[wastedyears]

Mike Rowe is a huge supporter of trade/tech schools.

[cuban leaf]

I’ve worked with some pretty dumb people with masters’ degrees. Meanwhile, some of the most successful and rich people alive didn’t go to college or dropped out.

One of my friends got a C average in community college for two years. The sole reason? His dad died early on and he needed the C average so that SS would pay his tuition. He then became a baggage handler at an airport. He and I met at Boeing’s COBOL tech school. It was a 10 month night school course for $2,300.

He became CIO of a fortune 500 company and cashed out 9 mil in stock options after serving for 11 or 12 years in that role.

My brother in law is a billionaire with no college. He started his own business.

In fact, my son became a multimillionaire with no college. As he hobnobs with other millionaire’s in the Chicago area he discovered something interesting. He told me that the one thing all those people in those disgustingly nice homes have in common is this:

They own their own business.

[SpaceBar]

Sounds like a case for public executions and convict labor.

[A_perfect_lady]

Unfortunately, teen employment has collapsed... Maintaining current levels of low-skilled immigration, which many liberals favor, can only make that problem worse.

Liberals never want to talk about the link between cheap immigrant labor and black unemployment.

[BBQToadRibs]

I’ve known plenty of people in the trades who make as good, if not better, money than college grads. Especially college grads with BS crap degrees.

[Harpotoo]

I was thinking about this the past 2 days and came up with this. Rehab blighted homes in the slums with trainers in everything from flooring, roofing, electrical, HVAC, framing, welding, plumbing, landscaping, sidewalk and street building. Have trainers there guiding residents through the process with certification given when proficient. The houses and streets can then be turned over to those rebuilding the above at low costs and have police & neighborhood protection placed into the rebuilt areas. Continue to expand and rebuild the neighborhoods while giving new and marketable skills to the inhabitants. Something like that amyway.

[bk1000]

“After a brief enrollment at the University of Memphis, he did not gain paid employment.”

What did he expect after a brief enrollment, Executive Vice President? What courses did he attempt? Social Justice 101: Hating Whitey As A Way Of Life? I am a big believer in vocational education, but this article does not address the facts. Why would his behavior change so? Leftist influence and indoctrination into victim culture is my guess. Colleges are infested with commie rats.

[Leaning Right]

George W. Bush deserves a good amount of the blame here. His disastrous No Child Left Behind Act does not test for trade knowledge. And since schools live and die by their test scores, most high schools dropped their trade programs.

I taught in an urban high school that had an excellent carpentry program. We graduated carpenters who were ready to work the day after they graduated.

But NCLB does not test for carpentry. So the entire program was eliminated. And the carpentry kids were shoved into classes they neither wanted nor needed.

Thanks for nothing, George.

[EinNYC]

While I was teaching in NYC public high schools, I was always a strong advocate for vo-ed. While a lot of my colleagues looked at me like I had committed some heinous act, the current craze being phrases like "Every child can learn" and "Everyone should go to college", I observed with my own eyes that many kids who would act out in my science class would be model citizens in any kind of shop class. They could not sit still, they had to be kinetic. That kid who was doodling in his notebook or looking out the window? Put a hammer or a meter in his hand, and he was all-in. The libtards did not pick up on this at all; to them, going into the trades was some kind of lower track for students, so everyone was pushed to go to college, whether it was right for them or not. Of course, it became a racial thing, with the libtards claiming blacks were not encouraged to go to college and were instead encouraged to go into trades.

We see the horrendous results of "Everyone should go to college", with illiterate, math-ignorant, non-critical thinkers flooding campuses everywhere. Unable to do the work, they latch onto "causes" and hold up those posters the libtards and commies shove into their hands. Sorry to say, these types don't usually end up as useful citizens, but often life-long welfare recipients.

And then we have the libtards bending over backwards to bring uneducated unskilled illegal criminal invaders into our country. They take the jobs which were traditionally entry level jobs for our teens to learn a work ethic in and to earn college money or money for other worthy purposes. So we have all these teens with no way to get work experience while they're very young.

Is it any wonder they turn to crime? They are unable to do useful work and there are no entry level jobs for them anyway.

[bgill]

$100/hr. plumbers don’t have outstanding student loans.

[cherry]

this article seems to meander from one idea to another.....

we're supposed to have a crisis now because young black men are not finishing college and getting into trouble....

its the young white men I worry about....they're the ones who are discriminated against....

but if in this long winded posting the author just wanted to say that college is overrated, its graduates over paid, its worth overstated, then I agree.....

college is not for everyone, and sometimes its for people that really do not know how to actually work....

get us our blue collar solid work opportunities back and it would be a godsend for many young men, or women, who don't have the patience for sociology,political science,communications, et all that fills college curriculum.

[minnesota_bound]

Why 4 years for 98% of what you need to know at work?