Quote:
Originally Posted by G UK
I'd qualify that as being those who were full time students. I did my degree part time whilst working in Engineering Full Time since leaving school at 16 and completing my apprenticeship.
Its quite an eye opener seeing the lazy full time students moaning about there assignments when you are doing the same assignments whilst also working full time and then going back into work the next day and seeing some recently graduated, now with a piece of paper think they should be in a management position after doing a "graduate scheme".
Unfortunately most technical roles where I work now require a degree but many graduates believe that these roles are below them, within a few months (nowhere near enough time to learn the job) the grads tend to move on with a tick in a box saying they have done the role. Unfortunately that leaves the roles open and having to be filled by contractors who are expensive and therefore eventually outsourcing takes over.
What should be happening is that people should be encouraged to train by working these roles from leaving school and be given the chance to develop through promotion within the role, this gives a high level focused competence and expertise. Add to this focused degrees for more advanced technical subjects as they should be and you end up with a highly capable workforce at all levels rather than every man and his dog having a degree and therefore expecting to be high up the tree.
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I agree entirely with what you are saying.
I believe the culture in this country has been created by the government and schools. The careers advice appears to be 'Leave school, go to university, gain a degree and when you have the piece of paper you can be a brain surgeon CEO earning as much as you like'
We have a number of graduates, I have had some of them working on a program that I have been leading. One of them is very good and really keen to learn, the majority seem to have an attitude that they know better and are assigned to bring value with their superior qualifications. The 'attitude' that they are above the basics, means they will never learn the basic engineering skills.
Some of these graduates like the ones I mentioned in their 20's and 30's with degrees are almost unemployable, but again due to our work with the government the company needs to have lots of chartered engineers with masters degrees or phd on the books.
We find these highly qualified engineers usually end up with tasks that are minimum risk. One of them has recently been promoted to principle engineer, I would actually question the term engineer being used in his job title. He was very embarrassed when he told me of his promotion, his first words were 'don't laugh'
Business in this country especially engineering is in a very screwed up state.
