Totally flipped on an HR person yesterday

We've got an amazing engineering apprenticeship programme at our company. It's won all kinds of awards, etc.

A whole bunch of us were interviewing this year's apprentices for intake and during the washup session, she was talking to though how they couldn't get US colleagues to understand how it all works. 
I was talking about how they didn't have a good frame of reference for it.   Then someone asked how it all worked in the US and she jumped in and said "Well people go and get degrees but then everyone in the US has to go get master's degrees because their degrees aren't equivalent to ours"

Totally flipped on her!!!!   I'm so sick of HR people here thinking that the British system is superior for education!!

I think the Scottish school system (my only frame of reference) is really good, but Scottish degrees are so specific and my degree is much more well rounded.  I have a Bachelor's Degree in Plastics Engineering , so I learned tons and tons about plastics and engineering, but also took so many courses in writing and literature, history, philosophy, arts, and business.  So many coworkers and friends are actually amazed at the amount of coursework and classes I actually took and how many non-engineering courses I had to take.    So yeah, get off your high horse lady!!  Because it's bollocks.   

She did apologise later, she was like "I didn't mean it like that... I meant...they're just different."  Yeah, right....... 

Ugh!  I'm glad you said something. 

Plastics Engineering

I support your analysis. But more importantly, why is it so hard to get into packaging these days? Why make it so sturdy?

I support your analysis. But more importantly, why is it so hard to get into packaging these days? Why make it so sturdy?

Protection of the item, e.g. if it's really secure in the packaging it won't break, impact resistant, and if it doesn't move actually in the packaging it won't move during shipping....  (Lots of shipping testing on an item usually shows this)
A lot of this is actually to reduce overall packing and make it cheaper for the producer and lots of times makes it more eco-friendly to comply with a lot more eco regulations around the world- eg, remove lots of layers of foam ,cardboard, sleeves, etc-  by making it one recyclable plastic clam shell that does all the above
Prevention of in-store theft and being able to be easily to display an item
Some of it is is marketing (they want things to look a certain way, etc

This is one of my biggest pet peeves about this country. I'm glad you said something. Fun fact: I often do comparative education lessons with my EFL students where we discuss the education systems in their countries and in the US and UK. At the end of the discussion I ask them which system they think would suit them best and they nearly always choose the US. Not even my detailed explanation of GPAs deters them.

Hey Phat beetle, can you comment on plastic recycling?  We put tons of plastics in the recycling each week and I've often wondered if it's not just getting thrown away by my council .