Technical > Home Improvement > What country are sharp window air conditioners made?

It was true years ago, but the idea that manufacturing creates jobs is false for the most part now. Be it here or anywhere else in the world.

Manufacturing will continue in the US, just not widgets that can be made by unskilled/semi-skilled labor. There's a tremendous demand for skilled machinist, and in precision engineering for example. Nobody else in the world can beat us in this.

The long term key to getting to the next step is education. When I see what passes for marketable skills these days, I worry.

Education is still key. The unemployment rate for those with college degrees is 4.1%. It's more than double for those without.

But yes, if a person decides to major in something stupid, then that's their call. But overall, college is still a winner.

Education is still key. The unemployment rate for those with college degrees is 4.1%. It's more than double for those without.

But yes, if a person decides to major in something stupid, then that's their call. But overall, college is still a winner.

The unemployment and underemployment rate has been (historically) significantly higher for non college-educated individuals; this may or may not hold true from here on out. And about the "doing fine" thing: You're ignoring the fact that, every year, more or more students are coming off the line who may be competing for these very same jobs, and employers may even prefer them to the older group for various reasons. And law has been on the out-of-favor list for a while now; I've known lawyers who dumped their current jobs for jobs in IT and such, ten or more years ago.

The upshot is that attitudes such as yours may be seriously outdated. There are plenty of colleges and universities out there who like to perpetuate this line of thinking, and seem to be happy to continue massive building campaigns and raising tuition rates under the pretense that huge demand will always be there, as if spending more and more money for their particular brand of education will always be a no-brainer. But, as many are starting to point out (including some of the more progressive educators AND employers), this model is something like 125 years old now, and doesn't necessarily mesh well with the modern world, and is no longer cost-effective in many situations and hasn't been for a while.

Interestingly, on the employer side I've seen two different things. Fast-moving, progressive (usually technical) industries want people who know enough to be immediately useful (no matter how they acquired that knowledge), but are also flexible enough to keep learning (no matter how they acquire that knowledge). While many other industries keep to the traditional methods and are even making things more difficult, like requiring Master's degrees for entry-level jobs where before a Bachelor's was sufficient. The worst among them will take people who have a Bachelor's (or equivalent work experience), who have been doing the job for years, then require them to get a Master's (or Bachelor's, as the case may be) in order to move up the ladder or in some cases even to keep their current job. This is incredibly stupid, BTW, and is a great way to destroy your organization.

When the economy recovers, ...

I'm of the opinion that the degree matters. We have hundreds of job openings at my present company that mostly require BS/MS/MBA degrees with a few AAS type degrees.

Ah, but you see, there's the rub! Historically, for an agricultural job all you really needed was a strong back and a willingness to work. Education didn't matter much, so anybody who could and would do the job could usually find work. This scenario still plays out in the migrant farm worker world, where you don't even have to speak the local language in order to do the job.

But for non-agricultural work, you generally have to have some education and/or training, and today you have people who've spent considerable time and money going to college and maybe beyond, perhaps going in massive debt in the process, only to find that there are minimal jobs out there for them. This is HUGE difference from the past, and people are only slowly coming to realize that such extended education is probably no longer particularly smart nor cost-effective. So it's really more a matter of choosing the RIGHT education (four or more years of college is no longer automatically the correct choice), in a field where you expect there will be ongoing or at least near-time demand, and also knowing that you may end up having to repeat this process multiple times during your working career.

Just because Posner doesn't like how patents are being used doesn't mean that he'll be able to change anything. As for patent lawyers, you have no idea that I'm part of the problem. We defend against troll suits all the time, but rarely enforce our own unless it's blatant and directly in our industry. Or would you rather that our company just sit back and get hammered? If you're going to through crap out there, think about what you're saying.

I think a bigger part of the problem is people who discourage formal learning and think that we can stay competitive with the rest of the world. Personally, I don't think we can stay world class by giving handouts and saying it's okay not to go to school. The people that generally think like that are the ones who couldn't or didn't go to school. I hate to tell you, but when I was doing chip design, there wasn't a single non-engineer that had or would have been able to learn that on the job.

Finally, our company has many HBS grads (our CEO is one) and we're among the most successfull companies of the last 20+ years. Not even Apple has been able to match the consistency of success we've had.

So, even though you use lots of words in your response, it boils down to finding the right people and executing. Just because you have eperience with one HBS grad who messed up doesn't mean they all are corrupt/clueless.