Posted on 06/11/2024 10:00:47 AM PDT by CFW
The higher-education industry is having a bad decade.
Some problems are obvious: With wokeness and campus unrest, colleges and universities have lost some of their mystique.
They’ll tell you to “follow the science,” right before they tell you that men can get pregnant.
Violent antisemitic riots haven’t done much to burnish their image, nor have the limp responses to those riots from many university administrations.
Whom the gods would destroy, they first make ridiculous. Mission accomplished!
Then there’s the economics of it: The reward of college was supposed to be a good job at the end.
[snip]
Younger people are catching on.
A recent Wall Street Journal article reported that Gen Z is becoming “the toolbelt generation”: To a degree unprecedented in recent times, younger people are looking at the trades.
Trades are flourishing as college enrollment shrinks, per the report, which found that “the number of students enrolled in vocational-focused community colleges rose 16% last year to its highest level … since 2018.”
Kids studying construction trades rose 23% during the five-year period, while those training for HVAC and vehicle repair careers increased 7%.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
In my day, to have a college degree almost guaranteed financial success. It was a lie. Some of the most successful people I’ve met had NO formal education, but an outstanding work ethic. Since I had no financial aid given my genetics, I worked on a construction site during my college days. THAT was my education and resulted in flipping houses when it wasn’t even a term yet. Thank you Jesus!
Competent ‘trade’ folks will provide more of value to you in one year than the combined total of all ‘kollege profezzorz’. And I was one of those professors (spelled correctly, because I was STEM - my stuff worked and still does). Just one call to a plumber will provide you more worth than the sum of all knowledge or work (if any of either) given by those with “woke” degrees in the multiverse.
Now days won’t they be pushing females into that work?
“In my day, to have a college degree almost guaranteed financial success. It was a lie. “
I have no college degree. I took some tech school business courses but didn’t graduate. I got my first job in a law firm (2 room office— one atty who was just out of law school) in the middle of the 1980s recession. That first job paid less than $5.00 per hour.
Forty years later I retired from a very large institution with a good retirement check after earning a nice salary for years. The key was arriving at work every day, on time, and being willing to learn. I paid attention, learned the legal terminology, and was meticulous in my work.
Hubby and I lived below our means, built and paid for the house we still live in, and now enjoy a debt-free retirement. It’s a trade off. Yeah, a college degree may have landed me a job making more money to start off with, but are you really ahead when you start out heavily in debt?
The path to wealth is owning your own business.
A smart person in the trades, after a few years experience, can open his own business, own his own equipment, and hire people to work for him.
What the US really needs is decentralization, with lots of small businesses.
+1
Good news.
Correct. That’s why they’re trying to demolish small business.
I was the last of a breed, a humanities professor whose students were taught how to think, how to find truth, and what millennia of past geniuses handed us to make our lives lived better. I used to, only half sarcastically, tell my students that their other classes would teach them how to make money, but I would teach them how to spend it, on that which satisfies the mind and the soul. And I did this because I love God and I love the best of the past and I love what the future could be. That is why I hate with a righteous passion what has been done to the concept of college by my woke colleagues, and I pray they either repent or suffer eternally for what they have done.
Mike Rowe should take a victory lap.
I have a college degree but attended a school with an coop engineering program. I found out what industries I didn’t want to have a career in and the one I did. The work experience was more valuable than the academics in a lot of ways. I didn’t attend my graduation because I had a great job ready for me when I completed my finals. The coop program also helped ensure that I had a very minimal student loan debt.
There are still a lot of good ones out there in the trenches.
Path to wealth is having your own business, and having it be successful. harder to do these days thanks to joepedo and crew.
That, and knowing how to maximize deductions for taxes...
There wasn't the discussion of today of college vs trades, but I just wanted to go fix electronics stuff. The fields I was interested in, if I went to college, paid the same as if I went to 1 year of tech school. Seemed like a no-brainer to me, despite what my teachers were telling me.
I have had a very fun and successful career, and make a way above average wage. Of course I show up to work, done stuff to make my bosses look good, and continue to learn as the electronics world changes. One of my very best decisions was to go the tech school route.
As an adult, I went back to school and got my BA, paid on the company dime. Didn't help my career much, but I enjoyed the learning, and had some good college instructors that weren't woke, and where I got a true liberal arts education (Econ major) and let me do some real learning and pondering of the way things are.
I officiate high school sports too, and in off the game moments with HS boys, I always tout the trades to them for their post HS education.
We need more Mike Rowes for spreading the message.
The market certainly appears more lucrative than ever given the going rates for various trade services. I expect this to be a big draw.
With current tax rates and markup though i generally find it more money and often time efficient to do most household jobs myself (even with 1 time tool purchases) than contract out with post tax money. The second time it is even more efficient.
The world needs such humanities professors more than ever. I’m appalled at the replacement of such humanities with ‘studies’ departments focusing on the cause of the day.
Given your past tense description, I presume you are ‘retired.’ Have you worked at writing books or doing videos?
I’m currently going through Sebastian Morello’s Symposia series.
“Just as many of us here have been saying for the past several years. The young people who go to two years tech school, or even enter a trade field directly after high school, are going to be free of college debt and the employers for the students with 4-year degrees and 100,000 dollars in debt!”
Often those instant unemployment degrees can be devastating to the grads and parents.
We are seeing the results of what you noted, in a nearby family.
There are 5 kids in that family! 4 were/are today/smart and got Stem degrees and got good jobs even before they were graduated.
The 5th kid ended up in an Oregon so called college and spent 5+ years getting a worthless degree in geography and arts.
He got his instant unemployment degree/IUD this past Jan/Feb. He can’t get an interview.
His girl friend attended a real NE college and was a Stem grad.
She immediately got a job at a good back east college as an asst. instructor.
The young man and his IUD went back with her and couldn’t get a decent job.
He is back home and is basically lost. His longtime girl friend is still in the east coast as an asst. instructor this summer and enrolled in advanced STEM classes.
He is very frustrated, and so are his parents. I suggested, to enroll him in one of the local trade schools and get a GED.
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