college vs. RR

You sound EXACTLY like me33 years ago !
It seems like EVERY mother wants their precious son to be a Supreme Court Justice, or "my son, the Doctor".
Very few know how to brag about "My son, the Conductor on a Beacon Park to Selkirk job"!
When you find yourself heading up Charlton Hill in the left hand (or right hand) seat of a brace of SD-70MACS, with your unused college degree dancing around in your mind, REMEMBER that your co-worker may be in the same position as you!
My guess is that if you are on the railroad 30 years (let alone 10) you will probably NOT want to find yourself a job as a yuppie.
There are less than one half million of US, there are more that 249 1/2 million of THEM in this country. The nation doesn't need any MORE of THEM !

There is no reason to feel that your college degree is unused on the railroad. Manyof the guys that I work with are college grads. This includes me. I used to think of the railroad like E7. I don't think that I would have been hired without it. Some lines like either college grads or veterans. When I finished college, I did not feel like I could live tied to a desk. Things came together for me from spending time with my uncle. He graduated, but did not like the field that he was in. He hired out in 1955, and worked to retirement in engine service. My uncle always reads. he never stopped expanding his mind. This appealed to me.
Even if you stay in the ranks, there are many ways the education will help. You can learn more about the rules and equipment if you read about it. This will make you a better railroader. Some of my brothers have been encouraging me to run for a union office. I think that I could be very organized whe negotiating, or trying a dicipline case.

I have worked for BNSF for four years now. I am 23 and I hired out when I was 19. I am money ahead of people my age who went to school. I have been an engineer since June and would have gone to school to do it but I like the thought of getting paid well these last four years prior to my "graduation". There are alot of guys out here with college educations that for one reason or another wanted to go railroadin'. You can work for the railroad and take a few college courses too, that is what I am planning, and alot of railroads will help you with tuition and books.

College versus railroad? You gotta be kidding...that you even have to ask.

Yep, you're making the big buck$ NOW, while your friends are paying out to go to school. But you won't be young forever...

I sit here with my lame back, on medical leave and probably done for good, fooling around with low-wage work...and wondering, at 47, what I'm gonna do with the rest of my life. No marketable skills outside of the railroad or a truck terminal. Even with some additional education/training, my choices are seriously limited. I'm not gonna get my MBA and be hired by a Fortune 500 company, not at my age.

I'm not going to have the mental agility to return to college and become a chemical engineer.

I'm not going to have the time to pay my dues and collect my rewards...I have less than 20 years left of my working life.

Why is this? Partly because, like you, I chose work over college. When Conrail hired me, I thought I was set for life.

But what you aren't able to protect can easily be taken from you. CSEcch has a different view of labor...it's a disposable commodity. They came in, the job became physically unendurable (combination of lousy seats, lateral motion, forty-plus pounds of rulebooks, not enough sleep) and my health broke and my back gave out.

Learn from my mistake. If I had the sheepskin in a back drawer, I'd at least have a prayer.

I had an inside track in the RR industry whom I bugged endlessly in the early eighties about getting me on the RR. But I wasn't 18 and we were in the midst of a recession at the time. After high school I was accepted to Penn State so off I went in Jan 1985. Well, after one semester my friend gets word to me that the RR is finally hiring Trainmen and would I be interested. Hey, I'm going to college so the hell with that! Three semesters later, I'm out of money and PSU is more interested in giving scholarships away to dummies who are good at sports than helping me so I'm off to see my pal about that RR job I turned down two years earlier. Thankfully it was still there for me. So in RR terms, college cost me two years seniority or about 40 roster spots but the experience and the education were well worth it for me.

Im 25 and going to take online courses. When not at a bar, and how often do we get a chance to do that, trying to find some tail, I am bored to death sitting in the hotels. I think it would be valuable to spend that time wisely by improving my education. I may never need it, but I will feel some sense of accomplishment when it is done.

You can always get a yard job with regular hours and go to school. You do not have to make a choice about one or the other. Business or management school should fall under the umbrella of business related and most Class I's will pay for it. Yeah the road pays more, but with your goals, you can have the best of both worlds and remember, your seniority will build all through school.

Yes, it is a lot of work. Yes, you will loose time with your family. But you will be building seniority and getting an education that the rr cannot take away.

Good luck.

Well, let me offer my perspective here...

I had thought of getting a job on the railroad, however I have "low vision" (my vision is corrected to 20/50, and I'm 20/70 uncorrected) and am pretty pale (gotta love Scandinavian heritage), so working outdoors isn't a possibility and reading the print on the signs trackside (while traveling at speeds over 40m/ph) isn't something I can do, so...

So, my folks talked me into going to college. I wanted to go to tech school first, learn various "industrial arts," then get my BA in Education to be a high school shop teacher. My folks are both teachers, as are a number of their friends, so I was steered away from that (why would I throw my life away?). So, I went through eight years of college trying to figure out something to do with my life, with two of those eight years spent studying abroad in Japan. I majored in Criminal Justice (to become a Parole/Probation Officer), Japan Area Studies, Architecture and finally History... which is what I have my Bachelor's degree in.

So, what am I doing with my wonderful college degree? Nothing as of right now. I've worked eleven years as a Disc Jockey at the radio station here in my hometown (started when I was in high school) and I'm still just a part-timer working odd shifts for $6.50/hr. I was just passed up for a promotion to full-time because they were in a crunch for both an announcer and a salesperson (they never trained me to do sales, nor did they have the time to do so). I also worked part and full-time as a front desk clerk at the local hotel. Because this is a small town (1,500) and they're trying to squeeze the most out of their employees, I not only did regular front desk duties, I also did laundry for 40 rooms (wash, dry, fold and stowe) and pool maintainance as well... for $6.50/hr. I left that job because management jerked my chain around one too many times...

So, here I am with eight years college experience, two years living/working/studying in a foreign country, an AA in General Education and a BA in History and going nowhere fast. So, a college degree isn't always the "golden ticket" that some make it out to be. My suggestion would be to do the same as Cardfan, work on the railroad and then do some online courses, or check with your local tech school or university to see if they'll let you do an "independent study," where you can do classes on your time. If I knew there was a niche I could fill in working for the railroad, I'd do it. Just remember, as conrail_engineer pointed out, a degree might be a good thing to fall back on.

It's your call. Just thought I'd give you my .02 on the subject.