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Comment by graham1776 | Hacker News Reader

Do you see local technical colleges and career colleges succeeding in the future? Dental schools, technical assistance/maintenance/etc, welding/plumbing trades, etc? It seems there is huge swath of different types of trade schools out there...I am trying to figure out which ones are going to survive with physical schools and classrooms/labs vs which ones will migrate online?

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Until a job can be performed remotely, I don't see how it can be taught remotely, i.e. not hands on.

That is a great way to look at it. I am a real estate investor looking into the pros and cons of investing in the campuses of technical schools. They are everywhere. I think your sentiment is a great way to sort the healthy/longer lasting schools from the ones open to technology change. Fields like nursing, dental hygiene, server maintenance, etc will be more likely to succeed than paralegal, medical billing, etc. Some jobs are inherently (and always will be) onsite.

> I am a real estate investor looking into the pros and cons of investing in the campuses of technical schools.

I don't know anything more than what you provided in this post, but it sounds like you're talking about for-profit education centers. These are generally looked down upon and are coming under heavy scrutiny by the U.S. goverment as of lat for their false advertisements and broken promises.

Yes, for-profit education centers. I'd really like to look into this more...Do you have any sources I could read into regarding decline and/or stigma? I feel there is more of a stigma on the larger "vocational" schools like University of Phoenix that offer college-esqe experiences and soft skills vs. blue collar/technical schools that have clear job paths and hard skills after graduation. True? Or are they all stigmatized?

I don't think they're stigmatized, I think we need more of them. I recruit employees at some of these 'hard' technical schools for things like CNC machinists.

Given the multitude of things you can learn to fix in your house using YouTube videos, (plumbing, electrical, appliances, finish work, etc) I think it's clear that you don't need an onsite instructor to learn trade work.

It would obviously be tricky to learn plumbing without wrenches or pipes, but I don't think an onsite instructor is required.

There's even an app called Fountain that lets you facetime with a plumber who then tells you what to buy/fix. I tried it when my bathtub faucet wouldn't shut off. It was surprisingly convenient.

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