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Mike Rowe Tells It Like It Is (or why college isn't the be-all and end-all)
So Mike Rowe testified before the US Senate.
For anyone who's too lazy to click the link, here's what he had to say. You can probably guess it, based on his TED talk and the nature of his show, but it's still great to read.
So this stuff has been on my mind a lot. And as such, there are questions I've been asking myself - now, I ask the forum these questions:
Why is it that Americans have lost their respect for "shovel-ready" jobs? They're certainly not glamorous, but a lot of these jobs make a solid living.
As a society, are we willing to pay a real wage to the people who are responsible for maintaining our infrastructure? It still boggles my mind that we marginalize all of these people who perform functions that aren't just important, they're fucking necessary.
For the kids in college: Do you feel that you're getting value for your money? What are you getting for your undergraduate education? Are you even thinking about it in a "value for my money" fashion?
What will it look like when we reach the breaking point? When, as Mike postulates, "an hour with a good plumber - if you can find one - is going to cost more than an hour with a good psychiatrist," happens, what will we do to alleviate the problem?
For anyone who's too lazy to click the link, here's what he had to say. You can probably guess it, based on his TED talk and the nature of his show, but it's still great to read.
Chairman Rockefeller, Ranking Member Hutchison and members of this committee, my name is Mike Rowe, and I want to thank you all very much for the opportunity to testify before you today.This topic has really been on my mind considerably more as of late. It's probably partly due to my increasing involvement with the SCA - which is basically a bunch of people with crafty, hands-on hobbies - and partly due to my growing dissatisfaction with my current job. We're just doing less at work, and even though I'm getting paid more than I ever have before, my job satisfaction is on the decline because it doesn't feel like I do anything these days. I care a lot less than I used to, and I'm starting to approach the point where I show up because I get paid, not because I'm actively interested in what's going on.
I'm here today because of my grandfather.
His name was Carl Knobel, and he made his living in Baltimore as a master electrician. He was also a plumber, a mechanic, a mason, and a carpenter. Everyone knew him as a jack-of-all-trades. I knew him as a magician.
For most of his life, my grandfather woke up clean and came home dirty. In between, he accomplished things that were nothing short of miraculous. Some days he might re-shingle a roof. Or rebuild a motor. Or maybe run electricity out to our barn. He helped build the church I went to as a kid, and the farmhouse my brothers and I grew up in. He could fix or build anything, but to my knowledge he never once read the directions. He just knew how stuff worked.
I remember one Saturday morning when I was 12. I flushed the toilet in the same way I always had. The toilet however, responded in a way that was completely out of character. There was a rumbling sound, followed by a distant gurgle. Then, everything that had gone down reappeared in a rather violent and spectacular fashion.
Naturally, my grandfather was called in to investigate, and within the hour I was invited to join he and my dad in the front yard with picks and shovels.
By lunch, the lawn was littered with fragments of old pipe and mounds of dirt. There was welding and pipe-fitting, blisters and laughter, and maybe some questionable language. By sunset we were completely filthy. But a new pipe was installed, the dirt was back in the hole, and our toilet was back on its best behavior. It was one of my favorite days ever.
Thirty years later in San Francisco when my toilet blew up again. This time, I didn't participate in the repair process. I just called my landlord, left a check on the kitchen counter, and went to work. When I got home, the mess was cleaned up and the problem was solved. As for the actual plumber who did the work, I never even met him.
It occurred to me that I had become disconnected from a lot of things that used to fascinate me. I no longer thought about where my food came from, or how my electricity worked, or who fixed my pipes, or who made my clothes. There was no reason to. I had become less interested in how things got made, and more interested in how things got bought.
At this point my grandfather was well into his 80s, and after a long visit with him one weekend, I decided to do a TV show in his honor. Today, Dirty Jobs is still on the air, and I am here before this committee, hoping to say something useful. So, here it is.
I believe we need a national PR Campaign for Skilled Labor. A big one. Something that addresses the widening skills gap head on, and reconnects the country with the most important part of our workforce.
Right now, American manufacturing is struggling to fill 200,000 vacant positions. There are 450,000 openings in trades, transportation and utilities. The skills gap is real, and it's getting wider. In Alabama, a third of all skilled tradesmen are over 55. They're retiring fast, and no one is there to replace them.
Alabama's not alone. A few months ago in Atlanta I ran into Tom Vilsack, our Secretary of Agriculture. Tom told me about a governor who was unable to move forward on the construction of a power plant. The reason was telling. It wasn't a lack of funds. It wasn't a lack of support. It was a lack of qualified welders.
In general, we're surprised that high unemployment can exist at the same time as a skilled labor shortage. We shouldn't be. We've pretty much guaranteed it.
In high schools, the vocational arts have all but vanished. We've elevated the importance of "higher education" to such a lofty perch that all other forms of knowledge are now labeled "alternative." Millions of parents and kids see apprenticeships and on-the-job-training opportunities as "vocational consolation prizes," best suited for those not cut out for a four-year degree. And still, we talk about millions of "shovel ready" jobs for a society that doesn't encourage people to pick up a shovel.
In a hundred different ways, we have slowly marginalized an entire category of critical professions, reshaping our expectations of a "good job" into something that no longer looks like work. A few years from now, an hour with a good plumber - if you can find one - is going to cost more than an hour with a good psychiatrist. At which point we'll all be in need of both.
I came here today because guys like my grandfather are no less important to civilized life than they were 50 years ago. Maybe they're in short supply because we don't acknowledge them they way we used to. We leave our check on the kitchen counter, and hope the work gets done. That needs to change.
My written testimony includes the details of several initiatives designed to close the skills gap, all of which I've had the privilege to participate in. Go Build Alabama, I Make America, and my own modest efforts through Dirty Jobs and mikeroweWORKS. I'm especially proud to announce "Discover Your Skills," a broad-based initiative from Discovery Communications that I believe can change perceptions in a meaningful way.
I encourage you to support these efforts, because closing the skills gap doesn't just benefit future tradesmen and the companies desperate to hire them. It benefits people like me, and anyone else who shares my addiction to paved roads, reliable bridges, heating, air conditioning, and indoor plumbing.
The skills gap is a reflection of what we value. To close the gap, we need to change the way the country feels about work.
So this stuff has been on my mind a lot. And as such, there are questions I've been asking myself - now, I ask the forum these questions:
Why is it that Americans have lost their respect for "shovel-ready" jobs? They're certainly not glamorous, but a lot of these jobs make a solid living.
As a society, are we willing to pay a real wage to the people who are responsible for maintaining our infrastructure? It still boggles my mind that we marginalize all of these people who perform functions that aren't just important, they're fucking necessary.
For the kids in college: Do you feel that you're getting value for your money? What are you getting for your undergraduate education? Are you even thinking about it in a "value for my money" fashion?
What will it look like when we reach the breaking point? When, as Mike postulates, "an hour with a good plumber - if you can find one - is going to cost more than an hour with a good psychiatrist," happens, what will we do to alleviate the problem?
Comments
edit: I did a search to find that stat on underwater welding and found a comment Rubin made in 2006
"apreche Dec 30, 2006
Underwater Welders have one of the most dangerous jobs short of military and law enforcement. At least they get paid a lot. If you are looking for high pay and danger, consider underwater welding."
It's just less gratifying than it used to be.
I'm just really wondering what the hell happened. Are people just not as interested in working with their hands any more?
Instead of attending the high school, you could also opt to go to the nearby vocational-technical school. The facilities were good (I visited it a few times,) and I have no doubt that the students there came out well-taught and skilled. However, the high school kids regarded it as some kind of ghetto. (There is a lot of classism in my hometown - I suppose that's what happens when you establish a university in a rural town otherwise dominated by farms and a few manufacuring plants.)
Maybe encouraging people to seek training as skilled laborers and craftspeople will do something alleviate these quarter-life crisis problems where young college graduates can't find work. Instead of entering a glutted professional job market, people could capitalize on this growing skill gap. Looking back at my own time in university, I realize how woefully lacking in practical application and job preparation it was. I had only one class that dealt with using anthropology outside of graduate school, and only one more that gave any practical experience. Granted, my lack of success in a career is mainly a result of personal failings, but I did not come out feeling like I had many marketable or real skills, despite my academic decorations. There must be something truly satisfying about being able to make something with your hands, something real and tangible that immediately benefits people. That's something very appealing in light of the fact that I'll likely spend the rest of my life poking keys to make numbers go up in a corporation's bank account, or slinging coffee at a Starbucks.
Other "last ditch" jobs I've considered. Note that when I say considered, I mean that I could drop out, move into one of these professions, and be almost as happy for the rest of my life. I'm only pursuing medicine because I really, really love it.
--Flight attendant
--International ESL teacher (through TESOL)
--Professional chef
--Waiter (MAD bank at a good restaurant)
--Hazmat diver (Are you a bad enough to jump into liquid concrete? Oil? Sewage?)
--Commercial fisherman (Have a friend who worked salmon boats in Alaska and made tons of money each summer)
--Dishwasher (Read this book.)
--Bike mechanic (read the above book, again)
--Freelance journalist
--Cabinetmaker/Woodworker
--Distiller/Winemaker/Brewer
--Luthier
I deeply respect vocational work, and I'll be working with my hands until the day I die. It just happens to be that working with my hands in the way I intend to (surgery) takes years of schooling. But then, you wouldn't let anyone but a master work on your body, and it takes years to become a master of any craft.
I personally love Dirty Jobs, and I kinda wish I could do something like that. Work on something that uses my wits and my hands to make the world a bit better for people who don't care about that stuff. Reading that testimony really makes me want to work at that. I mean, I still want to do webcomics, but my hands can also have other uses.
Building software there is still that difference between working for yourself or for someone else. The thing is, even when working for someone else, there is still plenty of intellectual satisfaction. I'm not just executing a process, I'm designing the process to be executed, and the computer does all the work.
I would love to have a job working with my hands, but most of them are not very creative. If I had a job say, as a brewer or building custom choppers, that would be the shit. Working as a mechanic for a car dealer or installing carpet, that doesn't work for me.
Also, if you need to know who will fill in this gap: immigrants (and some first generation Americans who don't have to worry about the shame that comes from working with ones hands). As long as they get trained in the field and the work is in demand, they'll do it. In fact, the entire business model may change: suddenly one otherwise useless American business student decides to start a plumbing company where he hires a few laborers and just manages the books. Rather than the field being artisanal, it will become something automated and rigid, possibly even franchise-based. You won't call the reliable plumber who you've used for years, you call Plumb-Co., have some unknown rush in and do the job (for a barely-decent wage), and people will continue to whine about the good old days.
As much as classism would have sucked, it sucked more to spend a good chunk of my life thinking that all my possible options ended in me being miserable. After dropping out of college, just as stupid and decidedly poorer, it took what now seems like a ludicrously large logical leap for me to comprehend that "Chef" was a job that people could become, rather than all non-collegiate vocations in the world being crewed by some kind of ur-folk that had always somehow existed in that state of being. All plumbers and electricians were obviously spawned by some frothing, fleshy, hairy vat. You might as well have told me the earth was an ellipsoid.
My mom is currently working for the same school district I grew up in, in the same elementary school that I went to, and has even creepier stories than I remember. There's always been a thing where they rotate one class a day to come to the office and lead the school in the Pledge of Allegiance (which also creeps me out, but I digress) before class starts. Now, apparently, they have the kids each sound off afterward with "When I graduate from college, I want to be-", screening all the kids answers beforehand. If one of them has an answer that doesn't require a college degree, they're scolded until they change it. So, I can confidently say my indoctrination began at about 5 years old.
What I think is the most lacking in terms of colleges, is that many of them still have the attitude from the 70s-80s. That you really don't need to adjust to what today's students have experienced or how they have lived their lives, which is so much different compared to just ten years ago. We've changed as a society in how we regard having a college degree, yet colleges haven't seemed to change much in how they want to treat students. (They probably know this, considering how much money they get from a single student) Hell, colleges straight up teach you that what career you take has only 20% chance of being related to the major you have, and they continue on with saying only 15% of people have to make an actual job application and interview to get into a business. They should change their formula on what's really important to learn and less on how getting a diploma is necessary based on just hours alone.
They really need to change their attitude on what's more important to teach teenagers, which is the importance of socializing. We've almost negated the importance of it, and it's had an effect of our children or even kids five years younger than me. (And there are horror stories) College has a real lack of actual job preparation, as do many students. And I don't mean to sound bitter, but many people who are my age, tend to really have an issue distinguishing themselves or have a general disdain of public speech.
Part of what also makes vocational or physical jobs less glamourous, is just that there's more risk in making a true business from it anymore. There was a bit more entrepreneurship going on, because it didn't require as specific needs. Any business or job now has more specific needs with few exceptions. Classism has overall been on the rise, even I will admit to having a sense of it just because anyone my age can't have a regular 9 to 5 job within my own home town. The glorification of having a craft by your own hands has been lost, because of how we've changed as a culture.
I've only had to call someone into my house twice. Once to replace the furnace and air conditioning unit (simply do not have the time to learn how to do that properly, would probably take weeks, and the risk involving in fucking it up is way too high), and the other time to hang a storm door on my front entrance. Part of the frame that the door would mount to was rotting so it was not a standard job, and I really wanted this door to be perfect, so it was worth hiring out. I can personally attest that the workforce shortage is real, though. It was hard to find a quality person to go with.