Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire The case for trade school

The cost of education does not equate to the quality of the end product.

Liberal Arts degrees should be outlawed in the US or at the least, no student loans should be allowed for a trash degree. The first year of trade school should be free and student loans thereafter should be interest free. It would put millions of inner-city thugs to work. A hand up vs a hand out.

Up here journeyman electricians are base salary just about 100k yearly. Other trades near that as well. Add in some overtime and your over 100k no problem. Not bad when school is no hinderance or massive debt.
Nephew asked me about 18 years ago what to do, I told himElectrical. He went to trade school, worked and saved, we flipped a few houses for extra income he bought/sold improved what he lived in I think 3 times now and is not yet 40 with a net worth of 1.4 million. He’s still churning full time for a major commercial electrical contractor and with overtime earns nearly 130k. Darn those trade schools.

As a comparison his older brother of three years took the exact same route and even better doing long stints in the Arctic oil facilities for very good money. That nephew cannot save a dime, nor will work any more than he is forced to. He has zero to his name and net, and only a pension some day to look forwards to. You get what you put in as they say, trades or college. ( unless you get into government )

Osky

I could get behind that.

We developed a program with Oakland University which is somewhere up in Michigan. Never heard of the school until we started working with them. Now they graduate engineers that have experience with our processes and tools, and we hire a few of them every year. The others can find jobs in our field with our competitors or partners if they want.

The trick is whatever you choose to do, you can't coast thru it. Earn that GPA, take on those extra projects, get that internship experience - and you're going to land a high paying quality job when you graduate.

I saw what you did there with that dyslexic thing too - heh

There are several large tech companies including Google and Amazon who have done exactly the same thing in Romania and other central European countries. They help form the curriculum for what they need and then hire the graduates. Pretty much solves their on the job training learning curve.

We have a similar program with Purdue. I have two recent Purdue grads working for me now.

But its a fight to get colleges to do that. We are working with Clemson and Virginia Tech, we have state funding to support it, a request by the governor to the schools to act on it and the backing of the largest employer in the state - and those schools still won't work with us developing a curriculum. They are very particular about letting people come in and setup shop on their site I guess.

Its become so frustrating we've reached out to an NAIA school to work with us.

You haven't met my family doctor. I look forward to HER doing a prostrate exam...

I've given my wife many a prostrate exam..................... they are fun!

Prostate!?!?!?!? Not so much!

A very positive tilt could be made by forcing colleges and universities to cosign all their student loans.

I worked in a high school for 6 years as an SRO. I can attest to the loss of shop classes and the pushing of college diploma's. It's been 12 years since I retired. I certainly hope the attitude has changed. I still have not seen new lathes, mills or welders show up yet. but, we do have a community college in town and it would be possible to work a deal with them, if they would.

kwg

a friend of mine who is in education and I were talking about renting out space at a local trade school and run a for profit program where anyone interested could sign up to take these two week mini classes. I thought there would be interest to charge a couple of hundred dollars and teach classes like basic welding, plumbing, carpentry, electrical work, roofing, basic car maintenance, computer building and repair, mower maintenance - topics like that. They might be 4 - 8 classes that would be 2 hours each with hands on.

I think we ultimately decided that we'd be competing with youtube and not pull it off but I still like the idea.

Yup .... No one pushes the trades anymore and they're dying for good tradesmen out there. No one either knows about the work or wants to do that work. All the kids now want to do IT. The work is in the trades with good jobs and good pay.




You're right about the women welders. I inspect the welds here in the refinery. Most girls here are great welders. I think they take more pride in what they do because some men don't think they should be doing that work. See more and more in it all the time working with the pipefitters and boilermakers.

IIRC student aid began after Russia beat us into space.... and then it was only for students going into fields deemed critical to National security


https://www.bestcolleges.com/blog/what-is-stem/

STEM comprises the following major areas of study:

Natural, physical, and life sciences, including medicine
Computer, electronics, and other technology-related disciplines
All types of engineering
Mathematics, or any field involving a heavy application of mathematical principles

That was one of the best produced short videos I have ever seen. Kudos to Chloe, Mike, and Mr. Kyosaki. And gosh Chloe is pretty!

Mike Rowe for head of education department....

When I was in middle school, we had retard inclusion in the shop class

Joan Glick, a waterhead chick. She got her hand caught between the guard on the belt sander.

Pain is a universal language even if youre barely smarter that a maple tree.

Could hear her screams over the noise of that 3-phase Powermatic planer.

Our local community college does something like that. It is not as diverse as what you are suggesting. It's mostly welding, State mandated schools and computer skills. I have done the welding class once but I want to go back an improve on my TIG skills. Unfortunately, at my age it's only for my use and not for hire. But, it's out there for others who want to jump into a second career or part time gig.

kwg

Nonsense... I've worked with a lot of female welders in a lot of different scenarios- from clean room welding exotic chemical tubing to pipefitters and all of them have been excellent welders and good workers. As an electrician I would need them to weld something in place for me at times or work with them to install a shared piece of equipment and they were always professional and their work was better than most guys who call themselves welders in shops...

Started with Pop in the concrete business as forced child labor, one brother a lawyer, the other a doctor (neither wanted anything whatsoever to do with the family concern). I stayed in the business and got the college diploma cause everyone in the family said you had to have it these days (early 70s).

Younger brother (lawyer) went to work as a prosecutor for the IRS, he retired after 30, was always mad that I made more money than him, (no balls, no blue chips) has a comfortable retirement. Older brother (Dr.) is a millionaire and I am thankful everyday I am not him.

His first house in Memphis, he wanted a privacy fence put up, but thought the local contractors were too expensive. He called and asked me if I could get the material and come put one up for him, so I said sure I will work the weekend with a couple of guys and get it done. That Sunday afternoon, his second wife (the nurse that got her Mrs. degree at the hospital he did his residency at) asked me to check the light fixture in the garage, they had asked the homebuilder to look at it, but he had not sent anyone back for a couple of weeks, I asked if they checked to see if there was a bulb in it...they both assured me that was not the problem, I got a ladder and took the globe off and of course there was no bulb...

I paid attention in life, and took 4 years of Vo Ag. learned the basics of welding and electrical, in fact I learned a lot of skills there that I still use all the time. I also took 4 years of math and all the science I could get in high school as well (my Mother was the teacher), CLEPed out of required math at college, (which I paid for myself, no debt at the end). Was out in 3 years from a "second rate" UT school. Over the course of my construction life it did get me a job once in Texas as none of the other applicants had a degree, and all the Chemistry I took has stood me in good stead.

What I see as a need for positions to fill are electricians and certified welders. That and equipment setters/riggers, of course we build steel mills, galvanizing lines and aluminum mills.

India is overrun with that. The students there don't get degrees. They get Microsoft and Cisco certifications. Their cirricula are set by Google, Amazon (AWS), Dell/EMC/VMware...

It's good that you run into resistance with that. You're a government contractor, funded by taxpayers and public debt, using state funding (more taxes and public debt) to support Federally-funded universities (more public debt) to fulfill the governor's request. You're basically a Communist outfit and operations like yours is what's ruining the US economy -- and the talking heads are all proposing more of the same to solve the problem. Exactly what wouldn't be better if your public-debt funded and big-government directed operation just shriveled up and died?