perils of education

I was reading an article today about supply chain management and I came across a statement that was actually very meaningful… it said “the number of people that aspire to be truck drivers or warehouse workers is shrinking. Our children are better educated than previous generations and want to pursue other kinds of careers”…

Now we are generally made to believe throughout our upbringing that education is the single biggest wealth that cannot be taken away from us… now is that causing problems? A long time back I remember my dad telling me, people used to take up jobs after many days and even months of searching… I have also seen movies related to those eras to prove the general mindset of the people in those times… in these days of campus placements that seems funny and illogical. But really, is it? My brain is still echoing with the words of the student from some remote village who had said “education is the only escape from my poverty”.

Another article in a leading business magazine had two pictures – one a smartly dressed sparkling young man, maybe his late 20s or early 30s and the other a poor looking not-so-well dressed (even to the point of dirty/grimy clothes) with a sad expression on his face, the age unfathomable because he looked tired and old, but at the same time he did not seem to be too old. It said something like are there enough jobs in India? Is India really shining? Not for the second guy…

But then what I felt at that time was there are a lot of people like the tired man… he was not as educated (in terms of the level) as the other guy who was probably a software guy… the poor guy might be having the qualification suiting that of a line worker – more requirements from a physical labor than an intellectually straining job. What was stopping him from investing in a good education and moving above the poverty line…? I personally know of a few people who were initially in the physical labor category and moved on to become software engineers thanks to the boom that happened… sometimes bugs are good, especially the y2k ones…

The question here is the investment… but then today there are a lot of options available to fund education… also the education investment is like a sure shot return category where the centers of knowledge tend to arrange for getting you a job. So what is stopping them…?

But is education going to cause problems to progress…? This is an angle that we had never thought of. What if everyone aspires to become software engineers or management consultants? All the elite jobs are the only aspirations… people don’t even want to consider joining some jobs that would under-employ their education/capabilities? So let us focus the discussion on truck driving (as in as an example… people are not to assume that this is the only profession).

So would a truck driving job sound lucrative to a guy who has say done his MBA and is looking at the Mckinseys and BCGs… now I am not going to reiterate on the skills that an MBA can teach you, but what are the skills a truck driver would want apart from truck driving? Look at the various possibilities that the MBA jargon can throw at you – supply chain management, logistics, taxation, warehouse management, resource management, negotiation skills, hard selling, bargaining, economies of scale, strategic cost management, activity based costing, impact of the crude oil prices on the inflation of the Indian economy, the cascading effect on the interest rates, the stock price of your company, the market capitalisation of the companies you are the logistics partner of, their effect on the indexes, long term market share, share of the customer’s mindspace, 3Ps, 4Cs, porter’s framework for competitor analysis, SWOT analysis, portfolio management, new services offering, services management, sustaining customer value, entry barriers, exit barriers, telecom and IT in truck driving management… and so on… the list is endless…

And let us look at the job description… the role would involve extensive traveling and opportunity to work with the customers, a more functional kind of outlook and the opportunity to gain domain expertise. Networking skills and communication skills are tremendously important when you meet the authorities at the different borders. And then the perks… for a complete auto junkie, you cannot ask for more – absolute power at arms length… what can those SUVs or good looking sports cars compete where it really matters. For travel junkies you get to travel throughout the country, the roads are yours… you visit different cities from Srinagar to Kanyakumari, Mumbai to Meghalaya the choice is yours.

So what is stopping people from taking it up? Well the pay could be one such issue… that is a sadly neglected area in the Indian industry. Compensation has to be in commensurate with the economy and companies should benchmark themselves with the competition. However the competition in this case is not the other truck companies, but any other company. What will happen if all the truck drivers decide to do a course in J2EE… they would be the most sought after guys for the ever booming software sector. Well J2EE is not tough you know, any truck driver with enough money can learn it.

So what is the gain for companies? They can look at hiring part-time employees like McDonalds… students during their vacations… the visibility it will give them amongst their logistics partners… the truck companies will also have to do some hard selling… maybe even come to campus… provide lucrative working conditions, global standards in truck designs and cabin facilities… world recognition in terms of quality trucks leading to future export markets…

What a butterfly effect it can produce with just one small decision to become a truck driver…