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Young Adults Heading for the Prosperity of the Oil Fields Instead of Liberal Academia

longknife

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Posted by Robbie Cooper on 12/27/2012 @ Young Adults Heading for the Prosperity of the Oil Fields Instead of Liberal Academia » UrbanGrounds

Doing the work Liberals are too weak to do…


Read more @ Young Adults Heading for the Prosperity of the Oil Fields Instead of Liberal Academia » UrbanGrounds
 
Re: Young Adults Heading for the Prosperity of the Oil Fields Instead of Liberal Acad

It seems kind of funny you posting that, after there have been so many people on this forum suggesting that we have too many students in college.

I say that it's the "invisible hand" at work. People go to where the jobs are, and the big money is - once they have figured out where those jobs are and where the money is. The free market isn't prefect, but generally it tends to work quite well.
 
Re: Young Adults Heading for the Prosperity of the Oil Fields Instead of Liberal Acad


Yup.

And with the increased demand for education in these fields the cost of education in them will increase. Which means that students will have to take out more in student loans to pay for a college education in these fields.

But with a larger workforce qualified in these fields, oil companies will be able to pay lower salaries since they have a greater pool from which to hire.

Which means those who get so in debt for an education in this field but can't get a salary capable to pay it off will be in the same boat as the academics you say liberals push forward instead.

And conservatives such as yourself will say it'll be those students fault for getting a degree that won't pay enough for being educated in it.

Way to go.
 
Re: Young Adults Heading for the Prosperity of the Oil Fields Instead of Liberal Acad

Samsmart, I usually agree with you, but I think that you may have missed that these oil rig jobs dont require college degrees, they only require a strong back and willingness to do hard work and show up for work.

Also, the article alluded that some of these workers will make fairly good incomes doing this kind of work as long as it is avalable, then head off to college at a later age, when they are more mature, and financially prepared to afford college.

When the average starting salary for a new college grad is around $32k, and one could make $50k at a job without going to college, it's a no brainer. Especially when so many college students majors say that there major is "fundecided" and have not particular academic interest.

That said, I am huge on going to college. I have a college sophomore son who was fortunate enough to know exactly (well almost) what career that he wanted, and he is pursing the educational background that may allow him to achieve his dreams. Most youngins don't have a clue though, I certainly didn't at age 18.
 
Re: Young Adults Heading for the Prosperity of the Oil Fields Instead of Liberal Acad

In 10 years, most of these jobs will be history. Elect whomever you want, if the price of oil goes down, the oil wells will suddenly dry up.

That said, I encourage Conservatives to skip out on "evil librul college." Stay dumb! You can always blame it on liberals later.
 
Re: Young Adults Heading for the Prosperity of the Oil Fields Instead of Liberal Acad


They may not require a college education yet. But with so many people applying for them, they will be required just as a method of weeding out applicants so these businesses will have a better chance of hiring the best skilled workers.

That, and the increased complexity of the machinery involved, especially in relation to computer skills.
 
Re: Young Adults Heading for the Prosperity of the Oil Fields Instead of Liberal Acad


In case you are not aware, non-traditional students statistics have been pretty steadily climbing and they tend to make better students as babies and mortgages and jobs are not the same level of academic distraction as co-eds and toga parties apparently.
 
Re: Young Adults Heading for the Prosperity of the Oil Fields Instead of Liberal Acad


Thats very true in a way. A while back, just for the heck of it, I looked into a success rates of for profit colleges. They were absolutely terrible. Then I discovered that the success rates of older students attending traditional colleges were also terrible. On the surface this seems to go against what you are saying, but I kept digging, and I found a study that compared younger and older students college performance on the bases of equalizing their high school academic performance and SAT scores. Turns out, most older college students were terrible students in high school (probably explains why many of them didn't attend college directly out of high school). But when well academically qualified older students were compared to traditional college age students with equal qualifications, the older students almost always did better.

I have an acquantance, the parent of a kid who my son went to school with, who went to college at age 40. He graduated last spring, it was just our local community college, but he had a 4.0 gpa and was the only graduating student with a 4.0.

Personally, I attended college for two years, then did some time in the military before returning to college. I did much better after my stint in the military, I studied more, never missed a class, and it paid off with better grades.

I am all for highly motivated well qualified students who know exactly what they want to study in college going directly into college from high school, but many people would probably better off waiting a few years.
 
Re: Young Adults Heading for the Prosperity of the Oil Fields Instead of Liberal Acad


Man every topic you make links to some random blog, whats the deal man!
 
Re: Young Adults Heading for the Prosperity of the Oil Fields Instead of Liberal Acad


If you think kids aren't a distraction, you clearly don't have any.
 
Re: Young Adults Heading for the Prosperity of the Oil Fields Instead of Liberal Acad

Wiseone said:
Man every topic you make links to some random blog, whats the deal man!
Click to expand...

Don't believe the liberal media! Believe every Conservative with internet access!

(Of course they had a story about this on NPR, they just left out the cheap putdowns)
 
Re: Young Adults Heading for the Prosperity of the Oil Fields Instead of Liberal Acad


My non-snarky answer is this: Go ahead and delay college to make some money. Really, I think that's a fine idea for a little while.

But you see, what they're skipping according to the OP is liberal indoctrination. And of course, Liberals don't work hard. When the OP is garbage, respond with garbage.
 
Re: Young Adults Heading for the Prosperity of the Oil Fields Instead of Liberal Acad

rocket88 said:
If you think kids aren't a distraction, you clearly don't have any.
Click to expand...

I clearly do. I did however observe that the non-traditional students in my classes always "blew the curve" in the eyes of may traditional students.
 
Re: Young Adults Heading for the Prosperity of the Oil Fields Instead of Liberal Acad

Here's a link to the original New York Times story that the blog in the OP quoted from: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/26/us/26montana.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&

Key quotes:

A 2005 federal Department of Education report showed that students who delayed college were more likely to drop out.

[Shay Findlay] bought a dirt bike and a flat-screen television, and took out a loan on a hulking black Chevy Silverado truck with personalized license plates — FDLSTIX — for his childhood nickname, Fiddlesticks.

The quick money of the oil field has a long term price to go with it...it's virtually impossible to find jobs in other fields if you no longer/cannot work in the oil field, since your skill sets don't transfer to other careers. Also, young people get intoxicated by the quick money and do not learn financial discipline, leaving them totally screwed when the boom goes bust.

Fortunately for me my oil field specialty, surveying, is much more stable than the production side. But there are plenty fools that don't save for rainy days in my specialty either, I can attest to the post-Katrina work boom that encouraged people at my place of work to start making payments on huge pick up trucks that they had to sell at a loss a few years later when the work dried up.

...and southern Louisiana doesn't have to worry about the problems that come with being boomtowns like microscopic MidWest towns. There are going to be a lot of problems that come as a result of the natural gas boom. On balance, I think it will be worth it, but we can't ignore the difficulties it will bring either.
 
Re: Young Adults Heading for the Prosperity of the Oil Fields Instead of Liberal Acad

rocket88 said:
But you see, what they're skipping according to the OP is liberal indoctrination. And of course, Liberals don't work hard. When the OP is garbage, respond with garbage.
Click to expand...

...which is why I posted the link to the actual NYT article, which in no way suggests anything that the OP blog created in his hyperpartisan mind.
 
Re: Young Adults Heading for the Prosperity of the Oil Fields Instead of Liberal Acad


Yup. A thinking youngster may very well opt for the oil fields as a way to start a working career and get his/her act together while they decide what to do with their lives. A liberal youngster may very well opt to borrow $100k to get a 4-year degree in English. Or perhaps borrow $250k to go to an Ivy League college and get a degree in Black Studies, or Feminist Studies or some other degree equally in demand.

Years ago I knew the manager of a wildlife refuge in western North Dakota. One summer he had a college student as an intern. The two of them spent the early part of one day digging a trench and laying in some clay sewer pipe. When it was time to fill in the trench the boss explained that, since there were rocks in the soil, the trench should be filled by hand until there were a few inches of soil over the pipe before they used the backhoe to finish the job. With the backhoe on one side of the trench and a shovel on the other side, he left this chore for the intern while he took care of another task. When he came back a couple of hours later the backhoe still sat on one side of the trench and the shovel on the other side, and the intern was still filling the trench "by hand" - a double handful at a time. The young man showed so little common sense that it destroyed the reputation of the university as a source of education for quite a few years - and the kid probably grew up to become a solid liberal and Obama supporter.

There is a huge difference between education and schooling, but liberals choose to ignore that fact.
 
Re: Young Adults Heading for the Prosperity of the Oil Fields Instead of Liberal Acad

Diogenes said:
Yup. A thinking youngster may very well opt for the oil fields as a way to start a working career and get his/her act together while they decide what to do with their lives.
Click to expand...

That's fine. But when the wells "dry up" and they're unemployed, you'll be going on about how they're dumbasses without enough sense to get themselves an education. At which point they will have undergone a drastic change in their political beliefs (in your mind) and they'll be stupid liberals.


So you know his political affiliation? Never met him personally, but he must be a liberal, because he's a dumbass? Do you ever think, or do you just vomit up the drudge you read in Ann Coulter's books?
 
Re: Young Adults Heading for the Prosperity of the Oil Fields Instead of Liberal Acad


They won't be liberals if they got an education in how the world really works, as opposed to mere schooling. About a dozen years out of high school, I ran across an old (and somewhat slow) classmate after the bars closed one night. For lack of alternative company, he deigned to give me an audience although I had a mere BS in math while He had a fresh new PhD in sociology. After talking (listening) to him for an hour I had a clear image of someone who, if you gave him a bird identification book, would disappear the basement for six months and come up for his exam. Given a flash of the bird outline, he would instantly be able to tell you the common name of the bird, the latin name, mating habits, nesting habits, range, number and color of eggs - anything you could answer by reading the book. If you took him outside, however, he would have difficulty distinguishing between a sparrow and a duck.

So you know his political affiliation? Never met him personally, but he must be a liberal, because he's a dumbass? Do you ever think, or do you just vomit up the drudge you read in Ann Coulter's books?
Click to expand...

Sorry, I've never met any dumbasses who weren't liberals. And I've never read any of Ann Coulter's books. Or Al Gore's for that matter. I defer to your advanced wisdom as to what's in the books, because I've spent my time in the real world.
 
Re: Young Adults Heading for the Prosperity of the Oil Fields Instead of Liberal Acad


I see you have never been to an oilfield and maybe never even seen one except maybe on television or a post card. Working in an oilfield is NOT easy. You either freeze your ass off, or fry it off. You work twelve hours minimum usaully on two week on or two week off schedule. You WILL work your ass off. They have trouble finding bodies to do the jobs and pretty much always have. Finding someone nowdays that dont do drugs is a bitch. It IS NOT work for the timid. By the way a lot of careers in the field DO require a degree usually a geology or engineering degree both of which will not be usless in other field not involved in oilfield work. Or you have to be a tradesman of some kind like an electritian or welder or pipe fitter or an iron worker, all of which can find work easily elsewhere. There are very few jobs that are so specialized as to not have an equivalent elsewhere. Mud engineers being one. But then again they can work overseas and make a bloody fortune. The companies will PAY to send good workers to school as well. The people that work in the oil indutry know its a boom and bust cycle. You either work your ass to damn near death, or there is no work. Aint much of an in between. Before you write about the industry it might help to know a little about it. My customers are MI SWACO, Chevron, Oxidental Petroleum, GEO Drilling Fluids, Baker Hughes, Star Tech, Berry Petrolium, are just a few amongst others. You might say I know a thing or two about the industry.
 
Re: Young Adults Heading for the Prosperity of the Oil Fields Instead of Liberal Acad


1) I was not the one who said that college degrees were not necessary. In fact, I believed that college degrees were necessary, but imagep said they were not, which he stated in this thread:


No, I don't know much about working in the oil industry, so I was unsure as to which jobs required high levels of college-level education in a variety of fields. But I was sure that college education was needed and pointed out that even if they weren't then they would be in the future.

2) Nowhere did I mention the difficulty there is in working in the oil industry, so I don't know why you're trying to call me out on something I never commented on.
 
Re: Young Adults Heading for the Prosperity of the Oil Fields Instead of Liberal Acad


Just pointing things out. Didnt mean to make sound like I was calling you out. My appologies.
 
Re: Young Adults Heading for the Prosperity of the Oil Fields Instead of Liberal Acad

PirateMk1 said:
Finding someone nowdays that dont do drugs is a bitch.
Click to expand...

One of the worst things about working in the oil patch is the very stringent and invasive regime of random drug tests...even just a few years ago you could party on your days off and be clean enough by the time you started your hitch to pass a piss test, but now with hair tests being required...you have to be a monk or a drunk.
 
Re: Young Adults Heading for the Prosperity of the Oil Fields Instead of Liberal Acad

longknife said:
Doing the work Liberals are too weak to do…
Click to expand...

So you're either saying all oil field workers are conservative, or only liberals seek higher education.
 
Re: Young Adults Heading for the Prosperity of the Oil Fields Instead of Liberal Acad

Diogenes said:
Sorry, I've never met any dumbasses who weren't liberals.
Click to expand...

You need to get out more then




Think about it for 10 seconds.....
 
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