Comments by "alex smith" (@alexsmith-ob3lu) on "The College Enrollment Crisis" video.

America has way too many white collar labor and too few (highly experienced) blue collar labor. When it comes to maintaining buildings, you need design engineers, control technicians, and a variety of skilled tradesmen to get the job done. Property owners aren’t competitive for such maintenance labor, so they’re forced to use multiple contractors.
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@tydude Well done earning a bachelor of mechanical engineering! If you can’t find work, try taking some community college courses/certificates in machine tools or HVAC design. The hands on and practical theory offered by community colleges helps to build your resume. I had a friend who graduated with honours bachelor of civil engineering and couldn’t find work. So, he went to community college for one year to learn construction and met an instructor who gave him a civil engineering job!
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@nick15684 Amen!! Keep on preaching!! Too many people think that college is the end all of your education. It’s not! College is there to assist your education, but there are STILL many other lessons to be learned outside the classroom.
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@ Building maintenance labor is pretty thin on the ground these days. Those who do get into maintenance of buildings, tend to work as contractors because property owners are not competitive.
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@JR-fl3yx I’ve done HVAC work for many school/college properties as a controls technician over the years. The one common pattern found everywhere is that property owners will complain about the high costs of the utility bills, but won’t spend more money on maintenance and servicing their building. They’re eager to spend ten million dollars on internet but won’t spend a dime more on maintenance, Lol.
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@crashdavis4123 That depends on what kind of contractor you work as. I don’t know how your school communicated with the painters, but here is what I can tell from my experience working in HVAC. If you’re an HVAC controls technician/engineer, you’re making decent money because nobody understands how pneumatics/DDC systems work anymore. Most men working in HVAC are dinosaurs who are part of a dying breed. On top of that, we’re got anti-trust laws enforced on small-medium sized enterprises to encourage ridiculous business competition. When you have dwindling labor in controls/HVAC, high business competition for the sale of proprietary equipment, and government mandates for energy efficiency on buildings. You get into a situation where anyone who owns large property gets financially burned real fast.
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I’m 100% happy with my associate of applied science degree from technical community college. I’ve got plenty of work doing controls and automation. Unlike so many of my fellow peers, who were basically shamed or guilt tripped into wasting time at a four year college.
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