South Dakota School of Mines and Technology Civil Engineering degree and Army ROTC commission 1994 (My lovely wife is a ChemE from the same fine institution. She's way smarter than me.)
As do many on here, I have the luxury of having a degreed job that still gets me outside and my boots muddy from time to time. Although each year I head toward more and more desk time as I manage more and engineer less.
Personally, I think we're in the middle of a real shift in the "standard" way to get post-high school education. Not sure how many other Mike Rowe readers/followers are out there, but he consistently makes great points about the American worker and blue collar jobs being dismissed.
With the state of the recent economy, there is a glut of people with degrees they haven't used for years. But a person just blindly adding themselves to that pool isn't a recipe for success for most young folks these days. Ridiculous college costs, education debt, and schools pricing themselves into irrelevance are worth their own conversation.
There are some real opportunities in trades or jobs that seem like "trade" work that 95% of the country is pretty quick to just write off. I'm always curious what advice other parents are giving their teens.
