
Trade school, not 4-year college, is a better bet to solve the US income gap - SQL2219
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/10/trade-school-not-4-year-college-can-solve-the-us-income-gap.html
======
roseburg
I would simplify it and say that learning trade skills is a better investment
for most people than attending a 4-year college. Trade skills can be learned
at a young age, right from home, where there is room and time to explore and
enjoy the learning process. Why we wait until after high school to teach kids
in-demand skills boggles my mind. All the pressure in the world arrives after
high school. It's time to start paying the bills and to grow up. It's no
wonder most kids go off to college because they have zero marketable skills
upon hs graduation and college is a way to get an extra 4 years to acquire
some skills.

The sad part of that is all the kids that get caught up in the college wave.
They get pressured to go to a 4 year school, take on a mountain of debt for a
degree (if they are fortunate to graduate) they most likely won't use. So many
students would be better off exploring the different trades and finding one
that they really enjoy. There are hundreds of them.

I've been working on a project lately to help people explore and learn the
trades online. Tradeskills.io It started as a side project for me a number of
years ago teaching people how to get into the appliance repair trade. I've had
over 600 students all across the country and Canada go through my training.
The trades can be learned online and I think tech will need to play a big part
in this area of education in the coming years.

~~~
ransom1538
Agreed+. This is anecdotal, but I tried recently to get roof repairs made in
CA for a rental home I own. I called 20+ roofers none of whom are taking new
projects. I was able to get one quote from a friend of friend for over $1k for
about 4 hours of work -- but he made no commitment. Plumbers, AC guys, roofers
are in incredible demand in CA - need an electrician? forget it. These guys
all own their own companies, drive nice trucks, are booked until feb '18 and
have rude secretaries. The future seems bright for them, not much competition
(know anyone learning HVAC?), a push for new housing all over CA, and I have
no idea how to outsource a plumber.

~~~
muzani
Honestly after a recent home renovation, I found myself a little envious I
didn't take house building as a career. It's definitely skilled labor and in
high demand.

It's not a "sexy" job - you'd be more likely to get a date telling someone
you're a software developer than a plumber. But the low prestige of the job
seems to make it worth .kre.

~~~
mlrtime
If you're using your job to get dates you're doing it wrong ;)

~~~
enraged_camel
At least in the US, a person's job is a big part of both their identity and
their brand. "What do you do" is one of the first questions that come up in
most conversations, and everyone judges everyone else (at least
subconsciously) based on the response.

Back in another life I did a lot of online dating and tested this hypothesis
by telling some of my dates that I worked as a garbage collector for the city.
Those dates pretty much always ended early. :) I had drastically higher
success when I told them my real job: software consulting.

------
malbs
I wish I'd taken my step-dad up on his offer and done an chippy apprenticeship
when I was 17.

Instead I flailed around, did some c programming, some web development, never
went to uni. I even managed to get myself that first job as a software dev,
slowly trading upwards, but it always worked against me that I was a high
school drop out and had no degree.

Later in life, I looked upon the lack of degree as an asset, I worked harder
than the guys/girls who did have a comp/sci degree, because I felt I had to
prove myself constantly, to out-do those with a degree.

But I always look back and think, man, I wish I'd just done a carpentry
apprenticeship. It's not like the systems change underneath you ever few
years, that you have to learn a new "circular-saw" to help you cut timber
because everyone is using it, even though the job you're working on, you could
get away with a regular hand-saw. The analogy is shit, but you get what I
mean.

Any friends/family who ever say "I'm thinking of being a
plumber/sparky/chippy" I wholly encourage them.

~~~
logicalmind
I come from a blue collar family. I was the first person in my family to
graduate college. But that wasn't my plan initially. During summers in high
school I worked installing HVAC systems. After graduating high school I
started a plumbing apprenticeship. It was what I discovered during that
apprenticeship that made me decide to go to college instead (during college I
had a job doing carpentry as well).

I'm not saying all people in the trades are this way, but you find a lot of
people who are alcoholics. It often does not impact their job, but people
drinking a case of beer a day is not uncommon. If you can avoid drinking, the
next problem is the damage you do to your body on the job. You are often
lifting heavy things. You will be using dangerous power tools often. Any
little loss of focus will lead to serious injury or worse. And even if you
avoid that, there is only so much your body can take. Many people need
surgeries or become crippled as they age.

Many of the people I once worked with have died from alcoholism, smoking, or
related cancers. My own father is now forcefully retired due to back and knee
issues. He can barely walk. He meets up monthly with the other people he
worked with, who are now retired, and it is not a pretty site. I personally
don't know anyone in this line of work who is happily retired and living the
dream, so to speak.

The trades are very much about physical work and physical labor. Not everyone
can take that kind of work for a lifetime.

~~~
GuiA
Obviously not to discount your experience - but I come from a family of
carpenters, on my mom's side, and do not observe the issues you describe in my
family. My grandfather, for instance, is still extremely healthy in every way
at 82 or so, drinks a glass of wine or pastis every few days, and is generally
enjoying retired life.

The main difference is that I am from France, and as such my family enjoyed
all of the socialist government policies like weekly hour limits, centralized
healthcare, plenty of paid time off, etc.

~~~
logicalmind
Yes, my experience is in Midwestern USA. Other places may be quite different.
Generally, the way it works here is that there are two main trade paths. One
is as part of a union, which is mostly new construction. The second is non-
union, which is often replacement and/or service of equipment.

If you're in a union, you basically pay union dues so that the union
represents your interests. The power of unions vary widely in terms of
healthcare, pensions, jobs available, etc. You get paid via a "scale" based on
tenure. But in general, when new construction comes up (houses, skyscrapers,
power plants, etc.) you get allocated to those jobs based on your tenure. You
may work the same jobsite for years, or maybe a month. It just depends on how
big the job is.

Alternatively, if your toilet is clogged, or a pipe is leaking, that is
generally a service call. And that is handled, typically, by non-union work.
With non-union work, you work specifically for a company. That company
provides you with whatever benefits they offer (healthcare, retirement, etc.).
When you work service, it almost always includes an "on-call" rotation. You
get paid whatever hourly rate you can negotiate with the company and get paid
overtime for off-hours work.

Unions are closest to what it sounds like you have in France. But trade unions
here have lost much of their power over the years.

------
olivermarks
I reacted strongly and positively to the headline of this piece...and even
more positively to the article.

Apprenticeship was once considered more important than academic degrees in
many areas. The balance has gone too far towards academia, and blue collar
'workers' don't get nearly enough respect IMO

~~~
Consultant32452
I generally agree with you, but I'm always hesitant when I hear the word
"apprenticeship." Because in my experience that _usually_ means a union is
stopping less experienced workers from undercutting their prices on the open
market by forcing the less experienced worker to pay the union for the
privilege of doing work. In this way it functions similarly to the way the
college scheme works, only the college scheme is for white collar work rather
than blue collar work.

Now, the word apprenticeship doesn't HAVE to mean that. In its simplest form
it just means working with a more experienced person to get skills. That I
definitely support. But if apprenticeship means stopping less skilled workers
from entering the market on their own, I'm opposed to that.

~~~
Double_a_92
Apprenticeships should be regulated (by the state). You should have some
degree at the end that qualifies you to also work for a potential competitor.

Meaning they should teach you a solid but generic base of skills. And not just
let you do manual labour that doesn't require much skill.

~~~
Consultant32452
Why would you want the state to stop poor people from earning a decent living
just because they haven't completed the full set of requirements for a state
sanctioned certification? The going rate to have your main sewer line snaked
in my area is $250. If that's the only thing you know how to do, why can't you
just sell that service?

~~~
wahern
Because clients are rarely capable of judging competency. You can crack pipes
with a snake. Furthermore, certifications typically come with a registration
requirement, meaning clients have a mechanism for formally filing complaints.
Similarly, there are often bond requirements, meaning you know that if the
technician screws up a job you'll have a decent chance at recovering damages.
Getting a bond without securing the full face value is probably easier with a
certification, too, because otherwise how would the underwriter know their
risk?

Certifications are a public service. It's no different than for lawyers,
doctors, or all the drivers on the road.

In some states the requirements for some types of certification are obviously
intended to limit entrants into the market. But that's a different matter.

~~~
Consultant32452
ALL certification requirements are intended to limit entrants into the market.
Whether or not that's worthwhile is subjective.

If a client is uncertain of their ability to judge risk, then they can hire
from a trusted industry provider/union and pay a premium. I'd still like the
ability to legally hire a poor person who may not have received a good enough
public education to fulfill all of the state requirements for certification if
the job is low risk enough. And I suspect the poor person would generally like
to feed themselves or their family, so it's a win-win except for the incumbent
wealthy who don't want their prices under-cut.

I don't need the government to tell me the electronics I buy are safe to plug
into an outlet, there's private UL certification for that. I generally don't
need the government to tell me who I'm allowed to pay for anything, even
medicine.

~~~
wahern
UL certification requirements are often incorporated by reference into law.
Which is one reason why there's not a proliferation of private standards in
that space, with the concomitant race to the bottom.

_You_ might not need the nanny state to protect yourself from yourself, but
many people do. In fact, pretty much everybody does, at some point in their
lives, in some circumstances. (You just don't know when or where.) And because
their loses are invariably externalized one way or another, society has an
interest in providing minimum safeguards.

It's like taxes: taxes wouldn't work if everybody got to pick and choose where
their taxes went. These solutions are intended to solve collective action
problems, which by definition cannot readily and consistently be solved by
everybody acting independently.

~~~
Consultant32452
If anyone wants protection from a nanny, state or otherwise, they can pay for
it. Offer all the certifications at the state level you want, just don't
interfere with my ability to do business with anyone I please whether they're
certified or not.

>society has an interest in providing minimum safeguards.

Requiring you to work at below market rates for YEARS is not in the best
interest of society. Harming the poor or immigrant workers by not allowing
them to earn a decent living is not in the interest of society. All of these
things are in the best interest of the incumbent wealth, not "society."

If you want some protection, then you can easily pay for it. Hire a contractor
through Home Depot, Sears, or some other trusted industry name where you'll
get lots of contractual protections and the benefit that a multi-billion
dollar corporation wants to keep a good reputation if it wants people to keep
doing business with it. This works much BETTER than taxes because everybody
DOES get to pick and choose where their money goes.

>These solutions are intended to solve collective action problems, which by
definition cannot readily and consistently be solved by everybody acting
independently.

These solutions are intended to maintain incumbent wealth which harms the
poor. You keep trying to sell me on you protecting me, which you obviously
know I don't value, without addressing the fact that your ideology keeps the
poor in their place. There's two wealthy groups you're protecting here. First,
as the property owner, I'm almost certainly more wealthy than the laborer. And
secondly, you're protecting the wealthy incumbent workers who don't want lower
skilled workers undercutting them.

~~~
Double_a_92
> Requiring you to work at below market rates for YEARS is not in the best
> interest of society.

But you are still in training. It's intended as something to do after middle
school. Why should unskilled kids earn a full salary? They probably end up
costing the company money during that time...

And also that's exactly where you need the regulation from the state! So it
can ensure that you are actually properly training those people and not just
using them as "human robots" to just do boring / unskilled manual labor.

~~~
Consultant32452
You're still requiring a poor person to get the permission of a wealthy person
to perform work they know how to do on the open market. Why would you cripple
the poor in such a way?

~~~
Double_a_92
How I'm I requering something from workers? A company can hire whoever they
want. Where do you see that limited, by offering a special training for
highschool kids?

------
Overtonwindow
I sometimes think, with deep regret, that most people living at or below the
poverty line at 30, their chances of rising above that are quite low. At 40+
it's next to zero. This may also be very generous. The amount of education,
training, and opportunities would have to line up perfectly for someone to
pull themselves up. Multigenerational, the odds appear much better.

~~~
nopii1234
I agree, but I’d like to add my 2¢ and mention that it’s not impossible
either. Skilled trades _really_ are in short supply and the pay is still good.

My dad lost his job as a construction worker during the recession, in his 50s.
At that age we knew it was going to be an uphill battle to continue to rely on
his physical health for work much longer. So he hit the books while my mother
continued to work part time, which allowed them to live off their savings
longer at least.

Upon passing class and getting his license, I helped them bootstrap all the
way through to his first customer. A simple website + a few hundred a month
spent on google ads does wonders. My mother now spends her time answering
customer emails/estimates/calls/paperwork and it’s has become a self
sustaining machine, and I have stopped running their ad campaign (Running off
the good reputation/reviews).

Now their biggest problem is finding enough skilled/trustworthy labor to
complete their bids in a reasonable amount of time. As well as capex (still
bootstrapped, which means expensive equipment rentals that eat heavily into
margins)

I’m not tying to trivialize this, it was/is an insane amount of work with much
to do before one can consider that “he made it”. Just pointing out that there
is hope.

More details:

\- Bay Area

-Parents speak English as a second language and only went to high school

~~~
koolba
What class did he take and what license did he get? I couldn’t figure it out
from your comment.

Does being a contractor in SF require passing a class / license?

~~~
nopii1234
Since this is a throwaway:

CSLB-C8 (Concrete contractor)

~~~
cylinder
Experience based licenses keep supply limited.

~~~
nopii1234
FWIW the experience requirements didn’t seem too onerous for a profession. The
rules seem to be in place to insure a standard of quality, not to limit supply
artificially.

Furthermore, there are plenty of unlicensed contractors that we have to
compete with, and a license requirement isn’t stopping them.

------
teslabox
> "There are too many four-year colleges serving too many students,

 _The Screwing of the Average Man_ [0] said that college used to be something
the upper-class sent their children to so they'd have a leg up on the
"uneducated" masses. Then the congress provided the GI Bill to subsidize
college for WWII veterans. This kept disgruntled veterans occupied while the
economy retooled to peacetime production. Thus began the college price spiral.

My great-grandmother played prohibition well, and sent all 4 of her children
to teh college during the great depression. After WWII, the one grandfather
didn't need any more college degrees and used the GI Bill to learn to fly
small planes. My other grandfather had no interest in any college, so he
didn't utilize his tuition credits... He certainly would've done better
financially if he had...

[0]
[https://books.google.com/books?isbn=0553129139](https://books.google.com/books?isbn=0553129139)

The only class I enjoyed in my public school experience was my 8th grade
"technology" class. This semester was broken up into woodshop, welding/metal
working, "computers", photography, and (don't remember). 45 minutes of
appreciated learnings, 5 days a week, for one semester. Everything else was
busy work. I learned a few things, here and there, but not enough to justify
the countless hours of boredom.

College was kind of a scam. I have an expensive diploma that doesn't mean
anything. I learned a few things, here and there, but not enough to justify
the $100k+ spent on my behalf.

John Gatto [1] says it's better to skip as much of the early years of
schooling as possible: some children learn to read when they're 2, some when
they're 8, and by the time they're 12 you can't tell the difference. I met a
man a few months ago that was traumatized by not being able to "read" on the
teacher's schedule when he was in 1st grade. He learned to read eventually, in
spite of his school's efforts to force him to read before he was ready.

Allowing young children to have experiences in the real world instead of more
classroom time would be much more valuable than giving young adults a choice
of a trade school vs. more academics at age 18.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14425760](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14425760)

edit: clarification

~~~
ringaroundthetx
Sudbury and Montessori schools offer a model that seems to encourage students
to learn at their own pace

Provides a positive feedback loop that seemed to have positive results in the
real world as well

~~~
roel_v
My children are in a Montessori school. There is no evidence that children
from most 'alternative' teaching systems do better or worse than those in
'regular' schools. My children like the school and it's conveniently located,
so we have no intention of changing; but it's not the teaching system that
makes or breaks a student (well, the more loony systems like Steiner schools
have documented worse outcomes than other systems, so it's not hard to make
schooling 'worse'; making them 'better' than mainstream systems is quite hard
- despite all the armchair opinions on this topic here every other day when
this comes up).

~~~
michaelt

      There is no evidence that children from most 'alternative'
      teaching systems do better or worse than those in
      'regular' schools.
    

I'd be interested to know more about that - could I ask where you learned
that?

~~~
roel_v
There's a lot of research on this; I read a lot about it procrastinating in
the university library when I was wrapping up my law degree, so that was 5 or
6 years ago. I don't remember details. Probably if you start on google scholar
and make your way from there, you'll find a lot of studies.

------
bruceb
Remove the social stigma of not going to college. Hardly any tv shows that
show young non college grads as positive.

~~~
aphextron
>Remove the social stigma of not going to college. Hardly any tv shows that
show young non college grads as positive.

Or just make college useful and accessible. Give people the option of a
European style undergrad where there is no liberal arts breadth, only
technical courses. If we had accredited colleges doing 3 year bachelor degrees
in STEM, the system would be much more efficient.

~~~
flukus
> Or just make college useful and accessible. Give people the option of a
> European style undergrad where there is no liberal arts breadth, only
> technical courses

So just turn college into a trade school? All that would do is make trade
schools more expensive.

~~~
dagw
I wouldn't call a "European style undergrad" a trade school. The only
difference is that for example a math 'major' in Europe spends 90-95% of their
time taking math courses, while in the US they might spend maybe 60-70% of
their time on math courses. Thus you can get through the same 'relevant'
course load in 3 years instead of 4.

------
abrongersma
I attended a 2 year vocational program for CIS in High School. It was heavily
focused on passing the CCNA exam but I spent most of my time working running
the class websites and learning the ins and outs of the LAMP stack. I had
unlimited access to industry standard equipment and the freedom to break
things without the risk of getting fired. It provided me with a solid
foundation of networking and infrastructure fundamentals.

I passed on going to college due to getting an incredible co-op. I'm quite
fortunate that my lack of a college degree has yet to limit my career. I give
back by volunteering and providing co-op positions for the students of the
program.

High School students are pushed to go straight to college and get a degree
even when they're not 100% sure what they enjoy doing. They're not often
provided with information about alternatives like attending a vocational
program.

------
Apocryphon
Isn't Germany, one of the more booming economies of Europe, a place that
promotes the trades and provides educational tracks for interested students to
easily get into apprenticeship programs? And where there isn't stigma against
entering such a field?

~~~
barry-cotter
> And where there isn't stigma against entering such a field?

This isn’t true. Germany is the second most credentialist, title obsessed
country in the world, with a class structure as obvious as in the UK, if
different.

~~~
analog31
As an amusing factoid, Germany is the country where my spouse would be
addressed as "Frau Doktor Doktor."

~~~
derda
Those days are long over. The behaviour might still remain in some small
circles (60yr old trophy wifes in a golf club) but is basically unheard and
frowned upon pretty much everywhere else in society.

~~~
roel_v
My last experience was 10+ years ago, so maybe there has been a drastic
revolution, but I once worked on an 'account profile' page for a large,
national company (in Germany) and one of the meetings went into this topic -
should there be a 'doctor doctor' entry in the dropdown with all the titles
someone could choose to be addressed as (so Prof, Dr, etc.). I, the barbaric
foreigner, then proposed we just get rid of the field all together - more to
fill in, more to get wrong, and who cares anyway? Jeebus, I might as well have
kicked a puppy in the nuts right there on the table. How was a letter to Prof.
dr. Mustermann ever going to end up in the right mailbox, if they couldn't
specify whether it was Prof Dr, Prof dr, Prof or just Dr. Mustermann? These
people spend hours coming up with the most ridiculous UI ideas of multiple
comboboxes, check list boxes, what have you. So after a few hours I said 'then
why don't we just put in a free form text field, so that people can just type
whatever they want?'. Well that was the one suggestion I could have made that
was even more ridiculous than leaving out the field. What if somebody would
type in 'poopyhead' (or whatever the German equivalent is), and they would
send a letter to Poopyhead Mustermann, and somebody would take a picture of
that letter and send it to the newspaper, mocking the company for doing such
idiotic things? (in those days they were more concerned about newspapers than
websites).

I don't even remember what they choose in the end. I think just a dropdown
box. I probably told them I'm make the list of titles to choose from
configurable in their backend system and they could make it however they
wanted later - which nobody probably ever bothered to do.

------
indubitable
Another idea, indirectly related, is to simply stop treating all university
degrees equally.

The whole reason student loans are so broken right now is because they cannot
be dismissed, so lenders are incentivized to lend with reckless abandon. In
the worst case scenario the loan converts into a lifetime rent on an
individual that automatically adjusts for inflation. On the other hand, the
idea behind creating special rules for student loans is easy to see. By
removing any risk in lending, that 'reckless abandon in lending' removes any
real up front financial barrier to education and investing in your society's
education is as good as investing in your society.

The problem here is people are then using this to get degrees that are more
recreational than productive. In high school kids are taught that the key to a
good life is to get a college degree. And so many people, who are otherwise
unmotivated or unambitious, simply choose easy and interesting degrees. The
'soft' degrees absolutely have a purpose, but a person coming from no means
choosing to major in a soft degree is not going to meaningfully change their
expected earnings. All they're going to do is remain a person of no means who
is now also deep in debt that can never be dismissed.

So the idea is to maintain the current system, but restrict lending just to
degrees that are statistically likely to 'substantially' effect a student's
expected earnings. When you remove the illusion of 'any degree is fine' you
start to bring the connection between education and earnings back to reality.
And you also push students towards a path of greater capability which is not
only good for themselves, but also for the nation as a whole.

~~~
analog31
In my view, this idea runs the danger of creating a planned economy, with
characteristic boom-bust cycles and scams.

The choice of which degrees to fund has to be made on either past data or some
sort of current fad. The list of preferred degrees will of course create
competition to get into those programs, but it may also encourage colleges to
create watered-down or even fake disciplines that can absorb more students.

Hypothetical example: Assuming that computer science is on the "hot list," a
low-tier college creates a fluff degree in Computer Technology Studies, that
gains access to loan money but leads to marginal employment prospects.

Closer to home, the K-12 schools in my locale have a new program that creates
career tracks at the high school level. The first track that has become
available is health care. Granted, it sounds like a good idea, what can
possibly go wrong?

~~~
indubitable
Measurements could be organic and self adjusting. In other words schools are
required to accurately assess the average earnings, including nonearners, of
each and every degree. Degrees above some rate, adjusted for location, qualify
for funding - others do not. It could be on a scale rather than binary. Too
many health care workers, funding for more pursuing it is completely
organically reduced.

Another cool feature is that this further aligns the motivation of schools
(who greatly benefit from 'reckless lending') and students. Reckless lending
is only possible when the degrees being pursued are provably valuable.

~~~
analog31
There still has to be a lag. When investment is a reaction to growth, and
growth is a reaction to investment, you've got practically the perfect recipe
for cyclic behavior.

Also, you can't just switch on college majors by switching on funding. The
pipeline for some fields is years, for instance arguably for math intensive
fields, or some performing arts such as playing the bassoon.

Here are the majors you can study. I hope you got interested in math 10 years
ago, or learned to play the bassoon.

------
deusofnull
I think there may be value in society providing some kind of fusion of these
two things at universities. University has become a sort of coming of age
ritual for young people, when they can manage to go. Craftsmanship and trades
skills are certainly solid ways to support yourself, especially when paired
with a decent, democratic union, but I cant help but feel that theres
something about a college experience that is hugely beneficial to people. Even
just the interpersonal relations you experience at university are deeply
influential.

Maybe we could have universities run more traditionally trade school type
programs as well as liberal arts, stem, art, and music curriculums? That way
the philosophy students have the opportunity to take a class in engine repair
and the students in the electrician's school can likewise take a class in
Computer Aided Design or Astronomy Lab.

------
crispyambulance
Trade school is a great thing for the right number of motivated and capable
students.

The problem is that the market can only take so many plumbers, electricians
and tin-knockers before their pay falls off a cliff. I expect that this would
occur long before the wage gap is actually closed. Moreover many trades are
still unionized and resistant to new entrants.

I think that schools should focus more on getting the basics right. Most of us
here on HN have enjoyed a priviledged journey through good to elite schooling.
The sad reality is that in large swathes of the country high school education
has become a shit-show with reprecussions that will last decades.

While it is good to continue to offer votech programs, I think that schools
should just make literacy a priority. If you think that's 'aiming low' you
haven't seen what goes on in schools today.

------
donatj
One of my sisters and I both attended trade school and were quickly happily
employed.

My other sister went for a psychology major and has since worked service jobs.

I went to a small trade school for "Application Development" circa 2005 that
has since gone under.

They really got an undeserved bad rap, like a lot of for profit schools
lately. I genuinely feel I received a quality education readying me for
working in the industry. I had what I would consider some of the best
educators of my life and lots of one on one time with them.

I know a handful of my classmates didn't really take it very seriously and the
army was paying for them to be there, but honestly it's lead me into a career
I enjoy and allowed me to earn more than I ever imagined.

------
oneplane
This seems rather odd to me. The article hammers on about manufacturing jobs
while it has been reported that manufacturing ethos in other countries is
better than the USA making it a really bad choice to manufacture there. It
costs more, and you get less.

At the same time, this seems to be suggesting that _anyone_ could be doing a
trade school type of education instead of college, while to me it seems that
is is the lower entry into any form of education. If college equals trade
school, then college in the USA needs to up it's game.

Learning a trade is only useful up to a point. As others have posted, there is
no point in having 100 million machinists all being very capable of re-
manufacturing tower crane gearboxes. Even a million would not make any sense.
There is also a limit to what you can do with your time. While you don't need
to be a millionaire to be happy, the limit to what you can earn is
comparatively low when you are working at the practical side of things vs.
what steering/planning/administrating and up can earn.

This does not mean that trade school is by definition 'stupid' and if you
don't go to college or university (or is that the same in the USA?) you are
therefore not smart, but it does limit your capabilities, at least in terms of
growth. Now, if you are comfortable with a trade, if it gets you what you
want, there would be no point in going to college. At the same time, if
college is too hard, and learning beyond basic literacy and mathematics is not
an option, you might be stuck at trade level.

One of the bigger problems with 'trade' or 'labour' type of skill is that it
often is very limited in abstracted transferrable knowlegde. What if the way
some thing are done are replaced. Say you are very good at cleaning chimneys,
that's great, but nobody needs your skills. Or what if you are very good at
shining shoes. Or driving horse carriages. Or digging holes and putting down
outhouses. This is the same for most of the current trade type of work, it is
only useful as long as people need you, and when they don't you can't really
go do something else because you don't have the theory behind what you were
doing to re-implement it somewhere else.

~~~
srtjstjsj
There's no point in having 100million "business" majors either.

------
galfarragem
I believe that nowadays - at least in developed countries - you can have a
stable income way above average as a tradesman. The shortage of reliable
people in these areas is unbelieavable. As an anecdote I knew a self-employed
_poolboy_ that before crisis was earning more than most managers.

According my experience (I used to help my father during work peaks) I think
that we arrived here because ALL talent is nowadays directed to academia. To
complicate the situation this is not easily undone, once people get used to be
intellectually challenged they see trades as a terribly boring job. And don't
forget the stigma..

~~~
rasz
Sure, but manager works sitting in front of a computer making couple of phone
calls per day sipping coffee. Poolboy scrubs dried shit off the pool tiles in
hot sun.

People go to college because they dream of getting paid for sitting on their
asses. Manual labour is for proles!

~~~
Broken_Hippo
Actually, I think a lot of managers are stuck making fast food and working
retail and can very easily mean doing a lot of physical work. This is
particularly true if you decided to go into business management instead of
business administration. Lots of those jobs are retail.

------
forapurpose
As is often the case, the answer is built into how the question is framed:

If we frame the question as, 'what is the most efficient way to train people
with directly salable skills', then college is inefficient and probably not
the best solution.

But if the question is, 'how do we best prepare people for life, including
critical thinking and knowledge about the world, and to improve our society',
college blows away any trade school. Four years spent studying the leading
thinkers, thinking, and critical approaches in a diverse array of fields,
tutored by leading experts, is an incredible way to sharpen your mind,
knowledge, and critical thought. Also, as most in IT realize, learning
specific skills in IT is far less valuable over the long run than learning
theory which then can be applied even as technology changes. Consider the
liberal arts as the 'theory' of other fields.

Many people on one hand bemoan the political situation, the ignorance, and the
inability to discern propaganda from fact; while on the other hand they
dismiss liberal arts as useless. The latter has developed, almost precisely,
as the solution to the former. Society doesn't just work; we need to advance
it, which requires understanding the world, its problems and their solutions.
These are very hard problems, and learning Java or physics won't solve them.

~~~
Double_a_92
The problem is that most people are not actually that smart to profit from
that. It just lowers the level if everybody basically HAS to go through
college.

~~~
forapurpose
Using collegiate critical thinking skills, I wonder: What is that argument
based on? Are 'smarts' really an important factor? Maybe it's just work, or
opportunity, or preparation, or a million other things.

I tend to think that anyone who wants to do it can do it; they only have to
work hard enough.

------
thisisit
> Researchers are investigating how the United States can become more
> competitive in the manufacturing industry in the age of artificial
> intelligence.

> Manufacturing employment has fallen in both countries, yet in Germany,
> manufacturing's value added has stayed around 22 percent in the last 20
> years.

So Germany has done well even before the _age of AI_. But are they well
prepared for the AI disruption?

Because currently the article seems to be relying on past data from Germany to
predict a future solution.

~~~
adventured
It's a bizarre premise, because US productivity has outpaced both the EU and
Germany over the last 25 years.

In 1995-1996, US and German GDP per capita were almost equal, at $30,000 to
$31,000. Today the US is about 40% higher.

US manufacturing has grown substantially over that time. The vast gains in
productivity are precisely the cause of the employment plunge in
manufacturing. Real manufacturing output is up 78% since 1991.

Germany has maintained its outsized manufacturing export base in part through
high degrees of protectionism and riding an artificially cheap currency (cheap
for Germany, not for Spain, Portugal, Italy or Greece), to the detriment of
Eurozone rivals.

~~~
AstralStorm
Productivity is not the end all measure for the society. Suppose the Moser
productive society would be made out of robots working 24/7 at high
efficiency. Is that superior to a society where "inefficient" research
happens?

Likewise GDP (even PPP) does not matter if it is distributed highly unequally.
You get a handful of people with huge economic power, that's it.

Albeit in the case of Germany you're somewhat right (protectionism mostly
designed to force manufacturing to happen locally), US productivity has not
brought improved living standards where it should have.

------
austenallred
It should be pretty obvious to anyone who has ever been to college that the
model there isn't exactly one of "efficiency." My first two years were a good
time, but if you're a 45-year-old man trying to get skilled as quickly as
possible to put food on the table, taking three credits of Shakespeare just
seems silly (and I absolutely adore Shakespeare). Not to mention the fact that
the notion that you should decide what you want to do for the rest of your
life when you're 18 and have never worked or experienced a job market just
seems completely insane to me.

The fact of the matter is we're going to need widespread adult re-education,
and the current four-years-at-18 model is woefully inadequate for the future
that we can all see coming. In fact, the future that's here. Why can't I be
prepared for a job in 6 months or one year? Can I take just the part of a
college education that helps me be skilled?

IMO the blue collar jobs of the future will be many of the white collar jobs
of today. I actually include "coding" in that. Relatively simple programming
is something most people can learn to do relatively quickly, provides
immediate value, and has rising demand (even the code bootcamps flooding the
market still, somehow, leave huge gaps).

My company, Lambda School, (shameless plug, I suppose - YC S17
[https://lambdaschool.com](https://lambdaschool.com)) is trying to solve some
tiny portion of that by providing a live, online, skills-based education and
job placement program that's completely free until you get a job. Soon it will
be available entirely after hours. We've literally seen students go from
applying at McDonalds to six-figure job offers; not because we're the best
teachers in the world, but because they were already smart enough to become
that person, they'd just never been given that opportunity, and for very
practical reasons four years of college and expensive student loans were out
of the question.

But we're still relatively expensive, still at the higher-skill-level-but-
more-difficult end, and we can only cover a _tiny_ portion of the market. In
the next 10 years I hope there will be a booming industry of college
alternatives that can get people placed, so long as they're not crushed by
licensing and regulation (neither of which I think are a bad thing in proper
amounts).

If you can move people from unemployed or minimum wage to regular living wage,
the value created in that movement is enough that you can take a piece and
everyone is _way_ better off, and the cost of doing so is orders of magnitude
less than college costs now. I really think we're going to enter a golden age
of educational innovation, because the current system is broken enough folks
are looking elsewhere. I would love to see someone do that at a serious kind
of scale for high-paying trades: plumbing, welding, etc.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Well, the 4 year degree at 18 may give you a framework to hang the rest of
your learning on - the learning that you're going to have to continue to do
throughout your career. The problem is, as you say, that it's too inefficient
(and therefore expensive).

Something like Lambda schools may well be the answer - if you can scale it.
(You say you can only cover a tiny portion of the market. What scaling
problems do you face?)

What I think is _really_ needed, long term, is something like an accredited
institution that acts like a clearing house. You want a BS in CS? You need to
cover at least this much material. Among the classes will be, say, advanced
algorithms. For advanced algorithms, we recognize any one of this set of
online classes as valid. That way, with the clearinghouse, you can get a
degree that the wider world will recognize, purely online, from a variety of
sources.

~~~
austenallred
We can scale really well, but education is an _enormous_ market. 5m people
begin college each year.

------
SeaDude
Trade apprenticeship + cultivated curiosity in tech = exactly what hold
industries need.

Unfortunately, old industries tend toward new "talent" \+ degree in something
cool sounding in hopes of disruptive "yahtzee". they, or at least mine,
largely ignore the ones who know the business rules/needs the most in gavor of
who "should know the future best". Oops.

~~~
matt_wulfeck
What’s “new” of today is the legacy codebases of tomorrow!

------
Noos
It's annoying when this is discussed, because people assume all there are only
three skilled trades; plumber, electrician, or machinist of some kind. Machine
Drafting, for example, was absolutely decimated by the rise of cad/cam, as was
graphic design with the rise of desktop publishing and decline of print due to
the web. We also have hairdressing, which is ok but shows that many trades are
not open to women, nor can many areas not support a decent amount of
tradespeople.

I went to a vocational high school myself, and many people wound up going to
college instead, as maybe half the trades didn't have much of a future. And
keep in mind, there were a LOT of tradespeople thrown out of work in the 90s
in my area due to military budget cuts, too; many skilled tradesmen tend to
piggyback on defense or government spending, which is not sustainable.

------
bsder
Um, where are the statistics showing that wages in the trades are rising?
Everything I have seen indicates that wages in the trades are stagnant which
implies that they don't need any more people.

Dumping a whole bunch of people into a system already at close to optimum
employment will not benefit _workers_.

~~~
roseburg
They are rising all across the country because there is a big shortage, and
it's only going to get worse. Boomers are retiring faster than they are being
replaced.

Optimum employment? When someone wants to get a project built in Portland
Oregon the wait time this past year was about 3 months until you were lucky
enough to land a contractor. Contractors can't find enough skilled help so
everything takes longer.

~~~
bsder
> Contractors can't find enough skilled help so everything takes longer.

No, contractors can't find enough _CHEAP_ skilled help.

If there is an actual shortage, wages will rise sufficiently to pull people
into the field or cause people to move around to fill the holes.

The fact that these slots are not being filled says that they aren't paying
enough _NOT_ that there is a shortage.

------
dogruck
The real question is how can we reduce the cost of education (or training)
while simultaneously better aligning training with the most valuable careers.

Trade schools are much cheaper than college. In addition, we don’t have enough
trained craftsmen.

~~~
roseburg
There is a shortage of trades workers, and it's only going to get worse
because the bulk of the workers are currently older and are retiring much,
much faster than they are being replaced. We are just at the beginning of a
crises level shortage. Labor prices will continue to rise and this will be
absorbed by everyone.

~~~
AstralStorm
In a supposed American model this means there should be more competition,
right? And the companies will be happy to pay those increased wages to US
workers?

(I'm being facetious devil advocate here.)

~~~
roseburg
:) They are having to pay higher wages. The wealthy in bigger cities are able
to absorb these higher costs. It has a much bigger toll on the middle class in
smaller cities because they have the same shortages, but less money to pay the
increased costs.

There won't be more competition in the short term because still, only 3% of
graduating high school students are even considering a career in the trades.
It's going to take quite a while for the ship to turn around.

------
0xcde4c3db
If people are going to make more money, where does the demand come from? Or is
this about American manufacturers gaining market share from/in other
countries?

I don't know much about macroeconomics, so maybe this is a silly question.

~~~
zachrose
There are five electricians in town, they each make $40/hour. They have a hard
time finding qualified apprentices.

After education, there are 7 electricians. The same 5 electricians still make
$40/hour, but the two new electricians make $25/hour. Turns out there's a
previously unserved market for a cheaper and less experienced electrician.

~~~
gozur88
Or... there wasn't much of an unserved market, and all seven electricians make
$30/hr.

~~~
zachrose
Sure.

(I'm not sure about the specifics of whether everyone's wages go down or the
two new electrician's can't find work, but for the purposes of an anecdote it
doesn't matter.)

But in the bigger picture this will be a feedback signal to the next class of
electricians and they will decide whether to stick with electrician school or
look for some other demand gap to fill.

------
erikb
A financial gap of any kind comes from unfair advantages in a vastly complex
system. How could something like that be solved by attending another kind of
school. Imo these are two totally independent things.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
A different kind of school can leave you prepared to exploit a different kind
of gap. If that gap is the one that is currently widening, then being
positioned to exploit it can be a wise choice, in two ways.

First, it can be wise _for you_. There's a lot of money to be made in filling
that gap.

Second, though, it can be wise _for society_. That gap is growing because
there aren't enough people going into that area to keep up with demand. That
is, society needs more people doing that. It can help society function to have
people meet that need.

~~~
erikb
That sounds reasonable. But is a gap of capital really exploitable without
capital?

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Skills are a kind of capital.

------
Raphmedia
So, a bit like the "General and Vocational College" we have here in Québec,
Canada. Three-year technical programs for students who wish to pursue a
skilled trade at a modest price. The price per semester is a mere $132 and you
even have access to scholarships & financial aid.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CEGEP](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CEGEP)

------
metaphor
Relevant TL;DR summary:

> Note: Working papers have not been peer-reviewed or been subject to review
> by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications.

------
mankash666
It's the other way around - a college education should be at least as useful
as trade school - i.e. decent employment shouldn't be a luxury

------
dba7dba
I entered high school in California right as woodshop classes were being
shuttered due to lower funding and also people wanting the students spend more
time preparing for college, not in a woodshop.

I think some might have benefited more by going to woodshop classes. Who
knows?

------
kaonashi
Income gap has nothing to do with education, it has everything to do with
power differentials. Education isn't going to counter the musical-chairs
nature of the economy nor the outsized influence of a handful of ultra-
wealthy.

------
MR4D
Let’s see....

Learn programming in a trade school or study English at an Ivy League school?

My bet would be the programmer will make more money more consistently across a
large number of people than the other. They will also probably have less
school debt.

------
sunstone
Trade school get's you license. A medical degree or a legal degree get's you a
license. A regular four year college degree is just an invitation to compete
in a race to the bottom.

------
openthedamper
a great one hour program on NPR 1a call-in program on the trades,
apprenticeships here:

[https://the1a.org/shows/2017-06-12/how-to-earn-six-
figures-w...](https://the1a.org/shows/2017-06-12/how-to-earn-six-figures-
without-a-four-year-degree)

------
puppetmaster30
Yeah, but from career politicians POV: we want liberal arts. STEM or trade
skills.... that is risky. They may want a smaller gov. So no way politics will
go this way. For example, the Dirty Jobs guy? His video is banned by Google.
True.

~~~
mantas
Any source on Dirty Jobs dude and Google ban? Never heard about it.

~~~
maxerickson
[https://www.facebook.com/TheRealMikeRowe/posts/1680626875280...](https://www.facebook.com/TheRealMikeRowe/posts/1680626875280782)

~~~
EADGBE
> The gist of my argument goes like this: > 1) Passion is a critical component
> of job satisfaction and overall happiness. However...

> 2) Just because you’re passionate about something, doesn’t mean you won’t
> suck at it. Which means...

> 3) Following your passion doesn’t always lead to lasting happiness or true
> job satisfaction. Ergo, my advice to graduates is...

> 4) "NEVER follow your passion, but ALWAYS bring it with you."

It's a shame it was censored. I could have used that advice. I've been
considering a career transition into the trades, anyway.

------
trisimix
We should close down business colleges in my opinion. Like learn a skill for
fucks sake.

------
jrs95
It doesn’t need to be one or the other. Just because trade schools are good
doesn’t mean we should ignore the needs of everyone who wants a 4 year degree
or has a mountain of student loan debt.

~~~
jerf
It's even better than that. If trade schools can recover some prestige, and
more people who would be happier and better off for going there do go there,
then colleges can become better colleges, too. Colleges trying to be both is
doing a disservice to everyone.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
More than that: If the people who would be better off going to trade school go
there, and so fewer people go to college, _the price of college can go down_ ,
just due to supply and demand.

------
holydude
Germany is the country that lost the battle but won the war. I am not saying
Germany is not full of hard working and smart people but consider this.

Germany wreaked havoc on its neighbors effectively killing huge % of their
populations,destroying trillions of $ worth of infrastructure and industries
and much more. Yet they only paid dimes to these countries because someone
smart people decided they must be the balancing force against the Soviets.

Also consider this. Germany is effectively dominating the markets of its
neighbors solely because of weak euro, its industrial scale, "open" (anti-
protectionist) laws and ...corruption. There are many many other factors of
course.

~~~
MagnumOpus
> Yet they only paid dimes to these countries

You seem to have been taught a rather selective history.

\- Germany was forced to cede _a quarter of its territory_ after WW2, to
exactly the allied neighbouring countries in addition to the ones already
ceded in WW1. In the east, Germans were ethnically cleansed from those areas.
(The western parts were later given back to Germany because France and
Netherlands found ethnic cleansing unpalatable.)

\- The Soviet Occupation Zone - the later GDR - was denuded of any and all
industrial machinery and other items of value, which were all carted off to
the Soviet Union.

\- The western allies took "intellectual reparations" and stripped German
companies and individuals of their rights to IP - patents, copyrights,
trademarks worth billions. (In violation of the Hague Convention which they
all signed, but hey, _vae victis_.)

\- and of course cash reparations too, for countries who did not participate
in all of the above (Greece, Israel, Yugoslavia).

~~~
holydude
Are you a german ? Because germans are usually the ones spreading lies like
this.

\- Germany was forced to cede a territory to the Soviet union and the SU gave
it to Poland. While Poland lost bigger land in the east.

\- Which happened to almost all countries under SU

\- Source ?

\- cash reparations ? Are you kidding me ? If you do the math it's like giving
greece 10 euros while you took millions from them.

~~~
Scea91
No one wanted to repeat the Versailles treaty after WWI. That is why they let
Germany off the hook quite easily.

