[doorstar]

College vs. trade school isn't just about money or 'social acceptability', it's also about opportunity. A 18 year old who goes to trade school to become an electrician is going to become an electrician, they are not going to be able to change their minds in two years and become a biologist.

That kid who went to college at 18 has a lot more options. They can switch majors, they can take internships, they can get their degree in underwater basketweaving and still be considered a good applicant to a masters program. They can also take that degree and apply to a lot of 'soft' positions. A basketweaving degree won't get you a dev job at google, but it might get you a HR job.

[steffan]

It seems like an easy solution to this is to have a 'trade academy' or a coalition of trade schools that allow / require you to do a rotation in each of the related trade specialties, i.e., if building / construction related, you spend a week / month / quarter learning about plumbing, electrical, framing, mechanical, landscape, etc. This would both promote understanding of related fields and give people an exposure to a variety of potential interests.

This is not unlike the required courses that predominate pre-major studies at a traditional university (in the U.S., at least)

[doorstar]

I think it's still going to be hard to get 'middle class' parents to embrace this for their kids - and I am a 'middle class' parent.

If my kid wants to become an electrician I'd probably say "Why not major in EE?". A construction worker - why not major in Civil Engineering? If I felt my kid was fundamentally incapable of the level of effort required for those degrees, perhaps my opinion would change.

I'm on HN and I have an engineering degree, so I'm predisposed to think my kid could get one too. I'm not sure how I'd feel otherwise.

[asldkjaslkdj]

What you're describing is often done in trade high schools. Freshman will rotate through trades and pick one to continue on.

Once you need a career it doesn't really work like that though, often you're working years as an apprentice in a specified trade before you can even think about branching out on your own.

If you switch trades you're back at the bottom with apprenticeships all over again.

Someone like an English major can much easily change careers as long as they're somewhat adjacent (e.g., copywriting, research, journalism, etc) and generally starts off at a higher salary depending on their degree level. Until you hit masters level most degrees are broad generalized education.

Trades are specializations. If you're unsure about which trade you want to get into, you'd likely be better served with a business degree (which is another generalized area of study)... at least that can be applied across trades. Many tradespeople struggle with the business side of things despite being very practiced at their trade.

[AnimalMuppet]

Sure, they can change their mind and become a biologist. But in doing so, they throw away the two years. They have to start college from zero, because their trade-school classes don't translate into college credits.

You can start college at 20 as easily as at 18. The problem is that you get nothing for the two years (except, I suppose, you can work as an electrician to pay for college, instead of working at McDonalds).

[doorstar]

I'm guessing that our hypothetical student must or might take a college-level Biology course as part of their undergrad degree, and that exposure might cause them to change their mind about their chosen field.

I also don't know how easy it is to get into the same college at 20 that one would have gotten into at 18. If at 18 they got accepted to a school that cost 100K/year (as the parent comment suggests) then they may find that school closed to them 2 years later.

[gowld]

Also, there are no underwater basket weaving degrees.

There are art degrees, for artists, not people expecting to make well paying careers out of it.

[Miraste]

"Underwater basket weaving degrees" is a great piece of rhetoric because it lets the listener project their personal most hated field in its place. If you think gender studies degrees are useless, I don't see the value in marketing, and we run into this little meme: boom, suddenly we're attacking higher education hand in hand. Epstein conspiracies are another example. Lots of people think he didn't kill himself. Ask them what did happen and they're at loggerheads, but if you can steer thoughts away from that you have broad public support. It's a clever if disastrous way to build American anti-intellectualism.