Posted on 04/05/2025 6:44:06 PM PDT by CFW
Wes Bihn watched his sister slogging her way through six years of university training to enter the psychiatry field, and he knew that path wasn’t for him.
“I was raised on a farm,” Bihn told Cowboy State Daily. “And I’ve pretty much worked nonstop my entire life, and I just always hated being in school.”
The mere thought of spending six years in a classroom was like torture for Bihn, who is from Indiana, really driving home the realization that he wanted something different.
Bihn is like a lot of people in Generation Z, ranging in age from 13 to 28, who are choosing trade schools instead of four-year universities or two-year community colleges. They are attracted by the shorter timeframes, lower costs, and better job opportunities. The trend is earning the generation a new moniker, the Toolbelt Generation.
Trade schools can take as little as eight weeks, ranging on up to two years, but many have programs that take just six months.
WyoTech automotive students like Bihn can finish their career-ready program in as little as nine months, unless they decide to take additional electives to improve their skills.
[snip]
After applying for scholarships, he won a big one from the mikeroweWORKS Foundation, which helped fund this new career path.
Now he has three months left studying diesel mechanics, after which he plans to return home to his old electrician’s job, armed with new skills that he believes are setting him up for life.
“I know the area mechanics and I know all the farmers around there,” Bihn said. “So, I’m just gonna moonlight as a mechanic until I feel I have enough experience to start my own business.”
(Excerpt) Read more at cowboystatedaily.com ...
Meanwhile, the Harvard grad with a degree in Trans-African Gender Studies will be crying about the $200,000 student loan debt that is keeping them from "getting ahead".
We have reached peak “higher education.”
A lot of Potemkin “perfessers” of imaginary subjects are going to be looking for real jobs soon. They might even have to go to trade school to get one.
This is a good trend and you’re right.
Probably 10 years ago at least, an auto mechanic friend of mine said that someone good in the trades can earn 6 figures with no problem there’s the much of a shortage of skilled tradesmen.
This is a good trend and you’re right.
Probably 10 years ago at least, an auto mechanic friend of mine said that someone good in the trades can earn 6 figures with no problem there’s the much of a shortage of skilled tradesmen.
A lot of Potemkin “perfessers” of imaginary subjects are going to be looking for real jobs soon. They might even have to go to trade school to get one.
I’m hearing of more and more universities instituting faculty hiring freezes. I suspect many 3rd tier colleges will be closing their doors over the next year or two. Then the pressure will be on the second tier schools. If colleges want to survive they need to learn to do so without our tax dollars and they need to return to actually teaching rather than being indoctrination centers for “social justice” activists.
In my family it was demanded you learn a trade,
before going to a university.
I’m a shipwright a Software and Electronics engineer.
(Vietnam era VET also)
I retired at age 55.
What are you pushing your kids to do?
I was driving 65 foot long long power boats at
age thirteen. Scarred the Schiif out of me but I had a mentor.
Push your kids to excel in the real world.
This is heartening. Thanks for posting it.
Excellent idea.
I worked quite a few jobs from retail to blue collar before and during college.
In many districts you don’t even need trade school. My son is graduating from high school this year. He started an auto body repair program at the vo-tech school in 9th grade and has been working in an auto body shop half days (with his academic classes during the other half) through a co-op education program. The shop offered him a full time job after he graduated, so he already has his first job lined up. He has said the shop has sent employees to schools for training, so even if he does need to do some additional schooling, the shop will pay. Needless to say, I’m quite happy that he has his prospects worked out and is avoiding starting his life out with student debt.
I was a tech school grad. Made alot of bread. So much I retired at 52.
Not bragging. I did pretty good. Non-union pipe fitter/designer of fuel systems.
Broke my back though. And screwed up a knee.
Most of the people in the building trades in Downeast Maine are in their 50’s and 60’s and a good number over those ages.
Young workers are in high demand. Some of my friends (the older ones) do the happy dance when they hire a young man or woman who is reliable and drug free!
I can’t help but notice that he has no desire to take up the family farm. It is hard to blame him, but this is why most of the farms have to shut down.
I know a couple of young men from Maine that went to WyoTech or a similar school in Wyoming. Both have great careers.
“In many districts you don’t even need trade school. My son is graduating from high school this year. He started an auto body repair program at the vo-tech school in 9th grade and has been working in an auto body shop half days (with his academic classes during the other half) through a co-op education program. The shop offered him a full time job after he graduated, so he already has his first job lined up. He has said the shop has sent employees to schools for training, so even if he does need to do some additional schooling, the shop will pay. Needless to say, I’m quite happy that he has his prospects worked out and is avoiding starting his life out with student debt.”
My sons are in their 40s. They didn’t go to college either. Once is a computer techie and makes about $150K a year. The other is an insurance salesman and apparently makes a decent enough living to support the half a dozen kids he and his wife home school. The gkids are way above their public school peers and have actually received an education, are well-read, and knowledgeable about a variety of subjects. I can’t complain.
Locally, we have a tech school with a great reputation. All the gkids will probably pick a field and enroll there.
I think GenZ is going to do well. They are already more conservative than the generation before them. That bodes will for our country.
My grandson did the trade school thing and CAT liked him so much he’s done follow-up schools and has his career in order quicker and better paying than college. As long as big trucks haul freight mechanics will feed and raise their families. Mechanics are the man.
I’ll never play golf again.
My dad got me a job at a gas station/mechanic shop while I was in high school. Worked there 3 years after school and summers. Then I went to college. Took my automotive experience and had a career selling and servicing industrial transmission equipment. Conveyors, gearboxes, bearings, couplings and the like. Plus my wife and I are now restoring an older VW beetle convertible. I am pointing and she is wrenching.
Back in the 80's there was a guy in my high school that was a known pot-smoker and a lot of people wrote him off as a dead-ender. He was in our vo-tech program for autotrades, graduated and seemed to disappear for a few years, until one day he rode back into town in his De Tomas Pantera. Seems he had somehow worked his way into being a mechanic for some Hollywood firm that provided high end vehicles for movies and TV shows.
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