Alternatives to College

JackH2021
Wed, 16 Aug 2023 01:56:06 +0000

Our school system has a vocational campus that trains students in manufacturing fields like mechtronics, programming, CNC machining, and machinists. Students go half time to their normal high school and half time to the vocational campus and graduate with a HS diploma and certification in their chosen field in five years with no debt. At an info session, the head of the program was touting examples of machinists making over $100k a year out of the program.

In other news, we met a 22 year old machinist (I don’t know if he was a grad of our system vocational school) who was earning $60/hour straight time. For a standard 2,080 hour work year, he grosses $124,800; throw in minimal overtime and he is grossing over $150k. This is compensation for a straight hourly worker, not shift manager or operation head. We have a friend who owns a machine shop and his income puts all but a few of my college classmates to shame (and my classmates with similar incomes were serial entrepreneurs or got stock in tech startups early in their careers).

It boggles my mind how some in our society look down on people who did not attend college, including skilled trades and business owners, who are financially far more successful than the vast majority of liberal arts grads. I find it disconcerting that kids out of HS are not entering construction and manufacturing trades because our economy desperately needs them.