80ktsClamp

As Bar said, even the SSP is going to be a whole lot more than 45 minutes.

The only thing it will lack is the medical and the face to face with a shrink. Personality profiling will still be involved as well as all the extra stuff with company records review.

ShyGuy

The medical is not included? Was this in the SSP language? Or has Delta done away with the medical exam and the shrink portion?

80ktsClamp

The SSP is a one day interview process. I'd be highly surprised if the medical is involved. That was the most cumbersome portion of the interview, and I would say the least necessary. It delayed me from getting the "go" almost a week because the idiots couldn't hook up an EKG properly. I flatlined. That should have given them a hint that something was wrong with the machine. A trip to a cardiologist to confirm that, yep, absolutely nothing wrong with me later, and I got the go for class...

There will certainly be shrink stuff- the extent of which will be determined. They can pinpoint your personality with rather astounding accuracy.

scambo1

In the living room window, nothing but glass...Shack.

Hilltopper89

Reminds me of that Budweiser "Today We Salute You" series....today we salute you Mr Fancy Coffee Shop Coffee Pourer. What do you do with a Masters Degree in Art History? You get a nose ring and pour coffee for a living

surfnski

I bet airline management types could somehow figure out a way.

Surprise

Again, agreed. I'm not saying I didn't learn anything in school, but I'm not sure it's worth what I paid (am paying) for it. As you say, I could have learned almost as much for a few dollars in public library fines, maybe less if I were responsible. The only reason I'm gainfully employed is because I learned how to fly while also going to school. And while I'm not getting rich by any stretch, my non-flying friends as a group are pretty well screwed. Jobs are hard to find and the ones they have been able to get have no use for their liberal arts degrees.

I have kept in touch with people who majored in engineering and such and they've done well. This is perhaps one of few legitimate purposes for higher education. Certainly the world needs theater and Latino studies majors, just not nearly as many. Nobody bothers to mention this on freshman indoc day.

At least I'll be prepared if I need to talk about Nietzsche or a Nash equilibrium or the power rule in my Delta interview.

Think outside the box. Use your credit cards, home equity, and any other dischargeable debt you can get your hands on to pay off your student loans, then file BK. I'm not advocating this, but it could be done.

gloopy

Yep. We're finally seeing some prices go the other way after their meteoric government bubble inspired rise that far outstripped income and reality, not to mention the "industry's" own abysmal ROI.

But the water behind the dam is still rising rapidly. While the mass quantity of debt can't be shaken like other debt, its being capped and artificially limited by numerous goverment (artificial) methods that will only exacerbate its inevitable failure when the college bubble explodes.

And so dellusional are the politicos they keep throwing money at the problem with grants and subsidies in a failing attempt to shift some of the ballooning debt to the federal balance sheet while in reality both will crash and crash hard.

But try to get anything done. Try to hire a mechanic, plumber, electrician, landscaper, anything. Odds are, especially if you want a good one, you will wait a long time and pay someone making far, far, far more than many hundreds of thousands of recent college graduates. Yet we keep meniacly feeding the 529 slot machine hoping for a payoff for our kids. "A million dollars more over a career" is the mantra, but that's not only debatable its merely an average that includes valid fields like engineering, medical and the small portion of lawyers that go on to make big incomes. Yet the overschooled, undereducated masses keep trying to ride that magic carpet with their 6 figure degrees in art history appreciaton with minors in political sophistry. Who knows though, maybe by the time some of these kids graduate Occupy Wall Street will be hiring again.

Nevermind that if you invested that same amount of money into a savings/retirement plan for your kid instead, they'd be guaranteed to retire a millionaire. But that doesn't justify all those years force feeding Baby Einstein videos to the entitled millenials now does it?

Its too far gone now anyway, and you can't even point out the obvious to most people. They, especially airline pilots, faithfully blow their savings and their own future retirements on what could literally be the single worst "investment" sector in society and they do it without question and without limits.

That said, while college has very little to nothing to do with being an airline pilot, I'm in favor of keeping the requirement to drive up the barrier of admission and restrict the supply. Its not up to me though, and so I predict we will slowly start to see the degree requirement turn into a preference at more and more places. Eventually we will see the rise of alternative higher education at pennies on the dollar that, combined with life experience/career credits will provide a pathway to pay as you go, work as you go, debt free, low cost degrees, kind of like it used to be. Those that get in the early phases of the hiring boom at regionals, etc at young ages and work on/worry about degrees later while building flight time and upgrading rapidly will smoke the careers of the "traditional" college first crowd, and they will make way more money sooner, have way less debt and way, way more seniority.

gloopy

Nice! True, it could be and likely will be done to some extent. But keep in mind that while that debt may be harder to shake in BK, they keep putting artificial limits on monthly and total paybacks as well as tinkering with the tax code, etc. Some will do exactly what you are saying, but many others will just pay their percent limited amounts for 20 and out and drop it like a bad transmission on the taxpayers down the road.

Bucking Bar

Grad school was never required of Delta pilots, yet quite a few have Grad degrees and IMHO, good for them. If you are correct that too many applicants have degrees, then it should be easily stated that [u]competitive/U] mins include a degree (or more).

Delta might (we will see) be into a bit of a culture shift, towards the goal of greater commoditization of its labor force. More like NWA and less like traditional Delta.

Delta's operation is running better than ever.