Re: "Starter Villain" by John Scalzi

Scott Dorsey wrote:

Lynn McGuire  <lynnmcguire5@gmail.com> wrote:

>
When I got into grad school in Mechanical Engineering at TAMU in 1982, I
was the only USA citizen.  The rot has been going on that long.  I
dropped out when I found a job that spring when I got my undergraduate
degree.

 That's a different problem.  That's the lack of interested and qualified
American students for engineering programs.  Also... when
I was an undergrad I heard a lot of freshman engineering students talking
about how they had picked their major entirely because they expected to
make big money as engineers.  This is not the way to get good engineering
graduates.

It's a good way to get bad lawyers, also.
A friend got an undergrad degree in engineering and went to work for an aerospace firm.  He wasn't unhappy with his salary, but he soon found out that the highest paid engineers in the firm were making barely double that amount.  He returned for a doctorate in chemical engineering and started work at a salary he wouldn't otherwise have made until about age 50, if at all.
The story resonated with me because my father ran a repair team at Kodak which contained several chemical engineers working in jobs for which a high school graduation was sufficient.  Canada being a branch plant economy there just wasn't much demand for chemical engineers and only the cream of the crop were able to work in their profession.
A couple of decades later there was a shortage of chemical engineers, with even the C students getting job offers.
William Hyde