At the factory attached to my place of employment, I'm not sure what jobs are actually left that are related to any of the skilled trades. Most of our workers are assemblers. We do hire people with 2 year trade school degrees, or equivalent military service training. When our welder retires, we will probably outsource the welding.
Now we get pieces from shops that have skilled trades such as machinists, but I don't think those shops require a 4 year degree. I don't think carpenters, roofers, or plumbers have bachelors degrees. Many of the businesses that hire those people are family owned, and hard to break into if you're not connected.
As for health care trades, well, employers might be willing to bear the cost of the training, if there was only one employer: The government.
The old guard of skilled welders who did the welding by hand are being replaced (and not happy about it) by young guys like him. My friend learned his job through a 3-year program at the local community college. His job involves a lot less of the tacit knowledge a skilled welder would have (judging the quality of a joint by feel) and a lot more theoretical knowledge of metallurgy. Instead of intuitive judgement, he relies on the methods of nondestructive (x-ray scanning) and destructive (cutting a test weld in half and inspecting it under an electron microscope) testing.
Companies that invested a lot in their employees paid less than companies that had no such expenses, so it became common to have a new hire, spend 3 years on trainings and leave for a better salary. This competition pressure made us adjust and move the training budget into salaries.
Why stay in the same place when you make more moving?
People don't like moving, it adds uncertainty. It is done because HR and management knows this and has taken advantage of it to not hand out raises.
It makes more economic sense to train your workers if people tend to stay with one company for a long time.
Tech employers usually offer reimbursement for online training, conferences, books, etc. That seems commonplace and enables business models of PluralSight and alike.
Some also bring outside consultants and training firms for in-house seminars, some pay for conference expenses, and some even reimburse tuition for a professional development course.
but when govt started handing out loans like candy, then of course the employer would rather the university train the person for them.
it moves the cost of training from the employer to the employee paying for their own training with debt
Notice how the high school graduation rate among 25-29 year-olds rose between 1940 and 1950. Those are people who graduated high school between 1929-1934 and 1939-1943. Before WWII.
This pre-WWII trend is consistent with the post-WWII trend, up until ~1978 when effectively "everyone" graduated high school. In other words, this has been happening since before WWII, and WWI had nowhere near the civilian mobilization as WWII, so the demobilized wives/children argument doesn't explain the inter-war increase.
As for college:
Notice how the number of 25-29 year-olds with college degrees rises dramatically between 1948 and 1951 and then slowly through about 1960. That's WWII vets using the GI bill to go to college (18-21 year-olds starting 1945 to 1948). Then the increase tapers off.
There's another significant rise between 1965 and 1978. That's boomers avoiding the Vietnam draft with college deferments. Then it levels off (actually, decreases) for 20 years until the late 90's.
The late 90's rise corresponds to the late-80's / early-90's push to throw student loans at anyone with a pulse.
Starting in 2008, the rate starts rising again: Young adults of all ages staying in or going back to finish college because the Great Recession killed a bunch of jobs. Plus, probably, some amount of people who started college around 2002 to avoid being drafted for Iraq (which didn't end up happening anyway).
This is an interesting angle. Do you think it is a mutually escalating war of trying to screw each other or maximize one's own gains that has resulted in a hostile relationship between employees and employers? What would mutual de-escalation look like?
Union representation on the board and broadly shared profit sharing as part of all employee compensation packages.
Get everyone rowing in the same direction.