2w ago

Kids are ditching traditional college for career tech programs. Parents are concerned.

www.usatoday.com

New survey data from the nonprofit American Student Assistance shows that teen interest in college is down while interest in nondegree paths is on the rise.

Meanwhile, parents are skeptical of options outside the traditional college pathway to work.

Nearly half of all students surveyed – 45% – weren't interested in going to college. About 14% said they planned to attend trade or technical schools, apprenticeships and technical boot camp programs, and 38% were considering those options.

66% of teens surveyed said parents supported their plans to pursue a nondegree route, compared with 82% whose parents encouraged them to attend college.

55 comments

Boomers set up this world where only a college degree mattered, then they tore that world down.
Do whatever you want, kids. We're all totally F'ed anyhow.
- They just required it for racist reasons.
  
  Ding ding ding!
  HBCUs didn't just appear for fun. They were founded to address segregation in higher education.
- considering how bad the tech job market is right now? Completely worthless.
  
  Different tech. It’s my understanding this is being used interchangeably with what many people know as “trade schools”
  
  Is it really? Also I've had a tech job for 20 years and my degree is not in the field. I didn't need a degree. Many of my colleagues are self-taught developers. I didn't know that tech jobs were so hard to come by now.
- I don't think boomers set it up that way. I think boomers were the first to grow up into a world where a college degree was almost required to get ahead.
  
  No they werent. They could buy houses with a min wage job. Dont speak on things you know absolutely nothing about.
they're talking about people who are actively witnessing degree inflation, student debt, people applying for 100 jobs to get 3 interviews, and not getting picked anyway because of nepotism-- not to mention the obliteration of the dept of education and grant moneys going up in smoke. i'm well over 40 with a masters, and i would 100% choose something other than a 4 year degree at this point
- Don't forget that if you dare take any of that knowledge and use it to exercise your free speech, the university can just deny the degree you earned and paid for at the behest of the government.
  
  If you're lucky. Or they could Bob Lazar you. I'm unsure of all of his claims but the government 100% deleted his degree and ruined his life.
- I have two degrees and a certification and I work on an assembly line in a factory. If I had to do it all over again, I'd sure as hell chose a different path.
  
  Jfc. That sucks.
- Schools already shit the bed by hiring 3rd party consulting like rpkGroup to “streamline” budgets/programs, and now they’re going to be cutting even more. Add that to the recent legislation which re-fucked student loans even more, targets schools that don’t have a good “ROI,” stripped funding, and now you’ve got a bunch of hollowed-out institutions too scared to do anything but train ChatGPT-brainrot kids on whatever the hottest job market is, completely saturating it within two years. But I have a feeling the college sports schools will somehow be ok. Can’t disappoint FanDuel.
- Wait until you hear how many profiles you need to swipe on to get 3 dates
From what I hear, many of the big "technical schools" are basically worthless as far as preparing you for the work, and they cost as much or more than community college. You're better off just going into a trade as a complete novice and building up experience that way.
- Yup. We recently hired a guy straight out of the HVAC-R program of our local tech school and he barely had any refrigeration knowledge. Aparently they only teach you barely enough about refrigeration to get an EPA cert and nothing beyond that.
  Hell, out of the three new techs we got recently, the one who actually went to tradeschool is the least competent. If you want to get into the trades straight out of highschool you best bet is to just start with a manual labor job for a year or so so you have something to put on a resume that show you can work. After that just apply for a low level position in your trade of choice. Once you're in your employer should be paying for you to get any certs that you need.
  
  Any good tradesman can teach the job to a competent assistant. But, if you end up working with a shitty guy, not going to learn much.
- I know the education quality for drafting has been so bad that the field has shriveled up over the past few decades as they've pushed more engineers and architects to do their own CAD.
Everyone's got anecdotes but I swear I've been hearing the same thing about trades jobs where proof is anecdotes and then data paints it as generally worse than a university degree
https://fortune.com/2025/07/02/gen-z-ditching-college-secure-trade-jobs-blue-collar-electricians-and-plumbers-worst-unemployment-rate-than-office-jobs/
https://wallethub.com/edu/best-entry-level-jobs/3716
I'd suggest young people not rely on anecdotes and focus on data. Don't trust a person when they say they're happy with their office job or their trades job. Don't trust strangers/people you barely ever talk to to be truthful about the condition of their health; most people spare people the weight of knowing their mental and physical struggles
Instead look at unemployment rates per profession that you're considering. Depression rates. Suicide rates. Salary trajectory and median wage by career stage. Like early, mid, senior, and wage at retirement. There's data out there for some professions like average yearly medical costs by age in profession. Average benefits value like health/dental/vision/401k match/etc data.
It's a ton to really consider but the ones that are able to do so without just shutting off their brains and turning off the web browser from stress/frustration will have done themselves a favor
- Most people learn statistics in college though.
- Also look into informational interviewing and maybe see if someone can connect you with a current job-holder. People are surprisingly nice and it may be feasible to get their time to get an understanding of their field and daily work life.
  Absolutely follow the data and put in the effort to find out.
Tech and trades are what pay. Most of my friends with degrees are drowning in debt and don't have a job related to their degrees
Out of twins, one is heading for trade school, the other will have earned half her undergrad by the time they finish highschool, with plans to go pre-med. One will make a great living as an electrician and the other will drown in student loan debt for years. I'm equally proud and supportive of their decisions.
If a parent is disappointed that their child is going for a trade, the only thing this shows is that the apple fell far from an asshole tree.
- A physician "drowning" in student loan debt is still making bank, in my experience. Having a lot of debt doesn't automatically mean you're drowning, if you're making $300K+, you will have no problem paying down that debt and living well at the same time.
  
  Out of residency 200-300k is the starting pay too. Mid to late career doctors, especially the specialist, make major major money. What sucks can be long hours and major responsibility over human lives while being sleep deprived but the long hours can be matched by tradespersons while paying 2-10x less and being more susceptible to market downturns
- You're not wrong, but being concerned doesn't mean being disappointed. Maybe use a less broad brush, unless you were intentionally just being provocative. In which case, tell your kids to cut down the asshole tree.
This survey only measured what teenagers were considering doing in the future. The headline is a severe overstatement of the results
- you might be the only one who actually read it (no i didnt read it haha)
How is this not great news?
I see article like this and they are so unrelatable. Most articles are. It’s all popular mass news media and doesn’t touch what I know to be real life. This is for rich families.
It's about how successful your parents were. If your dad is a mechanic, has his own shop, then you might want to consider some form of trade school that also teaches the business side of running a shop. Or becoming a machinist to complement his skills, and still make use of his tools and floor space. If you're going to be a plumber but end up working for a large corporation, because you don't have capital to start your own business, things will be tougher. You'll hours might be bad, the pension they offer might not be good.
Everyone's situation is different, and the future will be different from now.
Its funny how fast something becomes “traditional”
The generation that set this system up is still alive…
Reminds me of how everyone in my generation was funneled into STEM, and now the field is oversaturated and we have physicists stuck working at McDonalds.
In 5 years we will have too many electricians.
Then they will push people back into STEM again.
I'm not, told my kids study whatever the fuck you want so long as you can work that career and support yourself and a family of 4. When they asked how much was that, I taught then how to do salary research and how to determine the cost of living for a family of 4 in different parts of the country.
I'm not that surprised. The value of a college degree has decreased substantially as more people have gotten them.
- The value of a degree doesn't drop because more people get one, if that were the case there'd be little value in finishing high school. If everyone else has a college degree and you don't, then you are at a disadvantage.
  The value of a college degree will decrease as the cost of a college education goes up, the knowledge gained from a college education is available elsewhere, and fewer people see a reason to get a college degree.
  
  The value of a degree doesn't drop because more people get one,
  It absolutely does. Part of the reason lawyer pay collapsed was because of the proliferation of law colleges that increased lawyer supply.
  It happened to be that there was an increase in demand for college degrees in the later 20th century which countered supply, but the labor premium of having a college degree over a trade certification has dropped significantly over the past generation.
  A lot of millennials went to college and chose specific degrees due to the promise of a higher wage. That wage difference isn't there anymore.
If you go to college, the degree you get also matters. Professions requiring a degree "just because" is gone. Now the only degrees worthwhile are those where that's the only way into a specific profession, like medicine.
- That's utterly false. I still constantly see requirements listing a four-year degree, but not in any program.
- Tell me you've never applied to medical school without telling me you've never applied to medical school.

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