Does anyone with a career/technical/vocational post-high school education regret it?

Well, my brother went into the trades and as an electrician he has been pulling in just about $100k a year the last several years. 2008-2011 were a bit tough, but he managed and things were pretty good for him before the housing markets fell apart. He lives in Wisconsin, so his pay is good for the cost of living.

Ya ya wrote:

Well, my brother went into the trades and as an electrician he has been pulling in just about $100k a year the last several years. 2008-2011 were a bit tough, but he managed and things were pretty good for him before the housing markets fell apart. He lives in Wisconsin, so his pay is good for the cost of living.

I run an escort-service. My daughters make about $2000 per client and only need to work 2 evenings per week. Pretty sweet, if you ask me.

Can't speak to welding, millwright, or plumbing etc. apprenticeships (most start at +$20 an hour), but here's the deal in Automotive Vocational . Right now both Japanese and US Automakers are fighting each other to buy the bigger CC/JC automotive service programs in the US. They are doing this because there is a severe shortage of qualified service techs that can work on all the new cars at the dealerships-shade tree mechanics just won't do anymore.

What is happening is that when, say, Toyota buys(i.e. fully funds the program and takes control of the curriculum so that it only graduates Toyota Techs with a 2 year cert) a program, they insure the quality of their workforce. Added bonus is that that they get to select the candidates for the program. Once accepted, they pay the student's school costs(in exchange for a work commitment after graduation) and set them up with a job slinging oil changes at a dealership for $16-20 an hour for the first year. Year 2 may involve a paid internship type program where they move up to $25 an hour as they learn.

At graduation the techs have their pick of where they want to work, and many times are already lined up with a job before they graduate. My personal experience with this is that my brother is the shop foreman at a big name dealership. His top 4-5 techs, out of about 20 on the floor all make $100,000-$125,000 a year, with only a 2 year vo-tech cert! The "lazy" guys who just don't want to work that hard pull in $60-75k.

Now, let me also say that these guys bust their ace to make this kind of money. They do engine pulls, transmission swaps, etc. Diff rebuilds, suspension work. It's not easy and it is definitely hands on work, but if that is your aptitude, why would you go in the hole +$150,000 to get a bachelors that will for sure not net you that kind of money in the time that these techs get to decent money. Anyway, I'm too old for it now, but if I were 20 years younger, I would definitely look at the Trades for making serious dough as a young person.

I've thought that learning a trade could be good. Getting into HVAC or plumbing or electrical - it isn't going to get outsourced to Asia, and (hopefully) robots won't be doing it any time soon. I've often wondered if that work would have suited me better, but I was a good student and my family wouldn't have gone for it.

bluewhitecollar wrote:

I've thought that learning a trade could be good. Getting into HVAC or plumbing or electrical - it isn't going to get outsourced to Asia, and (hopefully) robots won't be doing it any time soon. I've often wondered if that work would have suited me better, but I was a good student and my family wouldn't have gone for it.

+1

In my family, we all had to go to college, no choice, and many a day I've sat in a cubicle and regretted it ...

One of the major risks of trades is your trade can become completely obsolete through technological advancement or consumer preference or industry shifts. Then you have to retrain yourself or find someway to apply your skills to something else. At some point, you just get too old and tired to do that, but it might be before you are ready to retire. So your stuck in a position where you are too old to be hired for entry level positions.

Whereas, in white collar jobs, you can move up to some BS management or executive position, not really have to know what’s going on at the ground level and keep up with advancements, spin some BS, and still have a decent career.

One example that comes to mind are watchmakers. It wasn’t until the 60s that quartz, battery powered watches were a thing. Then it was all downhill for mechanical watches and watchmakers. We still have both around, but in the same numbers with the same opportunities. Let’s say your 55 when quartz watches comes to dominate the market, it’s all you’ve done your entire life, and all your business tanks faster than you can realign your skills and career. It’s tough to readjust.

But if you’re a 55-year-old manager at Swatch that can’t touch type but knows how to play the management game, you see the writing on the wall for mechanical vs. quartz watches, decide to fire all the watchmakers and hire electrical engineers, and get to keep your job and might even be hailed for your decision. So that’s the advantage of a white collar collar career path.

Obviously, that’s a simplification with one example, but highlights a theoretical risk of the trades as compared to a four-year university career path.

Now if you got a some obscure liberal arts degree that only gave you skills to talk and write about some obscure subject very few people care about, I wish you luck.

And F, some for all the grammatical errors in my post, f-in phones.

My two cents on this...

Today, college graduates still on average make more than non-college graduates. Also, there is a level of professionalism that is more prevalent in jobs that require college degrees. People in blue collar jobs typically have to deal with more sophomoric behavior from co-workers.

I was about to call major BS on this but after looking into the numbers it's not far off. Granted, the 100k+ range is for super certified master techs at like Audi and BMW

I’m an MRI tech. It’s the job I was meant to do, but that’s me