Re: [tlug] OT: interesting NY times article:High-Tech Japanese, Running Out of Engineers

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

CL writes:

 > My job was in the motor industry and, back then, no one from Todai or 
 > any of the other "major" Kanto schools were even interviewed for 
 > positions by any member of that manufacturing group (except Nissan, and 
 > look what happened to them).

Er, they kicked Mustang and Pontiac butt for a decade or so, and the
other Washa (except the zuum-zuum-zuum people) didn't even try to
match them.  Nissan's problems weren't created by Todai *engineers*
....

 > The consensus was that there was too much emphasis on getting into
 > the school and not enough emphasis on the final product the faculty
 > turned out.

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.  At Todai or Stanford.
(Granted, the latter does have the redeeming feature that the faculty
*is* the product.)

 > During a crisis when we had to meet a specific government contract 
 > delivery schedule, about ten of us volunteered to put in a shift on the 
 > line to help.  There was great consternation when it was found none of 
 > us used the line tools in the way that had been taught in the high 
 > school and great surprise that we knew what the tools were and what they 
 > did without additional instruction.

Huh.  I thought that belief (that unlike crows and sea otters, humans
are not instinctively tool-users) was a Tokyo disease.  My Kyoto-bred
wife doesn't like power tools much, but a few hours of shopping at
Ikea is worth a week of good clean mindless fun for her.  And she's
never hesitated to ask *me* to try to fix the dirtier stuff like
plumbing and the kitchen fans (although her habit of calling me
"hakase" when she does is annoying!  Hi, Scott!  No, no kill files for
her!)

 > > What's interesting/scary about the parallel between the US in 1978 and
 > > Japan 2008 is that the scare talk is backed by real numbers regarding
 > > declining rikei enrollments.
 > 
 > You would have thought that the increasing number of "fashon," "esthe," 
 > and "karisuma biyoshi" shops replacing car and industrial equipment 
 > showrooms in places like Aoyama and Ginza, and the growing numbers of 
 > applicants for jobs in those places, as reported by Nikkei, Recruit, and 
 > the various job magazine publishers would have been a huge giveaway for 
 > anyone paying attention.

*shrug*  Data are data.  Mine are as good as yours for this purpose. ;-)

 > That sort of thing doesn't happen any more ... damn I just bit my
 > tongue ...

My condolences!