Originally posted by @George W.:
Originally posted by @Jamie Atkinson:
A lot of talk about STEM, learning a trade, MBAs, and the like, but what about a good ole liberal arts degree?
I'm dismayed by the general deemphasis on the humanities.
Conventional thinking has evolved regarding folks paying through the nose for pedigree and miring themselves in debt as they begin adulthood. Rightly so. Pedigree and the cost to attain it is increasingly a bad idea for most folks.
However, we should be careful not to throw out the baby with the bathwater, so to speak. Who'll be left amongst us to put all of our great economic and scientific advances into a proper historical context? Google won't help us. Food for thought.
Lots of great points but college is not for every single person. Do you think with artificial intelligence, there will be a day where computers outpace man in scientific discoveries?
I understand you didn't go to college so you take the default position its a binary choice "to go or not go". You have chosen not to go, and its an exercise for yourself justifying your actions; its not.
Which I said in my last posts. This about placement on the value-chain. Lets take some really good comparisons:
HVAC Technician vs HVAC Engineer (Mechanical)
So Median pay is $87K for the Engineer its $47K for the Technician.
Trade School costs money and will get you to various levels of certs in 6-18 months. Or a local union offers you a slot and they offer you a training wage of $14/hr mixed between classroom and job-sites. So its co-op basically. You get $2/hr wage increases as you move up the program, and finish at the final wage of $26/hr in two years. Then if you get your card/journeyman you get more.
Even if someone spends 5 years at University, assuming they made $0 (which is rare) and spent $100K+, which is again rare, that means you didn't work, and paid for tuition, fees, food, housing completely using Student Loans. You come out ahead in going to college in 10 years. Because a Technician gets paid based on hourly output, and the wages paid is fairly fixed. IF the Technician multiples themselves via a business of course they make more money. But that's a small percentage of people entering the trades. I see Engineers working until they are 70 all the time. Tradesman typically cant make it that long, or significantly cut back their work after a certain age (50s).
Most trade schools run about $15K-$18K for a year. If you get a union/organization to train you of course its cheaper. But thats no different than my buddy who had his company repay his 15% of his loans every year as long as he performed a certain level. Or another went into finance and got a scholarship from a Utility Company, and then had Internships paying $25/hr every summer.
Then of course people will say STEM has a return on investment always. Which yes, it does. But I have a "Liberal Arts Degree" that often gets made fun of. But I moved into a technical field where I leverage the knowledge regularly (couple Accounting, Systems, Database courses go a long way). Then in my Real Estate business same thing. I work in Data Management/Governance and Analytics. But I made $20K-$30K a year while I was in college for 6 years, I ended with $22K in debt (I went to Community College first). I make over 6 figures now in my 9 to 5, plus I have 15 properties, then a limo service. I graduated college in Dec 2008, started off at $9/hr, then jumped to $15.50/hr in 2 years, $48K 2 years later, $70K two year later, and 2 years after that six figures. Also from 2009-2016 I was a Guardsman in the ANG and earned money(in addition to my 9 to 5 wages) that way (plus a signing bonus).
The moral of the story is basically there is more than one way to skin a cat. When people are debating this topic its often anecdotal, and emotional no true data backs up people's claims of what is being made in the trades, from BLS, IRS, or even Census Data which tracks job profiles of top 10% earning households at the Census Tract, or Zipcode level. Saying you will go into debt $100K+to get some viewed low wage earning degree ex. Underwater Water Basketweaving, or Gender Studies (favorite catch all for this comparison). Versus paid training in a skill trade making $55K in 9 months (which is rarely the case) Only 5% of people attending undergrad leave with more than $100K in loans. Even more, when looking at what jobs make up what income brackets in density look at this study (2014 so little dated), Laborers are low on the scale and Truckers range greatly up and down the scale. But are less frequency as they move up the income scale. The trades are a great tool to potentially create a robust business, but it will not get you into the top 10% of household earners which is about $160K nationally or $180k in my state of Michigan or $270K in NJ (your state).
AI and Productivity tools have been disrupting the labor market sign Eli Whitney created the cotton gin. In 1915 Henry Ford employed 1400 people with his famous $5/day wage (who met the requirements lol) who had to complete this arduous process of nailing together fabricated parts. Well someone invented a nail a gun, 2 years later he needed only 300 people and he didn't need a to pay them $5/day anymore. I have literally installed an ERP system that allowed organizations to reduce their headcount from 100 people in support staff (clerks, accountants, admins, etc) to maybe 40-60 people in 3 years. I am working on a project at a Fortune 25 company that will reduce headcount of 300 people on go-live. This ranges from warehouse workers to people doing reporting (financial and operational) on inventory. The classic "mailroom" job at many companies are gone. Before companies needed hundreds on people to distribute communications across multiple work-sites in a small area. Today 5-10 people manage all the communication applications for organizations with 10,000+ people. If anyone remembers Cadillac's Commercial a few years back of the dancing robots people felt it was tone deaf because those robots put lots of people out of work. My wife's uncle programs these type of machines at $95/hr (advanced degree in Physics) and he drives all over Michigan, OH, and Ontario servicing them. It wasn't only blue collar workers wiped out, but millwrights too.
Anything thats a repeatable process will be wiped out by AI. Thats call centers agents, or even entry level accountants. Robots/Machines will wipe out jobs always. A friend of ours is an anesthesiologist makes about, $400K, well his hospital employed over a dozen. Because of monitoring and medical technology on shift they have one doctor monitoring machines of patient vitals throughout the facility, another making rounds, and another to respond to emergencies/codes. They cut their needs for a high-cost, critical role in half almost and each remaining doctor got a nice little bump in pay.
