Tariffs

[jpanhalt]

It's amazing a moderator would state as fact such rubbish. 

I simply pointed out the main points in the video. Being a moderator does not have anything to do with it, I suggest you up your debating game. As it happens my own employer wanted to get something molded in the UK, we have a local company. A colleague was sent to talk to them, very helpful with information but the answer was no, we won't mold your thing because it will take longer to set up than shoot out the 1000 pieces you want and we want to run one part for 24 hours straight.

That's a BS staged YT video.  I buy lots of stuff "Made in USA."  But the subject is tariffs.  Your assertion that they will backfire is not a fact.  In fact, they are working quite well to balance trade.  Those tariffs are America's tariffs, not Trump's.  I am fed up with the "non-political" bashing of President Trump.  The points you claim to be emphasizing were made well before your post.  Why did you feel they needed to be repeated?

Moreover, it was posted as a moderator not participant.*  How can one determine that?  There is no "report" button, which I would have used. Your objectivity seems about as credible as David Muir and Linsey Davis were in the ABC Presidential Debate.  Most of their corrections of Trump's statements were subsequently shown to be wrong.

*Maybe there should be a way of enabling that when a moderator enters as a participant.

[PlainName]

No need to imagine:
A typical article from a manufacturing trade publication:  https://manufacturing-today.com/news/persistent-labor-shortages-are-endangering-us-manufacturing-output/

I've read that article, yes skilled workers and a return to apprenticeships are what's required. Hopefully, recent government cuts to universities will result in fewer young people wasting money on studying pointless courses, in exchange for on the job training which will lead to secure, well-paid jobs.

Training and apprenticeships are certainly what's needed, but I don't necessarily think that discouraging a university education is the way to go. I can only quote my experience for that view, which no doubt too tedious to repeat here. But, in essence, I didn't know what I wanted to do when I started work and only later, during an unemployed period, did I get to go on a course at a technical college which directly led to me being here. Had that not been available I would no doubt still be doing random low-tech stuff to get by. Periodically.

Why should kids who aren't yet grown up know which way to point their life, when such a decision will basically cast things in stone? I think a university education should be available for any kid who is capable of taking it and is willing to learn. But it shouldn't be pushed on them as a one-off take it or forever regret it thing. But, coupled with that approach, there should be learning and apprenticeships available whatever your age. Maybe you're a late developer and only in your 30s figure out your life's (or the rest of it) direction. Paying someone to stay home and make 20 job applications a day to 'earn' their welfare doesn't help much; paying them not much more to improve in many ways and actually be suitable for a job is surely better.

[tggzzz]

The explosion of US manufacturing in the early 20th century relied on the influx of immigrant labor, and the manufacturing process (e.g at Ford Motors) was designed for that labor force.
Recent reports indicate that manufacturing now has a labor shortage (I’ve seen estimates of about 500,000 shortage currently, possibly going to a couple of million in a few years).

I can't imagine there aren't enough people in the US to get the work done. Especially with so many poor people and even many living on the streets. At the beginning of the 1900's factories in West Europe would build houses for the workers to live nearby the factory.

No need to imagine:
A typical article from a manufacturing trade publication:  https://manufacturing-today.com/news/persistent-labor-shortages-are-endangering-us-manufacturing-output/

I've read that article, yes skilled workers and a return to apprenticeships are what's required. Hopefully, recent government cuts to universities will result in fewer young people wasting money on studying pointless courses, in exchange for on the job training which will lead to secure, well-paid jobs.

Isaac Asimov wrote a novella about people with that attitude. It remains just as valid, and should still be used to shape career aspirations. Caution: people with a chip on their shoulder should consult a doctor first.

Please speed read
 https://www.abelard.org/asimov.php (but wear sunglasses!)
or http://employees.oneonta.edu/blechmjb/JBpages/m360/Profession%20I%20Asimov.pdf

[tggzzz]

Moreover, it was posted as a moderator not participant.*  How can one determine that?  There is no "report" button, which I would have used. Your objectivity seems about as credible as David Muir and Linsey Davis were in the ABC Presidential Debate.  Most of their corrections of Trump's statements were subsequently shown to be wrong.

Another extremely poor response, lacking visible critical thinking skills.

[Zero999]

No need to imagine:
A typical article from a manufacturing trade publication:  https://manufacturing-today.com/news/persistent-labor-shortages-are-endangering-us-manufacturing-output/

I've read that article, yes skilled workers and a return to apprenticeships are what's required. Hopefully, recent government cuts to universities will result in fewer young people wasting money on studying pointless courses, in exchange for on the job training which will lead to secure, well-paid jobs.

Training and apprenticeships are certainly what's needed, but I don't necessarily think that discouraging a university education is the way to go. I can only quote my experience for that view, which no doubt too tedious to repeat here. But, in essence, I didn't know what I wanted to do when I started work and only later, during an unemployed period, did I get to go on a course at a technical college which directly led to me being here. Had that not been available I would no doubt still be doing random low-tech stuff to get by. Periodically.

Why should kids who aren't yet grown up know which way to point their life, when such a decision will basically cast things in stone? I think a university education should be available for any kid who is capable of taking it and is willing to learn. But it shouldn't be pushed on them as a one-off take it or forever regret it thing. But, coupled with that approach, there should be learning and apprenticeships available whatever your age. Maybe you're a late developer and only in your 30s figure out your life's (or the rest of it) direction. Paying someone to stay home and make 20 job applications a day to 'earn' their welfare doesn't help much; paying them not much more to improve in many ways and actually be suitable for a job is surely better.

I'm talking about discouraging youngsters from going to university to study crappy courses such as gender studies. If it's something like engineering or mathematics, which can lead to getting a good job, then of course it should be encouraged, but that's not what the majority study nowadays.

Formal study is also part of most modern apprenticeships, especially technical ones, which can lead to degree level qualifications. The one I did gained me a foundation degree-level qualification. I could have gone on to top it up to a full degree afterwards, but at that point I had, had enough of studying and the additional time and money spent wouldn't have resulted in being paid more, so I didn't bother.

[PlainName]

Thing about universities is it's not so much the subject but the doing - learning how to learn is its own benefit, and why a uni qualification tends to be useful even if it's in a subject unrelated to the job you're applying for.

[TimFox]

Training in a technical discipline tends to go obsolete, and must be updated regularly.
Education, done properly, prepares the student for logical thinking, organized study, and other skills that transfer as technology advances.
Where do the majority of students study gender studies?  In the US, athletes tend to study "communications".
You probably mean philosophy, literature, and other parts of the "liberal arts" curriculum, which has nothing to do with the modern degraded usage of "liberal" and "conservative"

[themadhippy]

modern apprenticeships

Aka a loop hole to allow employers to pay less than the minimum wage,fine if your actually learning a trade that at the end of your time you start earning a decent wage,but when the apprenticeship is in office cleaning,making coffee or a retail assistant its obvious the whole scheme is broken

[Zero999]

modern apprenticeships

Aka a loop hole to allow employers to pay less than the minimum wage,fine if your actually learning a trade that at the end of your time you start earning a decent wage,but when the apprenticeship is in office cleaning,making coffee or a retail assistant its obvious the whole scheme is broken

The minimum wage shouldn't exist. We managed pretty well without it for years. It's certainly not improve living standards. Businesses who don't want to pay it, get around it by making workers self-employed, as is the case with food delivery services. Scrapping it would be a good thing.

Thing about universities is it's not so much the subject but the doing - learning how to learn is its own benefit, and why a uni qualification tends to be useful even if it's in a subject unrelated to the job you're applying for.

That's what I used to think. I admit I was naive. Yes, that should be the case, but it isn't with many of these rubbish courses. More often than not it's just indoctrination i.e. being told what to think, not think. I've dealt with people you've done useless course. All it does is produce entitled people.

[tggzzz]

Thing about universities is it's not so much the subject but the doing - learning how to learn is its own benefit, and why a uni qualification tends to be useful even if it's in a subject unrelated to the job you're applying for.

That's what I used to think. I admit I was naive. Yes, that should be the case, but it isn't with many of these rubbish courses. More often than not it's just indoctrination i.e. being told what to think, not think. I've dealt with people you've done useless course. All it does is produce entitled people.

You are throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Having said that, just like everything else in life, Sturgeon's Law applies.

Caveat emptor, whether you are choosing a course or an employee. It doesn't look good if it sounds like you have an immovable chip on your shoulder.

[Simon]

Degrees have become a whole minefield. I don't know what it was like in the past in the UK. I grew up in Italy where a degree is 5 years, I came back to the UK to find that a degree is 3 years. It's not just the silly courses like black history or gender studies that are a problem. University was the place to go and specialize, but that means that students must be good at "that" subject. There are far too many hybrid courses now. A friend studied some sort of electrical and mechanical degree. The result was that he then moved to France and tried to get a job. He was then expected to get on with the job, but he wanted training. His employers said but you went to university. And yep, it was the very new, "well they taught me to learn but they did not teach me the subject". and of course he had only had 3 badly run years of multiple subjects, not 5 years of well run specialization because in the UK universities are private companies with caps on what they can charge. There is no real oversight of what universities do.

I did a similar thing to Zero999 except that mine was distance learning, the course was atrocious, the tutors kept changing and very few really seemed interested in the subjects or capable. It really was a case of "those who can't, teach". But you could find the answers to the assignments online anyway, and when I pointed this out one tutor said that the site was based in America, I have no idea what that was supposed to mean other than they were not interested as the more students passed the more customers they would attract.

There are too many kids running around thinking they must be good because they have a degree. Too many people think they are electronics engineers because they can get a microcontroller setup in STMCUBE. Everything has been diluted, watered down and mixed up. It's no wonder that the west is a sitting duck!

[Analog Kid]

It's not just the silly courses like black history or gender studies that are a problem.

Ahem; since when are courses like black history (or even "gender studies") "silly" or some kind of "problem"?
I'll grant you that they're probably not the first choice of someone seeking a technical degree, like an engineer, although that's probably not true in all cases.
And I would agree that pushing those classes on students who are reluctant to take them wouldn't be a good thing, if that actually happens, which I doubt. (Talking about secondary education here.)

What about people who think it's important to study black history or gender? Like, say, someone who plans on teaching or writing about history, something that I think is extremely important. Are you making a blanket assumption that they're all jelly-brained foppish academics who the world would be better off without?

A little context here, puleeze.

[Sorama]

Naming gender studies or blacks a problem is nothing but pure racism.
In a somewhat developed country it’s punished with jail sentence.

It seems quite some people who don’t even understand how tariffs work (but do find them necessary) are actually racists.

The same goes for those who see any colored American or immigrant ( even with green card or born in US) a threat, an illegal that should be picked from the streets and sent to God knows where without any due dilligence.

Their POV here just took away their disguise.

[coppercone2]

I think its because those subject like English lit are not "teach you to deal with something that may come up"

for technical stuff if you get too many you still  end up with advancement. for soft subjects if you get too many you can starve to death

[Analog Kid]

I mean, consider an engineering student, who happens to be black (yes, they exist!).
Ya think maybe they might just be interested in their own history? In addition to all the math, science and EE courses. Gotta take some electives, dontcha know, some of those squishy "underwater basket-weaving" courses, so why not Black Studies 201?

Sheesh.

[shabaz]

University was the place to go and specialize, but that means that students must be good at "that" subject. There are far too many hybrid courses now.

There's always been hybrid courses, I hope there are more of them. I studied engineering with management. Over four years (five if you do a year work placement) there was plenty of time to be given a taste of some of the management school courses, and it made it very clear to me what further education I wished to do after uni (i.e. evening classes) while working. I feel I would not have pursued the career that I did, had I not taken the hybrid course, because you end up discovering what you enjoy if you try different things. It works in later life too; a friend of mine did not study engineering or IT, but then later on in his career decided to try it, and spent Pandemic-time doing programming courses, and soon found employers willing to give him a go. He's doing great.

The experience of your friend seems more a reflection of those potential employers he considered than anything else. There are backward employers who are not interested in hiring and developing kids fresh out of education, and instead want someone just familiar with the specific vocation-ready tasks that they needed at the time. Your friend was simply not at that stage in his career for that role, and in the long run they probably did him a favor by not hiring him.

My first job interview, the employer wanted someone with (already ancient) Z80 and Visual Basic experience. I had both since I had played around with microprocessors and computers as a hobby but I ran a mile from that job which was a good thing for both that employer and myself; I couldn't see myself growing in a job where I might spend years developing on their dated hardware, and they could certainly hire someone for some volume of money, to make it attractive enough if they really didn't want to grow that person's career in other ways.

My first major job, I hit a brick wall after a few weeks, because the amount of knowledge I had to pick up felt overwhelming, and of course that's not taught at a uni since it's very job-specific. However, I stuck with it (what other choice was there?), and soon learned to mentally accept that I knew only a fraction of a percent about the whole project, but to just trust myself that I would be able to navigate the unknowns and put the pieces together as I learned more over time. Anything I didn't know, I studied (and went on courses where I needed to, and read books, and learned to find pieces of information in standards despite discovering it was impossible to read them all to know everything in detail from first principles, and subscribed to Dr Dobbs and so on..). All my managers supported me (I've never had a bad manager - I know I'm lucky in that respect).

I recently just finished 8-weeks of evening classes on what's probably a "humanities" subject which I wanted to do. My class colleagues included retired people, a secretary, a politics graduate, a nurse and so on. All making the effort to learn something new, even if it wasn't job-relevant. We all learned things from each other.

Almost _any_ education is still better than not studying. There's a certain benefit for society i.e. for all, if the people around them are educated to a level (doesn't have to be a uni degree since people can become educated in different ways, but a degree is nicely intensive to a certain amount at least). If employers have to hand-hold a little, or supplement by sending employees on training, so be it. Why should uni's or students bend over for employers who have a relatively short-term perspective. I'd rather employers pay for extra training than see grads destined for not much of a future if they have spent 4-5 years studying mainly what employers felt they needed at that time.

[Zero999]

It's not just the silly courses like black history or gender studies that are a problem.

Ahem; since when are courses like black history (or even "gender studies") "silly" or some kind of "problem"?
I'll grant you that they're probably not the first choice of someone seeking a technical degree, like an engineer, although that's probably not true in all cases.
And I would agree that pushing those classes on students who are reluctant to take them wouldn't be a good thing, if that actually happens, which I doubt. (Talking about secondary education here.)

What about people who think it's important to study black history or gender? Like, say, someone who plans on teaching or writing about history, something that I think is extremely important. Are you making a blanket assumption that they're all jelly-brained foppish academics who the world would be better off without?

A little context here, puleeze.

Have you actually looked into the content of those courses?

Black history doesn't really exist, since the word black, just refers to skin colour, nothing else. When people talk about black people, they normally mean those with heritage from sub-Saharan Africa. There are a huge variety of cultures in sub-Saharan Africa. Unfortunately they lack a written language, so learning about their history is difficult. A lot of what we know is from the perspective of Europeans and Arabs, which of course isn't the most objective source of information. We could listen to their oral stories and folklore and record them, which would be very worthwhile and interesting. Unfortunately courses such as black studies don't do any of that. They're just political propaganda, peddling false narratives about white bad. Nothing more.

Gender studies is just another pseudoscience. It teaches such nonsense like their are infinite genders and the only difference between genders is social conditioning.

Naming gender studies or blacks a problem is nothing but pure racism.
In a somewhat developed country it’s punished with jail sentence.

It seems quite some people who don’t even understand how tariffs work (but do find them necessary) are actually racists.

The same goes for those who see any colored American or immigrant ( even with green card or born in US) a threat, an illegal that should be picked from the streets and sent to God knows where without any due dilligence.

Their POV here just took away their disguise.

The race card doesn't work any more. It's just a way to shut down debate. Virtually everyone has been called a racist for disagreeing with some progressive talking point. It doesn't mean anything any more.

Provide decent counterarguments in favour of these courses which I think are silly, rather than making childish accusations.

[tggzzz]

It seems quite some people who don’t even understand how tariffs work (but do find them necessary) are actually racists.

Yes, that does seem to be the case, but why?

I don't have a decent answer, but I suspect part of it is a combination of narrow experience, feeling downtrodden, simple ignorance, chips on shoulder, upbringing/memes, and simple personality. Some of those potential causes might be reduced if someone is willing to listen and understand and change their mind, but that doesn't happen often.

A useful technique is to demonstrate that you understand the other person's viewpoint, then to ask them what would be necessary for them to change their mind. If the answer is "nothing", then there's no point talking to them.

[tggzzz]

The race card doesn't work any more. It's just a way to shut down debate.

Another way is to use phrases such as "MSM".

[Sorama]

It seems quite some people who don’t even understand how tariffs work (but do find them necessary) are actually racists.

Yes, that does seem to be the case, but why?

I don't have a decent answer, but I suspect part of it is a combination of narrow experience, feeling downtrodden, simple ignorance, chips on shoulder, upbringing/memes, and simple personality. Some of those potential causes might be reduced if someone is willing to listen and understand and change their mind, but that doesn't happen often.

A useful technique is to demonstrate that you understand the other person's viewpoint, then to ask them what would be necessary for them to change their mind. If the answer is "nothing", then there's no point talking to them.

I think it’s all of this.
Morons is another word for them.

[PlainName]

The race card doesn't work any more. It's just a way to shut down debate.

Another way is to use phrases such as "MSM".

Hesitate to show how clean my mind is.. what does that stand for?

[coppercone2]

I don't think most people are opposed to the idea, I think engineers often don't like it because while the powers that be do have some kind of endgame in mind for equality, what you see in your life time is being passed over for hiring or promotion if there is a directive at play if you are not benefited by such things. That tends to make people feel like they are 'acceptable losses' or a victim of collateral damage.

Maybe people see it as massive acceleration of social changes. For some things its fine (i.e. you don't lose money or career) , but when it starts interfering with work, which is unfortunately the sole reason for most 1st world people to live, it leads to feeling very disappointed.

In the end what most people want to do is get 24oz ribeyes on Sunday dinners, retiring at 50 and so on...

[Sorama]

It's not just the silly courses like black history or gender studies that are a problem.

Ahem; since when are courses like black history (or even "gender studies") "silly" or some kind of "problem"?
I'll grant you that they're probably not the first choice of someone seeking a technical degree, like an engineer, although that's probably not true in all cases.
And I would agree that pushing those classes on students who are reluctant to take them wouldn't be a good thing, if that actually happens, which I doubt. (Talking about secondary education here.)

What about people who think it's important to study black history or gender? Like, say, someone who plans on teaching or writing about history, something that I think is extremely important. Are you making a blanket assumption that they're all jelly-brained foppish academics who the world would be better off without?

A little context here, puleeze.

Have you actually looked into the content of those courses?

Black history doesn't really exist, since the word black, just refers to skin colour, nothing else. When people talk about black people, they normally mean those with heritage from sub-Saharan Africa. There are a huge variety of cultures in sub-Saharan Africa. Unfortunately they lack a written language, so learning about their history is difficult. A lot of what we know is from the perspective of Europeans and Arabs, which of course isn't the most objective source of information. We could listen to their oral stories and folklore and record them, which would be very worthwhile and interesting. Unfortunately courses such as black studies don't do any of that. They're just political propaganda, peddling false narratives about white bad. Nothing more.

Gender studies is just another pseudoscience. It teaches such nonsense like their are infinite genders and the only difference between genders is social conditioning.

Naming gender studies or blacks a problem is nothing but pure racism.
In a somewhat developed country it’s punished with jail sentence.

It seems quite some people who don’t even understand how tariffs work (but do find them necessary) are actually racists.

The same goes for those who see any colored American or immigrant ( even with green card or born in US) a threat, an illegal that should be picked from the streets and sent to God knows where without any due dilligence.

Their POV here just took away their disguise.

The race card doesn't work any more. It's just a way to shut down debate. Virtually everyone has been called a racist for disagreeing with some progressive talking point. It doesn't mean anything any more.

Provide decent counterarguments in favour of these courses which I think are silly, rather than making childish accusations.

For me there are only 2 genders: men and women.

Or make it 3; morons.
The kind  that find it normal that colored peopled (not to limit blacks) that were born and raised in the US but have either a tattoo or their parents were immigrants, should be wiped from the streets because they so called take the job of some  white moron doing nothing but drinking, destroying the Capital and stealing from those colored that do work.
No, the racist card still works, now more than ever.
Tariffs are actually some form of racism: the people who promote tariffs are nothing but jealous at those foreigners that do want to work, even for way less money.

[tggzzz]

It seems quite some people who don’t even understand how tariffs work (but do find them necessary) are actually racists.

Yes, that does seem to be the case, but why?

I don't have a decent answer, but I suspect part of it is a combination of narrow experience, feeling downtrodden, simple ignorance, chips on shoulder, upbringing/memes, and simple personality. Some of those potential causes might be reduced if someone is willing to listen and understand and change their mind, but that doesn't happen often.

A useful technique is to demonstrate that you understand the other person's viewpoint, then to ask them what would be necessary for them to change their mind. If the answer is "nothing", then there's no point talking to them.

I think it’s all of this.
Morons is another word for them.

Yes and no.

In some cases the source of their discontent is actual and valid, e.g. the UK's broken housing market where young people find it very difficult to find a stable home. However, the cause of that source can be much more difficult to determine - and that gives malicious parties an easy way to deflect attention and to direct anger. The classic technique - which has proven successful many times - is to deflect the blame onto the poor and immigrants.

Consider that many many hard statistics across the western world quantitatively (numbers, not adjectives ) demonstrate that over the past 40 years the very rich have become richer, while the poor and middle class have become relatively poorer. Why is that, and what are the consequences?

Thomas Piketty has, famously, charted how that phenomenon has occurred many times in the past in different places. It makes fascinating reading. His definitive book is very long and detailed, so it is better to read the various "study guides" that have been written.

[Simon]

University was the place to go and specialize, but that means that students must be good at "that" subject. There are far too many hybrid courses now.

There's always been hybrid courses, I hope there are more of them. I studied engineering with management. Over four years (five if you do a year work placement) there was plenty of time to be given a taste of some of the management school courses, and it made it very clear to me what further education I wished to do after uni (i.e. evening classes) while working. I feel I would not have pursued the career that I did, had I not taken the hybrid course, because you end up discovering what you enjoy if you try different things. It works in later life too; a friend of mine did not study engineering or IT, but then later on in his career decided to try it, and spent Pandemic-time doing programming courses, and soon found employers willing to give him a go. He's doing great.

The experience of your friend seems more a reflection of those potential employers he considered than anything else. There are backward employers who are not interested in hiring and developing kids fresh out of education, and instead want someone just familiar with the specific vocation-ready tasks that they needed at the time. Your friend was simply not at that stage in his career for that role, and in the long run they probably did him a favor by not hiring him.

My first job interview, the employer wanted someone with (already ancient) Z80 and Visual Basic experience. I had both since I had played around with microprocessors and computers as a hobby but I ran a mile from that job which was a good thing for both that employer and myself; I couldn't see myself growing in a job where I might spend years developing on their dated hardware, and they could certainly hire someone for some volume of money, to make it attractive enough if they really didn't want to grow that person's career in other ways.

My first major job, I hit a brick wall after a few weeks, because the amount of knowledge I had to pick up felt overwhelming, and of course that's not taught at a uni since it's very job-specific. However, I stuck with it (what other choice was there?), and soon learned to mentally accept that I knew only a fraction of a percent about the whole project, but to just trust myself that I would be able to navigate the unknowns and put the pieces together as I learned more over time. Anything I didn't know, I studied (and went on courses where I needed to, and read books, and learned to find pieces of information in standards despite discovering it was impossible to read them all to know everything in detail from first principles, and subscribed to Dr Dobbs and so on..). All my managers supported me (I've never had a bad manager - I know I'm lucky in that respect).

I recently just finished 8-weeks of evening classes on what's probably a "humanities" subject which I wanted to do. My class colleagues included retired people, a secretary, a politics graduate, a nurse and so on. All making the effort to learn something new, even if it wasn't job-relevant. We all learned things from each other.

Almost _any_ education is still better than not studying. There's a certain benefit for society i.e. for all, if the people around them are educated to a level (doesn't have to be a uni degree since people can become educated in different ways, but a degree is nicely intensive to a certain amount at least). If employers have to hand-hold a little, or supplement by sending employees on training, so be it. Why should uni's or students bend over for employers who have a relatively short-term perspective. I'd rather employers pay for extra training than see grads destined for not much of a future if they have spent 4-5 years studying mainly what employers felt they needed at that time.

I don't know your country and as I explained this is a UK specific problem. you studied for 5 years total, he did 3 and they did not sound very good. One tutor announced that this was his last day with no real cross over with his replacement. Sure you can study 2 subjects at once, I design electronics, write code and designed mechanical stuff, an engineer that can only see their subject is doomed to fail. But you can't do 2 subjects in 3 years of poorly run courses. It feels like many courses are cross subject to avoid going to deep into any of them, the result is that the student comes out with very little to go on.

Take mechatronics/robotics, what do you actually study? In the UK my understanding is that year 1 is brushing up on maths and getting a start in the subjects. Year 2 is studying some of the areas in more detail but doing little bits all over the place. Year 3 is a group project where 1 maybe 2 of the group actually do the work and the rest sail through. That is my understanding of UK university, correct me if I am wrong.

I did electronics to HND level. There were lots of modules that were utterly useless, I suspect that the university was aimed more at people that needed skills to work on oil rigs so higher level understanding of various bits. The advanced control systems module spent a lot of time on sensors, this is a topic on it's own but it helped pad out what was a dumbed down control systems module. they even sent you to another universities website to use their oven temperature control simulator for one of the assignments, it was just an unprofessional joke.

This is the preparation that you get in the UK for a career as an engineer. But in the UK even the man that comes to repair the vending machine calls himself an engineer while he phones home for instructions on what to do to fix the machine.