Society/Culture Should a trade apprenticeship be valued as highly as a university degree ?

[ShanDog]

Household wiring for the most part is quite simple but yes there is zero margin for error dealing with electricity so not a good idea.

If there's anything I need when on the tools, it's a wide margin for error!

 

[RegHickeyStand]

Whats needed is university degrees to stop hijacking courses. I WAS going to do a drafting course. I have been doing it for years anyway, fixing up architrects' slackness. I thought 2-3 year part-time. Nah, its all full-on now. Very similar to a degree, and totally unnecessary additional work and requirements. I looked at it, and its like they are trying to make a closed shop situation out of it.

 

[Hoops]

It’s legal to do your own lighting in the UK. My mate did his. Not dead yet.

in the US the voltage is low enough that it just gives you a tickle.

 

[Hoops]

I don't mind DIY for just about anything, but don't touch electrical work with a ten foot (non-conductive) pole. I don't understand how electrickery works and as far as I'm concerned, it's the devil's magic.

I don't touch gas, but am up for anything else.

 

[Number37]

Whats needed is university degrees to stop hijacking courses. I WAS going to do a drafting course. I have been doing it for years anyway, fixing up architrects' slackness. I thought 2-3 year part-time. Nah, its all full-on now. Very similar to a degree, and totally unnecessary additional work and requirements. I looked at it, and its like they are trying to make a closed shop situation out of it.

Most of the fair dinkum bridging courses will credit your practical experience in lieu of many subjects, so for example ....instead of doing 12 subjects you might only need to do 8 or 6 and they give you credit standing for the rest so you qualify for the degree.

 

[Scotland]

You don't need to understand electricity to do basic electrical jobs. I've replaced switches, moved a couple of points up or down etc. It's common sense and you don't need a heap of expensive tools to do it. But I wouldn't do much beyond that. I wouldn't go adding a new power point and just connecting the wire to the nearest junction box I could find. * getting someone to come to the house and charge (lol) me $200 to spend 5 minutes undoing a couple of screws. I can see why some people don't even want to touch any task, each to their own.

What makes me more nervous about home electrics is having an older house and not knowing what dodgy workmanship exists (professional or otherwise) in the roof and walls. Don't want to go drilling into a wall to hang a painting to decide someone has decided to run an electrical cable horizontally. But I guess that's why they invented stud finders.

 

[Contra Mundum]

I was talking to a mechanical engineer who worked for a while at the Volkswagon factory in Frankfurt. He said the sparkies and electrical engineers work together in teams and you can hardly tell the difference. The trade schools in Germany are apparently top notch and many many tradies after a few years of working articulate into a tertiary qualification. The Dawkins Uni bullshit did not do that - it just created heaps of mediocre unis

 

[Seeds]

Gees we are still debating this?

the answer is determined by the free market wage.

can we end this thread.