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We weren't lied to about college being the pathway to a good job; industries just took advantage of that fact and found ways to profit from it.

There is a reason why so many people don't want to learn a trade: because they know it sucks. For every anecdote I hear about some tradesman living the good life, I can give them three about miserable workers who can't get out. Work is inconsistent, you lack much of the security and benefits that other jobs offer, it tears up your body, and working conditions are often poor. My dad had to do carpentry for months with a broken hip, because he couldn't afford to take the time off after surgery. My uncle--another carpenter--lost his job, found work in a factory to pay the bills, and lost three fingers in a machine. I briefly worked in a sheet metal shop, and many of the workers had carpel tunnel in both wrists, arthritis, and bad eyesight from all of the welders in the shop. I saw a flare from a TIG welder as I walked by someone's stall with the curtain halfway closed, and my eyes burned and watered halfway through the night. In another job, I cut off the tip of my thumb on a circular saw while building a deck. I'm a statistician now.

Learning a trade, along with the almighty STEM fields, are not the solution to the college problem; they are a red herring. The real issue is that a college degree is used to screen applicants for almost every good paying, secure job in the US, regardless of whether or not a degree is really necessary to do the job. College became more available, and any entry level worker with a degree had an edge in the job market, which forced everyone else to go to college to stay competitive.

In my mind, telling people to skip college and learn a trade because someone they know makes good money at it is like telling people to skip college and start acting because they know an actor that makes good money.

I mean what you're describing with trades is just as rampant in college educated jobs, minus the back breaking work but adding in other ergonomic nightmares of an office and more political and social stress. Not saying you're wrong but I think the problem is workers aren't getting their fair share for the progress of society. No matter their background.

Let me clarify: There are people out there that just should not go to college. It would be a waste of time and money for them. These are the people that need to take a look at alternate career paths, but those same people were in the room with me when the teacher was telling us about how poor you will be if you don't go do college.

I agree that the prestige of a college degree has been watered down, but that is simply a supply and demand thing. If there aren't enough workers with a college degree, then the employer will hire people who don't have one, especially if the job doesn't actually require a degree.

> There are people out there that just should not go to college. It would be a waste of time and money for them.

Wouldn't you say this is a bit 20/20 hindsight-y? You can be an A/B+ average student in HS and be completely out of your depth in college, depending on your course choices and rigor of the institution.

I didn't realize until maybe sophomore year that I perform better in applied scenarios rather than theoretical. I'd fail my stats midterms because I didn't understand hetero/homoskedasticity, but I would ace the final project because it gave you a dataset that you were supposed to analyze in STATA to answer specific questions. Got a B- overall though, due to the bad midterm grade.

Now, I'm not the kind of person who would fall into the typical "college isn't for you" category, but I did still graduate in 2009 with a 5-figure debt load, an average GPA and a recession economy. I'm sure there were tens of thousands of students like me. We likely have paid off the debt by now and are gainfully employed, but we still question the value of the degree in terms of both financial and time-based opportunity cost.

Yes, there are some people that by all measures should do well in college, but just don't. That is going to happen in any population of people. What I was talking about was students that I met early on (i.e. in the dorms or 2nd year) that were just there for posterity. They were there to get a degree just to say "I got a degree", and not the knowledge they gained there. I also knew quite a few of the athletes, but that is a separate discussion.

Yes, your situation is pretty rough as far as college grads go. My brother graduated a few years after that, but luckily got a job somewhat quickly as the economy was slowly rebounding. Maybe it is 20/20 to talk about this because not many people saw that recession coming. Kids entering college in 2004 were seeing a good economy, and that affected the cost/benefit for them.

I wonder what they are really screening for when they require a college degree for jobs it is not necessary for. They're not doing it for no reason... I expect it's attempting to screen for class, basically. No poor people, or at least people that seem like poor people and can't fake it.

Most business people are fundamentally interested in the good of the business. They require a college degree because they think someone with a college degree will do a better job.

Now there can be two reasons for that.

1. Skills learnt while getting the degree

2. The degree is a proxy for things not learnt during the degree. Think which things improve business value? General aptitude. Connections. Perseverance.

To the extent that 1 dominates, increased college attendance is great. To the extent that 2 dominates, increased college is an expensive signalling game.

Which is which? A little rule of thumb I have. If jobs require a degree from a good school, but the subject doesn't matter, then it's mostly signalling. If jobs require a particular degree, but the school doesn't matter as much then it's probably dominated by 1.

If interviews in the profession focus more on live demonstrating skills it's probably more 1. If interviews in the profession focus on telling a story that puts you in a good light it's probably 2.

How many people can a field absorb? Is it a fairly constant need of x carpenters are needed per capita to supply everyone with furniture (risks turning to signalling game about those fixed opportunities)? Or is it the more people we have, the cooler things we can build, the sky is the limit (clear this bar and your good to go)?

Is there a immigration of people in the field because domestic schools are not capable of meeting demand? That indicates a skill gap, 1. It can also mean the job is so shit no one wants to do it, but differentiating those cases should be simple.

The earnings for college graduates are very misleading because virtually all the children of wealthy people graduate from college, and they get high salaries, but those high salaries are due to nepotism and exploiting their parent's networks, and have nothing to do with their college degree.

For poor/lower-middle-class students college is mostly b.s. and you can be doing the exact same job for half the wage because you don't have the connections to get the high salary.

In my view it's not just connections. The children of wealthy people are also, for the most part, children of educated people. As a result, they know how to navigate the college system and to get the most out of it. There are things about college that I've explicitly told my kids. Someone who doesn't know, or is predisposed to believe that college is worthless, won't ever know what they missed out on.

Also, by the time they hit college, kids are already highly differentiated, and this affects their access to the more fructifying opportunities in college. There's this giant Sorting Hat, and it's called Math.

So I don't deny the wealth effect, but I don't think it's fully explained by connections.

> not just connections

totally true. but even the dumbest children of wealth will end up in six-figure jobs while the average ones will be top corporate lawyers, sales people, or professors, and the extraordinary ones will be CEOs. The smartest poor kids can excel in college and get the same salary as the dumbest rich kids, but will never move up the ladder because they lack the network.

There is also the lack of financial stress while in college and probably not having to work.

To my knowledge you don't need nepotism to get good jobs in STEM or high paying professions like dentistry, nursing, physical therapy, medicine, or law (well, actually in law if you are only a mediocre graduate nepotism can help a lot).

depends on what you call a good job: 6 figures as a grunt or 7-8 figures as an "entrepreneur."

In the vast majority of the country outside major west coast metro areas and corridor from NoVa to Boston, 6 figures is a pretty good job

Yes, and it's worse, screening for a college degree is an attempt not just to hire people you know specifically, but people _of your social class_ generally. Wealthy people prefer to hire children of wealthy people they don't even know.

(and even more clear when considering how degrees from some institutions are rated higher than others).

I think you might be surprised to learn about the modern economics of being an auto mechanic. [1]

[1] https://thinkprogress.org/the-harsh-reality-of-being-an-auto...

In addition to what the article points out, another issue is that many tradespeople are employed by small or family owned businesses, so your prospects for getting into a decent job may depend on your family and connections. Otherwise, you'll be working behind the parts counter at Auto Zone.

Lying assumes malice, which assumes that the people in a position to encourage a college track vs career track have any understanding of the situation whatsoever. People are incredibly adept at repeating a truism that they've themselves been told. No bearing on reality required.

Philosophically I would disagree that lying assumes malice. We don't really have a word in english to describe "lying without malice", and I suspect the reason why is because we don't recognize a significant enough difference between them to warrant its own word.

“Lying without malice” is called “tact.”

Not sure what dictionary you got that out of, but to me "tact" means to tell someone something in a less abrasive way, or politely. Tact is about how the information is presented, not the content of it.

He told us some good stories and also told us about how much money he made in the industry.

Good on him for being open about earnings. Most Americans are not so transparent and I wish I had known that many trades offer similar earnings potential to most careers for 4-year degree earners.

Median weekly earnings is currently $739 for high school graduates, $1,350 for those with at least a bachelor's degree.

Reasonable people can disagree on causality, cost-benefit, etc. but the association between earnings and educational attainment is definitely real.

https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/wkyeng.pdf