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Comment by honkycat | Hacker News Reader

I think this trade school obsession is foolish. Everyone cargo-cults it as "pragmatic" without actually analyzing what the jobs entail and what you can actually expect to make.

Statistically, you still earn way more with a degree than without.

You EARN that pay in the trades, and being an electrician is dangerous. The work is hard on your body. A lot of electricians end up on disability.

I wasn't very academic growing up. But then I grew up, and now I am a pretty successful computer programmer making a lot more than that, for way better perks and less dangerous, damaging work.

You can make that kind of money as a manager at Walmart and you do not run the risk of getting your arm fried off or falling off a telephone pole.

And where does a few years as an electrician leave you if you don't end up liking the career? "Sorry son, the internet told me trades were a good idea. Maybe go back to school now that you are an adult with a family?" Part of the reason you go to school as a young person is that you do not have a family to feed or a house to pay off.

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> Statistically, you still earn way more with a degree than without.

This is becoming less and less true for lots of cohorts. I suspect it will stop correlating for everyone soon.

From a few days ago: "Is College Still Worth It? The New Calculus of Falling Returns" by Center for Household Financial Stability, St Louis Fed

https://www.stlouisfed.org/~/media/files/pdfs/hfs/is-college...

> The college wealth premium is at a historic low; among other races and ethnicities, it is statistically indistinguishable from zero

> Our results suggest that college & post-grad education may be failing some recent graduates as a financial investment."

I went to a 4-year college, but earned almost all of my money from self-taught programming and design skills.

It's hard to justify the ROI on college.

At $25k/year for a low-tier college, you'll spend $100k (if you don't need loans). If you take that $100k and put it in the market (avg. 7% annual returns) with 0 contributions for 45 years, you could spend every penny you make and retire at 63 with $2.1M.

At more expensive colleges ($50k/yr+) the math seems less and less in your favor.

Low tier college should be about $10k a year and that's assumimg you don't do 2 years a community college.

You shouldn't live on campus if you're price sensitive. And you cant include room and board in your calculations because you'd need that anyway.

7% annual returns are also misleading because it ignores inflation. Edit--I've since learned that 7% average already adjusts for inflation.

7% is adjusted for inflation. It's about 10% without: https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/042415/what-average...

> 7% annual returns are also misleading because it ignores inflation.

"One of the major problems for an investor hoping to regularly recreate that 10% average return is inflation. Adjusted for inflation, the historical average annual return is only around 7%."

https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/042415/what-average...

It doesn't have to be conflated to low tier, state schools are around there as well and cheaper with aid or scholarship. CSU schools are typically pretty cheap considering the areas they are in.

> self-taught programming and design skills.

This is essentially my story too, but IMHE, it hasn't been a realistic option for the people I have known who "don't like academics," and consequently struggled or opted out of the system.

(Fwiw, I couldn't stand academics. However, through dint of self study, it didn't prevent me from graduating.)

There's many viable routes that don't have to be academic. I hate the idea of universities being pushed down everyone's throat. They're higher education institutions and should be for people actually interested in academics and possibly/likely research.

Half of the 'degrees' we have now are not academic, and half of these universities shouldn't even exist. I think all routes are fine. Everyone has different interests and learns differently. Trade school should be a prestigious route in its own right and they should be built up as such, rather than trying to chuck everyone into university regardless of whether it's the correct path for them. There shouldn't be a 'university' culture.

From my high school I can think of less than 10% of people that were honestly interested in/good at academics (of any type, science or arts/humanities) that should've carried on to university. In reality, it was pushed down and over 60% went. Most of them just spent their time partying.

And on the same note, schools should be better. It's sad that some people don't get to find their love in academics until college. It isn't necessarily always late blooming imo, it's that public pre-college education often sucks.

That may be the case, but I'd still wager that, for the majority, self-study isn't a viable route - particularly in technology.

(And, IMHO, the many alternatives to academia aren't nearly the rosey picture you purport, particularly for people who hope to be sure of employment in a decade or two. It's clear that, while many will still be here, many won't.)

Self-study isn't what I mean. Nor am I referring to present alternatives to academia. I'm saying the higher education system is broken and this is something governments need to fix (and stop pushing people into university specifically, and accrediting so many that are worthless) and society needs to change in.

There should absolutely be institutions for education or trade-work post high school. These should not necessarily be universities and should still be aimed at all kinds of individuals, but talented individuals that are not good at and have no interest in academics.

Currently those institutions are often not widely respected. Colleges have become the norm post-18. That shouldn't be the case.

45 years from now, $2.1M adjusted for inflation (3%) is $533K. A lot of these compound interest calculators don't show you the values adjusted for inflation. It sounds great when you get 21x your investment. 5x doesn't sound as great, but it's more realistic.

The 7% figure they gave is already adjusted for inflation.

Only if you think you're getting 7% returns after inflation, which statistically is highly unlikely.

$2.1M is literally $100k compounded at 7% over 45 years.

The S&P typically returns 10% YoY. 7% per year is the historical average adjusted for inflation: https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/042415/what-average...

You can't perfectly time your retirement to match the S&P 500 average. That's the reason your portfolio shifts to bonds as you get older. It's the reason everyone quotes 7 & 8% as reasonable long-term returns for your retirement portfolio.

Right, but if for each of the past 100 years you tracked people who put money in the stock market and held it for 45 years and averaged each of their returns you'd get a 7% YoY return after adjusting for inflation.

Some would end up lower but some would end up higher.

Nothing is guaranteed, but neither is a job.

What if you don't plan to start your life at 63?

I'm not planning for retirement. 63 is a long way off. There's a lot of life between now and then, indeed the majority of my life is between now and then.

These kinds of "responsible financial actions" are a bit silly imho. Invest in yourself now, and spend your time well now. College pays for itself, if you spent $100k on a decent degree I guarantee you'll earn that amount ten times over in any decent career. Aside from that, it's an experience, and that's worth some money in itself.

The difficulty is in landing in a decent career out of college. People have this fantasy that all you have to do is get X degree and go apply at X Y and Z corporation to land a job getting paid 6 figures for the rest of your life. And that's probably true if your X is from an Ivy League school or a massive state school with hyper-competitive admission to the program. And what you're paying for at that point is access to the elite so that you can hopefully ride their coattails into a good job.

If you end up going to a 2nd or 3rd tier school it's basically a wash whether you end up anywhere good. And it's even worse if you don't get X degree, but instead have a degree that doesn't make it through the word filters. And you can't fuck anything up or make any mistakes in your entire academic career. You have to network aggressively. Many of my cohort ended up working as electricians, and one of them manages the line at a brewery. College was pretty useless for nearly all of us, and our lives probably would have been improved by not getting the degree, because at least that way we wouldn't be under the tens of thousands of dollars in debt.

We were mostly mediocre. But we were smart and we knew how to figure things out. That doesn't really matter to most employers, who just want you to know a specific field right out of the gate so they don't have to bother training you.

I lucked out, by the way. I managed to find a job in 2009 clerking in a warehouse at a technology sales company, and it was only because I knew someone who worked there as a service technician. His moving up created openings that I would be able to use to move into increasingly technical roles. And after 4 years there I was making about $44,000/yr., doubling my starting salary as a clerk. The real benefit for me was networking with my current boss. Because if I hadn't met him then I'd probably still be working long hours for little pay.

So I would strongly urge anyone who isn't in the top 10% to strongly reconsider taking your advice. $100,000 is a huge amount of money and would have been a crippling amount of debt for me. As it was, the $20,000 I graduated with after working two and sometimes three jobs was hard to cope with until I lucked out.

I think my comment took it as a given that if you're spending $100k you'll use every single real opportunity you can get in college and make the most out of your $100k.

There's plenty of people that 'made it' from a local not-so-competitive state school. America remains the land of opportunity. But, unless you go to an Ivy or your parents are rich, you shouldn't expect it to come to you.

You can do things in America that you simply cannot in Europe. You mentioned a few way of doing college right in your own response. Wouldn't the correct response be to use your time in college wisely and not slack or "just make it through" but to make the most of it, rather than to skip college altogether just because it's going to be harder than having your life handed to you on a platter if you went to an Ivy?

----

2nd point I'd make is if you're in Europe student debt doesn't matter.

Tuition is almost always free/cheap, government pays for tuition and living for your time as a student, and gives very favourable terms to repay (e.g. in the UK you don't pay anything if you earn under £25k/yr, then you pay 7% of amount earned above that, debt is wiped clean after 30 yrs if any remains). It doesn't show up on your credit record or affect mortgages etc.

I'd describe America more as a country that rewards the ambitious (with perhaps some drops of luck) and the rich. If you're neither then the system is made to entrap you. Europe is easily better for general life, but it isn't great for ambitious people.

Not planning for retirement in that you’re not even putting funds into a 401k or other retirement account? I get it if you’re strapped for cash but it sounds like you have the funds to save.

This isn’t clever, it’s irresponsible especially given that just putting a little money away now literally pays dividends later.

I don't mean not putting in a 401k. The comment I was replying to was implying throwing $100k into a savings account is a good idea because you'll have a couple million when you're 63.

I do not advocate throwing $100k into savings for retirement at 18.

There's a difference between reasonable financial responsibility (401k, match pension contributions w/ employer, etc) and spending all your young years worrying about being prepared for retirement.

Enjoy the life you have. Be financially responsible, but don't over-do it, is what I'm trying to say.

Go to college. Get an engineering or other high paying job. Save and invest. You'll have a couple of million by early 40's, maybe late 30's if you're lucky.

Engineering is one of the few fields where this is true. For the vast majority of college degrees this is not true.

Ah great, I agree, there is a balance to strike

I really don't understand what you're talking about. The OP is saying that you wouldn't need to care about retirement at all if you invest instead of going to college, and if you can teach yourself a valuable skill like programming, you could likely get most of the benefits of going to college.

The question is, will a degree give you a better return than putting the money in the market? Maybe a degree would get you a better job, but you get a later start.

Students just aren't taught to figure this sort of stuff out before going to college and getting into debt. College just isn't the right fit for many people and it often just puts them behind.

Where do they get that 100K to invest from? Most people won't have rich parents to give them the 100K to invest. This means you have to get a job and save up. With college, you have student loans.

For most people, if you go to college, you can get to 2M a lot faster than you can by investing 100K and waiting around for 40+ years.

> I went to a 4-year college, but earned almost all of my money from self-taught programming and design skills.

College has other benefits like signalling and networking though.

Eh, unless you're going to Stanford, Duke, or an Ivy League (or maybe USC or $REGIONALLY_RENOWNED_SCHOOL), the networking is definitely not worth the price tag.

What you've written is largely hogwash.

Most fields are not so competitive that you need a degree from an A-list school simply to get your foot into the door.

But you will need to get your foot into the door. Several or perhaps many doors throughout your career. Your network, even if it is not a blue-chip list of Ivy League studs and studettes, can help greatly. Particularly with your first position.

I went to a rather unprestiguous school thousands of miles away from Silicon Valley and the network I established before graduation has directly and indirectly resulted in a lot of work for me over the years.

Anecdotal, sure, but I've heard enough similar stories to be sure that this is a commonplace experience. Not that I need to prove anything. The burden of proof rests with anybody who makes a statement like yours.

Even if the networking one does at $SOME_UNIMPRESSIVE_SCHOOL results in only a few thousand dollars per year over what one would have earned sans networking, over the course of one's working life that can easily equal the cost of a college education.

I went to a public university and the price tag was rather reasonable compared to the typical 200k+ of a private school.

They touted the network but I didn't get any meaningful business connections out of it.

1 year of working in Silicon Valley got me dozens of quality connections that turned into meaningful long-term projects.

I worked in that particular trade for quite a while, so I'm not speaking from ignorance. You move away from bucket truck work and the serious injury rates plummet (and bucket truck work -- especially line work -- pays way above average). Work for the union where safety is actually enforced and that rate plummets again.

While freak accidents happen, most are due to foolish people doing foolish things. For example, you mention getting your arm fried, but "working it hot" is almost always going to break safety regulations. I got hit with 480v once, but only because someone flagrantly broke safety regulations and cut my lockout off of a breaker.

If you think injuries don't happen at walmart, try working as a stocker for a few weeks. Only a fraction of a fraction of walmart employees are ever managers and it seems they are very often put there due to nepotism rather than merit. At least if you broke your back as an electrician, you make enough to save for retirement and the IBEW has great disability benefits.

Your last statement disregards three important facts of life. First, if everyone could get that computer job, it would pay next to nothing. Most people simply don't have what it takes. Second, as long as you like having electricity, there will be a demand for electricians. Somebody must do that job and the pay is very good. Thirdly, liking a job is not a pre-requisite. I very seriously doubt most people in the service sector like their jobs. If you're going to dislike your job anyway, you might as well go for the one with higher compensation. If you do decide to switch careers later, you'd be a lot better off with all that extra money.

> Work for the union where safety is actually enforced and that rate plummets again.

Not that easy given how weak unions are now in much of the US .

Both of my parents were union tradespeople, one of them IBEW, working on telephone poles.

I agree that the "trades" meme is merely a "grass is greener" perspective. The low capped pay and lack of personal autonomy (if not strong discouragement of it by the union perks) can make one miserable, especially when you're pushed into it at such an early age based on others' perceived assessment of your abilities.

Also, I was a terrible math and science student in high school, and found my groove in college, only to graduate with a BS in CS in the top 1% of the class of almost 1k. Just a late bloomer I guess.

> I agree that the "trades" meme is merely a "grass is greener" perspective

Nah, it's a meme being pushed with organized campaigns that take lots of money: it's an attempt to manipulate the labor pool to bring wages down in certain fields by increasing competition for jobs and increasing return to capital.

Of course, so is the similarly heavily promoted “train everyone to code” push.

Hmm. Any source on that or a piece of journalism ?

I think you overestimate the number of people attending college who "aren't college material" and underestimate the number who excel at trades. I've seen data indicating a majority portion of student loan defaults are by people who did NOT finish college, thus the worst-case scenario: they're responsible for the debt, and haven't the degree or the job to pay it back. Truly a sad place to be. You might consider the average readership of this forum isn't even your typical college-educated tech worker, but likely a more curious and intellectual type. Who is going to repair his electrical, communications, automotive, mass transit, etc infrastructure. Plumbing in non-glamorous. If you do it after hours I bet his billed rate is higher than yours. And he doesn't pay 7% on $125k of debt. His house is paid for already. My stepson has ADD and other initials to factor in. He makes $75-80k operating heavy equip. His tech school cost $25k. He owns a home. He is still close with his HS friends. 1 in 10 owns a home.

> Statistically, you still earn way more with a degree than without.

I would need to see better information on this. I would think a lot of people without a degree don't do much of anything at all and bring the average way down. It would be better to see what the average is for people who complete a trade school program vs the average of people earning a degree.

earning is a misleading figure anyway, a lot of these high paying jobs for graduates are in big cities where the cost of living offsets the higher income

> Part of the reason you go to school as a young person is that you do not have a family to feed or a house to pay off.

If you go to art school as a young person, you won't have the problem of paying off a house because you won't have a job that qualifies you for a mortgage.

My wife went to art school and is (somewhat embarrassing to me) supporting our family with her job at Amazon while I (a CS PhD) am looking for work. We even qualify for a mortgage with her income.

(Lesson: UX designers are as important as programmers)

That’s surprising to me. Why is it so hard to find a job with your CS PhD? Are you trying to get a specific research-oriented job?

There aren’t a lot of PL positions open right now, and I didn’t network as much as I should before. Along with the standard problems in applying for jobs (high stakes leetcode, ghosting after multiple successful rounds of interviewing, etc...), that I can’t just apply to a lot of positions means that it takes a bit longer than I would like.

I also have the luxury of waiting for a better opportunity rather than just taking the first one that matches.

A B.A., even in fine art, still opens up a ton of okay-paying jobs. Jobs like paralegals, retail managers, and HR often require a bachelors degree but don’t care what that degree was in.

But you can get a generic degree in English or business admin at a community college and have a fine career as a paralegal. Don’t see why you need to go to an expensive art school.

Bachelors and associates degrees aren’t equivalent. Whenever I’ve seen a job posting asking for a degree, they explicitly ask for a 4 year degree.

Agreed, I would never recommend someone go to art school unless they are absurdly talented ( and at that point: The school would probably give you a scholarship. )

Is this correlation or causation though?

Are young people who get through a degree course then super focused on getting as much money as they can because they have all this debt?

As opposed to people who don't have mountains of student debt, and can then afford to take lower-paying, better-for-their-life jobs?

Huge debt is really stressful, and hard on mental health. I don't know the comparative suicide rates of electricians and art grads, but I'd suspect art school is effectively worse for your health than a trade.

People generally have two or even three careers now. Migrating from electrician to manager is about as easy as migrating from software developer to manager.

>As opposed to people who don't have mountains of student debt, and can then afford to take lower-paying, better-for-their-life jobs

With income based repayment, you pay 10% of your disposable income (income over 1.5x the poverty rate) , so this isn't really much of an issue.

To maintain your debt, yes. But to clear it, and finally be free of it, you need to earn a lot of money. That is bound to focus the mind somewhat.

Or wait 20 years until it's cancelled. People regularly take out 30 year home loans much larger than the average student loan debt without debilitating psychiatric problems.

This isn't comparable in the least, since there's no equity built up over the course of paying off student debt.

Most people are never going to be able to access the equity unless they retire and downsize.

And people end up in situations where they can't make payments and have to walk away and take the credit hit all the time.

Worrying about the theoretical amount you owe instead of the actual amount you have to pay is just dumb.

There is also another aspect to the correlation-causation argument. The kids in college are presumably the smart ones in the cohort. We expect them to have much better outcomes than the rest based on intelligence even without getting a degree.

Does intelligence correlate to either education or wealth? I didn't think it did...

Intelligence strongly correlated with education (~0.5), and adult intelligence is mostly determined by genetics.

https://academic.oup.com/ije/article/39/5/1362/802787

The correlation between intelligence and income also substantial, but seemingly not quite as strong. The correlation between intelligence and wealth is weaker still.

https://www.bcaresearch.com/images/Peter_PPT_presentation%20... https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01602...

interesting, thanks for the info. I've met some complete idiots with PhD's, some utter morons with huge incomes, and some geniuses who didn't complete high school. But I guess that's not the normal perception.

It correlates strongly with education, reasonably well with income, and only little with wealth.

Conscientiousness is a huge factor too, but almost all of a person's attributes that would increase their earning potential also increase their chances of getting into college.

I think it's not just black and white.

Is college universally useful? No, it may leave you without knowledge on how to earn decent money, while crippling you with a heavy debt.

Is college completely useless? No, it's quite useful for some, and even indispensable for certain professions (e.g. medical doctors).

I'd say that college is useful for those who actively extract knowledge and experience from it, and that knowledge can help pay the tuition. This is definitely not 100% of students. Going to college just to hang out with kids and obtain a diploma for decoration, expecting to be passively taught, or studying stuff no business wants to pay for, is silly, of course.

> You can make that kind of money as a manager at Walmart and you do not run the risk of getting your arm fried off or falling off a telephone pole.

Yes, but we need many more trades people than managers at Wal-Mart.

Not really. We need more trade people than managers at Wal-Mart specifically, but there’s plenty of equivalent positions at other companies.

>Statistically, you still earn way more with a degree than without.

You don't actually. Among non-hispanic white individuals the college premium is at a historic low, for all other groups it's indistinguishable from zero.[1]

And as for realism or pragmatism. I am German and in Germany the majority of people still learn trades and do not go to university. They start earning a paycheck at 17 or 18, they contribute to their social security from the same point, they have good chances of taking over a business given the demographic transition, and they do not have to participate in the competitive hamster wheel that is the American college system or the overrun white-collar service sector including dozens of applications.

And while I can't speak to the crafts and trade sector in the US, in Germany being an electrician is not particularly dangerous, there are strict safety regulations in place and you don't overwork yourself, companies painfully pay attention to it. This isn't the 1920s with people balancing around on steel beams.

When I see the constant anxiety in the US of the millenial generation, the debt driven barely sustainable lifestyles and the constant competition I can only say I am thankful to have grown up in a country where there is a path for normal people to take on jobs that guarantee secure income, without largely useless academic training for a population that is frankly largely unsuited for it.

[1]https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/12/is...

Personally, I think learning a trade should be an option in high school. A trade is better than a high school diploma both in pay and practical usefulness, whereas "college prep" is almost always useless. If you learn a trade and dislike it, you should have as much time as possible to pivot to something else.

I think high schoolers should have two choices:

- Associates Degree track at a local university - apprenticeship at a local trade organization

The AA/AS by itself isn't particularly useful (a little better than a diploma though), but it gives you an introduction into college life. A trade by itself isn't particularly useful (need years of practice to master it), but it's a practical introduction to what's available without a college degree. Our current approach of teaching to standardized tests seems like the worse option since it's neither practical (college doesn't really work like the tests) nor in demand (your employer doesn't care about your standardized test scores).

Our whole education system is out of whack, and just making it free isn't going to fix it. We need more paths to success, and we currently only have one that's pushed by our education system: STEM degrees.

Sounds a bit like what we have in Norway where you have (roughly) three choices for your 11 to 13 free years in school (1 - 10 is mandatory and while you can choose Montessori and a couple of other options they all share the same subjects):

- Vocational: 2 or 3 years followed by 2+ years as an apprentice in a real company, often with a master craftsman where the apprentices pay increases from approx 30% of full pay and up towards full pay during the time you stay. In return for the limited pay they have to take time to teach you and they cannot easily let you go before your apprenticeship has ended.

- Study preparations: three years of languages (typically the two Norwegian ones, English and German but some people will choose French or Spanish or something instead of or in addition to German.) Students who aim for engineering or medicine studies will typically add math, physics and another sciency subject: chemistry and biology were popular back when I went to school.

- leave school and get a job (or more and more likely it seems: fall behind)

As for why I say roughly, there's been a very nice option where you could get certified as a craftsman and get enough subjects to enter engineering in four years.

Also there are some options for transitioning from vocational to other studies. Going the other way is pretty hard and probably involves getting a job as uncertified worker in the field, then work for 5 years, takes some courses and pass the certification test.

Note: I'm not saying this is unique. It would surprise me if something like this isn't common in many other countries.

> Personally, I think learning a trade should be an option in high school.

Lots of Americans do learn a trade in high school. Just to copy the "Programs" menu from the Tech Center at the high school where my wife teaches (suburb in VT): Automotive Technology, Building Technology, Cosmetology, Computer Systems Technology, Computer Animation & Web Design, Dental Assisting, Design and Creative Media, Childhood Education & Human Services, Engineering & Architectural Design, Natural Resources, Professional Foods, Health Informatics. I understand that many of these programs, if not all, are supposed to be a career for the students, and that many of them are thought of as hard.

There are lots of trade oriented magnate schools in LA and many of them could carry you right into LATTC then after that making six figures and full benefits boring heavy rail under the earth. The trade shortage is being tackled, in major cities at least.

The other issue is the health toll many of the trade jobs have. See what 40 years of running cable on your hands and knees as an electrician will do to you vs a cushy desk job.

Yep, exactly.

I went down this "trades are great!" rabbit hole a while ago because I had a cousin who had a friend telling him: "You can be making 6 figures in 5 years as an electrician!" I was surprised when I found out his buddy didn't have a bridge to sell him as well.

Your career is not just about money earned. It is about the lifestyle. It is about your physical health over a long period of time. It is about your chance for advancement. It is about what you are going to be doing day-to-day.

yeah because the average dev guy can run marathons, right?

Working as a dev doesn't inherently prevent one from being healthy and active enough to be able to run a marathon, just gotta spend some time being active in your spare time. But killed knees and back due to a job in trades certainly will prevent you from running a marathon, no matter what you do with your free time.

Sitting in a chair all day is horrible for people though. (To say nothing of what it does for your attitude and personality).

You can easily mitigate that by making adjustments to your workplace (adjustable sitting/standing desk), as well as by avoiding spending a lot of time in a chair and being active outside of work. With trades, you cannot really do anything outside of work to successfully mitigate the damage done to your body, unfortunately.

A lot of what I've seen is that people in the trades will encourage their kids to go for the desk jobs because the trades are hard on your body and dangerous to boot.

It always seemed like the cargo culting around trade school doesn't come from it as a career option but rather because it comes from a bias against traditional colleges. In reality what we should be doing is making both the trades and college free so that students have their choice of career and education rather than trying to pigeonhole them down one path because education has transformed from a societal good to one purely for work.

Taking your comment to its logical conclusion, then, no one should become an electrician. Too dangerous. Low (relative to a degree) pay.

Well, who then is going to fulfill this necessary role?

The licensed electricians I know make far more than degree holders, outside of comp engineers/doctors/MBA from select schools. For the vast majority of non selective schools and non rigorous degrees, an electrician should easily outearn them.

Electrician pay will also continue to rise quite a bit over the next decade. I already pay far more every year than the year before, if I can even book a decent electrician.

Perhaps people who really want to be electricians because they like the trade itself?

And how do people decide they like the trade itself? Fine line there. How are people to know about the trades if all they hear is "go to college"?

If fewer people decide to be electricians, then pay must go up to attract them, changing the calculus. If we force every high school student into trade school, on the other hand, there will be a glut of electricians and pay will go down.

Then what do we have? A lot of very angry people who feel betrayed by our insistence on trade school. And they'd be right to feel betrayed! We should be encouraging people to pursue fields that suit their interests, talents, and ambitions. If there are financial barriers then we need to tear them down.

The economy exists for the people, not people for the economy.

> Statistically, you still earn way more with a degree than without.

Applying population statistics to individuals is a fool’s errand.

Not everyone is cut out to be a software engineer.

Why it worked for you: "computer programmer"

There was a decent chance to get that success without college.

Meanwhile, what of the others who go to college? Most are not computer programmers. Lots of people get a BA in psychology, criminal justice, early childhood education, music, sociology, Spanish, drama, anthropology, journalism, or art history. These people seldom find success.

I come from a family of tradies, I was one myself for a few years, then went to uni. You can't expect to do this after about 40, maybe 50, and expect to have a lot of health problems - bad back, foo-foo valves burst etc. Whereas with the professions you can expect to work as long as you want.

Then of course there are the tradies I knew of when I was young who are dead from it, not many but a couple, I don't know anyone who is dead from computer programming.

There is perhaps one trade that seems to be OK in my experience - plumbing, its not particularly hard work and there's always demand, but you know, digging up sh*t all your life is the trade off. You don't see many old plumbers though - they're probably out in their yachts. Worked with nurses in health for a while - the number of nurses with bad backs is incredible.

Go to uni

Not every position is physically demanding or dangerous. Its quite easy to move into different fields and positions that are not physically demanding and just require a little bit of critical thinking or smart work. This idea that every trade job is dangerous or will leave you disabled is insane.

If you don't like being an electrician, you could move over into HVAC and make twice as much since you have an electrician's license. I feel your view is rather narrow.

With trades you have the ability of taking a 2 week intensive program and getting hired for $20/hr right out of school. Its a way better deal than some liberal arts education that gets you deep into debt and qualifies you to be a barista.

Older developer here with a same age friend that’s an electrician for the city. He often makes a lot more than me with overtime. He wasn’t unemployed for a year either due to interview games and ageism bullshit.

Trade school is a good, viable path, but you do make a good point.

Ask an old electrician what they want their kid to be, and (excluding the scenario of a family business) it's usually "not an electrician"

> Statistically, you still earn way more with a degree than without.

Hate to be so negative, but it looks like it's all the game of prestige in the hierarchy as it always was: https://www.academia.edu/41235398/Personal_Income_and_Hierar...

> Statistically, you still earn way more with a degree than without.

This isn't quite true. What's true is people with degrees earn way more than people without them. But people /w degrees don't equal people without degrees.

The trades also tend to be unionized with good workers' comp and disability pensions, though.

It's good that they pay for it but I still wouldn't want to be subjected to an opioid prescription for the rest of my life.

Factoring in tuition costs, plumbers earn almost the same lifetime income as doctors: https://www.high-profile.com/plumber-vs-doctor-who-brings-in...

And it's generally not a life threatening career.

That's complete bullshit. I've known plenty of plumbers, I've never met one who had almost $1 million saved up by 33--which is the example they are using.

Sure some small percentage of plumbers might make $90k after 5 years and manage to seriously save. But that's not anywhere close to normal.

Also even with the cherry picked example of a union plumber who is unbelievably disciplined with respect to saving. And a doctor who does an optional fellowship.

The doctor still comes out WAY ahead over their lifetime.

I'd guess this might have some confusion of average and median one way or the other.

Example: In 2010 the median lawyer made 78k a year while the average made 120k. Note the 50% difference.

Plumber != Plumbing business owner.

That’s the distinction most people gloss over.

So, I assume you pushed your kids to skip medical school and enroll in plumbing classes instead right? How did it go? Are they in the one percent now?

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