John Ackroff reflects on the value of a Williams Education:
I took an early retirement from Lucent in 2001. There was really no choice; it was either resign on a particular Friday, with enhancements that would increase the pension payments and health care benefits (which would be drastically reduced later), or be laid off the following Thursday. I took the retirement, applied for unemployment benefits, and the ruling from the State of New Jersey (there were lots of us in this boat) was that while we “retired voluntarily” we really had no choice, given the alternative. The ruling also said that since we were collecting pensions toward which we didn’t contribute, our unemployment payments would be reduced by the amount of the pension. I was happy to learn that my pension was greater than what unemployment would pay.
I spent about six months looking for work in telecom. There were opportunities, but many at salaries I would not accept. I felt my time and knowledge in the industry, let alone contacts, were worth more than they were offering. So I did not take any of these offers.
I was offered an opportunity to teach at my local County College. After the Lucent buyout offer was made, one of my co-workers told me that her husband was chair of the Psychology department of the college, and I might be able to teach for him. The three of us had lunch one day, and I think that was my job interview – I was offered a couple of classes there. I took that up, at the princely salary of $1,500 per course. While I was there, Karen’s lab supervisor found an ad for a position at Rutgers. I followed that up, and, long story short, finished my career at Rutgers.
The interesting thing is what happened while I was at the County College. There was a local event for students who had been admitted to Williams, along with their families, to encourage them to accept their offers. I was asked to attend to help these folks decide that Williams was for them. So my first thought was “Okay parents, tell your kids to go to Williams, so when they’re laid off at 50 they can accept a low-paying job”. Not a good sales pitch. But then I thought about it a bit more, and realized that the message was “Tell your child to go to Williams so that when he or she has to re-invent him- or herself, he or she can.”
For my first job, at Bell Labs, part of the reason I was hired was that a person with my background could figure things out and solve problems. I credit Williams for helping me with this. My time and work in graduate school gave me extra letters after my name, but didn’t really teach me anything substantive. (For a time, I knew by heart the logarithms for integers 0 – 20 to four digits, but that doesn’t get you much at Starbuck’s.) But it was at Williams that I learned how to solve problems. The greatest lesson I learned, which I tried to pass on to my students, was from Richard Rouse: if you don’t ask the right question, you’re very unlikely to get the right answer. Understand what the real problem is that you’re trying to solve, not just its surface manifestation, and go after that. I think it was my training to do that that led Bell Labs to hire me in the first place. From Bell Labs, I was moved to AT&T Bell Labs, then AT&T, then Lucent, and now we’re back where I started this tale. But Williams played a part in all the phases of this story, and my experiences there helped me through each one.