I started reading a book on how to be a good father yesterday and it made the point that 60 years ago, it was  common for young men to apprentice with their fathers--as opposed to the current system we have where we learn everything from schools and go to work for strangers at a corporation.  The point he was driving at is that, in the current system, our children, when they are growing up, spend more time with people who aren't family members then they do with their parents. As a result, parents have a lot less influence over their children then parents did 60 some years ago.

It made me think about something else, though--our culture hasn't only done away with the family apprenticeship (for the most part), we even treat it with hostility and label it as nepotism.  I don't know if that's good or bad.  My wife has an family member who took over the farm from his father.  That is quite a bit like an apprenticeship.  He's a good farmer.  Is this a case of nepotism?  In the strictest sense, probably.  I think the family farm is a good thing, though.  But the family farm is becoming a thing of the past.  Probably not for the better.
Sometimes, you see family businesses where the father hands control over to his son and it doesn't work out.  A lot of the recent examples that come to my mind involve religious institutions.  Oral Roberts University developed quite a few problems under the leadership of Richard Roberts.  The Crystal Cathedral recently filed for bankruptcy after floundering under the leadership of the founder's son, Robert A Schuller.   These seem to be genuine cases of nepotism in organizations where more qualified people would have been available to fill the desirable positions that became vacant.

I think is a shame that apprenticeships are disappearing.  Are there not occupations that are better served by apprenticeships than college education?  Of course, apprenticing a non-family member is probably expensive.  In the case of my wife's relative, he got the "apprenticeship" working on the farm, not because his father favored him over a stranger, but because he was free labor.  He took over the farm later on probably through some combination of working for ownership, gifts of ownership from his parents and inheritance.  Is that nepotism?  If so I guess all inheritances and gifts are a form of nepotism?  "How come you gave you son a bike for Christmas and not all the other kids in the world?".

Part of me wishes my sons could apprentice with me.  I don't know if engineering is a discipline well served by that.  It certainly needs formal education, but there is a lot that can only be learned from experience.  I don't know.  They might not want to learn from me, if they're like most sons.  I know I never listened to my dad...

whatever.