re: New figures on apprentice trade pay vs. new college grad pay

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$10k loan + $20k living expenses x 3 = $90k

And that’s only 3 years.

It sounds nuts, but I’m sure people do this somehow

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Are you not living if you aren't in college? Why are we counting food and rent as a cost of college? That makes no sense to me. If you are not able to pay your rent or food and have to take out a loan, yes that's idiotic for sure.

"well you could live at home", what sort of Tradesman is living at home? You can live at home and go to college too.

Not sure. My daughter's fiance graduated 3 years ago with both an MIS degree and a business degree. He's already in six figures. My daughter graduated with a finance degree with an emphasis on commercial real estate two years ago. She's also into six figures, herself.

Conversely, I have a nephew who is into his third year of apprenticeship as an electrician and he earns around $60k annually. So he was paid while they were in school but within 4 years they'll each surpass what my nephew is earning, within 5 years once he becomes a journeyman.

But to go to college for four years just to become a public school teacher? The trades will far outperform teaching salaries.

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Sure, going to an out of state or private school to be a teacher is dumb. But you can make $60k as a teacher working a very good schedule, especially for a mom with kids so you can be out of school when your kids are out of school.

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If your goal in life is to earn $60k a year, then teaching is great, but not worth spending $150k - $200k on college expenses for. Trades too are great, especially if you like doing things with your hands. You can do very well with trades. But if you want to earn higher wages and grow that into a career earning high six figures, the STEM degree is worth it, especially if you're the type to excel and get job referrals from the dean of your college.

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Now do that after culling out the degrees for sociology, queer theory, general degrees, and pretty much any non-stem degree and then make that same comparison.

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Granted. But how many undergrad degrees are STEM, or even higher paying business majors like accounting?

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Not counting it as a cost of college per se, but if you don’t work and don’t have money or parents who will pay for it you gotta take out loans for that too. Which many people do, I’m sure

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so you arent allowed to work in college now? cant live at home while going to a local regional college?

You can ofc but a lot of college kids don’t have that foresight. A lot just want to party and be a kid.

I would be willing to bet there are more that live at home on college rather than go off to college. Or it’s very close.

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How many people at Starbucks would you want as a tradesman? You think I want them showing up to help build my new home? I doubt they would last 3 hours on an industrial site.

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that wasnt the question....

My point still stands... a college degree doenst raise the floor, because when there are no jobs for whatever crap Liberal Arts degree there is, doest raise your job floor.

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That analogy is incredibly dumb.

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says the guy who completely miss the point.

The dude asked how one can manage to get $100k in student loan debt and I explained it. I never said it was normal, or the average.

You sure love to argue.

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You can do very well with trades. But if you want to earn higher wages and grow that into a career earning high six figures, the STEM degree is worth it, especially if you're the type to excel and get job referrals from the dean of your college.

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I have a STEM degree, and regarding it being worth the debt to get the degree, you're right, or at it's at least far more worth it than to go into crippling debt for a degree in history.

That said, the tradesmen who must be taken into account when it comes to doing well are the ones who wind up owning their own business. I've know many, many tradesmen in my line of work who are self-made millionaires, and oftentimes it was out of desperate necessity because the clock is ticking for a tradesman and his body's ability to be able to do the work. When you're facing destitution because of a bad back, you find the grind to become a business owner with apprentices working for you a necessity.

That's one thing these income graphs fail to take into consideration: physical impairment for a tradesman can doom his career for good. The same could be said for jobs not in the trades, but not nearly to the level of the trades. One lapse of judgement resulting in injury could end it all.