[keiferski]

AFAIK students are routed into apprenticeship programs quite early in Germany and some other European countries, early enough that American sensibilities find the idea off-putting.

The idea that your future career outlook is basically determined by the time you’re a young teenager is seen as unnecessarily limiting.

In practice there are plenty of apprenticeships for the trades, but they start in high school or later and are functionally socially invisible to people that go to college. Probably because there is more economic segregation in the US than in most European cities.