I read a very interesting blog named the Bayou Renaissance Man. I like it because the writing is great and the blogging approach (if you squint your eyes really hard) is somewhat similar to my own. To say the blog topics are eclectic is a fairly large understatement and there is some interesting windmill tilting crusades going for which I have no dog in the fight, but that are fun and interesting. So today, he had an article titled A Fascinating Look at the Shrinking Value of Higher Education. It makes some comments and points to an article at the Captain Capitalism blog (that I have now marked and plan to visit regularly) titled The Music School Bubble. The posts are a topic that is dear to our hearts, the higher education bubble and the best way to educate one’s self to get a job as opposed to get a degree.
Just last night, Christian and I had a vigorous conversation about this specific topic. He will be in a fairly unique situation in that he is on track to finish his PhD in Electrical Engineering by the time he is 22 or 23. It is not too early to try to figure out what should come next. I have tried to recommend that since he is so young, he expand his education into a completely different area. He has Applied Math and Electrical Engineering so maybe some academic work in Chemistry or Materials Science or even Biology might combine well with that. He countered by saying that classes often get in the way of his learning these days. He likes his classes and the material in them, but believes he can understand it faster by reading the literature and working with people who understand it.
Here is a quote from the article that got me to thinking Christian’s career might be much better served by getting out there and getting going on what he wants to actually do than just spending more time in academia for the prestige of it all:
I believe that being a full time musician who plays live (and/or in the studio) is the greatest badge of honor a musician can bestow upon himself. Why? Because it’s proof you can beat the odds. It shows you have no need for the “stability” of teaching music. See, we all think we need to be teachers because that is what MUSIC SCHOOLS tell us. They have a large stock in keeping interest in becoming a music teacher, for it keeps them employed, and the cycle continues. As of today, it’s spiraled out of control. Our families all want us to be teachers because they figure it’s the closest thing to a “real job” that a musician can have. It’s a lot safer than playing in bars, touring, and all of those “lifestyle” things that many people think are part of a music career.
Christian had the opportunity to go to Stanford or UCSD for that kind of a boutique degree, but chose to go with a professor who had actually worked at the highest levels of his field in industry at a premier research institution, only returning to academia much later in his career. The higher education is much less pronounced in the STEM fields, but having worked on the commercialization of technology from top tier engineering schools, I am convinced more than ever that the vast bulk of technological advancements in all but a few arenas are coming out of industry, not academia. The knowledge that new engineers coming out of supposedly great school with difficult STEM degrees will need to start from ground zero to be trained for several years before they become useful is disheartening.
These are just observations. I do not know the answer for anyone on any of this. I just know that vast amounts of time and money spent in academia would be much more well spent in the real world if the desired result is to prepare people for jobs, real life and an understanding of how to contribute to society at large.
Betty Blonde #399 – 01/26/2010
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It is amazing to me that the best pictures of me are almost always on my drivers license. Lorena drove me down to Woodburn yesterday to get my license transferred from North Carolina to Oregon and I am amazed at the quality and speed of service we received there. They did a great job. Oregon is one of the few places where you have to take the “written” test (on a computer) to do the transfer. The whole process was actually quite pleasant. Lorena got her license changed in Lake Oswego where the service was very bad and very, very slow.
This photograph is of François working with a team from Texas A&M to install a water level camera in Harlingen, TX. It went very, very well. It is not complete yet, but images are flowing from the camera up to the 
An amazing thing happened yesterday. One of the managers at my work won a $5 Starbucks gift certificate for getting a correct answer on a safety question. In a classy move, he did a “guess the number” raffle with his team. About seven people participated. The number was 43. Two of the guessers got it right. We were pretty sure no one cheated. I was one of the guessers how picked 43. I picked it because 42 is the answer in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and I hate that pretentious, badly written tome so I one upped it to 43. What are the odds? My immediate thought is that my picking 43 was definitely not random. Actually, whether the reason for picking 43 was overt or subliminal, I am pretty confident the other two who picked it (the raffle organizer and the other guesser) did not pick it randomly either. But then what could be the cause?
My old friend and college roommate, Warren Bone stayed with us this weekend. The kids call him Miss Turbone (think about it), an allusion to 
Kelly and I are kindred spirits in that we regularly get accused of being overly enthusiastic. We talked on the phone about this very subject today. Overly enthusiastic. That is an oxymoron. One of the few really good things that came out of the 1960’s was the expression, “
The “scratch and dent” computer I bought from the 
Lorena and I pick Grandpa Milo and Grandma Sarah up on Sundays to take them to church. It was nice to see Uncle Doug and Aunt Jean there at the assisted living home when we arrived yesterday. Aunt Julia had come a couple of days earlier because she went out of town this weekend. All of us kids, of course, brought food, the last thing any of us needed–including Grandpa Milo.
The picture to the right is of an old, piece of trash Dell Vostro 200 desktop computer that was cheap and incapable the day we got it. As can be well attested over the years of this blog, I have pieces of projects in various stages of completion and a ton of software to go with them. Now, I have a partner in crime. My buddy John, from my last job and I are embarking on a project that includes the new little 