Junk Food For Thought
By Mitch Berg
One the current tropes among the populist right is that “college is useless, and you should send your kids to learn a trade”.
There’s a truck loaded with cinder blocks full of truth in there – for many 18 year olds, a year or two spent learning how to weld, be an electrician or mechanic or tool and die maker would be a much faster path to self-reliance than four years at college racking up debts while learning little or nothing that one needs to succeed in the world.
Now, let’s be clear, here – I don’t think college needs to be a longer more expensive trade school; there can be value to learning a “liberal art”, something traditionally intended to teach one to think rather than strictly to design, build or fix something…
…provided that that that education actually teaches how to think.
We’ll come back to that.
As I’ve noted elsewhere, my father was a great teacher. He taught. high school speech, writing and literature, and college-level education classes. He was one of the two best teachers I ever had. He also used to agree, at least hypothetically, with the likes of Mike Rowe – the ideal education, he said, was spending a few months or years learning a trade, and then going on to some other course of more abstract study after one could pay the bills.
This, of course, may have been a little idealistic projection from a man who, on good day, knew which end of a screwdriver to hit the nail with. He was and remains a brilliant teacher – and one of the least handy people I’ve ever met, myself included.
When I was in high school. and college, I had not the slightest interest in going to trade school – not out of any sense of college being “above it all” or “better” – I was every bit as peripatetic back then as I am today, and if could have squeezed in learning how to machine metal or be an electrician, I would have.
But to my Dad’s point, I also figured I already had a trade; I’d started in radio when I was 15, and had learned a lot. I figured my fallback would be working at some station, somewhere. It wasn’t the dumbest idea, at a time when radio was a tough but viable way to make a living. It’s not advice I’d give a kid today, but that was then.
With the “trade” part figured out? I sought a life living in my head; I majored in English and minored in History and German. I also majored in Computer Science almost long enough to get the minor, but I hated it, and didn’t touch a computer for seven years after I graduated – but that’s another story. And for me, at least, the promise of a “liberal arts” education was fulfilled; I learned how to think, and when the opportunity to jam a bunch of different facets from my background together into a new career fell into my path, I was able to jump on it.
Of course, I’m not sure colleges today teach critical thinking the way Dr. Blake did.
But I come here not to wallow in nostalgia, but to weaponize it.
While I don’t disagree in the least with my Dad, or Mike Rowe, I also think this is a lousy time for conservatives who are so inclined to completely abandon the academy, if only because it’s people from Harvard and Penn and MIT who will write the histories and the textbooks and play an inordinate role in defining our culture…
…and if you see the people who are driving our system toward collapse and calamity today, that should be pretty terrifying. Because just as Califonria-style government followed Californians who fled to Colorado, a society run by the products of our crypto-Maoist university system – the judges, politicians and culture-definers of tomorrow – will follow you into your shop van or plumbing business.
Big Left has been ‘marching through the institutions” for over fifty years; they’re not going to be set back to square one by a season of scrutiny. But it’s an opportunity. And the future of a free society demands that some young conservatives, and the older ones that still control some levers of power (if only their checkbooks) take a shot at that tackle, before the current wave of barbarism completely rewrites the definition of “freedom” for a few more generations.
December 13th, 2023 at 1:17 pm
Well said. One thing I’ve noticed–my daughter is dating a mechanic–about the trades is that currently, a fair number of trades are topping out in pay not too much higher than retail or basic manufacturing. $25/hour is average for a mechanic, for reference, and other professions get up to around $30/hour. That’s not that princely when starting wages at Wal-Mart and Target are $15/hour.
So I think we need to understand, regarding the trades, that (a) barriers to entry are fairly low and (b) large players seem to work together to keep wages down. Plus, you’ve got the reality that by one’s fifties, one’s body may not always be ready to keep doing that job. You want a way out and up.
December 13th, 2023 at 1:55 pm
bike,
To a certain extent, you are correct. I call on trades people every day and wages are climbing within them, faster than any other discipline. For instance, one customer just won a bidding war with two other companies for the services of a 26 year old machinist, with just over two years of production experience. He said the “kid is sharp a knows what he’s doing”. Normally, that position would start around $31-34 per hour, but he won the bid at $37. Many shops are now offering to train someone with the desire and aptitude, something that before WuFlu, they wouldn’t have had to do.
My nephew is a plumber, with two years of new construction and remodeling experience. He just landed a new gig (not a union gig), paying him $31.45 per hour.
Eventually, the shortage of qualified trades people, will likely be giving them lawyer salaries.
December 13th, 2023 at 3:13 pm
I agree wholeheartedly with bike & boss, but I would not let the ceiling on trade wages be a deterrent to going to a vo-tech.
I encouraged my grandson to get into welding vs the alternative of borrowing the value of a top-end pickup for a few years at a state college with no idea what he would want to do with his life.
Why not spend a few years earning, then when you top out, either get into another trade like HVAC or pipe fitting, or go for a business, science or computer degree.
Hell, you won’t have to work at Caribou AFTER the degree and summer work won’t be hard to find.
Personally, I spent a few years at the U, studying geology, literature, and history – but was not really ready for school, so it was a waste of time & money, so I dropped out to work in a foundry for a few years before getting a two-year computer science degree.
Always made good money after that – but the big thing was, I never stopped reading, never stopped learning and that always kept me ahead of the game.
Even now, ten years after retirement, I still spend a few hours a day programming. I just love the doing of it.
December 14th, 2023 at 1:46 am
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December 14th, 2023 at 10:46 am
I agree with you. It just seems to me that, at this moment, it’s time to smash the old bait ‘n switch that was sold to us Boomers — “Go to college and you’ll earn more money!” That was true as long as college degrees were relatively rare. But sending almost ALL of us to college debased the coinage drastically.
Some people ought to go to college (I think I was one of those — not because I’m smarter than the average plumber, but because I’m pretty much good for nothing except head-work). For some people it’s a waste of time. We need to get to sorting again, and reduce the power of the Education-Industrial Complex.
December 16th, 2023 at 9:39 am
My almost 20yr old daughter just graduated from St Paul College, Welding school. She’s got red hair and is petite but was one of the best welders in the class in the end….a class of all guys. She wants to open her own welding shop some day and name it ‘Red Hot Welds’. She has 30K+ in the bank from her job as a server near the Xcel stadium. Smart and on her way to independence.
December 16th, 2023 at 9:43 am
I went to Normandale when I was fresh out of high school, gained credits at 1/2 the price of University and transferred them down to UW Madison towards my degree in meteorology. So I needed to go to the U to get my degree to do what I wanted to do, but if I were young today I am not sure I’d take the same route. But I ran into very little politics there besides down near State Street and the Union patio area where some stuff went on from time to time. But otherwise? A few liberal arts classes I had to take…History of Science being one, where the Leftist prof wore a black turtle neck sweater with elbow pads frequently. Classic…lol