The power of a blue-collar job

By PETER CARNEY
Posted 6/26/25

In reference to the Beacon editorial of June 5 (“Not all roads lead to college”), it seems fashionable these days to pile on against our institutions of higher education for a litany of …

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The power of a blue-collar job

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In reference to the Beacon editorial of June 5 (“Not all roads lead to college”), it seems fashionable these days to pile on against our institutions of higher education for a litany of reasons  – they’re too woke, too expensive, too irrelevant.

As someone who graduated high school in 1964, I agree that, back then, there were basically two academic tracks: college-prep and general studies, with the latter often regarded as less prestigious and somehow demeaning.

My graduating class had 650 students, 65 of whom made “honors” (I wasn’t one of them), and I enrolled at my flagship state university, where over the next four and a half years I probably skipped as many classes as I attended. But I was lucky because, at that time, there was no tuition for in-state residents, and I managed to graduate without much debt, thanks to federal student and family loans.

Scholastically, whereas high school had involved mostly passive, rote learning and lots of sheer memorization, the college classes I did manage to attend – across a wide range of mostly liberal arts disciplines – forced me to actively engage with the material. In short, my time in college taught me how to think rather than what to think.

The Beacon editorial highlights the importance of Career and Technical Education and spotlights the success of recent General Dynamics/Electric Boat program graduates. I agree. During college, I spent breaks working blue-collar jobs, including two summers at EB Groton, as an outside electrician and a painter. While some of my co-workers in the yard were envious of my being in college, I was envious of their ability to drive a nail straight without hitting their thumb.

With AI threatening to upset the world as we know it, if I were still in the workforce, I’d be looking to update my International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers membership from my EB days, rather than resuming my last job as, basically, a copy editor of college student research papers.  On second thought, since I found the two seemingly disparate  professions so rewarding and fulfilling, I’d consider doing both, even though my job prospects and security (not to mention financial compensation) as an electrician would be much, much better.

The writer, a Warwick resident, spent 45 years as an adjunct faculty member, academic staff and program administrator at a dozen colleges and universities in five U.S. states, Japan and Bulgaria.

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