UWM Alumnus Advises "Take the Tougher Stuff"

Insurance broker and UWM alumn Gary Wynveen (MA, Political Science, '73), whose clients include many Wisconsin employers, says that students with a solid background in the liberal arts have bright prospects in today's economy. Of the opportunities he cited, the striking was drawn from an unexpected area: manufacturing.

"Assume that a person has an aptitude for mechanical things," Wynveen said. "The opportunites today in Manufacturing are tremendous, even without an engineering degree. If students have a solid liberal arts background and are willing to come in and work for a year at starting pay, say $20,000 a year, and learn the procedures, within four to seven years they can gradually rise in salary to between $75,000 and $100,000 with all the benefits. Then, depending on ambition and capacity to keep learning, they can jump to the next level. By the time they are in their early 30s, they can be production supervisors making $100,000 to $150,000 a year. Production supervisors in good companies are earning that kind of money, and they are precisely what is needed in America today."

Great books Program Director David Mulroy interviewed Wynveen in his offices in Appleton, Wisconsin. Mulroy wanted to learn about the value of a liberal arts education in today's job market. He asked whether employers were looking for students with a background in literature, foreign language, and mathematics, such as that prescribed by the Great Books Program.

"Absolutely," Wynveen replied. "Employers have had it with people who slide through, the sort of student who, if he has taken any math, it is probably at the junior high school level. And that type of person is becoming a larger and larger percentage of our college graduates. My advice: take the tougher stuff. Even if you only get a 'C' in it, so what? Get the basics, because when you graduate, the basics are what you will need." "All of my clients run closely held businesses, from 25 to 300 employees," he continued. "They don't put a lot of credence any more in a person's degree, at least not as much as they used to. I know an employer who has spent a lot of time devising a pre-employment test. He has about 25 questions and every applicant gets the same test. It involves simple math, like manipulating fractions. It also tests the ability to read and analyze what has been read. What is amazing is that the level of formal education is not a very good indicator of performance. The employer is discovering that he has people in their fifties with solid high school educations who soar better than half the job seekers he gets from college campuses."