Need For Qualified Workers: A Shop Owner’s View

I agree that it is ideal when ones vocation is also ones passion. However, the next best thing where ones vocation can feed or fund ones passion should be considered acceptable and not a detriment.

Are there any good old fashioned trade schools anymore. Even Ranken and Vaterot call themselves colleges. Which means you have to take all the nonsense courses like english comp & history to get a degree from them. Nothing wrong with learning history or proper English usage but I'm not interested in paying $$$ for them. I just want the technical training.

And the cost is getting rather high too. I just looked into a 3 day class on Civil 3d training and they wanted $1200 for it.

The technical schools in Wisconsin were and still are pretty good..... Even though they are become technical colleges which the curriculum is more stringent.

Don't think there are any more 'trade schools' anymore, haven't seen an ad for Lincoln Tech in a while.

The 'death' of trade schools is due to the plethora of colleges, and the 'overload' of job-seekers.

If a company has 10 slots to fill for technical positions, and they receive 30 applications from people with Associate Degrees in the field, 5 applications from people with bachelor Degrees in the same field, and 20 applicants with certificates from a trade school in that field, you know what will happen. They'll interview the BS candidates first, offer them trade school salary, take who accepts, then look at the AS candidates, offer then trade school salary, take who accepts, then, if there are any slots left, they'll look at the trade school candidates, offer them minimum wage, and see if anyone nibbles.

In my parents time, a High School Diploma opened the world, with advanced degrees if you wanted to make more money. By the time I graduated High School, it took an Associate Degree to get what you used to get with a HS diploma, today, it looks like a BS degree is the new HS diploma, simply from the glut of applicants for every position.

1. How do we train the worker of tomorrow to be successful in manufacturing in the 21st century?

Teach them CAD/CAM and machining practice.

The cad of today is a career in itself, maybe basics

CAD/CAM works well for new part manufacturing as long as the machines do not develop any issues that cause deviation(s) in the part being machined.

It will not work when performing field or shop repair to existing equipment or non-cookiecutter parts nor does it provide any creative or alignment knowledge.

The choice is:

Do you want and just need a low-skilled machine operator?

Or do you need/want a highly skilled machinist that can operate the machine, correct any issues presented by the machine, and repair or make close tolerance parts from "scratch".

Creating highly skilled machinists require american industry to return to 4 year, intensive training programs with high personal performance requirement standards and accountability.

Today's HR controlled work environment in american business is focused strictly on behavorial-based evaluations and not on skill, performance, production, or knowledge.

The current HR system is broke and we need to fix it soon.

There is no reason that we cannot have civility in the workplace and still require high quality performance from the workers.

It is of utmost importance that an employer be able to get rid of non-productive, low skilled, uncaring socialites in the workplace and I do not see this happening any time soon.