Fair, but I'm not sure how that could be prevented. Uni lecturers for even first-year courses probably have at least a Masters, if not PhD in their fields. That would imply that they've spent a significant part of their life in that educational field.
One option would be to require they go on sabbatical to a "work term", for lack of a better phrase, in something that's related. That wouldn't be realistic for some fields.
A starter would be recognizing that we need skilled labour and we need to start directing people into it at a young age (16ish). To use the UK as a example they forecast what trades are needed. They then offer apprenticeships to people at 16 years old. They are paid a low rate (around minimum wage) but thats fine when your starting out. If you don't like the specific trade you started you can get switched into something else (i.e. I don't like being a Millwright but barrel maker seems like fun). The result is we get qualified trades people by 20-24, instead of the current model where most the apprentices I am working with are in their late 20s and up. They also don't have to retain the apprentice after they are certified so if you aren't particularly good or the company doesn't have a spot for you you can go find work elsewhere. Which if in the case you aren't competent 25 and under isn't a bad place to have to go find another career.
The early years are the most important for education, before 25 your brain is still developing. After 25 it gets harder to teach people things. You also lose out on many years of productive trades work for questionable schooling. If I take a 2 year program and get taught basically the same stuff I will in trades school that is redundant education and not needed. The schooling also gets filled with fluff courses only there to provide otherwise unemployable teachers with a job (i.e. english, global citizenship, etc.)
In the past couple of years we've hired three people, all under 30 years old and all with Master's Degrees, who have turned out to be first class. Two of them came right from university.
Something's going right, in some quarters, I would say.
It is not necessarily that everything is going wrong, but we are slowly losing the big picture. This trades shortage didn't come about overnight, it was over decades of poor education and practices which lead to here. I know people entering the trades with university degrees because there was nothing for them with their (as they put it) worthless bachelor degree.
It isn't that people who go to university aren't smart or not, people are people, some are competent, some aren't. Everyone has strengths and weaknesses and different jobs play off different ones. The important part is trying to recognize university doesn't work for everyone, and it isn't there to indoctrinate.
This.
Unfortunately for the last 30+ years the pathways laid out for young adults have been built by those who often have no "real world" experience. Going from high school, to Uni, to Teachers College and entering the workforce as a teacher, with no degree of mastery in life skills.
Gone are the days of a professional deciding to pivot their career, and do the year in teachers college before entering academics to finish out their career....I saw a scarce few of these before I left high school.
High schools that taught trades were dubbed "half knowledge college" and eventually many of their trades programs were deleted, as they were too costly, or had a higher degree of risk, which school boards were unwilling to bear.
The average age of a brick / stone mason in Ontario is over 50, no one wants to get into those trades, yet anyone who does can now command a kings ransom for their work. Or better yet, try finding an individual or business skilled at doing terazzo floors.....
Unfortunately many in the trades can't become teachers easily anymore. Having to take one to two years out of work to get a teaching degree when your being paid as well as they are isn't worth it for most.
You may have a point.
My department required a high school ( science ) diploma when I hired on.
Then a one-year college certificate. Then a two-year diploma.
Now, recruits have a four-year Honours Bachelor of Science degree.
What effect that has had on effectiveness is debateable.
CAF has this with the Officer corps as well. Is it better to take a 18 year old and train them to be a leader right away, or send them to school for four years to then train them to be a leader? Overall I don't think it makes much of a difference one way or another.
The last few years, everybody I know has made similar comments. And it’s true.
I know one guy who has been going through an exceptionally hard time (not the 1st world problem kind of hard time) where he was an Air Traffic Controller in Turkey for roughly a decade, and worked ATC out of Paris also.
He now works construction, because his training/experience isn’t recognized.
The guy who works night shift at the A&W across the street worked in India’s largest cancer hospital, in their lab.
He wanted to go into something similar here, but didn’t want to start from scratch - so he paid the $11,000 and has to wait up to 1 year for a ‘college of lab techs’ to simply call and verify his training/employment so he can bypass his 1st year.
These are self-inflicted wounds indeed.
Society is screaming for these jobs but we refuse to train in them. My cousin works for a heavy duty diesel shop and was trying to recruit two people for the job. Going on and on about people being too lazy to work. I told him I have a friend who would take up the apprenticeship in a heart beat and he said they were only looking for tradespeople and registered apprentices. Basically only wanting people already qualified. It isn't a laziness problem, its a unwillingness to train problem.
