You can tell this is an ancient meme because it prices college at 4 years at $9,000 per year instead of 5 years at $30,000 per year 😆
In Switzerland, apprenticeship is the standard for a good middle class income. It’s a win-win situation for all involved and if you later feel like you want to go further in your career, there’s a “master” training for your profession, which is considered by employers as equivalent to a master degree from an university. I’m not sure why such a system is not more popular in other countries.
I have to strongly disagree here. It was the case until neoliberalism hit hard on the country. From the middle 90s, the apprenticeship isn’t the standard to a good living anymore. We have roughly half of the households which are poor or near powerty. If the apprenticeship was a gold standard, it would not be the case. Teenagers learned it very well as they prefer to choose to study even after an apprenticeship.
Everything has took an exponential price hike. Healthcare insurance, rent, food, energy and more skyrocket and living is more and more difficult if you don’t have a tertiary diploma.
Honestly, would my wife and I need to save up only $1k per month for the next 16 years to pay for my kid’s college? That sounds absurdly do-able and easy. I’m all for trade school too. My Wife and I went to a more technical college and are doing fairly good for ourselves. Will hope our kid goes the same path. We got our college degree and in between years we had jobs in our industry and did interning. That’s the best of both worlds IMO.
Honestly, would my wife and I need to save up only $1k per month for the next 16 years to pay for my kid’s college?
16x12 = 192,000… Where are you getting this number from? That’s enough to put 2 kids through even the more expensive US colleges, assuming investments outperform tuition hikes
Given inflation, current estimates put the cost of a 4 year degree at about 180k in 2040, so not an unreasonable savings estimate. That number is both available from online estimates as well as what my own financial planner gave me when discussing my daughter’s college fund
Apprenticeships are infinitely more competitive than college applications. Not to say that the quality of education isn’t much better, too, but most mentors are already swamped with dozens of apprenticeship requests. It’s so competitive that most will expect you to already have some familiarity with the trade, whereas most colleges go into your education assuming you have very little experience with it.
Edit
Also
$19-$23 hour paid apprenticeships
Lmao only in already high COL areas. Plus having to compete with the 1,000+ other applicants (see above). Plus “we’ll select a candidate in 4-6 months.” Plus “must provide own tools. Our shop only allows Snap-On brand, here’s a $2,200 shopping list in case you get chosen.” Also “oh yeah that position was already filled last month, so-and-so’s son just got out of rehab and needed a job.”
T. An actual tradie of nearly a decade who has a proper 4 year university degree and tech school certification
Where are you from? I am a carpenter from Ontario, Canada and I was an apprentice in the carpenters union for a few years. They literally hired me on the spot when I sent them my resume. I also worked with a 19 year old kid who’d never had a job in his life before being hired instantly when he walked into the union hall.
Also the pay started as $20 an hour for first years, and went up about $5 an hour for every year of experience. I think if I remember correctly journeymen made around $45 an hour with benefits, and my zone wasn’t a super high COL area.
Maybe depends what apprenticeship you’re looking for but in my experience the carpenters union was dying for guys.
Electrician in IBEW here in a poor rural region. Those pay numbers are pretty close to our current rates, actually. And if you can pass a test, you can get into the apprenticeship program pretty easily. They don’t expect much from first year apprentices. I had a trade school diploma and my Limited Liability Electrician license already when I applied, but it didn’t matter much. The competitiveness is very dependent on your local.
You gotta buy your own hand tools, but power tools, conduit benders, etc are all provided.
So… like with everything career-related, it’s gonna depend on where you live.
‘Appreciceships’ is a pretty broad thing too. I can think of more mechanics and carpenters I know that had to buy their own tools then plumber and electricians.
This is pretty representative of my area as well. The thing that is weird for me is that they priced it at 40 hrs per week. A friend of mine was an Electrician Apprentice and he worked 21 days in a row 10 hrs per day and he’s in a union.
Damn, that kinda OT is some good money but miss me with that. After 50 hours of solid work in a week I’m worthless lol.
But I do light commercial construction mostly, which is pretty go-go-go all day long with bird-dogging foremen. If I was doing industrial or large commercial there’s usually some more breathing room.
Bro. Be more specific about where and what apprenticeship you are talking about. You’re casting a wide web as if all the apprenticeships are in the same position. My specific trades of electrician and instrumentation are highly in demand in lots of places in Canada. Can’t speak for everywhere, but there are a lot of large construction projects going on now that can’t find workers.
The availability of apprenticeships are based off the economy vs going to school is based on whether you can afford it.
College is a scam nowadays
Government allows infinite lending to stupid unexperienced children, children tell colleges their tuition is on the house, colleges raise tuition costs knowing their premium is secured by either wealthy families or the infinite pockets of the government, students keep being told the lie college is the only outlet to a better life, keep taking more loans. Rinse and repeat.
So many soft losers in this thread who think the epitome of life is wasting away at a desk all day looking at code and coping with the lifelong debt they took to experience it. Unironically some moron who thinks that you can only gain critical thinking from going to a uni, completely ignoring children who show the predisposition for higher intelligence among their peers. You can’t teach intelligence. Stockholm syndrome cope fr.
Yup, I got a chemistry degree. Yeah I get paid marginally better but considering how much it cost and all the trouble I went through I could’ve done something else I wanted to make money. Education is great and enriching, but we shouldn’t become debt slaves over it.
This is correct, but it’s virtually impossible to get most desk jobs without a degree.
Not because the degree is important, only because it’s a requirement.
So if you can afford it, unfortunately, I would recommend the degree path.
