Canadian Jobs - Isolationism?

[RougeUnderoos]

Originally Posted by afc wimbledon

You say you have a liberal arts degree and you are not starving, bully for you, but 40 years ago any Bacholer degree was a ticket into management, a great job automatically, entry into what now is reserved for a masters.
Now it qualifies you for nothing, you have paid 40 or 50,000 to end up where a grade 12 used to get you, it has been, from a purely practical point of view, a pointless waste of your money and our taxes, I hope at least you enjoyed it.

Where are you getting this? You don't even know what I do for a living. Trust me on this one -- if all I had was a high school diploma, I wouldn't have my cushy job, or the skills to do it.

As for this "40 years ago" stuff, I don't live 40 years ago, so I kind of have to, you know, live now. If things were better for university grads then, I guess I missed out.

Also, it is common knowledge that people with a university degree end up making more money (today), on average. That's just reality. You can say I wasted my time and money (and the taxpayers!) learning things, but in the end, it seems like a decent investment to me. And I did enjoy it.

Hell, even if it didn't get me a career, it still would have been worth it. I'd rather have "wasted" those four years reading books and getting drunk than working some grunt job.

Originally Posted by afc wimbledon

I have worked in schools in the toughest programs any teacher is ever likely to encounter, probation alternate schools, where I, with my grade 11 and nothing more, could hold the kids attention, teach a subject (I worked with a fairly burnt out teacher who would piss off to his office to play guitar once he realized I could teach anything but math) maintain discipline break up fights (everyday at times if we ended up with rival gang members in the program).
The teachers I worked with were mostly hopeless, as teaching is, ironically, not a teachable skill, some of them could teach naturally (ie had a personality, a sense of humour and some life experience), most couldn't and were run ragged by the kids.

And bully for you too. Sounds like you are a good teacher with a tough gig.

[afc wimbledon]

Originally Posted by Kavvy

Thank you all for your interesting responses. I would like to get this back on track from what I original sort of wanted from this thread:

Discussing ways the Govt can promote jobs within our economy by stating that we need to promote more trades jobs - great.

Throwing conversation grenades back and forth on whether or not a liberal arts degree is a worth while use of your dollars, and tax payers dollars is not what this thread is about.

What policy changes, if any, should our Gov't make to ensure long term, good paying jobs (including trades) are available for future generations of Canadians?

Aside of course from under funding liberal art degrees and funding trade programs.

The government has very little influence though other than creating the infrastructure, roads and ports, which Canada is pretty well served by, and creating the people, it pretty much does come down to how we teach people.

[afc wimbledon]

Originally Posted by RougeUnderoos

Where are you getting this? You don't even know what I do for a living. Trust me on this one -- if all I had was a high school diploma, I wouldn't have my cushy job, or the skills to do it.

As for this "40 years ago" stuff, I don't live 40 years ago, so I kind of have to, you know, live now. If things were better for university grads then, I guess I missed out.

Also, it is common knowledge that people with a university degree end up making more money (today), on average. That's just reality. You can say I wasted my time and money (and the taxpayers!) learning things, but in the end, it seems like a decent investment to me. And I did enjoy it.

Hell, even if it didn't get me a career, it still would have been worth it. I'd rather have "wasted" those four years reading books and getting drunk than working some grunt job.



And bully for you too. Sounds like you are a good teacher with a tough gig.

Oh lord, the point I'm making is not that 'you' alone wasted your money, your whole generation has, you've all been convinced that even though you may not be that academic, you need a degree to do anything, I am not saying life for graduates was better 40 years ago, 40 years ago you didn't need a degree for most jobs, a degree now is the new grade 12, of course having your grade 12 gets you a better job than a grade 10 (which used to be the basic level of qualification for trades) and having a degree gets you a better job than just a grade 12, but all it qualifies you for now is an entry level position that used to be seen as a suitable gig for a high school leaver.

Your generation is being asked to take on 40,000 dollars of debt to get a job as, say, a policeman, why? If you could be a cop in 1975 with a grade 12 why can't you now, what's wrong with on the job training for a specific profession?

A degree is valued by its exclusivity, the harder it is to get, the less people have it, the more it is worth, the more people have a BA English or socials the less it is worth. It has been a misguided government policy here, and in the UK, to try and get as many kids as possible through University, without realizing that it has degraded the worth of the degree, as most of those kids are not that bright so colleges have reduced the difficulty of the degrees in order to pass them.

Incidently I'm not a teacher, I'm a child care worker, started at 21 working the graveyard shifts in group homes, learnt my 'trade' on the job, how to deal with an OD, how to break up a fight, better still how to see a fight building and stop it starting, how to teach kids to cook, get up and go to work etc.
I' m damn good at what I do but I would never be hired now, you need a degree to work a crappy graveyard shift in a group home now that pays 16 an hour, what that means is no one stays in the field, no one builds up the skill sets I have, because the poor #######s that start these days have a huge debt to pay off that I never had to worry about.

What I'm saying is you guys are getting screwed, simple as that, your are effectively paying 50,000 or so for your grade 12.