Vocational Education in Gotham

Gotham University’s faculty cafeteria had a long history and was one of the first buildings constructed on campus.

It still used the traditional club-restaurant ordering system. When Schiller entered, he turned around and shook the raindrops from his umbrella outside. Victor stepped aside to make room for him and said, "Good thing you had one. Who would’ve thought it would start raining halfway here?"

"That’s Gotham. If you don’t carry an umbrella with you, you’d better be prepared to get drenched like a rat."

Schiller shook out the black umbrella, folded it up, tied it, and placed it on the umbrella rack by the door. The warmth inside fogged up his glasses the moment he entered, so he simply took them off.

Victor glanced back at the umbrella and asked, "Where did you buy that? It looks pretty good. I should get one too."

"Do you know Green Street? It’s in the East End, the street beside Living Hell. There’s an umbrella maker in the back alley at the end of it."

"God, you’re old-fashioned. What era is this? You still go looking for someone who makes umbrellas by hand?"

"You said it yourself. It looks like good quality."

The two chatted as they found a round table by the window and sat down. Before long, a waiter came over to take their orders. Victor said, "I really can’t get used to this. Gotham University’s cafeteria is way too old-fashioned. When I was in California, everything was ordered at a counter."

"On the contrary, I don’t like counter service. All that greasy bacon piled together, and bread slices cut to uneven sizes…"

Schiller took the menu and looked it over as he said, "Seems like you’ve gotten busy again lately. Something going on at the College of Science?"

"Don’t even mention it." Victor took the menu Schiller handed over, pointed out his order to the waiter, and sighed. "Isn’t this all thanks to you?"

"But I heard the cold-chain project is nearly finished. You should have had some free time by now."

Victor wore a helpless expression. "You really don’t know? Those gang bosses are desperate for people lately!"

"They’re especially short on people with management skills. Nearly everyone in Gotham City capable of management is at Gotham University. When the gangs came to borrow people, the president could only agree."

"But how many faculty members does Gotham University even have? The positions the gangs need filled must far outnumber the people they can borrow."

"That’s exactly the problem." Victor tapped the tabletop with a finger and said, "They can’t borrow enough people, but without managers, everything becomes a complete mess. So they had no choice but to talk to President Sheldon again…"

Just then, their food arrived. Schiller cut into his steak and asked, "What did they want?"

"Just as you predicted, they wanted to open schools."

Victor picked up the drink in front of him and took a sip. The icy liquid made him smack his lips. "Gotham only has three high schools, and their enrollment rates are all under ten percent. Most people willing to study seriously don’t want to apply to Gotham University, much less stay in this city."

"They wanted to establish their own schools—private schools—and teach what they needed."

"I remember Gotham having private schools, didn’t it?" Schiller thought for a moment. "Where were they? Down south, I think? There are two private boarding schools…"

"You said it yourself—down south. Those are schools in the Affluent Area, places where rich people dump their kids. What they teach is useless: instruments, painting, hockey. Do you expect gangsters to manage their businesses with that?"

"So they wanted to open vocational high schools?" Schiller said, turning over the scrambled eggs with his fork.

"You can’t really call them high schools." Victor swallowed his food, wiped his mouth with a napkin, and continued. "They’re more like vocational schools. Anyone can attend, but the gangs will probably select a group of people themselves. The main goal is to train management personnel."

"Honestly, they’re ridiculous," Victor complained. "They hired me to repair their low-temperature warehouses, but after asking every warehouse manager, I found that not one of them could read a gauge. They couldn’t even understand the most basic readings. How were they supposed to manage a warehouse?"

"So those gang bosses planned to train their own people to solve that problem?"

"Exactly. And they couldn’t find teachers, so once again, they came to Gotham University to borrow people." Victor shrugged. "I just hope I’m not one of the people they borrow, but I’m sure my name is on the list."

"You should be able to refuse, shouldn’t you?" Schiller set down his knife and fork, took a sip of water, and continued, "Sheldon can’t exactly tie you up and drag you there."

"That’s easy to say, but in Gotham, if a dozen gangsters jointly invite you, would you dare refuse?"

"Looks like you understand this ecosystem very well already." Schiller smiled. "Welcome to Gotham. Welcome to the big stage."

"And the money they’re offering is pretty good too—several times my salary."

"Do you still need money? Didn’t you take a commission from the Twelve Families to maintain and operate their cold-chain business? That should already pay quite well."

"But nobody ever thinks they have too much money." Victor was blunt. "Operations don’t take much time, and Gotham University’s regular teaching work… well, you know, it’s practically nonexistent. If their offer is right, I wouldn’t mind being a part-time instructor."

"Besides, teaching them how to read gauges would make things easier for me too. If they can maintain their warehouses themselves, I won’t have to keep running back and forth."

Schiller nodded. Victor had a point. He guessed most teachers who agreed to teach part-time at the vocational school were thinking the same way.

Most professors had taken on work from the gangs. The pay the gangs offered when hiring them was tempting enough, but once they arrived on site, most were left dumbfounded. Gotham’s gangsters were skilled with guns and weapons, but when it came to technical issues, they were utterly useless.

Not being able to read gauges was the least of it. They couldn’t operate even slightly complicated switches. If a technical term had more than five letters, they had to look it up in a dictionary. Ask an entire team, and only a handful could fully explain an operating procedure.

At its core, Gotham’s gang industry had become too mature. From birth, most people were destined to make their living through simple, brutal methods. They never considered learning technical skills. When the industry began upgrading, many people in the city suddenly realized that guns mattered less, while knowledge mattered more.

But their way of thinking had already hardened, and they had missed the best age for learning. Most of them couldn’t understand these things and had no desire to learn such complicated technical skills.

Yet the rise of the logistics industry had brought drastic changes in staffing needs.

Originally, if someone collected protection money, a minor boss did not need to know much more than the thugs beneath him. Maybe he just had more seniority. To collect protection money, he only needed to be able to count it.

But that no longer worked. The person in charge of an entire warehouse had to understand everything. At the very least, he had to read gauges and constantly monitor temperature readings and product conditions. Everyone below him also had to keep track of goods entering and leaving the warehouse.

Normally, these professional jobs could have been filled by professionals. But everyone knew Gotham’s reputation. Anyone in their right mind would not come here to risk their life. Even when the gangs offered huge sums, they could not hire many professional accountants, so they had to handle it themselves.

They lacked professional knowledge and did not want to learn, yet management talent was in short supply everywhere, and outside hires were impossible to find. The gang bosses had only one option left: open training classes.

Since Gotham University’s teachers had all taken private jobs from the gangs to one degree or another, the gang bosses easily got in touch with them. They offered high prices to hire them as teachers for private schools.

Just as Victor had thought, many professors discovered while working that the gangsters were incapable of doing anything properly and only added to their workload. It was better to teach them the basics first, so future private jobs would be easier too.

Of course, none of this had much to do with Schiller originally. He was a Psychology Professor. The gangs might need physics teachers, chemistry teachers, math teachers, or even language teachers, but they certainly did not need psychology teachers. Gothamites might lack many things, but they were open-minded.

But the problem was the celebrity effect.

Earlier, Falcone had opened a small private lecture hall at his estate and invited Schiller to teach the younger members of his family.

Schiller mainly taught basic knowledge about industrial models and the like, but Gotham’s gangs had always followed Falcone’s lead. Even the Old Godfather had invited Schiller. If you started a school and did not invite him, wouldn’t that be openly saying the Old Godfather had no eye for talent?

And so, one afternoon in Gotham, Schiller received a joint invitation from more than a dozen major gangs.

The invitation did not directly state its purpose. It merely invited Schiller to visit their newly established vocational school. But Schiller guessed that once he arrived, they would not let him leave. At the very least, he would have to become an honorary professor.

Schiller approved of the gangs’ enthusiasm for opening schools. After all, if Gotham University wanted to join the Ivy League, improving Gotham City’s overall academic atmosphere was essential. Beyond establishing more high-end research institutes, building a complete talent-development system was also necessary.

Wayne Enterprises was already working on proper elementary and secondary schools, but results would not appear anytime soon. The gangs’ spontaneous effort to develop vocational education was actually a decent path, and it suited Gotham City’s current situation very well.

In Gotham, where basic education was lacking, the city ran largely on experience. The gangs were family-based, passing things down from generation to generation, with the older generation teaching the younger ones hand in hand.

That model might have worked in the past, but it was becoming less effective now. It was foreseeable that, as new industries were introduced and existing industries gradually upgraded, vocational education would flourish more and more in Gotham, continuing until the results of basic education began to show.

As a professor, Schiller believed in doing his duty. He did not mind giving this process a push, so he accepted the invitation and prepared to see that weekend what kind of vocational school Gotham’s gangsters could make.