Trade school or college?

Trade school enrollment is climbing, writes Callie Holtermann in the New York Times. "Sure, A.I. can write an email, the thinking goes. But can it install a sink? How about solder a ball valve?"

More than 60 percent of high school graduates head right to college, usually seeking a bachelor's degree, though many do not reach their goals. Parents and guidance counselors see college as the best path to the future. But young people are not so sure.

College costs too much and takes too long, say some Gen Zers, They've seen older siblings graduate, but struggle to find entry-level professional jobs.  Many fear they'll spend years studying for jobs that will be filled -- or eliminated -- by AI.

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"Rather than despair, a growing number of young people have concluded that skilled trades like welding, plumbing and construction might be a pragmatic way forward," Holtermann writes. "The number of students at public, two-year schools that focus on vocational and trade programs grew by nearly 20 percent from 2020 to 2025, according to National Student Clearinghouse data, and "apprenticeships and private trade schools have logged increases, too."

LaDonna Glass left Mississippi State after one year, and now earns $21 an hour as an International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers apprentice. It's a four-year program. Once certified, IBEW electricians average close to $90,000, Holtermann writes. In addition, there's the satisfaction of working in the real, not the virtual, world. “I’m watching things grow from the ground up,” Glass said.

Logan Bangert got into Penn State, but decided it cost too much. He paid $21,000, with the help of a state grant, for seven months of training in wind-turbine repair. He immediately found a job repair turbine blades for $80,000 to $90,000 a year. It's physical work. He has no fear of AI competing for his job.

Ryan Shikhman, 21, started his own HVAC business and makes over $100,000 a year, he told Holtermann. “POV: AI can’t replace HVAC,” reads text over a recent video of him welding a copper pipe to a compressor on Trades Over College.

It's very hard work, she writes. "Shikhman eventually wants to spend more time on management and less time doing manual labor."

Bring Back the Trades, which hosts skills expos and offers training scholarships, estimates that "1.4 million trade jobs will go unfilled by 2030 as a result of a wave of retirements and rising infrastructure demands."

For all the talk of AI stealing jobs, America is facing a shortage of skilled workers, writes Hechinger's Jon Marcus. There are plenty of graduates with business and finance degrees, but not enough engineers, nurses and physicians, pharmacists, teachers, construction workers and airplane mechanics, according to both government and independent sources. "Most are jobs AI generally can’t do."

The last of the baby boomers are retiring, and the generation entering the workforce is much smaller, warns the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Commission on the American Workforce.

"College and university enrollment is down by nearly two million students since its peak in 2010," Marcus writes. Due to the birth rate, the "number of college-age Americans is forecasted to decline by another 13 percent through 2041."  

A growing number of working-age Americans aren't in the workforce, reports the Chamber of Commerce. Some have taken early retirement or gone on disability or find child care costs make out-of-home work unfeasible.