I'm not, so those numbers looked high to me, until I remembered that Aussie dollars are worth about half of American dollars.
2) People, in general, don't spend their money wisely.
3) Unlike a college grad, tradesmen work during their training, so they are productive for the company from day one. It is a win-win situation that should be a model for jobs everywhere, not just technician jobs.
Possibly, but its hard to see a ROI in this situation considering they are paying for training and giving the kids a full-time job, possibly with benefits. That's a couple thousand a person in training + 44,000 salary + a couple thousand in benefits and possibly a union membership. I don't see how there is cost offset over converting engineers who have a base knowledge. Not only that, where are they going to go if they lose their job?
We're also talking about high school students here. They've had stuff taken care of for them all their life (baring extenuating circumstances). Not exactly the most responsible bunch I would guess.
Why would you prefer engineers take a pay cut to do technician work rather than the engineering they are trained for and experienced in? If an engineer can do it, I bet it would be even easier to transfer VPs and executives to these lucrative technician jobs, right?
I've seen a lot of things done at the company I work for that wasn't exactly in the companies "financial interest". Its amazing how much money is used for things that aren't needed because a manager felt they couldn't wait an extra month, or something wasn't "moving" fast enough, or other poor excuses that justify spending 50k on a system of which they probably don't even use the majority of the features.