition doesn't work, and
you have to go through a menu that takes 4-5 minutes to go through. Then,
in the end, it dumps you onto an answering machine and after you leave a
message, nobody gets back to you.
Delphi-GM, and others are falling apart, and all of our big corporations
are getting smaller (except Walmart), or consolidating (mainly the big
banks getting bigger) but building more plants overseas than here (or the
big US banks are buying or buying stakes in Chinese banks [quite a few
from recent reports]). I'd welcome solid examples that are evidence for
having a more optimistic outlook.
Threeducks
I don't think anyone has bothered to collect such data. I offer up my
experience as one perspective, Rob certainly has his experiences. The
reality is probably somewhere in between.
Threeducks
> Straydog wrote:
>
>>It would be nice to have references to both more than your father's example AND
>>references to how solidly resistant ChE is to offshoring and availability to those coming on
>>NI visas. From the H-1B mailing list, and references to job categories, no job title or
>>function has zero representation with visa holders.
>
>
> Art, ChemE's a production/manufacturing related discipline so much of
> it has already being offsourced, just look at your neighbor Uncle
> Duppie. Between now and the next decade, a good percent of it won't be
> on American shores. It'll mainly be the energy industry that'll keep
> the field going locally.
>
> Also, biotech doesn't really need ChemEs for its pilot plant work
> because that industry has simple heuristics which have been work on by
> biologists, chemists, biochemists, etc throughout the 80s and 90s. The
> traditional chemical engineering discipline has little to do with what
> biotech does and regardless of 3D's ascertain that the major is
> changing, the chiefs of biopharma really don't care.
We have an industrial advisory board and they do care. A lot of effort
and money is going into a major curriculum revision in ChE.
Threeducks
I grew up in a town where the major employer was/is a chemical company.
People had/have good jobs, long careers, very few, if any, layoffs
over the last 30+ years. I find it offensive when you say I must "be in
denial" because I post experiences that are contrary to yours (ie.
positive). One can have positive experiences and see good things
because they actually are there, not because they are delusional. One
can also have positive experiences even when negative things happen to
other people.
Threeducks
There is no accreditation process for graduate programs in engineering.
Threeducks
Then they go to a university like the one I teach at that caters to
working students.
>
> I may be biased, because I am only talking to the kids that
>
>> take my classes, but that's the data I have to work with.
>
>
> Broaden your horizons.
Take your own advice.
>
>> Furthermore, there is a massive infrastructure of traditional
>> colleges. No one is going to do anything to disrupt that system,
>> which also employs a large number of non-academics as staff.
>
>
> Better pay attention to all the non-traditional things most of the big
> ones are getting into.
Just like everyone who got into the "internet" 10 years ago. Many
flops, lots of money wasted, with only a few outfits ever making money.
The same is going to happen with all this distance and e-learning.
Threeducks
I have only heard of one ChE department that was dissolved, and that was
at a small college where the faculty were not research active. As long
as the faculty can bring in enough research $$$ to keep the lights on,
no one is going to shut the department down, even if the enrollment
drops to 0. Besides, at my university, we have the AAUP who just love
to have something to fight about.
BMJ
<snip>
>> Art, ChemE's a production/manufacturing related discipline so much of
>> it has already being offsourced, just look at your neighbor Uncle
>> Duppie. Between now and the next decade, a good percent of it won't be
>> on American shores. It'll mainly be the energy industry that'll keep
>> the field going locally.
>>
>> Also, biotech doesn't really need ChemEs for its pilot plant work
>> because that industry has simple heuristics which have been work on by
>> biologists, chemists, biochemists, etc throughout the 80s and 90s. The
>> traditional chemical engineering discipline has little to do with what
>> biotech does and regardless of 3D's ascertain that the major is
>> changing, the chiefs of biopharma really don't care.
>
>
> We have an industrial advisory board and they do care. A lot of effort
> and money is going into a major curriculum revision in ChE.
Advisory boards can only be effective if they represent a cross-section
of the industry. I've known some whose members were selected to reflect
what the department chairman already had in mind.
<snip>
Straydog
And, I just talked, this weekend, at a picnic, with a guy who worked all
his life at ATT, loved every minute of it, and all of his coworkers
loved every minute of it, and they were well paid, and I asked him about
what went on at ATT (he got a buyout 9 years ago) in the last ten years
and--without me telling him ANYthing about how I felt about anyting--and
he had absolutely no good words to say about the future for young people
in the USA (he was born here). I asked him if any young people would come
to him and ask for any recommendations he might have for anyone and he
said that there was really no hope.
I find it offensive that you can take your own close in examples and
extrapolate to a conclusion that is just vastly different from not only
what I'm constantly reading in the newspapers (layoffs EVERYwhere
followed by offshoring the jobs) and what I'm hearing from 90% of the
people I talk with. You just don't give details in your statements that
give me any confidence that you have an observation that can be generalized
to "Everything is OK, don't worry about a thing" and yet you give no basis
for your projection into the future to indicate that what went on in the
past 30 years is going to continue into the future. Sure, I believe there
will be a small fraction of desk jobs that may stay in the USA besides
military jobs, but where you get this idea that there is nothing to worry
about is beyond me. Sorry, but the "I don't have cancer, therefore cancer
doesn't exist" line of thinking doesn't wash.
Straydog
On Mon, 22 May 2006, Threeducks wrote:
A couple of years ago my alma matter located me by email to make sure it
was in contact with one of its graduates (from the graduate college) and
when I asked why they were doing this, they told me they were doing it for
an accreditation review.
Straydog
And, if they live and work too far to drive over in the evening (I take it
you are talking about night school)?
>>
>> I may be biased, because I am only talking to the kids that
>>
>>> take my classes, but that's the data I have to work with.
>>
>>
>> Broaden your horizons.
>
> Take your own advice.
Unlike you, I've talked with kids that have been in lots of other
situations besides "..only talking to the kids that take my classes."
>>
>>> Furthermore, there is a massive infrastructure of traditional colleges.
>>> No one is going to do anything to disrupt that system, which also employs
>>> a large number of non-academics as staff.
>>
>>
>> Better pay attention to all the non-traditional things most of the big ones
>> are getting into.
>
> Just like everyone who got into the "internet" 10 years ago. Many flops,
> lots of money wasted, with only a few outfits ever making money.
Look who has the negative attitude now, as if you are unaware that
business over the internet, now, is a major fraction of the total economy.
The same is
> going to happen with all this distance and e-learning.
Wanna bet?
Straydog
And I have yet to see any comments on the tenure rate data I presented,
unless that is coming up in a post that I have not seen yet because it is
not on my server.
If you have a department without students but with enough grant money,
then you don't have a department, you have a research institute. And, for
the record, I've seen a lot of examples where a lot of the older faculty,
around in their 50s, start losing their grants. If you get tenure at your
age, then you will spend the next 30 or so years in your department and
you will get a chance to see how the grant track record plays out for each
of you that remains. I will predict that the same thing happens to you
guys; after periods of funding, then more and more guys will not get new
grants and old grants will not get renewed. I know how the reviewers think
about these things. They figure: "This guy has tenure, he doesn't need
the grant, lets give it to a young guy that needs it".
I'll leave it to you and the AAUP to help protect you.
rrc
> rrc wrote:
> > Also, biotech doesn't really need ChemEs for its pilot plant work
> > because that industry has simple heuristics which have been work on by
> > biologists, chemists, biochemists, etc throughout the 80s and 90s. The
> > traditional chemical engineering discipline has little to do with what
> > biotech does and regardless of 3D's ascertain that the major is
> > changing, the chiefs of biopharma really don't care.
>
> We have an industrial advisory board and they do care. A lot of effort
> and money is going into a major curriculum revision in ChE.
3D, ask yourself this question, who has the power at a place like
Amgen?
Is it the cell line/transfection specialist who insures that the
bacterium/mammalian cell is expressing the right protein (you know the
stuff that's worth billions) or the BS/MS ChemE at the pilot plant
who's insuring that the Millipore stack is clean and not suffering from
abrasion between batches?
Or how about that PhD level ChemE who makes sure that Eli Lilly's media
is keeping the batches growing in the 2K L bioreactor? Or that the
by-products of a cell harvest are removed to eliminate negative
feedback onto another generation of cells to produce the next batch?
You see, from the cell biologist's pov, these ChemE are his helper bees
at getting the batches out the door. His team, however, is the one that
makes *the goods*. If his vectors only produce a partial protein or a
de-natured one with the wrong folds, his project (and possibly company)
is dead in the water. If the ChemEs screw up a pilot plant test, he'll
just have to fire the bunch and get another crew who can do the job.
Also, he's got no problems letting other biochemists and chemists work
with the ChemE because from his pov, the only difference is that the
ChemE just has a bit more experience with unit ops. (*Hint: "They're
equipment/math geeks", I've heard this phrase myself and it didn't
sound very flattering.)
So, if I wasn't interested in getting a PhD in biochemistry or cell
biology, as a BS/MS level ChemE in this industry, I don't see the value
of my work or training. I'd rather be making the actual product than
getting a PhD in ChemE just to make sure that the Lilly feeds are clean
and that my cells don't drown in their own excrement.
Threeducks
Maybe you have a knack for seeking out losers.
> You just don't give details in your statements that
> give me any confidence that you have an observation that can be generalized
> to "Everything is OK, don't worry about a thing" and yet you give no
I never said don't worry about a thing. Stop lying and stop twisting my
statements.
> basis for your projection into the future to indicate that what went on
> in the past 30 years is going to continue into the future. Sure, I
> believe there
> will be a small fraction of desk jobs that may stay in the USA besides
> military jobs, but where you get this idea that there is nothing to worry
> about is beyond me. Sorry, but the "I don't have cancer, therefore
> cancer doesn't exist" line of thinking doesn't wash.
Ok, so don't work at all. Just give up on life, shoot yourself and get
it over with.
This is src, you know. Have you considered that the reason there have
been no new posters in 10 years, except for the cross-posts, is that you
have crushed any and all discussion of S&E careers?
Thomas Bartkus
news:ndOdnd9LB56WK-7Z...@comcast.com...
> Straydog wrote:
> >
<snip>
> This is src, you know. Have you considered that the reason there have
> been no new posters in 10 years, except for the cross-posts, is that you
> have crushed any and all discussion of S&E careers?
You didn't direct that at me but that statement is so completely
ridiculous - I can't stand it!
Do you seriously consider -
"that the reason there have been no new posters in 10 years, except for
the cross-posts, is that {anyone in particular}has crushed any and all
discussion of S&E careers?"
I've asked you before where the free wheeling, *uncensored*, *successful
career* discussions, which we used to have, has moved to. The answer is -
It hasn't moved anywhere, it has died!
Have *you* considered that the reasons for "no new posters in 10 years"
might be due to lack of interest? Or collapsing career opportunites that
drive people elsewhere?
How do you find it more plausible that the reason might be negativity on the
part of one or more posters here? Please enlighten us.
Perhaps you think we could inject some new blood and vigour into the
discussion by censoring the negative posts? We should all just sing
"Kumbaya" and "Everthing is Just Peachy" in order to achieve a more honest
and productive career discussion re: sci/research. If that's the case your
wish is well represented on the internet and you are free to move your
participation to one of those blogs.
How utterly lame!
Thomas Bartkus
rrc
> Threeducks wrote:
> > We have an industrial advisory board and they do care. A lot of effort
> > and money is going into a major curriculum revision in ChE.
>
> Advisory boards can only be effective if they represent a cross-section of the industry.
> I've known some whose members were selected to reflect what the department chairman
> already had in mind.
Also, it's no longer 1992, biotech and related industries are no longer
nascent development stage enterprises. The field has come of age with
its own hierarchies.
In addition, ever since the mid 90s, AIChE conventions have had less
and less corporate sponsorship with members having to pay their own way
and even using some of their vacation time if they're involved in the
organization.
Now, given the state of biotech being an established system, why would
they suddenly break ranks, among the bio-specialists, and give ChemEs
the keys to the kingdom? The world of industrial politics has never
worked that way. It's almost as if ChemEs had arrived at the party late
and were getting the second round of offerings than the primary ones.
Russell...@wdn.com
Well, I tend to agree, but it is true this NG isn't as warm and
and welcoming that it might be. As much as anything, I think
it is largely a function of a decline in Usenet in general, but
that's just my opinion.
Cheers,
Russell
Russell...@wdn.com
My sister just graduated from an expensive small liberal
arts college. She said that when they were lining up to
march in to the ceremony, they were given numbers and
told to make two lines in order, odd numbers on the right,
evens on the left. She said I should have seen the number
of students with $120,000 educations that didn't know
whether their number was odd or even.
She's planning on starting an online Masters program.
Cheers,
Russell
rrc
> I've asked you before where the free wheeling, *uncensored*, *successful
> career* discussions, which we used to have, has moved to. The answer is -
> It hasn't moved anywhere, it has died!
>
> Have *you* considered that the reasons for "no new posters in 10 years"
> drive people elsewhere?
Bingo, my last postdoc friends (most have left the academy) don't read
the usenet grps because they've joined DGJ and others and have buried
their heads.
> How do you find it more plausible that the reason might be negativity on the
> part of one or more posters here? Please enlighten us.
[ sarcasm on ]
Because Art's cult of personality has turned this newsgroup into an
Aum-like cult of pessimism and gloom over S&E careers.
[ sarcasm off ]
Threeducks
> "Threeducks" <three...@comcast.net> wrote in message
> news:ndOdnd9LB56WK-7Z...@comcast.com...
>
>>Straydog wrote:
>>
> <snip>
>
>>This is src, you know. Have you considered that the reason there have
>>been no new posters in 10 years, except for the cross-posts, is that you
>>have crushed any and all discussion of S&E careers?
>
>
> You didn't direct that at me but that statement is so completely
> ridiculous - I can't stand it!
It's not ridiculous.
>
> Do you seriously consider -
> "that the reason there have been no new posters in 10 years, except for
> the cross-posts, is that {anyone in particular}has crushed any and all
> discussion of S&E careers?"
>
> I've asked you before where the free wheeling, *uncensored*, *successful
> career* discussions, which we used to have, has moved to. The answer is -
> It hasn't moved anywhere, it has died!
You make it sound like there was ever a dialogue here. There used to be
positive thinking folk, like Rich Lemert, Josh Halpern, Derek Oliver,
Jeff Potoff, etc. but they all said to hell with it. Besides those
guys, you had the exact same people who are here now. So at the most
src only had 10 posters who argued about the same crap over and over again.
>
> Have *you* considered that the reasons for "no new posters in 10 years"
> might be due to lack of interest?
What goes on here in src has no effect on anything, especially jobs.
> Or collapsing career opportunites that
> drive people elsewhere?
Career opportunities have not collapsed. People haven't been driven
anywhere because they were never here.
> How do you find it more plausible that the reason might be negativity on the
> part of one or more posters here? Please enlighten us.
Because I've been here for 10 years, and I've seen what it did to the
"positive" posters.
>
> Perhaps you think we could inject some new blood and vigour into the
> discussion by censoring the negative posts? We should all just sing
> "Kumbaya" and "Everthing is Just Peachy" in order to achieve a more honest
> and productive career discussion re: sci/research. If that's the case your
> wish is well represented on the internet and you are free to move your
> participation to one of those blogs.
I think people should be honest instead of spreading lies.
>
> How utterly lame!
Yes, I think your post was lame.
Threeducks
Find Rich Lemert and he would echo that statement, except he wouldn't be
sarcastic about it.