As Gen Z heads to trade schools, it’s time to talk about how we view college education
By SABRINA FIGUEROA — sfigueroaavila@ucdavis.edu
At the end of high school, my peers and I were constantly swarmed with questions about our plans after graduation. Many were heading off to a traditional college or university, but a few opted for trade schools instead.
Although university is still the dominant choice, it seems as though the trade route is gaining more traction, especially amongst members of Gen Z. This has been credited (at least in part) to increasingly high costs of university tuition, which has “more than doubled in the 21st century,” according to The Education Data Initiative. In just one academic year, “the average in-state student attending a public four-year institution and living on-campus spends $27,146” — simply not an attainable metric for many people.
In comparison, trade schools (depending on the program type and location) cost, on average, cost roughly $3,800 to $16,000 total. Not only are these programs often cheaper, they’re shorter — some can be completed in less than a year. And, due to federal initiatives like the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, certain industries that require trade school training are experiencing a job boom; yet, there’s a lack of skilled workers fit for the open roles. This high demand and low supply situation makes trades especially appealing for recent high school graduates — they allow you to make money faster than attending college does.
As the cost of living continues to rise, our survival is increasingly based on our abilities to financially sustain ourselves and, for some, our whole families. If you can make that essential income more immediately by going to trade school, why would you consider getting a college education in the first place? Why struggle with finding a job after attending a four-year university when you can directly enter a market in demand of labor?
What we have forgotten is the beauty of education as a form of liberation; it helps us learn critical thinking skills necessary for solving real-world problems and systemic issues, for knowing when we are being deceived by people in power and for progressing into the future rather than regressing and repeating history.
Beyond what you learn in lecture halls, you’re able to become part of a community; interacting with people from different walks of life that have plenty to teach you and vice versa. The value of higher education is far greater than the sum of its parts; more than just a path to a career, college and university impart crucial life skills and experience on their students.
By no means is this to suggest we should stay away from trade schools, which are still great opportunities that people should take advantage of to pull through in this society. The problem lies with how we’ve begun to treat college or university as nothing more than a means to an end — a replacement for job training, the first step in an inevitable chain of events that lead to a career — and nothing else.
This mentality creates room for anti-intellectualism; “why do you study [insert any poorly perceived major] if it won’t make you money?” can turn into “college is a scam” very quickly. Hearing “what are you going to do with that?” after sharing your major as a social science or humanities student is not only annoying, but a consequence of how we as a society have begun to devalue education. When we fail to recognize that the privilege of knowledge and learning is useful beyond our need to accrue wealth, it’s easy to say going to college is a waste of time.
We assess the value of any given experience on a monetary basis — a consequence of capitalism — but this is ineffective, deceptive and problematic when we apply it to education. Failing to appreciate the value of higher education only keeps us going in circles where we continue to fall in line in a system that puts profit over humans.
We should be able to study something simply because we find it interesting or amusing — without feeling like we’re wasting our time and our money. The value of a collegiate education extends far beyond the career opportunities it can provide. Although it’s not the world we live in today, we can strive for it in the future with more accessible tuition rates, the elimination of barriers that dissuade students from attending university and a greater focus on pursuing higher education overall.
Written by: Sabrina Figueroa — sfigueroaavila@ucdavis.edu
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