Today’s online edition of The Wall Street Journal had a great article by economist Charles Murray, “What’s Wrong With Vocational School?”
The sub-heading actually sums up his thesis best: Too many Americans are going to college.
The piece does in 2 pages what I couldn’t quite do in 17.
And while the piece does have several interesting insights, one tangent popped out: his example of craftsmanship. Stating,
A reality about the job market must eventually begin to affect the valuation of a college education: The spread of wealth at the top of American society has created an explosive increase in the demand for craftsmen. Finding a good lawyer or physician is easy. Finding a good carpenter, painter, electrician, plumber, glazier, mason–the list goes on and on–is difficult, and it is a seller’s market. Journeymen craftsmen routinely make incomes in the top half of the income distribution while master craftsmen can make six figures. They have work even in a soft economy. Their jobs cannot be outsourced to India. And the craftsman’s job provides wonderful intrinsic rewards that come from mastery of a challenging skill that produces tangible results. How many white-collar jobs provide nearly as much satisfaction?
Interestingly enough, two recent trade articles discussed the ongoing revolution in constructing homes.
Last October, Popular Science published an article entitled “Building Blocks: The House of the Future” (pdf) which details a new endeavor that combines existing manufacturing methods with an open-source flare. [Note: Popular Mechanics interviewed the designer in 2005]
Basically instead of building homes from the ground up on location, architect Kent Larson and others at MIT have developed an open, standardized process in which homes can be prefabricated at a central location and shipped out in smaller units (kind of like trailer homes).
The analogy he uses is morphing the finished goods into Lego-like blocks, and as stated in the write-up, “the industry needs standards analogous to the USB standard for computers.” So Larson suggests that, “[y]ou don’t have to agree on the toilet, but you have to agree on how the toilet connects to the wall or the floor.”
The Open Source Building Alliance and the Open-Built endeavors are spearheading this modular fantasy. And the projected savings are not just limited to construction and labor costs, but also in time and wasted material (which typically amounts to “several dumpsters” compared to just a couple trash cans under the Open-Built system).
And if that doesn’t worry general contractors and craftsmen across the country, this past weekend, The Times Online ran a piece nefariously entitled, “Robo-builder threatens the brickie.”
And you guessed it, the author discusses the complete automation of construction labor… which unfortunately is only limited to homes for now.
Among other things, the accuracy involved in using robotic labor not only reliably creates a safe living environment, but it can be contorted in zany, creative ways that human laborers have great difficulty in doing (such as the twists and turns in innovative designs).
Oh, and if living on the ground is too ancien for you, perhaps Loftcubes will tickle your fancy – customized/prefabbed homes flown onto rooftops.
In conclusion, I do not think this diminishes Murray’s thesis at all, in fact, if anything it should strengthen his main point: that you do not necessarily need to attend 4-year colleges to become a successful entrepreneur or master in a trade.
And this is certainly true in a dynamic labor environment that is adapting and adopting new innovations on every front - including construction - in which trade schools can be much more flexible and effective in modifying their curriculm and instruction… to get with the times.
See also, The Prefab Home Is Suddenly Fab