Re: Job Offer

On 3/16/2025 4:23 PM, Jeff Liebermann wrote:

 Students don't attend college to learn much that will later be useful.
At best, students learn the basics.  ...
 I'm not going to attempt to assign the blame or offer solutions for
the problem.  Well, maybe just a small attempt.  (Frank will probably
hate me).  Most colleges are designed to manufacture academics who
will eventually become teachers. 

Perhaps that's true. I can't speak for "most colleges" and I have close knowledge about only a few fields of study, based on my experiences, those of my kids and siblings. IOW, a small sample. Engineering, chemistry, computer science, nursing and poetry.
So you may be correct about majors such as history, political science, philosophy, art appreciation etc. But based on that small sample of field I listed, I'd say you're wrong.
About my program, you're 100% flat wrong about the "designed to manufacture academics." As one piece of evidence, we rarely offered junior and senior level courses in the daytime. Why? Because by the time they were juniors, most of our students were already employed in their field at least part time. That's largely why I ended up teaching so many evening courses.
And to get specific: I developed our Robotics course and laboratory in 1986, when industrial robots were first beginning to surge. We used real industrial robots (not laboratory toys or online virtual robots) and I attended a robotics school along with a roomful of engineers from Ford. I consulted with them about what our course should contain, and as always I consulted with our Industrial Advisory Committee. One major piece of advice was to NOT build a course on how to design robots, or the details of the mathematical transforms used to control the robot's many joints, etc. The advice was to put heavy emphasis on how to use a purchased robot in practical ways to get a task done robotically. (As I told my students: There may have been a few dozen engineers in the U.S designing robots. There would probably be need for thousands of engineers who knew how to use them.)
And indeed, the wife of one of my graduates (they married when both were seniors in my program) came back to visit and explained how her husband had gotten great recognition in his company when he took over and succeeded at a robotics project that a previous engineer had called "Impossible." Her husband told her "It's exactly like the big project we did in Krygowski's lab!"
Of course a person must not stop learning upon graduation. But as the wife of another graduate relayed to me, "My husband said 'Krygowski taught us how to learn.'"
I know there are engineering programs that study robotics more as theoretical systems. We were purposely much more practical. The same philosophy was at work in the rest of our curriculum.
I can't give as much detail about the other degrees and educations earned by other family members and listed above. I won't compromise their privacy, but I'll note that each of the people is professionally successful in their field (even the poet) and could not have had that success without their education.
Again, I agree education is a tool. But a workman who attacks a job without the necessary tool is likely to be damned inefficient.
--
- Frank Krygowski