Skilled trades vs college. What is your opinion?
I’ve noticed something weird online: a huge percentage of the people aggressively telling young people to “skip college and learn a trade” don’t actually work in the skilled trades themselves.
They romanticize it from the outside.
They’ll point to union electrician or lineman wages like that’s the standard outcome, when in reality those are often some of the best-case scenarios, not the norm. If you actually look at U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics wage data, most tradespeople are \*not\* making $150k+ a year.
And a lot of the “6 figure tradesman” stories conveniently leave out:
\* insane overtime
\* travel work
\* years of apprenticeship
\* inconsistent employment
\* physical wear and tear on the body
People talk about trades like they’re some cheat code to financial success while ignoring the reality that many of these jobs are physically brutal. Knees, backs, shoulders, hearing, joints — there’s a reason older tradesmen constantly talk about pain.
Another thing I notice is that trade advocates often compare learning a trade to getting a completely non-marketable degree with massive debt attached to it. Of course becoming an electrician or plumber is probably a better financial decision than borrowing $120k for a random liberal arts degree with no career plan.
But that’s not the only alternative.
They also act like every college costs $30k–$80k per year when there are way cheaper paths:
\* community college
\* in-state universities
\* scholarships
\* employer tuition assistance
\* transferring after 2 years
\* commuter schools
A nursing, accounting, engineering, IT, or healthcare degree from an affordable state school is a completely different conversation than taking on huge debt for a low-demand major.
People also love bringing up tradesmen who own successful HVAC/plumbing/electrical companies. But at that point you’re really talking about entrepreneurship, not just “learning a trade.” There are successful entrepreneurs from both blue collar and white collar backgrounds.
And honestly, one of the biggest tells is this:
A lot of skilled tradesmen themselves encourage their kids to go to college if they can.
That doesn’t mean trades are bad. Society absolutely needs skilled labor, and some people genuinely thrive in those careers. But the internet has swung so far in the anti-college direction that people act like college is always a scam and trades are guaranteed wealth.
Neither path is guaranteed.
Both have pros and cons.
But the online conversation around trades feels heavily romanticized by people observing from the outside.