Vice: Generation Z is Skipping College and Going Into the Trades to Make Fat Money with No Debt

What cannot go on, will not.

As the Brookings Institution noted in 2017, participation in career and technical education (CTE) has declined for several decades. That was in part because of a lack of funding and the fact that many states implemented more stringent academic requirements. However, the growing belief that everyone should obtain a college education also surely played a part. The National Center for Education Studies found that the number of CTE credits earned by American high school students declined by 14 percent between 1990 and 2009.

But the jobs are still there. NPR reported in April that the pressure to attend a four-year college remained so strong in American society that many high-paying jobs in the trades were currently sitting empty. Melissa Burg, the principal of Queens Tech, insisted that New York City's Department of Education and some savvy parents had taken note of this dynamic, increasingly regarding a bachelor's degree as the new high school diploma.

"I think those [trade] jobs go unfilled because skilled labor is looked down upon, even though those skilled labor people make more money than I do," she explained. "I don’t know if people don’t want to work as physically hard as they used to, or if they see their families who’ve worked hard physically, or if those families are saying, 'Don’t do what I did.'"

The article actually doesn't have much evidence that this is the hot new trend, though, despite promising that in the title.

posted by Ace of Spades at 01:30 PM

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