Thread: is there ever gonna be a pilot shortage
View Single Post
Old 04-21-2010 | 11:15 AM
  #58  
forgot to bid's Avatar
forgot to bid
veut gagner à la loterie
 
Joined: Apr 2008
Posts: 23,286
Likes: 0
From: Light Chop
Default
Originally Posted by BoilerUP
That's something myself and a few other alums have been fighting for with Purdue alumni - to have more real-world topics discussed in the new curriculum with students vs. 4 semesters worth of 727 systems classes that an airline would teach in 2 40-hour weeks.

I think a contributing factor to this is at many universities, faculty don't have much industry experience...especially in the last 10-15 years. One reason for this is many universities want aviation faculty to have M.S. degrees if not Ph.Ds...and there simply aren't that many folks out there that have a strong professional/operational background with those academic credentials that want to teach.
BINGO! You're dead on.

Colleges are places of academia and they can be rather incestuous. Auburn has or at least had the same issue, a former major pilot / major airline pilot who is a current CFI/MEI is not going to qualify for a job teaching on campus but an aviation washout that sticks around a college campus until he earns a masters or PHd will and then they get to teach the future generation.

And 4 semesters of an airplane that is hard to find anymore is pointless. I think Auburn did DC-10s for a while and when they were doing that it was a joke of an idea. Systems courses ought to teach basic systems found throughout the industry and what it means to future pilots and aviation managers, problem is, they can't find people who could correlate the information.

And I doubt any of that will change because the truck driving school (aviation management) wants to do things the right way but not necessarily academia’s way.

I think there are 2 ways for students to get the most out of college whether they are aviation management or not but planning on going into this industry and that is:
a) choose their favorite airline long-term and intern somewhere in flight ops and if you’re unable to do that then try a regional, and
b) read every single aviation magazine they can.
Reply
0