If Elon Musk Could Do College Over Again
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Boca Chica to Mars
Something lost. Something gained.
Possibly that, Nick Fouriezos writes, is the story of Elon Musk's impact on the Rio Grande Valley. The globe'due south richest man arrived in the remote, mostly Hispanic region two years agone, promising that his interstellar dreams could be a rocket ship to prosperity for his neighbors, also.
The Valley's largest population centers regularly rank amongst the poorest U.South. cities. Fewer than i in 5 of the region's residents 25 or older take a bachelor's degree, compared with about i in 3 nationwide.
And so how much could Musk'due south arrival — and his decision to base his SpaceX South Texas Launch Site here, planning to launch rockets to Mars — really alter educational aspirations and career opportunities for the Valley's long-fourth dimension residents?
That's what Nick went to Brownsville to learn. In his story — which was co-published this week by Usa Today — we hear from concerned locals who describe SpaceX'due south presence as "exploitative" and "subversive." And from the mayor, who says his metropolis is lucky to have a generational figure like Musk in its midst: "We're trying to make Brownsville a destination urban center."
Mixed feelings
What's clear is that SpaceX is reverberating through residents' lives, in tangible and mixed means:
Mary Solis' high-school students hope having a flagship visitor for the region will create meliorate jobs. One inverse his career goals from law enforcement to mechatronic engineering — calling it a "2nd risk," boosted with the rise of SpaceX. Solis, the principal, says that until at present, many people in the Valley accept felt like they simply have iv career options, and three of them come with a gun.
Moises Castillo, an astrophysics Ph.D. student, stayed close to home to study at the Academy of Texas Rio Grande Valley and wonders if faith in infinite could go on others believing in the Valley, too. SpaceX, he says, has given people promise only he hasn't seen that rewarded yet. None of his Stalk friends have gotten full-time SpaceX jobs. Two interned at the visitor but are no longer there. Some other briefly worked at SpaceX … as a barista.
Immanuel Edinbarough, an engineering science professor at the local university, told a student to show upwardly at a SpaceX job fair. He did, and then dropped out of college months later to have a robotics job making nearly six figures for SpaceX. The professor is trying to persuade the onetime student to come up back to school and cease his degree as he works: While a dream job tin exist taken away in a moment, a degree cannot.
What's left behind
Nick was struck past a number of things equally he reported in the Rio Grande Valley. One, he says, is how speedily things are changing in Brownsville.
He'd been at that place before, back in February 2020, but earlier the pandemic. Inflationary and gentrification concerns you might not look in a remote region like the Valley, Nick says, are playing out there, likewise. Rents, for case, take soared by near 20% in the concluding yr alone. And space really has taken over Brownsville, with murals of Musk, the stars, and rocket ships seemingly everywhere.
"If Musk's city of Starbase becomes a reality, the disparity will become fifty-fifty more apparent. Information technology's a fascinating scene, merely it besides begs the question of what is lost, which I recall is the essential question of the piece — the interplay between longing for change for the better, while coping with what will be left backside in the process.
It's actually the question of all science, of the very rocket fuel that Musk wants to ride to Mars, right? Free energy can neither be created nor destroyed — information technology tin simply be converted from one course to another. In that location is an essential, beautiful, Mexican-American culture in the Valley now, which is already being lost, and which volition very likely only remain as a shade of its one-time self, as has happened in Austin."
Failure as inspiration
Another thing that Nick says he idea a lot about was, equally he puts it, "the curious example of Musk." He's a larger than life figure. And a graphic symbol study of him offers surprising lessons, Nick says.
One, which didn't brand information technology into the story, was something that the university's engineering professors mentioned. Nick says that the professors taught him how failures were a key asset of Musk'due south interstellar strategy.
"While most news coverage focused on the fiery explosions of each 'failed' launch, Musk sees each one every bit a way to get to success faster: The data obtained exposes flaws faster than a careful, measured, decade-long approach of applied science would. … To the professors, this was novel, because it was the exact opposite of what they taught in their classes — it flies in the face of a modernistic trend toward cautious engineering that focuses on bringing a perfect product to market place.
When asked why he thought he could build a spaceship or an affordable electric vehicle, Musk is frank with interviewers: He didn't think so. In fact, he idea failure was far more likely than not. But his attitude was that some things should be tried, even if they won't succeed. It's an attitude that the principal Mary Solis — a woman with a life an unimaginable distance from Musk's, even if simply a few miles from him physically — found inspiring and meaningful, especially since Musk himself struggled equally a student."
— Sara Hebel
+ Read Nick'south story.
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Work Shift explainers
Over atWork Shift — our digital hub for news, assay, and opinion focused on education and the workforce — we've been exploring the new and growing pathways into proficient tech jobs.
Through a series of explainers, Work Shift is spelling out how different models work, what'south irresolute, who pays, and what the benefits are for people and for employers in these specific areas:
- Tech apprenticeships—which grew more than 41 percent in the by year
- The development ofcomputer science degrees
- And coming soon: on-ramps and bootcamps, as well as employer-based training.
Why does this affair? Here's how Paul Fain answers in The Job this week:
Just about every industry is heavy on tech these days—finance, retail, healthcare, manufacturing, and of course, tech itself—and companies take huge hiring needs. The tech industry also has an disinterestedness and diversity problem that hampers both corporate competitiveness and individual opportunity.
People take been chipping away at the problem for years, but the pandemic and the racial reckoning of the past 2 years seem to have created more than of an appetite for modify. And a barrage of pedagogy and training announcements accept come from major companies similar Amazon, Intel, and Google in recent weeks.
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Source: https://www.opencampusmedia.org/2022/03/11/what-will-elon-musk-mean-for-the-rio-grande-valley/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=what-will-elon-musk-mean-for-the-rio-grande-valley
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