Specific proposals are immaterial here. This line was the one that perked me up:
“College isn’t for everybody, but it has to change so it returns to the idea that it’s a way to punch your meal ticket,” Mr. Emanuel said. “Right now, it’s a burden.”
(To give him credit, he is also pushing the community college angle.)
IS college a great idea as a way to punch your meal ticket going forward? Assuming it could be done without stupefying debt load.
Is right now it alternatively more important to figure out ways to increase the pipeline of skilled people in trades: HVAC, electrical, plumbing, welding, so on? Less likely to be displaced by AI, which needs infrastructure built and maintained …
My long term bias has been that a liberal arts education is a wonderful thing that helps hone critical thinking and communication skills with broad applicability … but …
I agree with Emmanuel in principle but the tent pole has to first be celebrating the importance of the trades path and enabling pathways to get the skills to meet the demands.
This really depends on what you think education is for.
Are you preparing them to get a job?
Are you preparing them to do a job once they get one?
Are you trying to invest them with the skills of a liberal arts education to make them better citizens, which incidentally are also excellent soft skills for a number of careers?
Separately,
Who should pay for a university education: the society that would benefit (state funding, the pre-1980s model), or the individual who will have higher earning potential (the current model)?
Thirdly,
Why the false dichotomy between a university education and the skilled trades? What’s wrong with a college-educated plumber? Why can’t we have a model that teaches critical thinking and reasoning, but also prepares people for the trades?
I’m a big believer in education for its own sake but job one is having a job that provides more income than debt you have to service.
Young adults need paths to successful careers, and the mindset that college is the path to that may be … less true … than it was. But the pipeline to becoming an in demand skilled tradesperson is not huge or clear.
A plumber may enjoy and benefit from a college education; less so the cost to get it. And if it is to be paid for by us all via the state, then the case needs to be made that it serves the public good enough to justify the cost, as opposed to investing in alternative pathways.
Well, okay, but you’re still presuming that the cost is paid by the individual getting the education. In plenty of countries, university education is subsidized and that’s not the model. So, per the terms of the debate that you’re framing, are you going to limit it to individual-funded education, or consider state-funded education?
If you are assuming that the individual and perhaps family are paying for the education, I think you’re right that the cost makes it less worthwhile to some. I’m still going to push back on the plumber, though: I think a plumber with student loan debt is going to be a hell of a lot more likely to make the payments than a barrista.
To be brutally honest, nearly every single thing that one could learn in high school or college is something one could learn online for free or near-free. We don’t go to school so much for the sake of knowledge itself as we go there for social interaction, the degree/diploma, the networking, and the experience.
In response to the OP, I think that in our over-taxed and over-complex era, we would do better to trim down education and focus on what people really need. At the risk of offending the liberal arts folks (despite being one myself,) Shakespeare is of almost no practical use to anyone. There are many much more pressing topics to tackle at the top of the pile.
I’m not saying sonnets and poems should be completely deleted from the curriculum, but they should be pushed way to the bottom of the priority pile.
The subject matter is only a small part of it, though people who are not educators tend to think it’s everything.
By teaching a sonnet, I teach:
language skills
attention to detail
the idea that historical and cultural context matter
By giving an assignment on a sonnet, I teach:
various professional skills (communication, deadlines and calendar management)
language and communication skills, notably writing
critical thinking and reseaoning
and, depending on the assignment, research skills, including the idea that you DON’T already know everything and can learn from those who have gone before.
Nobody gives a flying fuck about the sonnets, but the studying them brings real and practical skills.
Edit: you also give people a taste for learning and experience acquiring knowledge, including the satisfaction that comes with that. Autodidacts are rare, and tend to be spotty in their knowledge; formal education makes you learn things you wouldn’t otherwise (broccoli as well as intellectual junk food) and gives people a more solid grounding to pursue their interest on their own, later.
It is highly dependent on the situation and with the individual in question. Questions that should be discussed between parents and their kids, starting around middle school, are things like what the kid likes to do/interests, how much financial involvement the parents can afford, does the kid want to go away to school and is that practical, would they rather do a trade or maybe the military, how much student debt is tolerable. I think that last one should be discussed openly and honestly - for example, if the kid wants to go away to an out-of-state school to get a degree in Business Administration or Psychology that they can get from their local State school, the risks should be honestly discussed. If the kid wants to go to trade school instead of mom’s alma mater, that needs to be honestly discussed. Different families will have different circumstances and there is no right answer - but if a kid does not want to go to college and all that comes with it, that’s fine, but they need to have a plan - they cannot live in the basement playing video games and eating Fruit Loops all day. It’s an ongoing conversation.
My son started college in 2020 at the start of the pandemic, and several of his friends were told by the guidance counselors to go into engineering as it was nearly a guarantee of a job after school. Guess what - that didn’t happen and these kids got a worthless degree because the market for entry-level engineers disappeared by the time they graduated. Avoiding a liberal arts education didn’t work out so well. AI may have something to do with that.
Anyway, a college education is not for everyone even tho the guidance counselors keep drilling that into young people’s heads - parents need to keep an open mind to their kids’ preferences and interests, and establish some boundaries in terms of financing so the kid does not incur crushing debt that will impact their adulthood.
As someone that was both in Trades and a Programmer Analyst I think young people should be advised to avoid accumulating serious debt for college degrees that either don’t pay well or are likely to be displaced by AI. Remember the current demand for Cyber security experts will probably also go away at some point. I remember the major lacks for Business Programmers, Network People & Graphic Artists (that one was short lived).
Schools went too far in pushing all for degrees and it has caused a lot of problems that are likely to only get worse.
HVAC is an especially good field right now with the desperate need for heat pump installers. This will likely change in the future of course. But Auto Mechanics, Plumbers, Electricians never go out of demand.
Disclaimer: I was a Navy Electrician and then an HVAC mechanic before dropping my pursuit of Engineering degree to become a Programmer as at the time Engineering his a dead spot following the end of the Cold War. My BILs were an HVAC mechanic his entire career and the other a Plumber. The Plumber like myself retired early.
Just to clarify - thoughts on what to advise young adults are welcome but I am more interested in the question as it pertains to policies. What gets funded and how? Why?
That doesn’t mean they will still be good paying jobs. Look how many supposedly critical workers get crap pay (nurses, seasonal agricultural laborers, grocery shelf stockers). You generally only make decent money in the trades as the owner, which either requires that you have some business training, or you have a spouse that can do it. Even that is becoming less and less possible as the trades are being bought out by private equity along with medical and veterinary practices. Also let’s hope your back and your knees hold out long enough to get into a more managerial position.
The trades only pay well when customers can afford to pay them. We’re in a situation where most customers can’t, so they turn to DIY tutorials, questionable handymen, or hacks. Yeah some trade work can’t be avoided, but people are doing their best to avoid it as much as possible. Equipment has been getting cheaper and less repairable so we could see a move to more black box disposable equipment with replacements that any schlub can drop in. TV and appliance repair is mostly dead, and a lot of trade work could go that route too.
None of that means there shouldn’t still be more support for vocational training and a better respect for trade work. College just isn’t right for some people, and that doesn’t mean they should be left out in the cold. How does that affect policy? I don’t know, because no job is safe right now. Does that mean higher education shouldn’t bother job training? Maybe, I don’t know.
Hard disagree. I have one daughter-in-law who’s a nurse. You can’t teach touch online. My other daughter-in-law is a singer. You can’t teach reacting to the audience in a live performance from a textbook.
In general you can’t teach interpersonal skills from a textbook or an online course. And with AI and automation taking care of all the routine stuff, interpersonal skills become more important than ever. That doesn’t necessarily mean college, but you can’t do it online.
Full agree. I have counseled my son (who is at his first big boy job in finance now) about building up interpersonal, communication, and presentation skills - that will set him up initially, at least, to rise above the chaff that may get skimmed-off as AI makes it’s presence felt in his profession. My daughter is a nurse, but I recommended to her to also beef-up these skills, which she is a bit more resistant to, but that’s another story.
I am struggling a bit on this - funded? What is funded now, and by whom? Just trying to hone-in on what you are asking.
My boss is never going to go higher than the supervisory position she’s in now because she doesn’t have a degree. On the other hand, she’s making close to 100k in Arkansas, so she’s doing better than most. College is a great way to punch your meal ticket going forward…generally speaking at least. I believe someone with a degree has much more earning potential than someone without a degree.
I have a degree in history and I work in human resources. Do I use my history degree all that frequently? Yes. Yes I do. One of the most valuable things I learned was how to do research and quickly become knowledgeable about a subject I knew very little about. So when my boss walked in and said, “Hey, Odesio, you’re handling immigration for us now,” I knew I could figure it out. I just wish someone would ask me why 1066 is an important date. Just once.
Those jobs aren’t all they’re cracked up to be which is why finding workers can be difficult. I don’t know anyone who worked the trades and made it to my age without having some chronic physical ailment of some kind. Years of working a trade can be hard on the body even if you take care of yourself. There’s a stigma attached to the trades, though attitudes could change, getting the training necessary to enter the trades isn’t always easy, nor can everyone afford the tools. These problems aren’t insurmountable, but they do exist.
This is my thinking. If the trades really were a road to easy wealth, people would line up to enter the trades. There was a stigma in the 90s and earlier about being a “computer nerd”, but as soon as there was money in to be made in the field, people got over it.
Whatever stigma exists against the trades, if people were making money hand over fist out of proportion to the effort put in, people would get over it. The fact that they are not is because of two reasons: (1) the stated high earnings are “if you really hustle and start your own business and have a dozen employees you can earn up to…” numbers, and (2) the jobs tend to have a pretty big physical component that is hard on the body.
When I was in high school (several decades ago) I got the same schpiel about, “university isn’t for everyone – don’t forget you can make a good living in the skilled trades!”. It’s not a new sentiment and its been a long enough time for the market to correct itself.
Given the amazing increases of productivity over the last 100 years, we can easily move to a 20-hour work week, a UBI, and more. Once we do that, we can sit down and figure out how we want to think about poetry and plumbing. I vote for both, because that makes us more interesting and self-reliant. We really do have the capacity to create a post-scarcity economy that provides much more for most people with much less work. That’s the uncertain future we can educate for.
Nurses don’t quite make crap: an RN with a BSN typically makes near $100K; an NP more like $130K and a nurse anesthetist typically near $$250K.
That said - the first bit is just having a career that is still going to be there a decade or so from now. They will.
HVAC techs commonly start off around $50K and supervisor level near $100K. Electricians (same cite) start off higher, near $60K but senior level about the same. Yes owner operators and those with specialized certifications will make more but even as an employee that isn’t bad, especially factoring in that there is less investment to get there: no crippling debt service, and earning for several years while the college path is still spending.
The trades are not just who homeowners hire; these are the people building and maintaining our infrastructure, including data centers.
but some are less at risk than others. And require less big of a bet up front.
The impetus for this thread was that article about Emanuel’s proposals. No idea if the numbers work, but basically relaxing some administrative requirements for colleges and allowing more full pay foreign students, in return for tuition free for all under family income if $200K. And $10K to veterans going into the trades.
But I’m thinking of the in general case of the state, by way of our taxes, supporting the different educational paths in a cost sharing manner. Considering ROI for the individuals and for the public good.
Going forward … is it? Right now new college grads are less optimistic about their job futures than those without college educations. So they don’t think so.
Also … the historical "college premium on lifetime income usually does not include the opportunity cost of missed earning years and of the money invested in the college experience. Let alone for those who started college and never finished.
Plus side of college education has included less depression, higher partnership rates, and more benefits compared to no college education folk. But how much that is the impact of having a career that going into the trades can accomplish also, maybe more so in the uncertain future?
Full disclosure and personal anecdotes - as stated I believe in value of education for its own sake. I have four kids, now all adults. We are privileged enough that I could start putting into their 529s from birth on and we paid for however much education they chose to get. Of the four two are on paths that required college: one a physician (neuropsychiatry) and the other getting a masters in marriage and family therapy. The other two are gainfully employed, one managing an animal rescue center and the other teaching music. For them the college benefit was not career pay off. I’m still glad they are educated and intellectually curious. Worth it to me but we were in position to afford it. I can’t imagine them in the jobs they have having to manage a huge debt burden. And my marriage and family therapy child? How her classmates will manage their educational debt on what that job typically pays is beyond me.
True.
Easy wealth maybe not. Decent consistent income and a good bet of employment definitely. Why are they not going into the field then, beyond the snobbery of their parents, the apparent stigma? Because there is an inadequate pipeline to train them up. You need experienced people to work teaching at least some portion of time instead of doing, and they get paid more doing. Employers want to hire people with experience and skill, not train people so they have the skills. The programs that exist have limited throughput.
Hence the concept that maybe investing in trades training should be approached as public policy as much as increasing college access has been. Instead of focusing on getting more in college (especially men who are going to college less often) focusing more on facilitating the non college paths to successful careers?