# If not college, then what? Trade jobs are even worse? (young adult problems in the US for jobs) **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [July 5, 2025, 11:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-not-college-then-what-trade-jobs-are-even-worse-young-adult-problems-in-the-us-for-jobs/1020532 "2025-07-05T11:19:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 8
**Author:** ![Slithy\_Tove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slithy_tove/32/18248_2.png) [@Slithy\_Tove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slithy_Tove)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2025, 3:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-not-college-then-what-trade-jobs-are-even-worse-young-adult-problems-in-the-us-for-jobs/1020532/141 "2025-08-12T03:42:50Z")
Where I grew up, if it didn’t help the corn grow it’s just bullshit\* So of course I went off to college and studied art, history and literature. Like the old saying: a humanities degree at least allows you to laugh at the people filling the jobs it excludes you from. Years later I landed a job in industrial safety. Upper management wished it could simply wish the problem away. The line workers were young guys who thought their youth made them invulnerable. Older workers thought the same just by evading the law of averages. To all three groups I was pleased to perform as if I were a gadfly on a horse’s anus. About a year or so after I retired, a technician who’d been hired after I’d left tripped a release and was crushed to death under a hydraulic table. He’d have never set foot on the floor without understanding lockout tag out when I was there. That’s an ugly sort of vindication as a legacy, one that I wish had been a culture of continuous safety and awareness instead. But the dynamics of money and pride have defeated better people than me. Life is a precious gift, and I’ve seen it squandered in many ways quite a few times. It’s an endless battle, and maybe a losing one, but you couldn’t pay me enough to be on the other side. (\*also from where I grew up: talking about yourself is just bragging, complaining, preaching or gossip. That’s a lot harder to rebel against. Who do you think you are? If you’re no good to somebody else, you’re not worth a damn.) ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2025, 10:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-not-college-then-what-trade-jobs-are-even-worse-young-adult-problems-in-the-us-for-jobs/1020532/142 "2025-08-12T10:40:08Z")
> [@Dr.Drake](#): > > Holy false dichotomies, Batman! An education is to enable you to become a better person and a better citizen. Everyone should be getting an education, lifelong, though not necessarily through degree-granting institutions. That’s a lovely, idealized view of things. Unfortunately, we don’t live in an ideal world. To many (far too many IMO) the only goal of education is how it can get you a job that will make you a lot of money, with a side order of the prestige of the institution possibly giving you a leg up on the social ladder. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2025, 11:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-not-college-then-what-trade-jobs-are-even-worse-young-adult-problems-in-the-us-for-jobs/1020532/143 "2025-08-12T11:44:59Z")
> [@Spice\_Weasel](#): > > For graduate school, I mean it cost a lot but they paid half my tuition which I was told was unprecedented. You think you’re getting a deal that way! That depends on the field. In the sciences, any serious grad school acceptance will always include a teaching and/or research assistantship that pays full tuition plus a small stipend. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2025, 1:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-not-college-then-what-trade-jobs-are-even-worse-young-adult-problems-in-the-us-for-jobs/1020532/144 "2025-08-12T13:22:48Z")
> [@Dr.Drake](#): > > Holy false dichotomies, Batman! An education is to enable you to become a better person and a better citizen. Everyone should be getting an education, lifelong, though not necessarily through degree-granting institutions. You sort of missed my point. We as a society have established the notion that getting a college degree is a prerequisite for most jobs worth having and an indicator of being a “better person and a better citizen”. But at the same time college has become exorbitantly expensive and less of a “golden ticket” to the upper middle and affluent classes. I would also challenge that college inherently makes you a “better person/citizen”. I think it can, but a lot depends on what you put into it. Either way, given the cost of college these days, it’s almost become a luxury where only the rich can afford to send their kids off to become a better citizen without any regard to how they will earn a living afterwards. ---
**Author:** ![Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/q.q.switcheroo/32/5713_2.png) [@Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.Q.Switcheroo)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2025, 1:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-not-college-then-what-trade-jobs-are-even-worse-young-adult-problems-in-the-us-for-jobs/1020532/145 "2025-08-12T13:29:20Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > In the sciences, any serious grad school acceptance will always include a teaching and/or research assistantship that pays full tuition plus a small stipend. Likewise the humanities, at least in highly ranked Ph.D. programs. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ad7895/32.png) [@Dr.Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Drake)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2025, 2:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-not-college-then-what-trade-jobs-are-even-worse-young-adult-problems-in-the-us-for-jobs/1020532/146 "2025-08-12T14:41:31Z")
I think “what is higher education for” is inherently a question of “why do you value education.” For so many, the anawer is “it has no intrinsic value; it has the potential to increase my income or social status.” One of the reasons we are where we are. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2025, 3:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-not-college-then-what-trade-jobs-are-even-worse-young-adult-problems-in-the-us-for-jobs/1020532/147 "2025-08-12T15:22:48Z")
> [@Spice\_Weasel](#): > > I know a lot of people who make a lot more money than me and they feel their work is meaningless. Some of them got into it because it’s what their parents expected, some just didn’t know what they wanted to do, and other people experienced a significant mismatch between expectations and reality. > > I think it helped that my program was a lot of hands-on job training through two years of internship, so I knew what to expect. And I already had prior non-profit experience. I spent a couple years working before grad school to be sure this is what I wanted to do. > > I knowingly traded status and profit for meaningful work and when people tell me they don’t feel like they are doing anything useful, I don’t know what to say to them, because while I’ve definitely had individual jobs that sucked, I’ve never had a career trajectory that sucked or felt like I was trapped in the wrong line of work. But there’s a danger to treating education as purely economic and transactional because that’s how you end up like my friends, wondering what the hell you’re doing with your life. > > I’m not saying I do as much as I should, but I’m fan of the song _All These Things That I’ve Done_ by the _Killers._ To me, it’s a song about being depressed and feeling like you want to make a difference in the world but like you’re not good enough to rise to the occasion (which everyone feels sometimes!) but the song concludes > > _While everyone’s lost, the battle is won_ > > _By all these things that I’ve done_ > > _If you can hold on, hold on_ > > When you can help yourself out of despair by reminding yourself no, you did this thing, what you do matters, it makes a difference. > > What’s the price tag on that? > > By the way I’m not implying there’s any specific line of work that makes a difference more than others. I think people can find meaning in all kinds of work. But they often don’t. Why is that? > > I think a lot of the reason I enjoy my work is because I have a lot of creative freedom and autonomy. It might be as simple as that. Of course Trump is trying to destroy nonprofits right now and seriously fucking with my sense of self-worth in the process because there are good people on payroll who need to get paid and it’s stressful as fuck but heyyyy > > _All these things that I’ve done_ > > You know, maybe it’s like marriage. I put some serious thought into who I married, too. You can make all the right choices and still get fucked over but how many people really think about what their career will look like beyond the paycheck? I might not have been thinking _enough_ about money, but I know people who don’t think of anything else. And they are fucking miserable. I suppose if all you care about is a paycheck, there is a certain Zen quality where you can just focus on the number instead of being miserable because you don’t feel like you have a purpose or make a difference. Then again, there is a danger in that sort of short-sighted bottom line thinking where you don’t care about how the numbers impact actual people (or even your business). In the past ten years, I’ve worked for five different companies (ranging from 9 months to 4 years). And because it’s mostly client-facing project work, I’ve probably worked directly with at least 20 different companies during that time. I lost my job a bit over a month ago so as I’ve been looking for a new job, I’ve been thinking a lot about what I liked and didn’t like about those various jobs, what gives me purpose, and what makes me miserable. In general, I like working with teams of smart people to implement some new system or process or solve some business problem. Some of my projects actually help people. Some are just kind of esoteric back-office systems but that can be interesting too. I’m at a level in my career where I am usually either running the show or listened to very closely by those who are (and get paid well for it). For the most part, I was content to do this at most of the places I’ve worked at. At least for awhile. What makes me fucking miserable has less to do with the actual work and more to do with the dynamic of the work environment and the people I work with. It’s like what you describe with Trump attacking non-profits. There is some shift in leadership and now someone who I’ve never met who has nothing to do with what I’m working on just arbitrarily decides my experience is no longer valuable. That’s why people are fucking miserable IMHO. Because they have been told that going to college would prepare them for decent, stable, good paying jobs. But what they are finding is that those jobs aren’t available and current jobs are being attacked at every level. People who do the work are having their jobs outsourced or automated. Companies want to replace entry level jobs with AI. Middle management is largely viewed as an unnecessary and bloated expense. Maybe to an extent it is, but it has also been a typical mid-career destination. Senior executives still seem to keep their bloated pay, but that generally requires a very specific career path as an Ivy League MBA with a brief stint at as a Mckinsey management consultant (and even that is under attack). Heck, even Jamie Dimon is bitching because his first year analysts keep quitting to join private equity firms (because there’s not enough money in investment banking I guess). Every job posting literally has 1000 applicants. Even if 90% of them are totally unqualified, that’s still a 1 in 100 chance of being picked. And these are just bullshit mid-level corporate jobs. I’m not applying to NASA here. The point I’m trying to make is that it does seem like we have trouble figuring how where to find work for all these highly educated people to do. And it’s a big problem when a lot of the work requires years of schooling to actually learn how to do it. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2025, 3:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-not-college-then-what-trade-jobs-are-even-worse-young-adult-problems-in-the-us-for-jobs/1020532/148 "2025-08-12T15:47:47Z")
For some people, the relevant calculation might be “What job can give me a comfortable living wage, with the minimum amount of work?”. In this view, you’re accepting that the thing you get paid for isn’t going to bring you fulfillment, but you can hope that you have enough time outside of work to do the things that you do find fulfilling. Or, of course, there might be some happy medium, where your job isn’t the most rewarding thing you can think of, and it doesn’t pay the most, but it’s still rewarding enough, and still pays enough. But yeah, “How can I get the most money possible” is kind of a dead end, if the process of making that money doesn’t leave you any time to enjoy the rewards of it. ---
**Author:** ![Mighty\_Mouse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mighty_mouse/32/7776_2.png) [@Mighty\_Mouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mighty_Mouse)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2025, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-not-college-then-what-trade-jobs-are-even-worse-young-adult-problems-in-the-us-for-jobs/1020532/149 "2025-08-12T18:35:16Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > I suppose if all you care about is a paycheck, there is a certain Zen quality where you can just focus on the number instead of being miserable because you don’t feel like you have a purpose or make a difference. Then again, there is a danger in that sort of short-sighted bottom line thinking where you don’t care about how the numbers impact actual people (or even your business). I work in Finance. I would say that comfortably over 50% of our effort is spent in negotiation and persuasion to lower our targets (for Sales, profits, cash flow, etc), and under 25% is spent in improving actual results. Its soul crushing. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2025, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-not-college-then-what-trade-jobs-are-even-worse-young-adult-problems-in-the-us-for-jobs/1020532/150 "2025-08-12T21:00:07Z")
I am not suggesting your personal role fits the thesis I’m about to cite. But for sure when most of a major department’s effort is spent trying to stop arbitrary ill-considered guidance from above, that’s sure a crappy way to run a company. Or said another way, that’s clear evidence of a crappily run company. IMO this book is must-read for anyone still working: > **[Bullshit Jobs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs)** > > Bullshit Jobs: A Theory is a 2018 book by anthropologist David Graeber that postulates the existence of meaningless jobs and analyzes their societal harm. He contends that over half of societal work is pointless and becomes psychologically destructive when paired with a work ethic that associates work with self-worth. Graeber describes five types of meaningless jobs, in which workers pretend their role is not as pointless or harmful as they know it to be: flunkies, goons, duct tapers, box tick... ---
**Author:** ![Mighty\_Mouse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mighty_mouse/32/7776_2.png) [@Mighty\_Mouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mighty_Mouse)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2025, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-not-college-then-what-trade-jobs-are-even-worse-young-adult-problems-in-the-us-for-jobs/1020532/151 "2025-08-12T21:05:54Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > I am not suggesting your personal role fits the thesis I’m about to cite. I’m often on a lonely and career-limiting crusade to get folks to actually try to beat the competition, improve employee engagement, improve customer satisfaction and maximize share price. My boss has to extricate me from dicey political situations 2-3 times a year, because she and other people at higher levels in the organization seem to define success as setting a goal we can exceed and building bigger organizations so that they can justify promoting their cronies into “leadership” roles. I have considered leaving a copy of Bullshit Jobs on my desk, but my career coach tells me that would be a bad idea. ---
**Author:** ![Spice\_Weasel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spice_weasel/32/5435_2.png) [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2025, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-not-college-then-what-trade-jobs-are-even-worse-young-adult-problems-in-the-us-for-jobs/1020532/152 "2025-08-12T21:21:50Z")
> [@Q.Q.Switcheroo](#): > > Likewise the humanities, at least in highly ranked Ph.D. programs. Yeah, my husband’s PhD in clinical psychology was paid for, in theory. But he was looking for a post-doc internship (required) during a nationwide matching crisis, and he wasn’t matched for _two years in a row._ Guess who ate that expense while we waited two years for him to match? It wasn’t the school. And it wasn’t anything he did particularly wrong - about 33% of students didn’t match. The things that worked against him were too much research experience and the fact he was a behavioral psychologist at a time when the evidence-based culture wars were kicking off. As for me, my program was a professional terminal master’s degree in social work, which is almost never paid for. I was able to eat the cost of grad school (mostly) because I had so little debt from undergrad. I’m really torn about whether I could have had an overall better result with a different graduate school choice. I had my pick of four very good options and this was the second most cost effective. But I could have gone to Rutgers, which wasn’t as highly ranked. I might have had a totally different career path working with immigrants and I’d be in even more advocate hell right now. A factor I want to point out here is that my educational and career options were limited by where my husband needed to live for grad school. It’s challenging enough to make the best choice for one person, but when you think about two it gets complicated. And that’s also why we had more debt - there was a period of overlap where we had no income. Also, I was encouraged to apply for a PhD in social welfare and had two professors who would have vouched for me. I thought about it a lot. I thought about how miserable my husband was and then I realized I could make more money as an entry level social worker than an adjunct professor. While I wouldn’t describe my career as lucrative, I’m doing pretty well for someone who works in a nonprofit. I’m making more than I imagined I would when I was poor. It’s just that everything is so damned expensive now. ---
**Author:** ![Spice\_Weasel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spice_weasel/32/5435_2.png) [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2025, 9:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-not-college-then-what-trade-jobs-are-even-worse-young-adult-problems-in-the-us-for-jobs/1020532/153 "2025-08-12T21:33:21Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > What makes me fucking miserable has less to do with the actual work and more to do with the dynamic of the work environment and the people I work with. It’s like what you describe with Trump attacking non-profits. There is some shift in leadership and now someone who I’ve never met who has nothing to do with what I’m working on just arbitrarily decides my experience is no longer valuable. Yeah, that utterly fucking sucks and I’m really sorry. My experience with DOGE has been maddening and disempowering but I have the balance of really liking and respecting my coworkers and leadership. Sure I vent about them here but overall it’s a good team and I get a lot of support and positive feedback. I’m lucky as hell. The people I know who are in existential crisis about their jobs 1. Lawyer who left law to be a product manager who then left _that_ job and has been delaying looking within the same field for over a year because he wants to write fiction (me too, buddy. Me too.) 2. Lawyer who works for Pete Hegseth though he is ultra liberal, became a lawyer to please his rich family, recently got certified as a museum archivist, wants to write fiction 3. Engineer who kind of went off the deep end and became a therapist. 4. Engineer who quit to…become a therapist. 5. Engineer Hmm. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2025, 10:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-not-college-then-what-trade-jobs-are-even-worse-young-adult-problems-in-the-us-for-jobs/1020532/154 "2025-08-12T22:14:43Z")
> [@Spice\_Weasel](#): > > A factor I want to point out here is that my educational and career options were limited by where my husband needed to live for grad school. It’s challenging enough to make the best choice for one person, but when you think about two it gets complicated. I’ve heard physicists sometimes refer to the “Two-Body Problem”, where both members of a couple are academics, and now they need to find one institution, or at least one multi-institution urban area, with jobs for both of them. It can lead to thorny questions about what jobs are “good enough”, and whose career to prioritize. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2025, 10:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-not-college-then-what-trade-jobs-are-even-worse-young-adult-problems-in-the-us-for-jobs/1020532/155 "2025-08-12T22:25:52Z")
My nephew and his wife are in that boat. Two different specialties, but finding a single urban area that can support both at an appropriate level is a challenge. A challenge not yet surmounted. ---
**Author:** ![Spice\_Weasel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spice_weasel/32/5435_2.png) [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2025, 10:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-not-college-then-what-trade-jobs-are-even-worse-young-adult-problems-in-the-us-for-jobs/1020532/156 "2025-08-12T22:30:50Z")
There was so much that happened that we couldn’t have foreseen. The matching fiasco and post-doc alone forced me to quit two good jobs. But the other side of that is because I had to go from job to job every year or so, my wage increased pretty quickly. I was only part time, even before we had a kid, for years at my current agency, and because of all the shit I had to sacrifice for his career (including delaying motherhood for _checks notes_ fourteen years) he was fully of the mindset that he was making it up to me. I spent a great deal of time focused on my fiction writing, but I figured if I stayed good and loyal at my current agency, it would pay off. And it did. When the new CEO came in she promoted me immediately to a salaried leadership position and not only did she accept my counterproposal, she threw in an extra week’s paid vacation at her own suggestion. It was exactly what I wanted. I’ve been here almost ten years, I have crazy amounts of paid vacation time, I go into the office once a week, there aren’t many employees with as long a leash as I’ve got because I have a track record of getting shit done. And on top of that I actually enjoy my work. So it all worked out for me. ---
**Author:** ![Mighty\_Mouse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mighty_mouse/32/7776_2.png) [@Mighty\_Mouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mighty_Mouse)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2025, 10:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-not-college-then-what-trade-jobs-are-even-worse-young-adult-problems-in-the-us-for-jobs/1020532/157 "2025-08-12T22:34:45Z")
My daughter’s English professor in freshman year was absolutely awful. Her rate my professor page is a dumpster fire. She has tenure because her husband brings in tens of millions in research dollars to the university. Apparently they are a package deal. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2025, 1:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-not-college-then-what-trade-jobs-are-even-worse-young-adult-problems-in-the-us-for-jobs/1020532/158 "2025-08-13T01:10:59Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > My nephew and his wife are in that boat. Two different specialties, but finding a single urban area that can support both at an appropriate level is a challenge. A challenge not yet surmounted. My wife and I are fortunate. She’s in structured finance working on those financial instruments that destroyed the economy back in 2007. I mostly work for management consulting firms working with banks and fintechs to correct all the damage she causes. So for better or worse that keeps us working around Manhattan ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2025, 10:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-not-college-then-what-trade-jobs-are-even-worse-young-adult-problems-in-the-us-for-jobs/1020532/159 "2025-08-13T10:19:10Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > given the cost of college these days I’ll remind everyone that while sticker prices have soared, the average net price has not. While obviously far in excess of what my boomer parents paid, net price has been flat for a couple decades. That doesn’t mean you can’t find expensive options. I recall a poster in another thread writing about how he borrowed $80k to attend an out of state public school instead of going for an in-state option or finding a way to establish residency first. ---
**Author:** ![Mighty\_Mouse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mighty_mouse/32/7776_2.png) [@Mighty\_Mouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mighty_Mouse)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2025, 11:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-not-college-then-what-trade-jobs-are-even-worse-young-adult-problems-in-the-us-for-jobs/1020532/160 "2025-08-13T11:03:09Z")
> [@Ruken](#): > > I’ll remind everyone that while sticker prices have soared, the average net price has not Cite? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-not-college-then-what-trade-jobs-are-even-worse-young-adult-problems-in-the-us-for-jobs/1020532.md?page=7) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-not-college-then-what-trade-jobs-are-even-worse-young-adult-problems-in-the-us-for-jobs/1020532.md?page=9)