
The Stigma of Choosing Trade School over College - pseudolus
https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2019/03/choosing-trade-school-over-college/584275/
======
ihm
One thing that is always missing from these articles is the idea that it’s
actually good for individuals (and for our society) to get an expansive view
of human knowledge rather than a narrow training to turn you into a worker on
a production line (or at a computer).

Of course right now that’s a path that’s not accessible to many people, and
people may have other financial reasons for going to trade schools, but I
think those are the issues we should fix. That is, make our society one where
to be financially stable you don’t have to choose between a narrow training
and an opportunity to explore the accumulated knowledge of the humanities and
sciences.

~~~
finder83
Except that's what high school should be. And let's face it, general studies
courses that make up that "expansive view" of college really are repeats of
high school with slightly more work, at least if you take honors classes in
high school. And if that expansive knowledge is being surrounded by peers who
are in pursuit of higher learning...that's not the typical college experience
these days.

High school is becoming more dumbed down so that people can pass state exams
and graduate rather than teaching the knowledge that we used to consider
foundational. We've lowered expectations and extended adolescence so much that
we no longer expect 18 year olds to be mature and capable adults, which
shouldn't be the case.

Your view of trade schools is severely skewed though, and is really indicative
of the problem discussed in the article. Most trade schools do not turn you
into a worker on a production line, they teach you to be a skilled worker or
artisan in a trade. You don't go to a trade school to be an assembly line
worker, those are jobs that are taught on the job and are typically low
paying. You go to a trade school to be an electrician, mechanic, carpenter,
welder, etc. These are skilled jobs that are difficult and challenging. They
are also jobs that have a greatly accelerated pay scale, and often lead to
jobs that pay as high or higher than the large majority of college degrees
(maybe STEM excluded), particularly if you are able to start your own business
in the trade.

~~~
snide
This was exactly my problem with College and why I didn't succeed there.

I came from a really good high school that offered a breadth of knowledge
across fields. When I went to college (granted in 1998) to become a "web
designer" the curriculum and training was just not there. My first year was
taking variations of the same math courses, the same english courses and a
couple comp sci courses (teaching Java). It was heartbreaking. Anything design
related involved drawing classes.

I dropped out mostly because I was too disheartened by what college was and
didn't end up going to class. I was instead hacking in my dorm room on HTML,
CSS and Photoshop. When I dropped out it led to immense guilt in relation to
my family, who very lovingly had done everything they could to set me up to
succeed. It was only a year later when I had a surprisingly decent pay check
to show my parents that they didn't consider me unmotivated.

College isn't for everyone. It's especially not good if you know what you want
to do and have mastered some manner of self-learning. For those of us that
figure that stuff early, it's much better to just jump into the work and
figure it out. In those ways I somewhat value a good high school as more
important to college. It was there that I learned to learn and could explore
my interests in a well-rounded curriculum.

I'm conflicted about how I'll deal with the scenario when my own kids grow up.
I married a teacher, and speaking for myself I do very much value liberal arts
educations. I just think a lot of those introductions need to be provided in
High School, with secondary education focused more towards whatever your
career is. If you don't know what that career is yet, I think potentially
waiting a couple years to go to secondary education (be it college or trade
school) till you know is a better bet.

My big takeaway is there isn't some magic formula for this. Everyone is
different and we shouldn't pressure certain paths.

~~~
Retric
I don’t know about your school, but most of the useful classes generally occur
later on. So, dropping out after a year means you missed out on the most
useful parts.

It might seem wasteful, but gateway classes are what allow upper level courses
to assume basic competency and move much faster. I had a computer architecture
class where one assignment was to write a fairly simple program in x86 ASM and
the handholding was a recommended book to get you started.

That said, a lot of collages had real issues teaching computers in the 90’s.
Competent staff was hard to retain and enrollment was skyrocketing. So many
schools tried to shuffle students into other departments.

~~~
kbenson
> Competent staff was hard to retain and enrollment was skyrocketing.

And, from my experience being part of that skyrocketing enrollment, quite a
lot of them wanted to learn to "make stuff" and were complaining well into
their third and fourth years that they weren't learning how to "do anything"
in their computer science classes, since it was mostly theory.

The thing is, they were teaching theory because that's the harder stuff to
pick up on your own. Want to learn a specific language? Just do it. It's not
that hard, and there are online resources and plenty of books. Want to learn
how to make some particular thing? harder, but also mostly doable from self
study. But what would spur someone to learn theory of computation topics, or
how to do algorithm complexity and runtime assessment? That's the sort of
stuff that really benefits from a knowledgeable instructor, and only a small
percentage of self-taught people will likely stumble into learning. Computer
science is a _science_ , and that's what they teach in school. It also makes
you a better programmer, but it pays off in small ways over many years through
more intricate knowledge, instead of front-loading all the gains into making
you passable right now. That the better solution for some people, but not all.

~~~
sanderjd
> Want to learn a specific language? Just do it. It's not that hard, and there
> are online resources and plenty of books.

This is why I always find myself skeptical of boot camp type programs. So many
of them seem focused on specific tools: node plus react! rails plus angular!
etc. On the other hand getting a top down view of things _is_ also useful. But
I think this is what I enjoyed about my college program; there was time for
both. Bottom up theory can seem pointless and unmotivated, and top down
practicum can be hard to extend and generalize. The combination is powerful.

------
jteppinette
If students are coming out of 12 years of general education needing more
general education, that is a failure of the public school system. We should
fix that instead of pushing people into more school. After 12 years of general
education, how do you justify more?

In my opinion, we should be pushing specialized education at a younger age.
When students exit high school, they should have skills that they can expand
or fallback on. They can then use that fallback as a safety net to explore
other options without extreme risk or debt.

~~~
paulpauper
The problem is not the school system but rather too much education and
commodification of education. 100 years ago , knowing how to read and write
and do basic math was special and made one employable, but now such skills are
so commonplace, so more advanced education is needed to differentiate one's
self

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Back then, high school graduation had an exam and a higher standard that most
folks could do now. Can you amortize a loan? Close a ledger? Calculate return
on an investment from a series of data points? Most can't today, regardless of
college education.

So, _real_ education still has value.

~~~
ams6110
Back then, most people finished school at grade 8.

Those who went to High School were smart and motivated to further their
education. So curricula could be correspondingly more challenging/faster-
paced.

~~~
tracker1
I'm 44yo now... my great grandmother was a school teacher starting in the
1930s, and her 5th grade books for English alone was far more difficult than
anything I had through H.S.

~~~
mixmastamyk
What kind of book, grammar, literature? What made it so difficult?

~~~
tracker1
"5th Grade English" a lot of the content itself was centered around proper use
of grammar. In practice, these days, it feels like nobody really cares.

~~~
naniwaduni
It doesn't help that most prescriptivist poppycock is flat-out wrong, either.

------
jseliger
The crazy thing is that most colleges have evolved non-academic party tracks,
or simple tuition-extraction tracks:
[https://jakeseliger.com/2014/04/27/paying-for-the-party-
eliz...](https://jakeseliger.com/2014/04/27/paying-for-the-party-elizabeth-
armstrong-and-laura-hamilton/). Talking about "college," as if it's just one
big unified thing, doesn't make sense today (if it ever did). I spent ten
years teaching college, and I wish this point were better emphasized in the
media narratives.

~~~
pretendscholar
Do you think the college model makes sense for science/engineering?

~~~
jalgos_eminator
I think it does. I got an EE degree at a state university, and couldn't
imagine how anyone could just learn all that on their own. There is so much
abstract/esoteric knowledge and skills you need to develop. Having a guided
step-by-step process to learning is huge (along with experienced teaching
profs to help you). Plus, at least with EE, you need to have access to some
absurdly expensive tools like Synopsys Design Compiler.

------
remir
School should be a place of discovery. By being exposed to multiple things,
you're encouraged to find your interests and talents. Society should help
students find their path and encourage them to pursue it. Not everybody has
the same sets of talents and sensibilities.

There are child living in poverty that have the potential to be great doctors,
scientists, programmers. And there are adults in these professions, today,
that are miserable because they were pushed and pressured into obtaining the
education and skills to do these jobs.

Society should help individuals reach their full potential, whatever that
potential may be. If someonewants to be a welder, than help them be the best
welder they can be. If they wants to be a doctor, than help them be the best
doctor they can be. Imagine what we could achieve when everybody is firing on
all cylinders.

Jobs as status symbol is ridiculous.

------
austincheney
With regard to computer science I doubt many students could tell you the
difference between their college curriculum and a trade school, aside from
taking extra classes outside of compsci. If you go to college hoping to learn
how to code or to learn a programming language, imo you are treating college
as a trade school.

Trade schools teach a skill. Colleges provide an education. Those are not the
same. With the proper discipline you can teach yourself a skill, and with
programming, unlike many other trades, you often have all the tools you need
already at home.

* Education - [https://www.dictionary.com/browse/education](https://www.dictionary.com/browse/education)

* Skill - [https://www.dictionary.com/browse/skill?s=t](https://www.dictionary.com/browse/skill?s=t)

In short a skill teaches you to do something. An education teaches you to make
decisions. The number of computer science graduates that cannot make simple
decisions about the code they write is stunning, to the point of negligence.

I think the confusion comes from why people attend college. If you ask them
the common answer is "To get a better job!". College doesn't get you a job. It
isn't job placement or vocational training. Trade schools often do provide
those. I suspect it is disappointing to graduate college and still have
trouble acquiring a better job.

------
squozzer
I'm a regular college grad, but always liked working on my own car (and didn't
always trust professional mechanics.)

That lead me to consider becoming an auto mechanic at one time but after
hearing some stories - and looking at the pay scales - I jumped back on my
desk and rode off into the sunset.

The stories -

1) Constant complaints by mgmt about productivity. 2) Grueling work schedules
3) Pressure to upsell additional work 4) Customers blaming you for new
problems

Sounds a lot like working in tech for 25% of the pay, doesn't it?

~~~
jacquesm
The biggest downside of being a car mechanic is that your back and knees will
be shot after a couple of years. Ease of service and mechanic's comfort are
not usually high on the list of desirable features.

~~~
analog31
Indeed, this is true of many skilled trades. When I have workers come to my
house for various jobs, if they're my age, they're broken and hobbling.

------
claudiulodro
I blame the recession more than any stigma. There is a stigma around working
at McDonalds, not skilled trades.

I and many other millenials definitely applied for trade apprenticeships back
when we got out of high school. In my case after doing very well on the
electrician apprentice entrance exams I was still 200th in line because of the
recession, and they weren't really onboarding many new apprentices. I ended up
going to college instead, am doing well as a software engineer, and there is a
huge shortage of electricians now . . .

Personally, it would have definitely been nice to work with my hands and not
have student loans.

~~~
EpicEng
> I blame the recession more than any stigma. There is a stigma around working
> at McDonalds, not skilled trades.

For at least thirty years we have been telling our children that, in order to
be successful, they need to go to college. We remind them of this constantly;
college is the goal. That message implies that anything else is less than.
There is definitely a stigma regarding trade skills, but not necessarily one
we explicitly put forward.

~~~
throwawayjava
Consider re reading the rest of the parent comment...

~~~
EpicEng
In what way does that alter or qualify the statement "There is a stigma around
working at McDonalds, not skilled trades"?

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bluedino
Is 'video production' really a trade school? I think more of the blue-collar
trades.

Also, aren't video/music production classes like that usually the realm of
for-profit schools like Full Sail and the job prospects dubious?

~~~
naasking
Any schooling specifically intended to be vocational is a trade school.

~~~
umanwizard
So, CS at most non-elite American universities?

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intopieces
An entire article about the future of education and not a single paragraph
about automation. How are trade schools preparing students to reinvent
themselves every 10 years or less? How is vocational education setting the
expectation that those students will have not one career for the rest of their
lives, but many?

This is not to say that liberal arts colleges are much better; but, at least
with 4 year degrees, the expectation that you will “get a job in what you
studied” is less pronounced (that is, after all, the original meaning of
“liberal” in “Liberal Arts”).

~~~
ceej01
Will trade jobs be automated? Plumbers, HVAC, Welders are jobs that seem to be
the least likely to be automated..

~~~
Nasrudith
Plumbers I can see from the range and messiness of the tasks as very non-
standardized beyond pipe thicknesses, and the diagnostics and HVACs as a
cousin likely would have some similar issues but why would welders be a very
hard to automate task?

Not dismissing it I just wonder what the "hard for machines" aspect is that
I'm missing.

I know there are plenty of robotic welders out there and that progress implies
they'll either expand more into "humans can't do that" territory and possibly
become cheaper over time.

~~~
ceej01
Correct me if I'm wrong, but sounds like you are thinking of welding in a
factory?

I know a lot of welding is repairing damaged equipment. Especially older or
already Jerry-rigged devices. I'd imagine it would be extremely difficult and
expensive to develop an AI and a machine that would be adaptable enough to do
these sort of projects.

Would construction welders be any less 'non-standardized' than Plumbing or
HVAC? I would think welders have to problem solve far more than them for their
tasks..

~~~
Nasrudith
Ah that explains it - a maintenance vs construction thing - notice how repair
has become the expensive option compared to creating new? Manufacturing has a
far more constrained process which allows for readily automatable braindead
repetition because it gets results. If construction now isn't readily
automatable surprisingly doesn't matter too much. Building new things can be
reengineered to a "friendlier" option like say screws and nails instead of
joins but maintenance needs to take what they have and their moving parts.

Building everything to a schematic is easier to automate but I believe that
already isn't the bulk of labor demand.

Theoretically a smart system with diagnostics could be more readily automated
but those would be more expensive and probably be new constructions and come
with their own host of technical and logistical issues. Sure it would be nice
to have clogs and leaks mapped and remedied but it would take a while to
become universal even if they were rolled out tommorow and worked perfectly.

------
empath75
I don't know why more tech companies don't do apprenticeships straight out of
highschool. You can pay a high school student with some programming experience
a fraction of the salary of a college graduate and it probably doesn't take
_that_ much longer to get them productive and they won't be saddled with
student loan debt.

~~~
fullshark
Poor return on investment given risks involved, you're better off offloading
that cost of education/training to the individual and then just hiring them
when they signal they are worthy of employment.

~~~
jacquesm
I have hired high school drop-outs and academics, both the best and the worst
performers came in roughly equal proportions from both groups.

~~~
IdiocyInAction
That is because the signal that college is supposed to provide has also been
devalued to an extreme degree. It's simple - a bachelor's degree will soon be
the equivalent of a high school diploma.

That is why for a lot of roles a motivated, smart high-school dropout is a
better hire than a college student.

------
tqi
My bigger concern would be that the shelf life of a job seems to be getting
shorter and shorter, and it is harder to transition careers with a trade
degree than a more general 4 year degree. Not saying that people learn more /
are better prepared by a 4 year degree, just that it is easier to get past the
resume screening phase of a job hunt.

------
mises
The apocryphal story here is as that of the successful plumber. He works hard,
learns his trade, and eventually starts his own plumbing business. This
business employs two other plumbers. He also has a wife and three children. As
they age, his business grows. By the time his children are 17, he employs
twelve other plumbers and is worth over two million dollars.

He speaks to his sons about joining his business. All three decline. They want
to go to the fancy, expensive college that will wipe out a substantial chunk
of the two million dollars their father has worked for. He offers to give them
paying jobs, right away, and promises they will eventually take over the
business and help grow it to make more money. The four of them, he tells them,
can grow the business to the point where they can all easily make an excellent
living. The three sons persist.

So he gives in, and his three sons attend college. The first majors in poetry,
the second in art history, and the third in dance. They go on to make a spotty
living, as compared to the steady income of their father.

The father, as he grows older, wishes to pass some of his responsibility to a
subordinate. By this point, his business employs fifty plumbers. With no son
to inherit his business, he chooses his most loyal employee.

He dies some years later, leaving his sons each five hundred thousand dollars.
All three spend it on an increased standard of living; it lasts each around
seven years. After which they are again broke.

The plumber's subordinate, meanwhile, has grown the business to over one
hundred employees. He was worth over fifteen million dollars, and was
exploring the sale of the company to another, a deal that would likely net him
roughly twenty million dollars personally. He lived happily ever after.

~~~
paganel
Some people just want to spend their time learning about Gothic art or about
Persian poetry instead of fixing other people's plumbing, there's nothing
wrong with that, quite the contrary.

And to add a further non-apocryphal anecdote: I'm probably never going to be
reach (I'm approaching 40 and you kind of feel this sort of things) but were I
to die tomorrow one of my best memories/things that happened in my life would
be the fact that I got to appreciate the poetry of Hafez [1] because of my
dad. He had a book of his in our library, I knew my dad liked his poetry so
one day I just picked the book and I liked his poetry, too. It became a sort
of a new bond between me and my dad that I can still feel now, 20+ years after
I had first read Hafez's poems.

More to the point, not everything in life is about money.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hafez](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hafez)

~~~
mises
Not a ding on poetry or art. More the fact that I have heard many accounts of
boys giving up the family business to go pursue such things as a career.

More seriously, I've also heard of similar situations where the boy majors in
management or something to that effect, gets out, and can't find a job (this
was more common in 08-12). Tradesmen pretty much always have work.

~~~
throwawayjava
08-13 was fucking brutal for folks in construction in most parts of the
country.

But then, us tech folks forget the dot com bubble when things are good too.

------
gumby
One of the nice things about the bootcamp movement is that it has legitimized
vocational schooling for at least part of the software development industry.

I'm actually not a big fan of bootcamps, but most of the reason is that most
of them talk a big game yet don't really open job opportunities. I am not at
all opposed in principle.

~~~
sf_rob
Honestly my biggest shock coming out of college was 1) how unfamiliar I was
with the toolset/processes in real world development and 2) how little
onboarding on these topics I received from a major tech co. It probably didn't
help that I was in a technical role tangential to "real" SWEs but honestly I
think attending a bootcamp to round out my skills would have been a great
idea.

------
curtis
I'm inclined to think that there ought to be a four year college degree that
teaches a number of different trade skills as part of its core curriculum. A
student in such a program might take history and mathematics courses similar
to other college students, but would also learn concrete skills like welding,
electrical wiring, HVAC, etc. The goal would be to have a graduate that might
be able to find work in a variety of different trades, not just one particular
one, and also provide graduates with some of the more traditional educational
breadth associated with university.

University ought to make you a more rounded person, and a better citizen, and
it ought to make you more employable, all three.

~~~
zrobotics
The trouble is, that graduate wouldn't be much more worthwhile than a fresh
high-school grad. Taking a few welding courses won't make you employable for
most jobs, it takes quite a lot of time to build up that skill. And while a
bit of knowledge of other trades is always a good thing, it takes more than a
few classes to prepare someone to work in HVAC. While the liberal-arts model
of small amounts of exposure to different fields is good, more specialization
and focus is needed.

For instance, I'm glad I took some economics classes in school, but in no way
am I prepared to work in that field.

~~~
curtis
Further training might be required, but if there's a shortage of trained HVAC
people, an employer might prefer to hire someone that already knows something
about the field, and who happens to know a bunch of other stuff as well
(because that indicates they're good at learning new stuff).

For the prospective employee, there's some advantage in not being deeply
locked-in to one field in particular. Depending on economic circumstances, you
might need to switch trades half-way through your career. The idea is that
having some basic experience in a number of different skillsets will make a
switch easier if you need to do that.

That's the theory anyway. I don't know whether it's really practical though.

------
em3rgent0rdr
It's great that The Atlantic is finally putting out articles de-stigmatizing
trade school. But, over the past several decades, The Atlantic has been a
major contributor to the problem by churning out articles claiming how great
and necessary college education is for all and how we should provide more
subsidies and loans for higher education, without providing nearly as much
attention to the utility of trade school. I'm sure countless Americans who
would have been better off going to trade school instead of college have made
that poorer decision as a result of The Alantic's editors and readers pushing
too much for college degrees.

------
anth_anm
Their argument is based on a very privileged person who had every option and
chose the one he liked best.

That's great. Good for him.

But my concern is that people get pushed towards trades for a variety of bad
reasons. It's not that trades are bad, but a lot of them are pretty brutally
hard work. You end up destroying your body. In exchange you get a working
environment that seems continually more and more worker hostile.

------
motohagiography
What would happen if we posted jobs that said preference would be given to
applicants without University degrees?

Then, still others disqualifying people with a master's or higher?

It would encourage people who were so exceptionally competent that they could
survive in their fields without the degree, and filter anyone who cheated or
faked credentials at the least. Fun thought experiment.

------
AtomicOrbital
The essential benefit of a quality education is the person has learned how to
learn ... the Greeks nailed this by teaching the trivium : grammar, dialectic,
and rhetoric ... armed with this educational foundation the person can listen,
speak and write on any topic ... how ? because they have the skills to teach
themselves ... this approach to education was used in the West for 2000 years
- up until about 1900 ... outsourcing education to the government which has
conflicting rewards and motivations has resulted in our current malaise

Time is precious so staying in mandatory education until a person is 18 is
criminal and counterproductive for many children ... a resurgence of quality
trade schools is happening and we as perspective employers need to step up and
hire based on a real time assessment of those trivium qualities not on bloated
automated parsing of CVs

------
mrhappyunhappy
What stigma? Isn’t the novelty of college wearing off by now? We have
thousands of courses from various elite universities accessible online for
free now, not to mention places like khan academy. If college is for broad
knowledge then I’d argue it’s no longer necessary. For a narrow field of
experience a trade school or a condensed program should be all that you need.
With automation ever increasing, kids will need to change their careers
multiple times anyway. Why would you spend so much time in college on any one
specialized field if there is a high chance you won’t stay in that career path
forever?

I have a toddler and I plan on letting him decide if he wants to go to college
or not when time comes. I won’t encourage or discourage it. Personally,
college did very little for me as may be evident by my grammar, but I’m
happpier for it.

------
wespiser_2018
Let's face it, with more than a trillion dollars in student loan debt, any
disturbance to US salaries could result in a student loan crisis. Higher
education is only getting more expensive, and the bubble is going to burst
when babies born during the great recession drop enrollment across the board
in 2026. Hopefully, we can get to a more sensible place in terms of the
distribution of degrees, and their types, we need to create a maximally
effective society. I believe trade school is a big part of this and on an
individual level, no one ever outsourced a plumber!

------
musicale
From my perspective, the best aspect of undergraduate programs is that you get
the chance to study lots of interesting things outside of your core
discipline. That is harder to do once you are working in the field.

The worst aspect is the crippling debt, which cannot be discharged even in
bankruptcy.

I went to a student loan web site recently and clicked on something like
"discharge eligibility" leading to a form that said that you may be eligible
to stop making payments if you have "become deceased." I'm glad they sorted
that out.

------
redsavagefiero
When I was born it was still possible to learn your trade (engineer,
programmer) without too much onus if you didn't attend college. Without
college now your options are strictly limited. This is one of the reasons why
we have a real problem in the US: those who are capable and self/job taught
but discriminated against and those who didn't have (self imposed or
otherwise) difficulties during school years and were encouraged or raised for
success.

------
newyorkcityguns
I think the days of college being a needed step in order to enter the
workforce are ending. Unless you want to work in academia or need a
specialized track of education like a career in the sciences, the days of the
Ba opening doors are basically over. The corporate jobs that require a Ba are
hardly worth the bother these days. Electricians and plumbers can make more
without all the PC mind control crap in the corporations.

------
fencepost
If I had kids, I'd absolutely tell them to at least consider things like
electrical work - from low-voltage network cabling for businesses to plain old
electrical to specialized high-voltage stuff. Some of it may not be glamorous,
but at the high end where you're doing diagnostics and fixes for problems,
etc. I guarantee folks are making some money and while you might never get
rich, you'll also probably always have work available.

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opportune
Everyone thinks more kids should go to trade school instead of college. Very
few think _their own_ kids should go to trade school though

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chaostheory
I agree with the article's message. I have a lingering question though. The
only thing that puzzled me is why Toren Reesman, the person being examined in
the article, didn't opt to be an industrial designer. It's a very hands on
major where you create physical things. Why didn't he like it? Was he even
exposed to it?

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jl2718
It's not just a stigma; school is a structural mechanism to create
professional options, and it's nearly impossible to get back into once you
leave it. You need recent letters of recommendation from a teacher/professor
to get into a good program. Pure gatekeeping. Good luck, kid.

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ydnaclementine
What are some trades you can learn that have the highest salary floor and
ceiling?

As a developer, I always feel lucky that our junior level salaries and
architect++ level salaries are quite good

------
nutellalover
I really don’t understand this aversion to trade schools as a viable career
path. The college-is-the-only-path-to-success is distinctly American and to me
seems more like a narrative perpetuated so that parents feel justified paying
80k a year to send their kids to any back-alley no-name school in the states.
I think it’s pretty disgusting and exploitative.

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camelNotation
Many roles we classify as trades are becoming increasingly difficult to
distinguish from the roles we typically associate with college education. This
is partially due to the fact that they are increasingly technical, partially
due to the fact that trade schools are offering training and certification in
fields that were once exclusively in the purview of colleges, and partially
due to the fact that our jobs are becoming increasingly cross-pollinated
(mechanics using augmented reality, electricians building custom electronics,
plumbers using GIS mapping, etc.).

This makes defining the idea of a "trade" much more difficult. I think for the
purposes of clarity, we should find some sort of line that distinguishes trade
education from liberal education. I think the best way to do that - and this
is obviously just my opinion - is to classify as a trade any work that doesn't
directly question and debate theory or, put another way, any work that almost
exclusively implements theory. So in this definition, you would obviously
include the existing trades, but it would also include things we typically
associate with college education like nursing, most software developer roles,
therapists, architects, most engineers, etc.

I think the reason most of those roles are task-oriented (performing a
function according to outlined requirements and expectations) but still
trained at the college level is that they arose from more theory-oriented
areas of study but never made the shift away from college when they entered
mainstream, non-theoretical application. For instance, computer science was
born from mathematics, but at this point, the average software developer
doesn't need a PhD level of understanding in math to do their job at all.
Nursing, similarly, was born from specialized forms of medicine, which was
always a university-level field, but in recent years is shifting into 2-year
programs and a more trade-like structure at the entry-level.

When you think about things this way, it suddenly makes the stigma against
trade school seem silly. Most of us are doing trade work anyway. I write
software, my friend wires buildings, my other friend does plumbing. We are all
trade workers because we are ultimately just implementing theory, not
discussing and questioning it.

This should also inform how we judge education. I have a couple college
degrees, but I do not have what I would call a liberal education. I have not
trained extensively in philosophy, law, theology, art, etc. My education is
exclusively applied topics like finance and software. When I judge the quality
of my own education experience, I am using different criteria than I would for
someone that has training in English, history, or law. Their standard for
"success" in the context of education is primarily defined by whether or not
they take a role of social leadership and influence in their community
(education, politics, writing, etc). Mine is different because I judge my
success on whether or not I deliver a completed product in the context of my
technology job.

------
xkcd-sucks
TL;DR College-industry PR/advertising, made effective at scale by government
subsidies in the 1950s, grew a social algae bloom aka economic bubble in
academia and made some people richer.

