Interesting report from the Amtrak OIG

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I'd say that the statement about not getting into Harvard for good reason speaks for itself! Unless you went to a religious school that taught hate and bias I can't imagine why yoiu'd think that a college taught you to dislike/distrust others, usually you learn about people one by one, I'd totally disagree that most people are stupid or hateful, only some!

As to college I personally have three degress, all from public universities, my Bachelors is in humanities, my Masters is in Public Administration and I attended a community college to get a degree in General studies mainly to meet women! :lol:

I'll agree with most posters that a good mix of formal education and on the job experience is necessary for most organizations. I know in my case I didn't learn alot in college, in most classes, due to life experience, I knew more about the subjects than the person teaching it, some of the best bosses I ever had came through the school of hard knocks, some of the dumbest

(no common sense) were degreed up from prestigious schools. You just never reallly know till you're there!

I'm glad you know about trains, I learn from you but you are in serious need of a class in the humanities, seems to me you must be extrememly unhappy to judge people so harshly as a class or group! <_<
 
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That is pretty sad. Nowhere else will you find people responsible for that many subordinates without at least a bachelors degree. Its great that they have a lot of hands on experience and I think that is something that is sorely lacking in a lot of college graduates, but professional development through university education is needed for the higher ups.
That is not true, particularly in the military. There are many senior enlisted personnel and even a good deal of limited duty officers (officers that were previously enlisted and received their commission without going to college) that are in charge of and responsible for ships and shore commands full of people. So there are other places where senior leadership isn't all college educated.
 
There are many senior enlisted personnel and even a good deal of limited duty officers (officers that were previously enlisted and received their commission without going to college) that are in charge of and responsible for ships and shore commands full of people. So there are other places where senior leadership isn't all college educated.
I have never heard the term "limited duty" officer before as it relates to the US military.

A lot of the requirements in the military can be waived. I was a draftee that went to OCS in 1969. In theory, you were supposed to have a 4 year degree to be allowed in, but it was almost automatically waived to an AA at that time, and with little more than a request to a high school diploma. One guy in our OCS class had no formal education beyond about 8th grade (maybe. It has been a long time)but he had passed the GED. most of us were fresh out of AIT, but quite a few had a few years of normal enlisted service instead. There was nothing "limited" about these commissions. Some people that got their bars this way have stayed in and gone on to fairly high rank.

Maybe what you are thinking about is a Warrant Officer. This is a class of officers that falls between enlisted and officers in authority, but are paid at normal officer scales. Many helicopter, and in WW2 airplane pilots were Warrants. They are considered as specialists in their field, while a normall officer is supposed to be more of a generalist.
 
You know, GML, the fact that you didn't manage to get a lot out of college doesn't mean nobody does. There's absolutely a component to college (as there is elsewhere in life) where you get back what you put in... if you sat back, skimming books and waiting for your "piece of paper", then yeah, you got exactly what you expected, and you probably did see a poor return on your tuition. One thing you should have learned in college is not to draw such strong conclusions from a single datapoint, particularly when that datapoint is yourself.

Anyway, a good college education does bring many students, particularly those enrolled in B.S. programs, certain very practical tools that they'd be hard pressed to develop outside of the classroom: a familiarity with thinking and communicating in more abstract, mathematical terms. Learning to be critical of the world and seek truth is all well and good, but it's the multiple-year immersion in mathematical analysis that provides what might be the most useful experience, and it sounds like there are all too few people in the organization with those skills.

That's not to say it's impossible to study these techniques independently and apply them successfully without time in college, but it really is like learning a language: it's much more effective when there are instructors and "conversation partners" around, and that's what a B.S. degree should provide.

EDIT:

It should be pretty clear why it's a good thing to have someone on the team who can actually take an idea and run a quantitative analysis on it, maybe using some legitimate but not obvious trick of math they used two years of classroom study to develop, while everyone else works on their educated guesses. It's another approach to solving the problem.

The point is, many or most (yes, GML, not all) college educated people with B.S. training bring an additional tool set to the table, one that is real, useful, and difficult to acquire. As someone else pointed out, managers tend to hire people similar to themselves, so if there's a lack of good college education in management, chances are the skills of college educated applicants will be underappreciated, and the organization will not be able to take advantage of what they'd otherwise contribute.
 
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You know, GML, the fact that you didn't manage to get a lot out of college doesn't mean nobody does. There's absolutely a component to college (as there is elsewhere in life) where you get back what you put in... if you sat back, skimming books and waiting for your "piece of paper", then yeah, you got exactly what you expected, and you probably did lose a lot of money. It seems college didn't teach you any lessons about there being a world outside of your own experiences, though, as you're constantly expressing opinions based on the idea that everyone else has the same values, needs, and experiences as you.
Anyway, a good college education does bring many students, particularly those enrolled in B.S. programs, certain very practical tools that they'd be hard pressed to develop outside of the classroom: a familiarity with thinking and communicating in more abstract, mathematical terms. Learning to be critical of the world and seek truth is all well and good, but it's the multiple-year immersion in mathematical analysis that provides what might be the most useful experience, and it sounds like there are all too few people in the organization with those skills.

That's not to say it's impossible to study these techniques independently and apply them successfully without time in college, but it really is like learning a language: it's much more effective when there are instructors and "conversation partners" around, and that's what a B.S. degree should provide.
I fully agree with your comments about the ultimate value of a college education and it certainly relates to some of the analytical issues and management issues with Amtrak. As I read the IG report, the fact that so few operational management have college degrees did not surprise me. They are hard-core old railroad people and college was not a part of their experience - especially when you look at how many senior management have been with the company for over 30-35 years. College degrees at the railroad were not the norm when they entered the work force; however times have changed and the need for senior management that can think critically, analyze data and develop creative solutions is absolutely necessary.

In my opinion, the more critcal need at Amtrak is the lack of a formal career-path management training program which would allow young people to join the company, move through the various departments and know that they have an oppportunity to move up through the system. The fact that only one or two senior management on the Executive Committee have come "through the ranks" is a major problem - coupled with the fact that hiring from within for the top three Executive positions has been non-existent.

There is great knowledge at Amtrak; however the lack of properly trained and motivated senior management who can positively utilize this knowledge and take advantage of it is, in my opinion, holding the company back.
 
You know, GML, the fact that you didn't manage to get a lot out of college doesn't mean nobody does. There's absolutely a component to college (as there is elsewhere in life) where you get back what you put in... if you sat back, skimming books and waiting for your "piece of paper", then yeah, you got exactly what you expected, and you probably did see a poor return on your tuition. One thing you should have learned in college is not to draw such strong conclusions from a single datapoint, particularly when that datapoint is yourself.
Anyway, a good college education does bring many students, particularly those enrolled in B.S. programs, certain very practical tools that they'd be hard pressed to develop outside of the classroom: a familiarity with thinking and communicating in more abstract, mathematical terms. Learning to be critical of the world and seek truth is all well and good, but it's the multiple-year immersion in mathematical analysis that provides what might be the most useful experience, and it sounds like there are all too few people in the organization with those skills.

That's not to say it's impossible to study these techniques independently and apply them successfully without time in college, but it really is like learning a language: it's much more effective when there are instructors and "conversation partners" around, and that's what a B.S. degree should provide.

EDIT:

It should be pretty clear why it's a good thing to have someone on the team who can actually take an idea and run a quantitative analysis on it, maybe using some legitimate but not obvious trick of math they used two years of classroom study to develop, while everyone else works on their educated guesses. It's another approach to solving the problem.

The point is, many or most (yes, GML, not all) college educated people with B.S. training bring an additional tool set to the table, one that is real, useful, and difficult to acquire. As someone else pointed out, managers tend to hire people similar to themselves, so if there's a lack of good college education in management, chances are the skills of college educated applicants will be underappreciated, and the organization will not be able to take advantage of what they'd otherwise contribute.
Quantitative and qualitative analysis are things I do well and did not learn in college. I learned just how stupid people can be. I had the torture of having to sit there in class and have people ask, over and over again, questions to which the answer was obvious. I had to listen to the insanity of when I ask a question that actually expands on the subject at hand, hearing the answer, "Don't worry, that isn't on the test." Like I care what is on the test.

I had to sit there and listen to people complaining to teachers that essay questions aren't fair because you couldn't memorize the answer! I HAVE HEARD PEOPLE TELL TEACHERS THERE IS ALWAYS SPECIFIC RIGHT ANSWER TO EVERY QUESTION! I have been marked wrong for giving a correct answer to a problem because it wasn't the specific right answer they were looking for, apparently. I'm not talking about high school. It was even worse in high school. No, I am talking about college.

Maybe, possibly, 30 years ago a college education might have been all that you say it was. That is quite possible. But right now, in this world, today, it is an extension of high school, a below-grade, useless mechanism to try for another four years to stuff your average moron with a smattering of mostly useless information they don't need. I mean in this country you can go through high school, college, graduate school, and even get your freakin' doctorate without disturbing your basic 12 year old mentality.

I don't need someone to teach me how to think. I learned that on my own. Just like everything else.
 
I have learned some minutiae in legal regulations, a few specific accounting rules, and how to write a business plan. I can't think of anything else that I learned that I didn't know or could have figured out as a very simple one-step extrapolation of what I already knew.
All of the things I did learn I could have learned by simply picking up a book on the subject and skimming it. Clearly either: I am some kind of genius and most college students are total morons or... that sitting in college was a waste of time and most people would be equally well served paying $200 for an overpriced textbook then $150k for an overpriced college "education".
Well, this is patently false.

If you truly are a super genius, and college was a complete waste of time, then why did it take you five years and $150,000 to figure that out?

:ph34r:

Personally, I think college is what you make of it.

Quantitative and qualitative analysis are things I do well and did not learn in college. I learned just how stupid people can be. I had the torture of having to sit there in class and have people ask, over and over again, questions to which the answer was obvious. I had to listen to the insanity of when I ask a question that actually expands on the subject at hand, hearing the answer, "Don't worry, that isn't on the test." Like I care what is on the test.
That may have been your experience. My experience - which lasted 7-8 years, and ended about 10 years ago, just as a reference point - was that most professors taught very well, and challenged our thinking on a regular basis, only to have the dunderheads raise their hands and ask "Is this going to be on the test?" My professors were smart, it was my fellow students who were just plain lazy. This was a public institution and not a private one, if that makes a difference, but tuition is only $14 grand a year.
 
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Most informative and very interesting! While formal education isn't everything, modern times demand some kind of formal education along with real world experience in order to be able to effectively supervise/manage people/logistics and equipment. In the case of Amtrak this might help explain some of the idiotic decisions made over the years such as cutting routes, idiotic concepts like CCCs, cutting OBS on busy trains, especially diners, and the schedule itself which must have been the result of a so called task-force, work team or any other mod-speak for a committee!(Dont blame me, they did it!!! :lol: )
Those idiotic concepts like; CCCs, and cutting OBS, AKA Simplified Dining Service, all came from the office of one of the apparently few college educated Amtrak managers.

ABC article
 
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Most informative and very interesting! While formal education isn't everything, modern times demand some kind of formal education along with real world experience in order to be able to effectively supervise/manage people/logistics and equipment. In the case of Amtrak this might help explain some of the idiotic decisions made over the years such as cutting routes, idiotic concepts like CCCs, cutting OBS on busy trains, especially diners, and the schedule itself which must have been the result of a so called task-force, work team or any other mod-speak for a committee!(Dont blame me, they did it!!! :lol: )
Those idiotic concepts like; CCCs, and cutting OBS, AKA Simplified Dining Service, all came from the office of one of the apparently few college educated Amtrak managers.

ABC article
Please don't misunderstand, I might not have been clear as I thought, I was trying to point out that idiotic ideas can come from any person or organization,whether or not everyone in policy making positions went to college or not. Usually the worst ideas come from committes or "teams",

or in autocratic organizations where a "boss" makes a decision that others in the group either don't realize is idiotic due to lack of education or real world experience. I feel that a mix of both is necessary to all companies/agencies since common sense is not exclusive to either type of person.

Harry Truman would be an example of common sense and real world experience, one of our best all time leaders, Jimmy Carter and George W. would be examples on the other side of the equation! :rolleyes:
 
There are many senior enlisted personnel and even a good deal of limited duty officers (officers that were previously enlisted and received their commission without going to college) that are in charge of and responsible for ships and shore commands full of people. So there are other places where senior leadership isn't all college educated.
I have never heard the term "limited duty" officer before as it relates to the US military.
I can assure you that they exist, although blueman is incorrect in saying that they can have command at sea. I'm also 99% sure that one needs a college degree (I got out of the Navy 2 years ago so my memory is a little foggy).
 
Harry Truman would be an example of common sense and real world experience, one of our best all time leaders, Jimmy Carter and George W. would be examples on the other side of the equation! :rolleyes:
George W., yes. Jimmy Carter - NO.

He was one of the most underrated presidents of all time. He predicted this current economic downturn almost precicely for the reasons it is occurring. He also was dead on about Iraq and the middle east. He may not have been the strongest communicator (like Reagan) or had the best foreign policy, but he was very smart. He just couldn't apply it as he needed to.

He was also hampered by a bad economy, just like Obama is now. It may or may not have been his predecessor's fault, but we all know the economy is cyclical, and he had the misfortune of being there at the wrong time.
 
There are many senior enlisted personnel and even a good deal of limited duty officers (officers that were previously enlisted and received their commission without going to college) that are in charge of and responsible for ships and shore commands full of people. So there are other places where senior leadership isn't all college educated.
I have never heard the term "limited duty" officer before as it relates to the US military.
I can assure you that they exist, although blueman is incorrect in saying that they can have command at sea. I'm also 99% sure that one needs a college degree (I got out of the Navy 2 years ago so my memory is a little foggy).
College degrees are not a strict requirement for Officers in the Army. I had completed only two years of college in 1962 and was offered OCS, but declined, since my crystal ball told me that young second Lts. in that era unfortunately did not last very long.
 
There are many senior enlisted personnel and even a good deal of limited duty officers (officers that were previously enlisted and received their commission without going to college) that are in charge of and responsible for ships and shore commands full of people. So there are other places where senior leadership isn't all college educated.
I have never heard the term "limited duty" officer before as it relates to the US military.
I can assure you that they exist, although blueman is incorrect in saying that they can have command at sea. I'm also 99% sure that one needs a college degree (I got out of the Navy 2 years ago so my memory is a little foggy).
Maybe "limited duty" is a navy term. Maybe a college degree is needed now. but definitely not during the Vietnam era. My OCS class was probably under 50% college grads. I also know one man who retired as a LTC that did not have a college degree, but then he was a Marine. It could also depend upon your MOS.
 
Usually the worst ideas come from committes or "teams",or in autocratic organizations
Comittees yes, but not so much in Autocratic situations. Where a large corporation has a strong boss, that boss usually got their through sheer competence. I'll give you a few examples.

Fiat: Sergio Marchionne is damned autocratic. He took Fiat from a position wherein GM paid billions of dollars it didn't have in order to not be saddled with buying it - and giving up iconic names like Ferrari, Maserati, and Alfa Romeo in the process- to a point where Fiat took over one of the former Big Three automakers.

Ford: Alan Mulally is not only autocratic, but even his friends think he is something of a heel. Nonetheless, despite the fact that he is not a car guy and has no automotive experience whatsoever, he has managed to steer Ford on a course so true, it has become the only American automaker that did not receive government bailout money, did not declare bankruptcy, and has declared a billion-dollar profit last quarter. This despite the fact that when he took over in 2006, Ford was considered the weakest of the Big Three.

VW/Porsche: Ferdinand Pïech (Pee-ehk) is about the most autocratic person I have ever personally met, and by some margin. He inspires me, actually. First of all, he has assembled some of the greatest car brands in all automobiledom: Audi, Bentley, Lamborghini, Porsche (they merge in 2011), and Bugatti. They also own (of course) Volkswagen passenger cars. Piech was largely responsible for buying the messes that were Seat (originally a Spanish Fiat) and Skoda Cars (Originally a highly respected Czech automaker that lost most of it under communist control) and bringing them back to success. Comercial vehicle speaking, they have Volkswagen commercial, Scania-Vabis, and a controlling interest in Maschinenfabrik Augsburg Nürnberg (MAN) AG.

Beyond that, though, they created some absolutely amazing and outrageous products that are known to be practically the brain children of Piech himself: the incredibly over-engineered Volkswagen Phaeton (which has a draft free HVAC designed by Piech himself due to his hatred of drafts), the 1001-hp Bugatti Veyron, the Bentley Continental, and the Audi R8. Piech is the single driving force behind all of them, some of which aren't profitable and aren't intended to be. Example: despite the Veyrons $1.6 million price tag, VW group loses $750k on each car.
 
Again, college, especially the type of B.S. degrees mentioned in this report, is not just about essay questions and "challenging ways of thinking." A whole lot of it is, certainly, and a lot of that crap isn't worth jack. But that's not really that this report is referring to.

People enrolled in legitimate degrees in technical fields like engineering, science, and even math are taught methods of approaching problems that they otherwise wouldn't have a chance of solving. Three or four years of intensive study can open whole new worlds of ability for these people, and they'd be pretty unlikely to learn it studying on their own even from textbooks... much less trying to somehow pick it up in the field.

As just one example, consider statistics. This is an area that most people have almost no familiarity with at all, and the human mind is notoriously bad at estimating statistical qualities based on informal observation. The numbers are just too big for our brains to easily deal with. So we have a field called statistics that can give a person powerful tools for predicting what's going to happen, which is really important for an organization such as Amtrak.

Problem is, statistics is hard, and doing it wrong is worse than not doing it at all. You know, "lies, damn lies, and statistics"? A person with a B.S. degree should have at least a firm foundation for using statistics, at least enough to know what he doesn't know... and that sort of foundation (along with the rest of the toolbox) is hard to come by without the college experience.
 
Problem is, statistics is hard, and doing it wrong is worse than not doing it at all. You know, "lies, damn lies, and statistics"? A person with a B.S. degree should have at least a firm foundation for using statistics, at least enough to know what he doesn't know... and that sort of foundation (along with the rest of the toolbox) is hard to come by without the college experience.
Statistics are easy. Anyone who really needs a semester course to learn the basics of prob and stat is... special.
 
At least there is one person on this forum who does not suffer from an excess of humility.

I will just say that over my working life I found that there is an inverse relationship between the quantity of talk and the quantity of knowldge on almost any given subject.
 
Problem is, statistics is hard, and doing it wrong is worse than not doing it at all. You know, "lies, damn lies, and statistics"? A person with a B.S. degree should have at least a firm foundation for using statistics, at least enough to know what he doesn't know... and that sort of foundation (along with the rest of the toolbox) is hard to come by without the college experience.
Statistics are easy. Anyone who really needs a semester course to learn the basics of prob and stat is... special.
I rest my case.

There probably should be more B.S. degreed people in Amtrak management just to protect the organization from amateurs with Excel claiming knowledge of statistical analysis just because they can find the "average" function. Pros spend years, if not decades, studying statistics, but people like GML, even with his unfortunate suffering through classes that he didn't get more than a piece of paper from, don't know how much they don't know, and that makes them dangerous: their reports superficially carry the legitimacy of science, but their conclusions arise from flawed methodology.

I'm reminded of mechanical engineers I work with who spend years studying different metals and different alloys... but gee, I can do that job: it's just steel, copper, iron, and aluminum, after all! That'll take a week to learn!
 
I'm reminded of mechanical engineers I work with who spend years studying different metals and different alloys... but gee, I can do that job: it's just steel, copper, iron, and aluminum, after all! That'll take a week to learn!
Volkris:

I feel your pain.

A few years ago for an overseas rail project, it was recommended that they use 136RE. This was instantaneously rejected because it was not an "Intrernational" section, but an American section. It took pages, well more accurately, a couple page summary with quite a number of pages behind it to give the information and quite a bit of effort to convince the people that 136RE was really available from almost any mill that rolled rail anywhere in the world. It was quite a bit of effort also to convince same people that "international" in this case meant the standard of several Western European countries, and was really used outside that area only where the railroad people from that area prevailed. For example, India, China, Russia with most ex Soviet countries, Japan, South Africa, and Austrailia each have their own designs of rail sections that they use with each one having varying amounts of availability in other parts of the world.

Recently got asked, what is the ASTM for rail steel? The answer is, there is not one. It took a while to get this message across. The ASTM has no meaningful specification for rail steel. None. There is an ASTM for rail. It is A1, and it is just as archaic as the number would make you suspect. You DO NOT use it for anything on which you intend to run full size trains.

For rail steel metallurgy and physical properties, you go to the AREMA Manual, Chapter 4, Part 2. There you will find what you need ts spacify the rail properties. But: You cannot just say I want AREMA rail. There is more than one possibility, depending upon the specific properties that you want.

There have been books written on this subject. They are obviously not best sellers, but the contents can be a lot more significant than the contents of a lot of things that are best sellers.

However, it would not surprise me is some self anointed engineering genius decided that rail should be ordered to the ASTM spec and in long dead ASCE section just because it seemed more "standard" to their little mind than to use a standard developed by the engineers that deal with the stuff all their working lives.
 
I rest my case.
There probably should be more B.S. degreed people in Amtrak management just to protect the organization from amateurs with Excel claiming knowledge of statistical analysis just because they can find the "average" function. Pros spend years, if not decades, studying statistics, but people like GML, even with his unfortunate suffering through classes that he didn't get more than a piece of paper from, don't know how much they don't know, and that makes them dangerous: their reports superficially carry the legitimacy of science, but their conclusions arise from flawed methodology.

I'm reminded of mechanical engineers I work with who spend years studying different metals and different alloys... but gee, I can do that job: it's just steel, copper, iron, and aluminum, after all! That'll take a week to learn!
You are now making assumptions with absolutely no basis for them. I have studied statistics, just not heavily in class rooms. I don't use excel for most statistical computation because most of the time I need statistical information, I do not have a computer in front of me. I do most of it by hand with the help of my cellphones 4-function. I find statistics very easy. Math comes naturally to me, I guess.
 
If you are trying to do multiple regression analysis or anything with a lot of data involved, Rip Van Winkle is going to have competition from you by the time you do it with your 4-function cellphone. Along the way I completed a minor in Statistics. Basics are simple. Beyond that is not, IF you want a result that means anything. My minor included a course using SAS and SPSS, two very powerful Statistical Analysis Computer Software packages, Nonparametric Statistics, which was fun (no, really) and Biostatistical Methods, which was NOT (the professor actually begged a number of us NOT to drop the class because so many were dropping it that it would have been canceled). The minor was, if I recall, 22 or 24 semester hours of coursework in Stat. I managed an A- average in all of it.

I'm not going to get in the degree argument except to say that a good baccalaureate degree should teach you how to think critically, analyze, look objectively at a situation from an opposing viewpoint, and hopefully give you some "people" skills. Nowadays, I am sorry to say, I don't think they are doing a very successful job of that, and the job is even more difficult since a horribly large percentage of freshman college students today are almost functionally illiterate. They are hard pressed to write a sentence of more than four or five words, and can't spell to save their lives. To be blunt, the computer phrase GIGO - Garbage IN, Garbage OUT applies.

You need education AND experience to be truly useful (experience of course educates, although frequently with a generous serving of pain), and as has been pointed out you can fix ignorance but you can't fix stupidity.
 
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To return to the topic, isn't Amtrak's current Inspector General a temporary appointment for the longtime IG who left abruptly? If I recall correctly, the temp's previous experience was in the Human Relations Department. Predictably, the activities of the IG department then turn to the educational level of Amtrak management. Nevermind that Amtrak is receiving much larger pools of federal and state government funding than previously -- the IG will stay out of the critical railroad functions.
 
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