Garret Morgan received the same consistent message as the majority of high school kids in America: Go college. Purchase a bachelor’s degree.
In 2018, Morgan stated, “I’ve always been told, ‘If you don’t go to college, you’ll end yourself on the streets. Everyone is so enthusiastic about attending college.
So he gave it a shot for a bit. But he gave it up and enrolled in ironworker training, which is what he was doing on a weekday morning in a plain. High-ceilinged structure with a concrete floor in an industrial park close to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.
Morgan and a number of other men and women were equipped with safety harnesses. Heavy wrenches dangling from their belts, and work boots and hard caps. They were putting 600-pound I-beams in place while being timed.
The need for ironworkers was growing at the time, and it is still doing so today. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the industry is expanding by 4% yearly. The average hourly pay for ironworkers is $27.48, or $57,160 annually. While Morgan wasn’t in the Pacific Northwest Ironworkers shop, he was already working on a construction site. He was making $28.36 an hour plus benefits when he was 20.
Five years later, he has a full-time job and works “six-10s,” which is business slang for 10 hours per day, six days per week. He contributed to the construction of Microsoft’s data center as well as Seattle’s Rainier Square Tower. Every day, I’m loving it, he added. It was without a doubt the best decision.
What about his high school friends? “Perhaps they’ll make as much as I do someday.”
Some Job alarms
While earnings in the skilled trades are rising due to a lack of employees. The financial benefit of earning a bachelor’s degree is declining even though its cost. And, the average debt it leaves students with are still high.
Yet, high school graduates have been persuaded so forcefully to pursue a bachelor’s degree. That paying occupations that call for less time-consuming and less expensive training are leaving unfilled. This has an impact on those kids and seriously jeopardizes the economy.
Mike Clifton, a retired professor of machining at the Lake Washington College of Technology for more than two decades, stated in 2018 that “parents want success for their kids.” They become fixated on [four-year bachelor’s degrees] and do not become aware of the shortage of tradesmen until they employ a plumber and must pay for their services.
Good positions in skilled trades were left unfilled
Good positions in skilled trades were left unfilled. According to a 2017 report by the Washington State Auditor, because students are nearly uniformly being encouraged to pursue bachelor’s degrees. Current job market data hints that this is still the case both nationally and in Washington State.
President Biden mentioned “jobs paying an average of $130,000 a year. And many do not require a college degree” in this month’s State of the Union speech.
The Washington auditor suggested, among other things. That career counseling begin as early as the eighth grade and include options that call for less than four years of college.
According to Chris Cortines, a co-author of the research, “there is an emphasis on the four-year university pathway” in high schools after it was published. But, according to the most recent data from the National Student Clearinghouse.
Approximately three out of ten high school graduates who enroll in four-year public universities nationally do not graduate with a degree within six years. Nearly one in five four-year private colleges have that ratio.
Being more aware of different possibilities can be just what they need, according to Cortines. The types of wages that apprenticeships and other career fields pay. The fact that you do not pay four years of tuition and you are paid while you learn. And, the perception that college “is the only path for everyone,” he said, “make it clear that these other paths really need some additional consideration.”
And it’s not only in the state of Washington.
According to the Associated General Contractors of America, today approximately 90% of construction companies worldwide are having problems locating suitable workers; in Washington, the percentage is 88%. Together with drywall installers and sheet metal specialists, ironworkers are still in particularly short supply.
According to the White House, the $1.2 trillion federal infrastructure plan, which was Biden’s signature piece of legislation and was approved by Congress in 2021. It will generate 1.5 million construction jobs annually for the next 10 years. Increasing the percentage of all jobs associated with rebuilding the country’s infrastructure from 11% to 14%. Thus, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median pay for construction jobs is higher than the median income for all jobs.
According to Amy Morrison Goings, president of the Lake Washington University of Technology. Which trains students in various professions, “the economy is absolutely bringing this issue to the fore,” There isn’t a day that goes by when a company doesn’t ask the professors. “Who’s ready to go to work?” in contact with the college.
And, according to the Georgetown Center for Education and the Workforce. There are roughly 30 million employees in the United States that don’t require bachelor’s degrees and pay an average of $55,000 per year.
Nonetheless, the race for bachelor’s degrees goes on. Their inflation-adjusted median earnings were lower in 2018. The most recent year for which data is available than in 2010, despite the fact that those who receive them are more likely to be working. And, earn more money than those who don’t. This advantage appears to be waning.
What is the American dream and the best value for your money?
The American dream and the best value for your money! According to Kate Blosveren Kreamer, deputy executive director of Advance CTE, an association of state leaders involved in professional and technical education, is the bachelor’s degree. “The difficulty is that it’s frequently used as a fallback. Due to the simple “Go to college” mentality that pervades the high school. People are attending college without a strategy or job in mind.”
Finding employment in the trades or even manufacturing does not imply that you may skip college after high school. Certificates, certifications, or associate degrees are typically required by regulators and employers. Nonetheless, they are less expensive and time-consuming than obtaining a bachelor’s degree.
In Washington State, for instance, the cost of tuition and fees for in-state students to attend a community. Or, technical college was less than half that of a four-year public institution last year. And, less than a fifth of that of the least expensive private four-year college.
Washington is not the only state that encourages students to pursue trade school. According to a 2017 Brookings Institution assessment. At least 39 states have taken action to promote vocational and technical education. And, many of them have increased financing for it.
Federal legislation that was proposed in Congress in January. It would allow some short-term workforce programs to receive Pell Grants from the government. According to its backers, “for too long, the college-for-all ethos led Americans toward expensive and frequently unproductive education options.” Less Americans are obtaining the skills they need to succeed as our nation faces a historic labour shortage.
The issue of branding
According to proponents of vocational and technical education, money is not the only problem. Convincing parents that it leads to rewarding careers presents an even greater hurdle.
Many recalls “voc-ed” from their high school days, which isn’t exactly what they want for their own children, according to Kreamer. The Washington State Labor Council of the AFL-Kairie CIO’s Pierce added: “It kind of has this stigma of being a nasty job. ‘That’s hard labor — I want something better for my kid or daughter.'”
According to Goings, the institution’s president, the Lake Washington Institute of Technology, which is roughly 20 miles outside Seattle, changed its name from Lake Washington Technical College to avoid being mistaken for a vocational school.
These beliefs feed the concern that, if students are encouraged to consider the trades as early as the seventh grade, low-income, first-generation, and students of color will be directed into blue-collar jobs while wealthy, white classmates are encouraged by their parents to pursue bachelor’s degrees.
Low-income and minority children
Low-income and minority children were being tracked into these paths when CTE was still vocational education, according to Kreamer, which contributed to the system’s true disinvestment at the time. “Do you want to focus on the folks who would benefit most from these initiatives, and — is that tracking? There is this tension.”
High schools like to highlight the percentage of their graduates who continue on to four-year colleges and universities in an effort to gain status and rankings as well as to support real estate values.
After graduating from high school, Jessica Bruce attended a community college mostly because she was signed up to play fast-pitch softball. She admitted that she was still trying to decide what she wanted to accomplish with her life.
Nonetheless, she claims today that she “couldn’t quite figure it out.” In 2018, she was an apprentice ironworker, pursuing her education while earning $32.42 per hour, or almost $60,000 annually. She joked at the time, “I can run with the big fellas,” at 5-foot-2.
Five years later, at the age of 46, she begins work placing 500 tons of rebar for a Boeing hangar close to Seattle. She enjoys working outside. In a way, she has returned to school as well, enrolling in online courses to earn her certification as a fitness instructor as a side job. She also purchased a Harley.
She claims to have “absolutely no regrets,” according to Bruce. For her own 15-year-old daughter, “if it’s college, it’s college,” she asserts. “I firmly back that.” Yet, she continued, “kids now in high school are perhaps becoming a little bit more conscious” of the possibility of making good money in the crafts. “My daughter is aware, I’m sure of it. There are all different kinds of trades, I’ve told her.”