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My understanding of this new college is that it's aimed at solving the perceived problem of four-year Catholic liberal arts schools, namely that they graduate a

My understanding of this new college is that it's aimed at solving the perceived problem of four-year Catholic liberal arts schools, namely that they graduate a lot of young adults with the same (or roughly the same) degrees, but without an obvious career path laid out for them. So, to begin with, high school graduates who go to these schools were predisposed to go to a Catholic liberal arts college. If the College in the article is successful in its mission, these folks will graduate with the degree they wanted, in the surroundings/environment they wanted, but also with solid career possibilities. People have been swearing up and down for over a decade that the US graduates far more people with bachelors degrees than we "need", and that more parents[0] should be encouraging their kids to learn a trade. This new college is a response to that. [0] it's seldom "us"; the problem seems to be isolated, in many peoples' minds, to other peoples' kids, and they don't want their own kids to be the ones who learn a trade.

sircastor 4y ago
My mom frequently encouraged me to learn a trade on top of my chosen (at the time) field (Special Effects). She always pointed out that people would need their cars fixed and would need their electrical wired.
- jseliger 4y ago
  people would need their cars fixed This may turn out to be false: electric cars require almost no maintenance.
  - distortedsignal 4y ago
    You’ll still need alignments. You’ll still need the steering adjusted. ABS modules can fail, those need to be replaced. Just because we’re getting rid of two large issue generators in the engine/transmission system, doesn’t mean the new machines are bulletproof. People are going to need their cars fixed.
    - DiabloD3 4y ago
      I'd also like to mention that half of the parts in any given Tesla are off the shelf parts shared with other car brands. Just normal boring things you'd never think of... but ones that also require NHTSA approval, thus, a small number of Chinese companies have a monopoly on those otherwise boring parts. This came up when the pandemic started, and Tesla had to halt production lines waiting for the cargo ship to arrive from overseas because Tesla doesn't make that part. We have like 3 actually good mechanics locally... most of what they do is related to alignment, suspensions, and consumables that owners don't feel comfortable doing themselves. All three of these still apply to a Tesla, even though they don't need their oil changed, they still have tires, antifreeze, air filters, brakes, etc, and that's still bread and butter work for the local shop.
  - mensetmanusman 4y ago
    Actually, one issue insurance agencies are having is that it almost takes an electrical engineering degree to fix an electric vehicle. They would love it if you could fix a vehicle instead of having to replace the entire thing, which is what the OEMs want.
    - toast0 4y ago
      > They would love it if you could fix a vehicle instead of having to replace the entire thing, which is what the OEMs want. The auto insurance industry knows how to influence car makers, they run the IIHS crash testing rating system, and they could probably also rate cars on repairability. Although, sometimes the safety features make it hard to repair, so there's some tradeoffs there.
  - ancientworldnow 4y ago
    Teslas spend more time receiving service than almost any other modern car. EV's also need tires rotated and changed far more often than ICE due to their greater weight and torque.
    - drewg123 4y ago
      My 4 year old Tesla has had several unscheduled service visits. None of them were for anything EV related. All of them were for Tesla-specific or "new car builder" things. Eg, main infotainment replacement (from ancient arm to modern intel for better performance), ball joint replacement at 40K miles, forgotten tow package when my car was delivered, improperly installed windows, etc, etc, etc.
  - tenpies 4y ago
    I realize this is a common trope among Tesla fans, but you should really call your local electric vehicle mechanic and ask him how business is doing. Spoiler: it's booming.
    - gruez 4y ago
      >but you should really call your local electric vehicle mechanic and ask him how business is doing. that anecdote is only indicative of short term market conditions. It's sort of like saying that trucking jobs are safe because there are truck driver shortages today, ignoring the impending doom of automation in the next few decades.
      - HWR_14 4y ago
        > It's sort of like saying that trucking jobs are safe because there are truck driver shortages today, ignoring the impending doom of automation in the next few decades. If it's still decades out, that means it's still reasonable to suggest to people looking for a career. Changing careers at 38 is something a lot of people do, for instance after 20 years in the military.
    - bitexploder 4y ago
      There is definitely less overall maintenance required. The total number of mechanics needed would definitely decrease if everyone was driving electric. We did zero maintenance other than brake fluid check and tires in 3 years. This experience is typical. Certainly we will need more independent electric capable shops than we have now, but there is a definite first mover advantage at play. Also, cars get wrecked and need repairs. Body shops will always be a thing too. Still, these things are simpler, have less parts, and are easier to service in general.
      - Schnitz 4y ago
        > We did zero maintenance other than brake fluid check and tires in 3 years. This experience is typical. That's nothing special these days, look at the maintenance schedule of a new Toyota Corolla, except 3 oil changes (and that's only in the US where this is done ridiculously often) there's nothing ICE specific on there...
  - worthless-trash 4y ago
    When electric cars stop crashing, we're effectively dead.
- jameshart 4y ago
  Special effects is a trade. And people will always need stuff that snuck into shot rotoscoping out. Don’t worry.
  - funstuff007 4y ago
    It is now. We don't know when this person's Mom was giving the advice.
  - majormajor 4y ago
    People will always need their car fixed locally, though. It's reasonable to be concerned about jobs that could be performed anywhere. "Take this thing out" is a much easier request to ship off than even most other information/tech jobs.
  - sircastor 4y ago
    I didn’t actually go into Special Effects. Sometimes I wish I did, but Software Development pays better with more flexibility. I once had a friend comment when we were talking about job security that the first thing to go when a recession hits is dance lessons and Karate classes. At the time it felt like film making was very boom or bust
- Baeocystin 4y ago
  When the first dotcom crash hit, I paused working in tech and welded at a shipyard for a while. Enjoyed the work, and was very, very thankful I had a fallback skill!
3a2d29 4y ago
To add, there are so many kids that go to college just because it’s suppose to be the next chapter of life. Allowing people to learn trades while still having “the college experience” I think would fix this.
- ethanbond 4y ago
  Kids go to college because even despite the wildly unacceptable costs, it remains the single best investment a person can make in their future earning potential. They go to college because it is actually very likely the correct decision with the information they have at the time.
  - 3a2d29 4y ago
    If this were true, and most kids are doing a cost/benefit analysis about future wealth, then we would say far more engineering/math majors.
    - ethanbond 4y ago
      College is the best investment a young person can make even outside of STEM. Obviously the odds of financial upside varies discipline to discipline, but within most of them, college degrees are worth the money as compared to not getting a college degree (not to mention that most disciplines are entirely inaccessible without a degree). Lots of people out here who can actually affect the labor market and affect the way student financing works, and instead of hiring people without college degrees and instead of electing people who can reform financing, they just ask students to take a decidedly stupid bet on not getting a degree. It's a silly way to solve the problem.
kwatsonafter 4y ago
This is going to turn our country backwards. We're the richest country in the world. We should be training our citizens to be PhDs and exporting innovation and culture. The standard for "skilled trade" should be world-class skills (Hyperbaric Welding, Robotics, Civil Engineering; ie. "skills an advanced society would export") and not work that can be exported to the developing world. These, "advanced skills" require a level of critical thinking that requires college education. We're beginning to forget that we can't have an advanced society without a well-educated and informed voting populace. Relevant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfsburg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfsburg
- abakker 4y ago
  Sure, but college attendance is very high now and wasn’t back when we had a “more informed electorate”. Educational achievement is not a catch all for actually being a thinking and critical person. Also, not everyone has equal potential, and the people who do have it may not want to use it. Having many trade paths, not just elite ones helps our society to match achievement and desire. We certainly need the full spectrum and should encourage the development of more choice.
- chadash 4y ago
  I need a plumber. And I don't care what plumbers in Vietnam charge, because I need a plumber here. And if everyone I know made twice as much money, we'd still need plumbers, maybe even more so, and we'd just pay more for them.
  - a5seo 4y ago
    “If I had a million dollars We wouldn't have to eat Kraft dinner But we would eat Kraft dinner Of course we would we'd just eat more”
- teakettle42 4y ago
  First, we still need plumbers, painters, and tradesmen of all sorts. Second, not everyone is equipped to earn a PhD by significantly advancing our knowledge in a useful field. In fact, the majority of people are not. Third, the demand for degrees — due to the idea that everyone must go to college, and misguided subsidies to make that happen — already far exceeds what colleges are able to supply while still being achievable by the majority of their customer base. The result has been degree inflation, cost inflation, and a huge number of useless workers with useless degrees unable to pay off their crippling college debt.
dragonwriter 4y ago
> My understanding of this new college is that it's aimed at solving the perceived problem of four-year Catholic liberal arts schools, namely that they graduate a lot of young adults with the same (or roughly the same) degrees, but without an obvious career path laid out for them. No, it's aimed at solving a perceived problem of the Catholic working class, that they aren't effectively equipped and harnessed as a political arm of the Church to shape civil society. The people this is aimed to attract is not people who would otherwise go to traditional liberal arts colleges and universities, Catholic or otherwise.
IncRnd 4y ago
> My understanding of this new college is that it's aimed at solving the perceived problem of four-year Catholic liberal arts schools, namely that they graduate a lot of young adults with the same (or roughly the same) degrees, but without an obvious career path laid out for them. The top of the home page states their aim, "Learn a trade,earn a degree, and graduate without crippling debt. The College of St. Joseph the Worker forms students into effective and committed members of their communities by teaching them the Catholic intellectual tradition while training them in skilled and dignified labor. We teach our students to think, but also to pray, to love, and to build."
- tptacek 4y ago
  That's their stated goal, but their staffing suggests a truer revealed goal, which is political rather than practical: they aren't accredited to offer a degree, the degree they offer isn't valuable in the trades they hope to serve, they don't have instructors with credentials in the trades, and they cost more than a community college. What they do have is a founder and coterie of teaching fellows that share a peculiar ideology. By way of example: "electrician" is one of their 5 trades, and they have no listed electrician faculty.
analog31 4y ago
>>> People have been swearing up and down for over a decade that the US graduates far more people with bachelors degrees than we "need", and that more parents[0] should be encouraging their kids to learn a trade. The trades are not without their issues, however. Many of them are physical jobs. The trades people who have come to work at my house, if they're my age (58) are hobbling and broken. Their hands look like hell. Many are sunburned. Many if not most of them work for tiny businesses that receive virtually no oversight. Encouraging the trades might make sense in a country with a strong safety net, free health care, better labor laws, stronger unions. The American public figures who are promoting the trades also tend to be doing nothing about those things, or are even opposed to them. I've heard that the trades are a good option in Europe.
- TimTheTinker 4y ago
  > Encouraging the trades might make sense in a country with a strong safety net, free health care, better labor laws, stronger unions. This is just my own observation, but the tradesmen I've seen do OK in the US are those that own and run their own business -- even those that have just 1 tradesperson working. Think "Inland Plumbing LLC" run by a guy and his wife out of their house. Yes, many trades are back-breaking work. I have a relative who was a home inspector for years (crawling around in attics, crawl spaces, and roofs all day is exhausting), and he did struggle at times to pay to raise several kids. Owner-operator electricians and plumbers in particular (and especially those rated for commercial work) can do very well.
- worthless-trash 4y ago
  The local tradies in Australia, -definitely- do okay.
- throwaway0a5e 4y ago
  The biggest problem (and not everyone sees it as one) with the trades is that there's a lot less opportunities to coast through middle age without putting in effort ahead of time. You only see the 58yo that comes to unclog your drain. You don't see the 58yo who's name is on the van. You don't see the one who has some comfy job as a building manager for some commercial facility.

sircastor 4y ago

My mom frequently encouraged me to learn a trade on top of my chosen (at the time) field (Special Effects). She always pointed out that people would need their cars fixed and would need their electrical wired.

jseliger 4y ago
people would need their cars fixed This may turn out to be false: electric cars require almost no maintenance.
- distortedsignal 4y ago
  You’ll still need alignments. You’ll still need the steering adjusted. ABS modules can fail, those need to be replaced. Just because we’re getting rid of two large issue generators in the engine/transmission system, doesn’t mean the new machines are bulletproof. People are going to need their cars fixed.
  - DiabloD3 4y ago
    I'd also like to mention that half of the parts in any given Tesla are off the shelf parts shared with other car brands. Just normal boring things you'd never think of... but ones that also require NHTSA approval, thus, a small number of Chinese companies have a monopoly on those otherwise boring parts. This came up when the pandemic started, and Tesla had to halt production lines waiting for the cargo ship to arrive from overseas because Tesla doesn't make that part. We have like 3 actually good mechanics locally... most of what they do is related to alignment, suspensions, and consumables that owners don't feel comfortable doing themselves. All three of these still apply to a Tesla, even though they don't need their oil changed, they still have tires, antifreeze, air filters, brakes, etc, and that's still bread and butter work for the local shop.
- mensetmanusman 4y ago
  Actually, one issue insurance agencies are having is that it almost takes an electrical engineering degree to fix an electric vehicle. They would love it if you could fix a vehicle instead of having to replace the entire thing, which is what the OEMs want.
  - toast0 4y ago
    > They would love it if you could fix a vehicle instead of having to replace the entire thing, which is what the OEMs want. The auto insurance industry knows how to influence car makers, they run the IIHS crash testing rating system, and they could probably also rate cars on repairability. Although, sometimes the safety features make it hard to repair, so there's some tradeoffs there.
- ancientworldnow 4y ago
  Teslas spend more time receiving service than almost any other modern car. EV's also need tires rotated and changed far more often than ICE due to their greater weight and torque.
  - drewg123 4y ago
    My 4 year old Tesla has had several unscheduled service visits. None of them were for anything EV related. All of them were for Tesla-specific or "new car builder" things. Eg, main infotainment replacement (from ancient arm to modern intel for better performance), ball joint replacement at 40K miles, forgotten tow package when my car was delivered, improperly installed windows, etc, etc, etc.
- tenpies 4y ago
  I realize this is a common trope among Tesla fans, but you should really call your local electric vehicle mechanic and ask him how business is doing. Spoiler: it's booming.
  - gruez 4y ago
    >but you should really call your local electric vehicle mechanic and ask him how business is doing. that anecdote is only indicative of short term market conditions. It's sort of like saying that trucking jobs are safe because there are truck driver shortages today, ignoring the impending doom of automation in the next few decades.
    - HWR_14 4y ago
      > It's sort of like saying that trucking jobs are safe because there are truck driver shortages today, ignoring the impending doom of automation in the next few decades. If it's still decades out, that means it's still reasonable to suggest to people looking for a career. Changing careers at 38 is something a lot of people do, for instance after 20 years in the military.
  - bitexploder 4y ago
    There is definitely less overall maintenance required. The total number of mechanics needed would definitely decrease if everyone was driving electric. We did zero maintenance other than brake fluid check and tires in 3 years. This experience is typical. Certainly we will need more independent electric capable shops than we have now, but there is a definite first mover advantage at play. Also, cars get wrecked and need repairs. Body shops will always be a thing too. Still, these things are simpler, have less parts, and are easier to service in general.
    - Schnitz 4y ago
      > We did zero maintenance other than brake fluid check and tires in 3 years. This experience is typical. That's nothing special these days, look at the maintenance schedule of a new Toyota Corolla, except 3 oil changes (and that's only in the US where this is done ridiculously often) there's nothing ICE specific on there...
- worthless-trash 4y ago
  When electric cars stop crashing, we're effectively dead.
jameshart 4y ago
Special effects is a trade. And people will always need stuff that snuck into shot rotoscoping out. Don’t worry.
- funstuff007 4y ago
  It is now. We don't know when this person's Mom was giving the advice.
- majormajor 4y ago
  People will always need their car fixed locally, though. It's reasonable to be concerned about jobs that could be performed anywhere. "Take this thing out" is a much easier request to ship off than even most other information/tech jobs.
- sircastor 4y ago
  I didn’t actually go into Special Effects. Sometimes I wish I did, but Software Development pays better with more flexibility. I once had a friend comment when we were talking about job security that the first thing to go when a recession hits is dance lessons and Karate classes. At the time it felt like film making was very boom or bust
Baeocystin 4y ago
When the first dotcom crash hit, I paused working in tech and welded at a shipyard for a while. Enjoyed the work, and was very, very thankful I had a fallback skill!

3a2d29 4y ago

To add, there are so many kids that go to college just because it’s suppose to be the next chapter of life. Allowing people to learn trades while still having “the college experience” I think would fix this.

ethanbond 4y ago
Kids go to college because even despite the wildly unacceptable costs, it remains the single best investment a person can make in their future earning potential. They go to college because it is actually very likely the correct decision with the information they have at the time.
- 3a2d29 4y ago
  If this were true, and most kids are doing a cost/benefit analysis about future wealth, then we would say far more engineering/math majors.
  - ethanbond 4y ago
    College is the best investment a young person can make even outside of STEM. Obviously the odds of financial upside varies discipline to discipline, but within most of them, college degrees are worth the money as compared to not getting a college degree (not to mention that most disciplines are entirely inaccessible without a degree). Lots of people out here who can actually affect the labor market and affect the way student financing works, and instead of hiring people without college degrees and instead of electing people who can reform financing, they just ask students to take a decidedly stupid bet on not getting a degree. It's a silly way to solve the problem.

kwatsonafter 4y ago

This is going to turn our country backwards. We're the richest country in the world. We should be training our citizens to be PhDs and exporting innovation and culture. The standard for "skilled trade" should be world-class skills (Hyperbaric Welding, Robotics, Civil Engineering; ie. "skills an advanced society would export") and not work that can be exported to the developing world. These, "advanced skills" require a level of critical thinking that requires college education. We're beginning to forget that we can't have an advanced society without a well-educated and informed voting populace. Relevant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfsburg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfsburg

abakker 4y ago
Sure, but college attendance is very high now and wasn’t back when we had a “more informed electorate”. Educational achievement is not a catch all for actually being a thinking and critical person. Also, not everyone has equal potential, and the people who do have it may not want to use it. Having many trade paths, not just elite ones helps our society to match achievement and desire. We certainly need the full spectrum and should encourage the development of more choice.
chadash 4y ago
I need a plumber. And I don't care what plumbers in Vietnam charge, because I need a plumber here. And if everyone I know made twice as much money, we'd still need plumbers, maybe even more so, and we'd just pay more for them.
- a5seo 4y ago
  “If I had a million dollars We wouldn't have to eat Kraft dinner But we would eat Kraft dinner Of course we would we'd just eat more”
teakettle42 4y ago
First, we still need plumbers, painters, and tradesmen of all sorts. Second, not everyone is equipped to earn a PhD by significantly advancing our knowledge in a useful field. In fact, the majority of people are not. Third, the demand for degrees — due to the idea that everyone must go to college, and misguided subsidies to make that happen — already far exceeds what colleges are able to supply while still being achievable by the majority of their customer base. The result has been degree inflation, cost inflation, and a huge number of useless workers with useless degrees unable to pay off their crippling college debt.

dragonwriter 4y ago

> My understanding of this new college is that it's aimed at solving the perceived problem of four-year Catholic liberal arts schools, namely that they graduate a lot of young adults with the same (or roughly the same) degrees, but without an obvious career path laid out for them. No, it's aimed at solving a perceived problem of the Catholic working class, that they aren't effectively equipped and harnessed as a political arm of the Church to shape civil society. The people this is aimed to attract is not people who would otherwise go to traditional liberal arts colleges and universities, Catholic or otherwise.

IncRnd 4y ago

> My understanding of this new college is that it's aimed at solving the perceived problem of four-year Catholic liberal arts schools, namely that they graduate a lot of young adults with the same (or roughly the same) degrees, but without an obvious career path laid out for them. The top of the home page states their aim, "Learn a trade,earn a degree, and graduate without crippling debt. The College of St. Joseph the Worker forms students into effective and committed members of their communities by teaching them the Catholic intellectual tradition while training them in skilled and dignified labor. We teach our students to think, but also to pray, to love, and to build."

tptacek 4y ago
That's their stated goal, but their staffing suggests a truer revealed goal, which is political rather than practical: they aren't accredited to offer a degree, the degree they offer isn't valuable in the trades they hope to serve, they don't have instructors with credentials in the trades, and they cost more than a community college. What they do have is a founder and coterie of teaching fellows that share a peculiar ideology. By way of example: "electrician" is one of their 5 trades, and they have no listed electrician faculty.

analog31 4y ago

>>> People have been swearing up and down for over a decade that the US graduates far more people with bachelors degrees than we "need", and that more parents[0] should be encouraging their kids to learn a trade. The trades are not without their issues, however. Many of them are physical jobs. The trades people who have come to work at my house, if they're my age (58) are hobbling and broken. Their hands look like hell. Many are sunburned. Many if not most of them work for tiny businesses that receive virtually no oversight. Encouraging the trades might make sense in a country with a strong safety net, free health care, better labor laws, stronger unions. The American public figures who are promoting the trades also tend to be doing nothing about those things, or are even opposed to them. I've heard that the trades are a good option in Europe.

TimTheTinker 4y ago
> Encouraging the trades might make sense in a country with a strong safety net, free health care, better labor laws, stronger unions. This is just my own observation, but the tradesmen I've seen do OK in the US are those that own and run their own business -- even those that have just 1 tradesperson working. Think "Inland Plumbing LLC" run by a guy and his wife out of their house. Yes, many trades are back-breaking work. I have a relative who was a home inspector for years (crawling around in attics, crawl spaces, and roofs all day is exhausting), and he did struggle at times to pay to raise several kids. Owner-operator electricians and plumbers in particular (and especially those rated for commercial work) can do very well.
worthless-trash 4y ago
The local tradies in Australia, -definitely- do okay.
throwaway0a5e 4y ago
The biggest problem (and not everyone sees it as one) with the trades is that there's a lot less opportunities to coast through middle age without putting in effort ahead of time. You only see the 58yo that comes to unclog your drain. You don't see the 58yo who's name is on the van. You don't see the one who has some comfy job as a building manager for some commercial facility.