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You can thank the unlimited backstop of federal student loans for people to study at any subpar school in any number of useless degrees. This has siphoned off

You can thank the unlimited backstop of federal student loans for people to study at any subpar school in any number of useless degrees. This has siphoned off the historical supply of labor in trade schools.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
You can also blame society for undervaluing tradesmen. If the pandemic has taught us anything it is that even though we are able to recognize how essential a lot of jobs are, we will still refuse to respect or properly compensate the people who work them.
- hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
  > If the pandemic has taught us anything it is that even though we are able to recognize how essential a lot of jobs are, we will still refuse to respect or properly compensate the people who work them. Maybe for some types of frontline workers, but certainly not for skilled tradesman, who are making bank right now and have for at least the past 20 years since I've lived in my current city. And in terms of "refuse to respect", honestly I think it's the opposite: supply has been so high for skilled tradesmen in my area that it is customers who have consistently been disrespected. I can't tell you the number of times I've hired a plumber, AC guy or other worker, confirmed a time, and then that person just doesn't show up, or at best you get a call 15 minutes before saying they're canceling. It always baffled me how these businesses could give such poor service (I mean, a lot of this type of work is referral based), but it's because demand is just so high they can do that. Of course it's not everyone, and once I found a good, reliable plumber I hung on for dear life, but the lesson I've learned is that workers follow same incentives of supply and demand as employers do.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
    Ask yourself this though: why aren't people going to trade schools more often? If it's such a high demand career, with such reasonable pay, then surely it should attract talent; especially when one considers the extreme affordability of trade school in comparison to university education. But we don't see this, why? I posit that it is because people who work trades are looked down on socially. People point at the mechanic, or plumber, or HVAC technician and say to their kids "you have to go college so you don't end up like that guy".
    - NonContro 5y ago
      One of the major advantages of being a small businessperson is rarely talked about: the ability to minimise taxes. You can live in your workplace, have a company car, company utilities, company equipment. Some customers will pay you cash. You can easily allocate business income to your spouse or children (if you live in a country without combined income taxes). You can buy products at wholesale rates. When you're just an employee, you usually have very few of these tax optimisation opportunities. The other factor is that the education system is dominated by people with university degrees (ie. teachers), who consciously or not direct their students to pursue the same lifestyle and career values as them.
    - lizknope 5y ago
      People I know look at restaurant workers and retail store employees as the people you say "You go to college so you don't end up like them." I would never say that about mechanics, plumbers, and HVAC technicians. They have skills that I respect and value. I often ask them what was wrong and their analytic and problem solving skills often impress me. I got a new HVAC system with a 2 stage compressor. Everything was working fine until the summer when it would shut off cooling just when it got hot even when the thermostat was saying it was cooling. The technician determined that the system worked fine in "low" mode and when the thermostat went into "high" mode the enter system shut off. He traced the thermostat wire through the crawl space and found a splice. 20 years earlier when the house was built someone spliced the cable and only spliced together a few wires that were needed for that simple system. He connected all of them and now the 2 stage compressor works great. It took him an hour of debug going back and forth measuring stuff with a multimeter inside and outside. I was impressed.
      - AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
        > People I know look at restaurant workers and retail store employees as the people you say "You go to college so you don't end up like them." That certainly happens even more often, but within that statement is also an implication that one must go to college to avoid that kind of work. And why is that kind of work so bad? Mostly because they have to deal with people who treat them like garbage because they think so little of them.
- JohnWhigham 5y ago
  This one's massive, and probably the biggest culprit. I was fortunate enough to be in an area where you could choose the default high school (college prep), or be bussed to the regional vocational school where you alternate doing one week of academic work and one week of your trade. And of course, those that went to the vocational school were looked down on as being dumber. And once you're in the college prep high school, it's just always looming over you: what colleges you looking at? What major do you want to study? What are your safety schools and reach schools?? You are looking at colleges right now while you're only 15 and a freshman and have no idea what the fuck you want to do for the rest of your life right??? And then that's how you land up with the only 25% of kids that enter college actually graduating. So many kids who aren't sure what they want to do (or just straight up aren't cut out for that kind of work) are shoved into college, rack up debt, drop out with nothing to show for it, and don't know where to go next.
  - jl2718 5y ago
    There was only one kid in my middle school that went to the regional tech school. His parents were both PhDs and he got into MIT. That’s probably an outlier, because many if not most of his classmates were only there because they got expelled from their local school. Regardless, he said it was awesome.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago

You can also blame society for undervaluing tradesmen. If the pandemic has taught us anything it is that even though we are able to recognize how essential a lot of jobs are, we will still refuse to respect or properly compensate the people who work them.

hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
> If the pandemic has taught us anything it is that even though we are able to recognize how essential a lot of jobs are, we will still refuse to respect or properly compensate the people who work them. Maybe for some types of frontline workers, but certainly not for skilled tradesman, who are making bank right now and have for at least the past 20 years since I've lived in my current city. And in terms of "refuse to respect", honestly I think it's the opposite: supply has been so high for skilled tradesmen in my area that it is customers who have consistently been disrespected. I can't tell you the number of times I've hired a plumber, AC guy or other worker, confirmed a time, and then that person just doesn't show up, or at best you get a call 15 minutes before saying they're canceling. It always baffled me how these businesses could give such poor service (I mean, a lot of this type of work is referral based), but it's because demand is just so high they can do that. Of course it's not everyone, and once I found a good, reliable plumber I hung on for dear life, but the lesson I've learned is that workers follow same incentives of supply and demand as employers do.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
  Ask yourself this though: why aren't people going to trade schools more often? If it's such a high demand career, with such reasonable pay, then surely it should attract talent; especially when one considers the extreme affordability of trade school in comparison to university education. But we don't see this, why? I posit that it is because people who work trades are looked down on socially. People point at the mechanic, or plumber, or HVAC technician and say to their kids "you have to go college so you don't end up like that guy".
  - NonContro 5y ago
    One of the major advantages of being a small businessperson is rarely talked about: the ability to minimise taxes. You can live in your workplace, have a company car, company utilities, company equipment. Some customers will pay you cash. You can easily allocate business income to your spouse or children (if you live in a country without combined income taxes). You can buy products at wholesale rates. When you're just an employee, you usually have very few of these tax optimisation opportunities. The other factor is that the education system is dominated by people with university degrees (ie. teachers), who consciously or not direct their students to pursue the same lifestyle and career values as them.
  - lizknope 5y ago
    People I know look at restaurant workers and retail store employees as the people you say "You go to college so you don't end up like them." I would never say that about mechanics, plumbers, and HVAC technicians. They have skills that I respect and value. I often ask them what was wrong and their analytic and problem solving skills often impress me. I got a new HVAC system with a 2 stage compressor. Everything was working fine until the summer when it would shut off cooling just when it got hot even when the thermostat was saying it was cooling. The technician determined that the system worked fine in "low" mode and when the thermostat went into "high" mode the enter system shut off. He traced the thermostat wire through the crawl space and found a splice. 20 years earlier when the house was built someone spliced the cable and only spliced together a few wires that were needed for that simple system. He connected all of them and now the 2 stage compressor works great. It took him an hour of debug going back and forth measuring stuff with a multimeter inside and outside. I was impressed.
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
      > People I know look at restaurant workers and retail store employees as the people you say "You go to college so you don't end up like them." That certainly happens even more often, but within that statement is also an implication that one must go to college to avoid that kind of work. And why is that kind of work so bad? Mostly because they have to deal with people who treat them like garbage because they think so little of them.
JohnWhigham 5y ago
This one's massive, and probably the biggest culprit. I was fortunate enough to be in an area where you could choose the default high school (college prep), or be bussed to the regional vocational school where you alternate doing one week of academic work and one week of your trade. And of course, those that went to the vocational school were looked down on as being dumber. And once you're in the college prep high school, it's just always looming over you: what colleges you looking at? What major do you want to study? What are your safety schools and reach schools?? You are looking at colleges right now while you're only 15 and a freshman and have no idea what the fuck you want to do for the rest of your life right??? And then that's how you land up with the only 25% of kids that enter college actually graduating. So many kids who aren't sure what they want to do (or just straight up aren't cut out for that kind of work) are shoved into college, rack up debt, drop out with nothing to show for it, and don't know where to go next.
- jl2718 5y ago
  There was only one kid in my middle school that went to the regional tech school. His parents were both PhDs and he got into MIT. That’s probably an outlier, because many if not most of his classmates were only there because they got expelled from their local school. Regardless, he said it was awesome.