Andrew Sarangan wrote:
I think you are right on the money. I am in the education field, and
see this phenomenon first hand. We are promoting an educational system
that does not reward hands-on skills and the joy of creating things.
Elec engineering students graduate without ever having seen a
soldering iron;

Ahem. We used plug-in breadboards and wirewrap in college to wire up
circuits, not soldering irons. As we should have - we were learning
concepts, not necessarily eye-hand skills. In college you are supposed to
experiment with circuits and soldering is an impediment to that goal. And
that was in the physics program at the University of Minnesota. You can't
get a physics degree without taking the required 1 year lab course, 2/3rds
of which was electronics. (The required text was (still is?) Horowitz and
Hill's "The Art of Electronics" which a lot of people consider a classic
text. I know one of the authors used to contribute in the
sci.electronics.design group - not sure if he still does.)

mech engineers graduate never having done any machining.

While having hands-on experience with machining is nice, it isn't necessary
to doing good design work. Especially when a lot of machined items are now
done with CNC the hands-on experience has less relevance. We all live the
same number of years yet the amount of things to learn keeps growing -
something has to give. For example, machining isn't relevant to much of the
design work they'd do with composite materials, so that is yet another
reason why it is no calamity is mech engineers graduate without machining
experience.