Education
DeLorean attended Detroit's public grade schools, and was then accepted into Cass Technical High School, a technical high school for Detroit's honor students, where he signed up for the electrical curriculum. DeLorean found the Cass experience exhilarating and he excelled at his studies. His academic record and musical talents earned him a scholarship at Lawrence Institute of Technology (now known as Lawrence Technological University), a small Detroit college that was the alma mater of some of the automobile industry's best draftsmen and designers. At Lawrence, he excelled in the study of industrial engineering, and was elected to the school's honor society.
World War II interrupted his studies. In 1943, DeLorean was drafted for military service and served three years in the U.S. Army and received an honorable discharge. He returned to Detroit to find his mother and siblings in economic difficulty because of the strains of Kathryn's single income. DeLorean worked as a draftsman for the Public Lighting Commission for a year and a half to improve his family's financial status, then returned to Lawrence to finish his degree. While back in college, he worked part-time at Chrysler and at a local body shop, presaging his later contributions in the automotive industry. DeLorean graduated in 1948 with a Bachelor of Science degree in industrial engineering.
Instead of entering the engineering workforce after earning his degree, DeLorean sold life insurance, and later worked for the Factory Equipment Corporation. DeLorean states in his autobiography that he sold life insurance to improve his communications skills. Both endeavors were successful financially, but these areas held little interest for DeLorean. DeLorean's uncle Earl Pribak, a foreman at Chrysler's engineering garage, recommended that he apply for work at Chrysler and DeLorean agreed. Chrysler ran a post-graduate educational facility named the Chrysler Institute of Engineering, which allowed DeLorean to advance his education while gaining real-world experience in automotive engineering.
He briefly attended the Detroit College of Law, but did not graduate.
In 1952, DeLorean graduated from the Chrysler Institute with a masters degree in automotive engineering and joined Chrysler's engineering team. DeLorean also attended night classes at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business to earn credits for his MBA, which he completed in 1957.
Read more about this topic: John DeLorean
Famous quotes containing the word education:
“In the years of the Roman Republic, before the Christian era, Roman education was meant to produce those character traits that would make the ideal family man. Children were taught primarily to be good to their families. To revere gods, one’s parents, and the laws of the state were the primary lessons for Roman boys. Cicero described the goal of their child rearing as “self- control, combined with dutiful affection to parents, and kindliness to kindred.””
—C. John Sommerville (20th century)
“A two-year-old can be taught to curb his aggressions completely if the parents employ strong enough methods, but the achievement of such control at an early age may be bought at a price which few parents today would be willing to pay. The slow education for control demands much more parental time and patience at the beginning, but the child who learns control in this way will be the child who acquires healthy self-discipline later.”
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“What does education often do? It makes a straight-cut ditch of a free, meandering brook.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)