Aesop links to John Wilder writing about life paths, and adds his own thoughts. This part from Aesop's post seems key:
A high school classmate, solid C student, nice guy, was a total gearhead. Not college material in any way, shape, or form, and he knew it. But a good guy, and good with transmissions and engines. Three years out of high school, he bought his boss's shop. Ten years out, he owned ten auto shops. Was married, paid-off house, and worth $1M. Before age 30. Never even bothered with the SAT. Knew what he liked, did what he wanted. None of the college grads (which was 95% of my class) could touch that at the 10-year reunion.
A guy fixing air conditioners, transmissions, or furnaces and water heaters is going to make a good living anywhere but Trashcanistan, and the entry requirement is a GED, aptitude, and a work ethic.
Mike Rowe annually pounds the drum that Caterpillar every year has unfilled openings for people willing to learn how to repair bulldozers, cranes, and graders, has a full apprenticeship program, and that in 2 years, you'll graduate with zero debt, and skill that can take you worldwide, and pay $100K a year within a couple of years after graduating, and can't be shipped overseas, unless that's where the broken bulldozer is. And they go begging for applicants, because people would rather mortgage their entire future and not get their fingernails dirty.
Same with the Electric Unions. They'll train you for little/no cost and then get you an apprenticeship. That's a job that simply can't get outsourced.
I've written for almost a decade about how you can teach yourself everything you need to pass basic Cisco network certification. Starting salary is $50,000+ and you can keep repeating the exact same process until you have their Security cert at which point you will be making six figures. If you're a young guy I should point out that SecureWorks has a Security Operations Center in Myrtle Beach, so you can ride your Harley to work at the beach.
The cost? $30 for a book, your time, and the cost to take the cert (couple hundred bucks). My posts are here, just keep scrolling.
The key point here (my posts, Aesop's, and John's) is that the University Marketing departments have done an excellent job of selling short-term social status, not long term Return On Investment. If you're independently wealthy then that's fine, but their pitch of "you'll make a million dollars more if you get our degree" simply isn't true for most students.
College is expensive. People need to look very closely at the expected return on their investment if they're considering going. Social status doesn't put dinner on the table.
There are a lot of alternative paths that High School Guidance Counsellors won't tell them about. Most of those alternatives pay as well or better than a University degree. Caveat Emptor.
16 comments:
As with everything the big government touches, they've killed college education. They've increased demand so much that no matter what the college costs, it's considered a good investment, and then guaranteed that no matter what the cost, students will get a loan.
FEE (the Foundation for Economic Education) has run a few articles on how college is dead but they just don't know it, yet. Mike Rowe's stuff you used is legendary.
The only thing that could hurt the value of college more than they have already is to make it "free."
And ya know what? I know some of those auto mechanics who never went to college and own their own shops, and they're having more fun at work than most.
I consider myself lucky. I turned my avocation into my vocation, and it has served me very well. The worst part of my job? Some of the cretins - sorry, "managers" - I have had to work for.
Most "blue collar" unions pave apprentice programs that will teach young men and women a useable trade, provide paid on-the-job training, and a really good, well paid, lifetime career. Many will also provide job placement assistance. But the best part? No lifetime burden of six-figure college loans to pay back!
When you see those people working highway or building construction sites on hot summer days, ask yourself what they will be doing on their weekend. Will they be out on a lake in their boat? Up in the cool mountains driving their ATVs? Will they be going places and doing things you college grads can't afford?
If you have children in high school, it might be to their benefit to help them consider an alternative to a college education.
I had this battle with my own daughter over a decade ago. Don't kid yourselves, guys. The kids KNOW that nowadays, not all education is good education. If your kid wants to take out loans, knowing full well their mickey mouse liberal arts program will never pay off - you have a much bigger problem on your hands. Your kid is still a child, and will do anything possible to delay and stave off adulthood. A lot of this goes back to our public education schools that we outsourced our parenting to. They are taught to follow their hopes and dreams, and the money will follow that. With a kid like that... when they turn 18 your choice is really quite simple: do you enable their continued refusal to grow up and go along? Or do you put your foot down - and throw them out into that cruel world they are not equipped to take on?
Either way, you and your kid are in for a world of hurt.
+1
I dunno, but I suspect the number of people who have the aptitude to work as an auto mechanic or in any of the skilled trades is very low, maybe as low as 3% of the population.
Robot makers are busy building robots to replace all the menial service workers.
We really need something for these people to do. Playing video games or partying only gets you so far. After a bit everyone starts looking for something else to do.
Maybe we can get the Amish to teach people to farm the Amish way.
Chuck, the skilled trades aren't "menial", and the level of knowledge/skill required is a lot more than needed to flip burgers. I'm not at all confident that you can make a robot electrician.
No, the trades are not menial, but there are not that many people who can learn to do those jobs. Most people consider cleaning a menial job, but menial jobs are being usurped by robots, so we are left with 90% of the population who has nothing to do but look for ways to amuse themselves, and a lot of them end up making trouble because trouble is always amusing.
There are some areas where college makes sense, as has always been true.
Don't forget that we have functionally fone back to the 1930s in terms of education. We have many students "graduating" with a 3rd to 6th grade education and a small percentage going to college and doing well.
Everything else you hear is a distraction, chaff.
My former pHd boss, whose wife just retired as a tenured professor from the local state university says you now pay for a 4 year resort stay and not the degree. Colleges and universities show prospective students the multiple food courts and hotel like suites that are now dorm rooms.
The education they receive seems to bear that out as well.
Right on.
The barrier is high school guidance counselors and administrators who don't understand that the world has changed. They do their students a disservice by discouraging anything but four year schools. (By the way, now it takes more and more students more than four years to complete a Bachelors degree) What's a few more thousand in debt, when four years can cost $300,000 dollars?
Mike Rowe is the articulate advocate for sensible education, but administrators and counselors who have never left a school campus in their careers don't want to listen.
While it may (?) be true that only 3% of inner city kids can handle learning a trade, out here in the country, about one in six kids goes to trade school.
I'm pretty sure the stat is that only 3% of inner city kids can handle learning, at all.
Which public education and TPTB see as a feature, rather than a bug.
How you gonna keep 'em on the Vote Plantation if they can get a job and a skill, and go anywhere they want?
The biggest problem with college, including community college now days is that for at least the first, and often second year, it is just repeating the last two years of high school. Because high school today spends so much time on social problems that they don't have the time to worry about teaching actual subjects like math and history.
I spent over 35 years in a steel making factory, making special alloys for the investment cast and aerospace industry. I do have some college, that I took as I worked and raised a family, to further myself. While I hired in right out of high school, and it took me quite some time to get there, eventually I made not the 6 figures that the trades make, but several years I came close, with overtime.
The thing is, I tested high enough to qualify for Mensa. So it is not like I could not have gone to college and succeeded. I also had several scholarships offered, for a few different areas, that I could have taken advantage of. I simply had no idea of what I would have studied in college. And to me, going to college just to play football seemed like a very bad idea. Now, at the age of 61, medically retired due to chronic daily migraines, and having suffered at least 6 serious concussions in high school football, back when after getting knocked out, but playing the rest of the game, only knowing what happened by watching game film the next Monday, was common, it is good that I stopped. Now they have concussion protocols, and I probably would not have been able to complete a full year due to having 2 concussions in the same season.
While I have a worn out body from the hot, heavy and dangerous work that I did, I don't regret it. I made metal for everything from the tailfins of the sidewinder missiles, to all kinds of guns, a high percentage of artificial knee and hip joints, to a lot of the hot parts of a jet engine, that power the Rolls Royce engines. I actually have a gun frame, just cast, without being finished, in my shed, that came back in the scrap. It is one of the mini revolvers. It is cool to see some things that came back.
I worked my way through college going to UCLA in the late 70s in Electrical Engineering. I helped myself by passing some courses via CLEP and community college.
When my sons were ready to go to college neither wanted to and both ended up going to different Trade Schools. Trade Schools were less than a half year of college. The reality is they make more money than me and at a much younger time, both have homes, and own cars.
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