Originally Posted by Bucco

Comparing NASA budget to wars does not seem to address the point. While it would be great to have the money to afford a program as noted, it is a larger undertaking (moon colony) than anything ever attempted and while I have no idea of how to even estimate the costs it seems to me that the cost would far exceed anything from the past !

I'm sorry, Bucco. If you thought I was endorsing Gingrich's looney-tunes idea of establishing a moon colony, I was not. What he was trying to do was appear "Kennedy-like", that was pretty apparent.

What I meant was that way too many of us simply go along with what our elected representatives say or do, based only on soundbites of information. Seldom do people think about some of the stuff that comes out of Washington by saying, "...wait a minute, does that make any sense?" In this case, that probably goes for both the decisions made to pretty much shut down NASA as well as fighting wars.

Originally Posted by Villages Kahuna

I'm sorry, Bucco. If you thought I was endorsing Gingrich's looney-tunes idea of establishing a moon colony, I was not. What he was trying to do was appear "Kennedy-like", that was pretty apparent.

What I meant was that way too many of us simply go along with what our elected representatives say or do, based only on soundbites of information. Seldom do people think about some of the stuff that comes out of Washington by saying, "...wait a minute, does that make any sense?" In this case, that probably goes for both the decisions made to pretty much shut down NASA as well as fighting wars.

Great....I can then agree with you

Not sure if you read my post.....but wondering what you think about the expansion by the entire congress of the H1-B visa program and also what you thought of my probably misguided suggestion that corporations should adopt the military academies approach...ie. pay for education of american citizens in areas we need the engineering expertise and insist on 5 years of service in return???

Pay for education by employers did happen in the early 70's. I had numerous girlfriends who were hired right out of high school, were given handsome salaries and free tuition, and attending and passing classes were encorporated into their work hours. One gal was an apprentice draftsman making an annual salary of $45,000.00 and got her college diplomaon the job...all due to her high GPA and her gender!

Originally Posted by Rags123

YEP and pretty much approved by both parties across the board. Makes it easier to give the jobs away.

Why do we not have companies emulating our service academies.....pay for the education with a guarantee from the student that you must work for me for x number of years. I guess I am a simpleton on this but it seems like it would be a way to go.

Business is in the business of doing business (making $$, making shareholders happy) - not paying for a kid's education. Just because a kid is a college grad., it doesn't necessarily follow you want him/her working for you for x number of years.

Originally Posted by Bucco

...Not sure if you read my post.....but wondering what you think about the expansion by the entire congress of the H1-B visa program and also what you thought of my probably misguided suggestion that corporations should adopt the military academies approach...ie. pay for education of american citizens in areas we need the engineering expertise and insist on 5 years of service in return???

I think I'd be in favor of both ideas. Much has been made of employers, particularly those in high tech, simply not being able to get enough highly qualified people to man the facilities they'd like to have here in the U.S. I can recall Bill Gates saying that they definitely wanted to build or expand a Microsoft facility in the Pacific Northwest, but found they had to place the new facility less than 200 miles north in Canada because they could get the highly educated people they needed there. The people they hired there weren't necessarily all Canadians but Canada has a much more liberal visa policy, thereby permitting many of the foreign students who had come to North America to be educated to stay and work in Canada.

One of the most logical suggestions I ever heard came from Tom Friedman in one of his New York Times columns a year or so ago. He noted that at his daughter's graduation from Cornell, virtually every single doctoral graduate in math and the sciences were foreign students. (I've noticed the same thing when my sons graduated from the University of Michigan.) He suggested that the Immigration Service have a representative at the commencement ceremonies of all the top U.S. engineering and science schools, who would simply hand all those new Phd's either a permanent visa or a passport accepting them as U.S. citizens when they came down the stairs with their new technical doctoral degrees. He suggested that the "brain drain" so long a complaint of U.S. companies, could be solved permanently and very quickly with that approach.

As far as companies using a "military academy" approach, educating and then employing students, I don't see much wrong with that either. It sure works for our military. The military has both the service academies as well as the ROTC programs, which pay for all or a big part of the education of future officers. I was an Army ROTC officer and I couldn't have made it through college without that monthly check from the Army. In order to complete my degree in Industrial Engineering, I was happy with the trade off of a couple years of active duty and another six years of weekly meetings and two-week summer encampments in the active reserve.

That doesn't mean employers would offer an education-for-future employment deal to everyone, any more than our military does. Both the service academies as well as the ROTC programs are pretty doggone selective with the academic credentials they require for those they accept into those programs. The same could be true for companies seeking engineers, scientists, mathemeticians, etc. Hire the brightest, pay to educate them, and then give them a good job when they've completed their education. A good deal for them as well as the employers.

If you think about it, the G.I. Bill worked awfully well in educating a whole generation of people who accomplished some pretty fantastic things. So much so that they're now called "the greatest generation". Does anyone have an expectation that our current younger generation will ever be so respected as to be called something like that?

I'll talk about NASA in another post.

Let me offer an example of myself concerning training.

I got my first job in my industry (software engineering) at the age of 14 in a work-study program. It was 1976. Because of my 'knack' for computers, I was able to make a career of it. For a while, I could practically write my own ticket (in the mid to late 1980s).

I sat on my laurels a bit much and when 2004 roleld around, disaster struck. I was laid off and my skill set was a bit out of touch.

Once I realized I wasn't going to immediately find work, I looked at some training - one ad in particular looked like it was for a job that offerred training. I was a little off in my reading of the ad, but I signed up for the 3 months program anyway. They offerred financing of the $18,000 tuition. It was a risk, but I took it. They apparently had a verison of the training that said you would get free tuition but you had to work at whatever job they assigned you to for 2 years (they would basically be acting as a contracing house) but they clearly didn't want to operated that way. I don't know how many people were there under that arrangement.

I updated my skills, went to job fairs and they even had job placement skill help - teaching you how to write a resume and how to interview if you didn't know how.

Working against me was the fact that I had to commute to their campus - and they were in New Jersey while I lived in New Hampshire. I ended up renting a room in a house and commuting weekly. Because of this, when the training was over, it was still difficult to find work. It took almost another year before I found a contract.

When I *did* get back to work, I parleyed my training with my 'legacy' experience and that contract led to another one which lasted over a year and led to a third - with my rate increasing each time. When my 3rd contract was cut, I had another contract within 48 hours - thanks to my re-training and usage of those skills. That contract was eventually converted to the full-time position I have now.

I financed this myself. If there were more employers who could operated programs like I described above - training in exchange for a contract to work - we would be doing ourselves a great favor. Think of it like baseball - the major league teams bring someone up from the minors (training) and they have 'control' over that player for 4 years at which time the player has earned free-agency.

There should be programs that allow this sort of thing because not everyone has the resources that I had to take out the loan for the tuition, room and board. Paying it back in kind with employment serves several purposes - paying back the investment while the 'student' gains experience in the field.

But that would take thinking of nature lasting more than just the next fiscal quarter. It would take long-term INVESTMENT-style thinking.

EDIT: I should clarify - by "financed this myself", I should specify that I went out and got an education loan that I have since paid back when I refinanced my house.

He who controls the moon controls.....oh never mind.