The College Calculation Has Flipped
Posted by freedomforall 2 days, 8 hours ago to Education
Excerpt:
"Buried in new data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) is a bearish sign for a college education, the first time we’ve seen this in 50 years. Trade workers without a college education are gaining new advantages in employment stability and even in earnings. On paper, a college degree still earns more but that edge is slipping too.
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The Washington Post explains: “The unemployment gap between workers with bachelor’s degrees and those with occupational associate’s degrees—such as plumbers, electricians and pipe fitters—flipped in 2025, leaving trade workers with a slight edge for six months out of the past year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It’s the first time trade workers have had a leg up since the BLS started tracking this data in the 1990s.”
It’s a bit ironic that this story was posted just days before the Post itself laid off fully one-third of its workers, a gutting of the staff of a major paper that we’ve never seen before.
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Consider the costs of college beyond the outrageous financial expense. We are taking people who are at the height of their learning potential, the very time of life when becoming an adult and a great worker is at a premium, and sticking them in childish environments. College encourages terrible lifestyle choices, finding shortcuts, drugs, drinking too much, and otherwise experimenting with dangerous choices.
And the student does this for fully four years, during the most impressionable early years of adulthood, leaving graduates with no work ethic and a wildly distorted view of what life is all about. It seems nearly unfair to throw such people into professional life. They are ill-equipped.
Compare this reality with someone who leaves high school to learn a trade, whether that is welding, construction, or coding. After four years, such people already have a gigantic advantage over their peers in college. They know what it is to get to work on time, do what the boss says, achieve things, manage money, and so on, essentially skills that kids matriculating in college do not have."
"Buried in new data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) is a bearish sign for a college education, the first time we’ve seen this in 50 years. Trade workers without a college education are gaining new advantages in employment stability and even in earnings. On paper, a college degree still earns more but that edge is slipping too.
...
The Washington Post explains: “The unemployment gap between workers with bachelor’s degrees and those with occupational associate’s degrees—such as plumbers, electricians and pipe fitters—flipped in 2025, leaving trade workers with a slight edge for six months out of the past year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It’s the first time trade workers have had a leg up since the BLS started tracking this data in the 1990s.”
It’s a bit ironic that this story was posted just days before the Post itself laid off fully one-third of its workers, a gutting of the staff of a major paper that we’ve never seen before.
...
Consider the costs of college beyond the outrageous financial expense. We are taking people who are at the height of their learning potential, the very time of life when becoming an adult and a great worker is at a premium, and sticking them in childish environments. College encourages terrible lifestyle choices, finding shortcuts, drugs, drinking too much, and otherwise experimenting with dangerous choices.
And the student does this for fully four years, during the most impressionable early years of adulthood, leaving graduates with no work ethic and a wildly distorted view of what life is all about. It seems nearly unfair to throw such people into professional life. They are ill-equipped.
Compare this reality with someone who leaves high school to learn a trade, whether that is welding, construction, or coding. After four years, such people already have a gigantic advantage over their peers in college. They know what it is to get to work on time, do what the boss says, achieve things, manage money, and so on, essentially skills that kids matriculating in college do not have."
Edit add: I had my furnace/air conditioning system worked on recently and was delighted to have a smart 20-something show up to do the work and he knew what he was doing! Prior times it was a 50 or 60-something that came to my door.
Although the skilled trades offer a better choice for career, at present, look down the road a few years. Who will be able to afford new construction, whether for homes, businesses, mining or data centers ... as the wheels fall off the AI / Data Center / Bitcoin Mining operations? Oh, right, the State will have ample funds for new construction.