Bill Anderson
Aug 24, 2017 · 2 min read

Or they could spend about a quarter of that on much needed occupational training for thigns that AI is not solving, nor will any time soon: the real world; I’m talking actual trades here. We literally have millions of jobs requiring specific training. Plumbers. Auto mechanics, appliance repair, electricians, pharmacy technicians, and so on.

Most of these require no college, have very low education costs in comparison to both college but to the salaries they actually pay. For around three grand you can get qualified to work in a pharmacy in up to a year or so, get placed in an apprenticeship, and start out with a salary of 3–4K depending on where you are. That is but one example (and one local high school kids have the option to graduate with).

Consider that in two months of work (approximate taxes and all) they could have zero debt from their work education, and be working and living at three times the poverty level. From there they can bootstrap learning all manner of things and not need to go into heavy debt to do it. Electricians are another fine example.

You can get into an electrician’s apprentice system with but a few optional months of training. Then you are looking at paid apprenticeship for two to four years duing which you can reasonably expect about 27–30K annually. A fully trained electrician tends to make at least double that.

So, Millenials could go from high school -> trade school -> 60K/year with four years of experience and no college debt by the time they are 22–23, there the “smart ones” who go to college hit that age with little-to-no actual experience (and probably still in school), and enough debt to have bought a house, or even two or three. Knowing the tech industry as I do I can not in good conscience recommend it to kids unless they have a clear and unshakeable passion for it. Even then I’d still recommend the trade so they can have a day job that pays for their living and let their passion run their hobby. And yes, my kids receive this actual advice.

While these jobs don’t carry the “prestige” so recently associated with computers they have several significant advantages that can be summed up with: “they ain’t going anywhere”. You can’t offshore fixing your wiring, your HVAC, your busted pipe, and so on to a third world country for pennies. Robotics and AI are not taking these over any time soon, hype or not. No need to spend 5–6 years going into debt to really get into it. We literally have millions of these jobs open, and have had for long time — the number has been increasing not decreasing.

They may not be glamorous, but they are real; they are available; they are very safe bets; and they require far less monetary investment than the so-called “good jobs” you go to college for, or spend 16K just for hardware for.

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