Apprenticeships

This is a topic that I started pondering about when in college. Specifically, I was sitting in freshman chemistry, learning how to fall asleep in class, wondering what the hell I was doing. College tuition isn't cheap. I'll be paying off my loans through 2024, and that's the part that I didn't have to pay right away. My folks were kind enough to forward all college related bills to me so that I got to appreciate (and pay) how expensive the curriculum was. Yet, I'm sitting through a class where material could not be presented any more dryly. Long, wordy powerpoint presentations in a dark lecture hall at 8 am do not an alert student make. I sometimes wondered if the professor snuck out halfway once all the students had fallen asleep for a smoke. Unfortunately, I could not stay awake long enough to test the theory.
I took the class because it was part of a required curriculum of courses that I had to pass if I wanted my degree. I took lots of classes like that. Some of them, like WW2 history, were very interesting to me, but ultimately have little impact on what I do as an occupation now. I would even go so far as to say that I learned more at the job I held in college than I did the courses I took to properly prepare me for a job as a mechanical engineer. The courses were just butter for the degree, and once done I wash my hands, burn my notes, and forget anything I might have accidentally learned. Once I started working, that's when I started learning. A more experienced engineer took me under his wing, and started showing me the ways of the engineering world. Project to project, mentor to mentor, I've continued to learn and accrue more 'real' knowledge. It's stuff that my professors couldn't really teach me as most of them had never left academia (This, non-readers, is possibly a reason for the previous entry regarding the Smithsonian Paradox).
What has happened to the concept of the apprenticeship? They've replaced it with internships and Co-ops, which are really just afterthoughts crammed into a now convoluted education system that seeks, though sadly fails, to surpass it. Apprentices figured out what they wanted to do, started learning at a young age by working in the industry under one or more mentors, and soon they were off on their own. Young grownups. Admittedly, some mentors were better than others, which is perhaps why the education system tried to move in and standardize everything. How ironic, it is then, that colleges offering the same degree vary so much in tuition. I'll not lie, I did not go to an ivy because I thought it would offer me a somehow better, richer experience. I went there to put the name on my resume. I never harbored thoughts that it would make me better. Truth be told, I'm envious of those that I work with who went to state schools because their bills are likely smaller, their college lives likely less hellish, but they're doing just as well as me. Doesn't the pain count for something!?! I bet it counted for apprentices.
Anyhow, yeah, chemistry sucks.