DeaneBarker.net

More college-educated jump tracks to become skilled manual laborers: We’ve discussed this here before – in the U.S., college is traditionally defined as the one true goal, and anything less is considered…well, less.  This needs to change.

Economists and labor scholars […] point to policymakers, guidance counselors and parents who don’t value the trades and overvalue college as the gateway to success. As a result, American students come to trade apprenticeships relatively late, often after they’ve already tried college. The average age of the beginning apprentice in the United States is 25; in Germany, 18.

"It’s hard to get high school counselors to point anyone but their not-very-good students, or the ones in trouble, toward construction," said Dale Belman, a labor economist at Michigan State University. "Counselors want everyone to go to college. So now we’re getting more of the college-educated going into the trades."

In many cases, college is over-valued.  There are a lot of people who shouldn’t go to college because it’s not necessary for what they want to do with their lives.  But they feel pressured into it, and stumble out four years later, deeply in debt (or, worse, two years later, also in debt but with no degree).

This is symptomatic of how the U.S. has destroyed our manufacturing base.  We sent manufacturing overseas because the U.S. was going to embrace the “information economy,” where everyone worked in an office and no one ever got their hands dirty.  We need to raises our expectations and perception of the trades.

Consider:

Taylor was accepted into an apprentice program run by unions for plumbers, pipe fitters and sprinkler installers. He now works for a mid-size construction firm in Maryland and vacations in Europe.

Apprentices start out getting paid half the scale for experienced workers, with raises every six months. Ultimately, many make as much or more as they would in jobs requiring a college degree. Licensed journeymen can expect to be paid $65,000 to $85,000 a year, depending on overtime.

Makes you look at plumbers a little differently, doesn’t it?