New survey data from the nonprofit American Student Assistance shows that teen interest in college is down while interest in nondegree paths is on the rise.
Meanwhile, parents are skeptical of options outside the traditional college pathway to work.
Nearly half of all students surveyed – 45% – weren’t interested in going to college. About 14% said they planned to attend trade or technical schools, apprenticeships and technical boot camp programs, and 38% were considering those options.
66% of teens surveyed said parents supported their plans to pursue a nondegree route, compared with 82% whose parents encouraged them to attend college.
Reminds me of how everyone in my generation was funneled into STEM, and now the field is oversaturated and we have physicists stuck working at McDonalds.
In 5 years we will have too many electricians.
Then they will push people back into STEM again.
I see article like this and they are so unrelatable. Most articles are. It’s all popular mass news media and doesn’t touch what I know to be real life. This is for rich families.
Boomers set up this world where only a college degree mattered, then they tore that world down.
Do whatever you want, kids. We’re all totally F’ed anyhow.
They just required it for racist reasons.
Ding ding ding!
HBCUs didn’t just appear for fun. They were founded to address segregation in higher education.
considering how bad the tech job market is right now? Completely worthless.
Different tech. It’s my understanding this is being used interchangeably with what many people know as “trade schools”
Is it really? Also I’ve had a tech job for 20 years and my degree is not in the field. I didn’t need a degree. Many of my colleagues are self-taught developers. I didn’t know that tech jobs were so hard to come by now.
The data I’ve seen is that it’s mainly bad on the entry level
But this is focused on comparing college degree outcomes in entry level rather than degree + non-degree. Also the longer term studies that consider career outcomes degree vs trade vs non-degree/trade certifications long term regardless of career path
I’ve been job hunting for almost 2 full years now, can barely get interviews. I put out 30-50 app’s a week.
9 years IT experience between helpdesk, field work, desktop support, and cyber security.
I don’t think boomers set it up that way. I think boomers were the first to grow up into a world where a college degree was almost required to get ahead.
No they werent. They could buy houses with a min wage job. Dont speak on things you know absolutely nothing about.
You could, but it would be a house with no indoor plumbing. My grandpa lived in one. Gotta shit in the outhouse.
Houses got much bigger since then and the home ownership rate stayed at around 60% basically forever. If it was so easy, why didn’t everyone do it?
I never said that boomers did not benefit from it, I said that they didn’t set it up that way. They benefited, exploited, abused, and left nothing for those to come after, but they didn’t set it up themselves.
So when boomers came into the workforce they did not need college degrees to get ahead. After they had gotten ahead and were in charge, new employees started needing college degrees to get ahead.
And you think they didn’t set it up themselves? If they didn’t, who did?
After they had gotten ahead and were in charge
Chiming in that I do agree with this specific sentiment. I think the issue with your overall statement is that it seems to imply that all boomers did this, while it only applies to the ones that got ahead. The system we’ve been living in for ages has been creating and rewarding cutthroat psychopathic/sociopathic tendencies - so it absolutely makes sense that the people that rose up in the economic ladder abused their position accordingly.
Yes, clearly not all boomers did this. My dad didn’t go to college and is the trades. He isn’t making any rules about people needing college.
I’m all for hating the boomers. If you want to blame the disappearance of American manufacturing and the weakening of organized labor on Boomers, I’m all for that. They availability of higher education for the masses to the point where a college degree became a barrier to entry is something that came about thanks to the prosperity boom after WWII. Remember yuppies? Those fuckers were boomers enjoying the advantages their parents and socialist reforms laid at their feet.
So no. Boomers didn’t make college a barrier to entry, but they did milk their good fortune and left very little for those that came after them.
Everyone’s got anecdotes but I swear I’ve been hearing the same thing about trades jobs where proof is anecdotes and then data paints it as generally worse than a university degree
https://wallethub.com/edu/best-entry-level-jobs/3716
I’d suggest young people not rely on anecdotes and focus on data. Don’t trust a person when they say they’re happy with their office job or their trades job. Don’t trust strangers/people you barely ever talk to to be truthful about the condition of their health; most people spare people the weight of knowing their mental and physical struggles
Instead look at unemployment rates per profession that you’re considering. Depression rates. Suicide rates. Salary trajectory and median wage by career stage. Like early, mid, senior, and wage at retirement. There’s data out there for some professions like average yearly medical costs by age in profession. Average benefits value like health/dental/vision/401k match/etc data.
It’s a ton to really consider but the ones that are able to do so without just shutting off their brains and turning off the web browser from stress/frustration will have done themselves a favor
Most people learn statistics in college though.
Also look into informational interviewing and maybe see if someone can connect you with a current job-holder. People are surprisingly nice and it may be feasible to get their time to get an understanding of their field and daily work life.
Absolutely follow the data and put in the effort to find out.
they’re talking about people who are actively witnessing degree inflation, student debt, people applying for 100 jobs to get 3 interviews, and not getting picked anyway because of nepotism-- not to mention the obliteration of the dept of education and grant moneys going up in smoke. i’m well over 40 with a masters, and i would 100% choose something other than a 4 year degree at this point
Don’t forget that if you dare take any of that knowledge and use it to exercise your free speech, the university can just deny the degree you earned and paid for at the behest of the government.
If you’re lucky. Or they could Bob Lazar you. I’m unsure of all of his claims but the government 100% deleted his degree and ruined his life.
I have two degrees and a certification and I work on an assembly line in a factory. If I had to do it all over again, I’d sure as hell chose a different path.
Jfc. That sucks.
Yeah. At least I make a pretty decent living for now.
Wait until you hear how many profiles you need to swipe on to get 3 dates
Schools already shit the bed by hiring 3rd party consulting like rpkGroup to “streamline” budgets/programs, and now they’re going to be cutting even more. Add that to the recent legislation which re-fucked student loans even more, targets schools that don’t have a good “ROI,” stripped funding, and now you’ve got a bunch of hollowed-out institutions too scared to do anything but train ChatGPT-brainrot kids on whatever the hottest job market is, completely saturating it within two years. But I have a feeling the college sports schools will somehow be ok. Can’t disappoint FanDuel.
Out of twins, one is heading for trade school, the other will have earned half her undergrad by the time they finish highschool, with plans to go pre-med. One will make a great living as an electrician and the other will drown in student loan debt for years. I’m equally proud and supportive of their decisions.
If a parent is disappointed that their child is going for a trade, the only thing this shows is that the apple fell far from an asshole tree.
A physician “drowning” in student loan debt is still making bank, in my experience. Having a lot of debt doesn’t automatically mean you’re drowning, if you’re making $300K+, you will have no problem paying down that debt and living well at the same time.
Out of residency 200-300k is the starting pay too. Mid to late career doctors, especially the specialist, make major major money. What sucks can be long hours and major responsibility over human lives while being sleep deprived but the long hours can be matched by tradespersons while paying 2-10x less and being more susceptible to market downturns
Tl;dr: If you have a good paying job, you should consider getting over the distance for it and find fulfillment outside of work
One thing I’ve learned with age is that everyone complains about their jobs. Everyone. Even the most idealistic jobs. Filmmakers, painters, community organizers/outreach, your everyday local DJ doing any event that’ll hire them, doctor, scientist, tradesperson, etc.
Anecdotal, but practically every freelance artist I’ve met has been like, “if you can find a steady 9-5 corporate gig, take it so you can have a chance at being able to live a normal life. It’s too late for me.” As in the years of constantly having to market themselves, look for contract after contract, constantly traveling because often times your best shot at making it as a videographer is doing remote shoots weeks at a time, constantly budgeting just to make rent and keep your going to next gig, learning about the costs of health insurance and that it gets higher as you age, every other type of insurance they didn’t think about until they were a freelancer, etc has made them into a bit of a scatterbrain and kind of selfish. Reasonably selfish as it’s unstable work and your relationships are constantly distant and passing. But still selfish. So ya, I always hear don’t be like me as a freelancer because it’s really hard to live the nice idyllic life without the time to build out a committed to home community. Like, “I wish I could work a normal job but mentally I can’t do it anymore so I keep freelancing.”
Community organizers/outreach, non-profits. Anecdotal again but I’m used to hearing from non-management employees about how little they trust organizational leadership to care for them. Very often the phrase I hear is, “these non-profits don’t care about us” and a co-worker say, “preach, amen.” Doing good work but unless you’re in leadership, you’re working poverty wages and at some point most will start questioning what they’ve even accomplished and how much longer can they do this and whether they deserve better in life than poverty wages as a social/political outreach employee. Those that don’t work the job will always gush about the work to them and make it awkward and unlikely for the workers to tell people how they feel about the job rather than the mission. Ideally a fulfilling job turns to a fulfilling mission not job, to then neither and wanting a good paying job
Everyone thinks grass is greener and people think they can just get into the trades and make big money. There’s the cost of training and apprenticeship. Then there’s the grind to journeyman. Then there’s the low chance of being one of the ones to run their own business and doing so is a trade-off of work-life balance. Make more money owning your own trade shop but until if ever you make it to owning a fleet of vehicles hiring a bunch of tradesperson, you’re going to be working insane hours
Work for a company as a tradesperson and you’ll have better work life balance but just solid pay eventually that’ll cap out lower than some office job where you can move up into corporate stuff.
One thing that hit me talking around was a tradesperson telling me that in the trades you don’t have downtime. You can’t let yourself chit chat with a client pausing work or else everything gets delayed, you can’t take as many clients as you need and operations can fall apart by being too social on the job. You don’t have time to just scroll on your phone randomly throughout the day.
The other being hearing stuff like trades jobs feel worse than playing on the line in football. At least in football you’re mostly upright and when you fall you fall but it’s all mostly deliberate and comfortable games and workouts. Trades you’re moving your body to fit places that place weird strain on your body for 8+ hours a day. You inhale all sorts of whatever. You may be doing work where shavings of whatever is constantly flying around getting all over your clothing at least but also any bit of skin that it gets to through the day. Shit can be real loud regardless of ear protection. Could be lifting steel beams that are heavy as shit over and over for hours of the day
Like people will lift weights for 1-2 hours a day cycling muscle groups different days of the week. Take some days off. People will still get workout injuries from overuse or tiny mistakes. Trades, it’ll be the same muscles and joints day in and day out 8+ hours a day
Regardless you got to do what you got to do to survive and trades are good respectable work that deliver a service and can raise a family. Anecdotal but old tradespeople that have gotten over the machismo have always told me I and anyone should get over the grass is greener mentality. They didn’t just start making $100k+ doing a trade. It was mediocre for a decade+ until they sniffed $100k and by then their body was already aching and they could legit try to start their own business where they’d now have to work more hours to hopefully someday just be the boss rather than the boss that also works every job as well
People in office jobs that required degrees that gave them starting wages over like $70k with clear growth prospects looking to get into trades for self-fullfillment, get some hobbies you can do with friends and alone. Make some friends. Use the energy you’re not spending crawling around breathing in who knows what to become really good at cooking so that people want to have cookouts with you
You’re not wrong, but being concerned doesn’t mean being disappointed. Maybe use a less broad brush, unless you were intentionally just being provocative. In which case, tell your kids to cut down the asshole tree.
Tech and trades are what pay. Most of my friends with degrees are drowning in debt and don’t have a job related to their degrees
From what I hear, many of the big “technical schools” are basically worthless as far as preparing you for the work, and they cost as much or more than community college. You’re better off just going into a trade as a complete novice and building up experience that way.
Yup. We recently hired a guy straight out of the HVAC-R program of our local tech school and he barely had any refrigeration knowledge. Aparently they only teach you barely enough about refrigeration to get an EPA cert and nothing beyond that.
Hell, out of the three new techs we got recently, the one who actually went to tradeschool is the least competent. If you want to get into the trades straight out of highschool you best bet is to just start with a manual labor job for a year or so so you have something to put on a resume that show you can work. After that just apply for a low level position in your trade of choice. Once you’re in your employer should be paying for you to get any certs that you need.
Any good tradesman can teach the job to a competent assistant. But, if you end up working with a shitty guy, not going to learn much.
I know the education quality for drafting has been so bad that the field has shriveled up over the past few decades as they’ve pushed more engineers and architects to do their own CAD.
This survey only measured what teenagers were considering doing in the future. The headline is a severe overstatement of the results
you might be the only one who actually read it (no i didnt read it haha)
It’s about how successful your parents were. If your dad is a mechanic, has his own shop, then you might want to consider some form of trade school that also teaches the business side of running a shop. Or becoming a machinist to complement his skills, and still make use of his tools and floor space. If you’re going to be a plumber but end up working for a large corporation, because you don’t have capital to start your own business, things will be tougher. You’ll hours might be bad, the pension they offer might not be good.
Everyone’s situation is different, and the future will be different from now.Its funny how fast something becomes “traditional”
The generation that set this system up is still alive…
How is this not great news?
I’m not that surprised. The value of a college degree has decreased substantially as more people have gotten them.
The value of a degree doesn’t drop because more people get one, if that were the case there’d be little value in finishing high school. If everyone else has a college degree and you don’t, then you are at a disadvantage.
The value of a college degree will decrease as the cost of a college education goes up, the knowledge gained from a college education is available elsewhere, and fewer people see a reason to get a college degree.
The value of a degree doesn’t drop because more people get one,
It absolutely does. Part of the reason lawyer pay collapsed was because of the proliferation of law colleges that increased lawyer supply.
It happened to be that there was an increase in demand for college degrees in the later 20th century which countered supply, but the labor premium of having a college degree over a trade certification has dropped significantly over the past generation.
A lot of millennials went to college and chose specific degrees due to the promise of a higher wage. That wage difference isn’t there anymore.
The value of specific degrees may be diluted, however the value of a college degree in general does not - at least from the perspective of being able to land a job. If 75% of the applicants for a job have a college degree, the 25% are going to find it difficult to get a first interview.
Even if they do get the interview it is still an uphill battle. I just hired someone on my team who doesn’t have a college degree. He was by far more qualified than anyone else I spoke with because he had 20 years experience. I hadn’t even noticed that he didn’t have a college degree until I got a call from HR asking me to justify hiring someone without a college degree for this position, and me just saying ‘He has 20 years experience’ wasn’t good enough justification.
A lot of millennials went to college and chose specific degrees due to the promise of a higher wage. That wage difference isn’t there anymore.
You’re right, compared to a career from a trade school versus a career from a college degree there isn’t much difference, but having a college degree can still give an edge over someone without a degree in getting a job.
I can see that having a college degree may be a benefit at getting a job at your company, but would you recommend that people go to college to work at your company? Based on your numbers, a college degree only turns a 1 out of 4 chance to a 1 out of 3 chance of getting a job.
The company I work for is a huge medical equipment manufacturer, practically everyone in my building are either scientists, R&D or manufacturing process management and those positions all require specific degrees.
I work in IT, and they want the people leaders at least to have degrees. The position I was hiring for was a people leader, but I didn’t feel a degree was necessary. That said, if someone starting out on IT asked me if they should get a degree I would tell them that they should work in IT for a few years to see if they like it, and if they want to advance in IT then they will have a much easier time advancing with a degree. Depending how high they want to go they might even need a Masters.
But if people are choosing to go into a trade, are they choosing IT as that trade?
When I hear people talking about going to trade school over college, I expect them to go into technical fields where their trade certifications are enough to get by on.
I’m not, told my kids study whatever the fuck you want so long as you can work that career and support yourself and a family of 4. When they asked how much was that, I taught then how to do salary research and how to determine the cost of living for a family of 4 in different parts of the country.
If you go to college, the degree you get also matters. Professions requiring a degree “just because” is gone. Now the only degrees worthwhile are those where that’s the only way into a specific profession, like medicine.
That’s utterly false. I still constantly see requirements listing a four-year degree, but not in any program.
Tell me you’ve never applied to medical school without telling me you’ve never applied to medical school.
