[blackrock]

I don’t understand the requirement for college degrees for most jobs.

Regardless of your major, a college education will now cost over $100,000. That is at least $25,000 per year.

Unless you get grants, scholarships, or some financial aid, then the brunt of this is going to be paid in loans. Loans that cannot be discharged in bankruptcy.

Now, do you want a 19 year old to be making a life decision to go into such a heavy debt burden, of which they cannot escape?

Some low level business jobs earns less than $50,000, but yet, these jobs still require some college degree. Simply because the company is lazy, and wants the best worker they can get, without having to actually pay for it.

The low earnings, the tax rate, and the cost of living to pay for an apartment to live near that job, makes the numbers illogical.

I think America, and the world, would be better served, if we went towards some kinds of journeyman and tradecraft system instead. Businesses can instead hire people with a minimum of a high school education, and train them for the jobs. Those businesses can apply for some kind of federal or state assistance if they need to, to get credit for doing this.

[topkai22]

That $100k figure really isn't true at all. To pick a school, Washington State University is $13k/year in all academic fees. Even if you take 5 years to graduate, that's still about $65k in fees.

Yes, if you include room and board into the equation it gets around $100k, but you don't get to not pay room and board by not going to university.

$65k is easily worth it if it increases your payback $10k/year over a 40 year career.

I agree that an apprentice system would be nice but having participated in an "apprentice like" training system for technical consultants it is MUCH harder to create such programs than you think.

In our case we are training people who already have college degrees and some programming experience. The rule of thumb is that we can't get them consistently billable for at least 4 months after hiring, they'll add overhead to projects for a year, and they won't pay back the cost of training them for at least 2 years. And that is with a well-structured and experienced program. How many businesses are willing to to deal with unproductive employees that long, even if they are potentially subsidized?

[mesa8]

Loans can be at least partially discharged in bankruptcy, so that is incorrect. They are more stringent, but with the current public perception of college loans, judges are more likely to agree that the conditions this must meet are true.

Secondly, college is free for a lot of people, as in some states anyone making less than $20k/yr goes to a state university for free. This isn't incredibly obvious, and some grants received may be relatively unknown, such as a grant from a college that's not on their website of $7k a year for low-income students.

You also can't generalize everyone's feelings. Some people aren't compatible with trades.

[non-entity]

I would be so much more supportive of the recent trades push if it wasnt riddled with misinformation.

Saw a guy I knew in school post a pic where there were two people. On the left was a person who was clearly supposed to represent some sort of business man, perhaps and executive. The image claimed this man made made $120k per years and had $100k in student debt. On the right was a linemen. The image claimed there made $130k a year with 0 debt.

The average salary for a lineman? Decent, but definitely nowhere near $130k. Both BLS and Glassdoor have it around $65k. There seems to be some myth going around that certain trades are an instant path ot size figures. Sure, after many many years of experience, in a specialized trade and/or in an expensive state with strong union protections you can maybe make six figures, but most trade apprenticeships I've seen dont pay much better than entry level office admin jobs I see.