Is a lucrative college-free job too good to be true? A few years ago, a strange phenomenon began to appear in polls that asked Americans for their opinions about higher education: People’s responses suddenly started to diverge along partisan lines. Democrats have continued to describe higher education as a mostly positive force in American life, but Republicans’ opinions of college, beginning around 2015, took a sharp turn toward the negative. This shift didn’t come out of nowhere. Conservative politicians and media figures have in recent years been making a sustained and often vociferous public case against higher education. Instead of college, their argument often goes, young Americans should pursue a career in the skilled trades. And there is one trade that gets held up more than any other as an example of the opportunities awaiting those who shun college: welding. If you trace back the history of this idea, you eventually get to a kind of welding text: an April 2014 op-ed column in The Wall Street Journal by Josh Mandel, then the Republican treasurer of Ohio, titled “Welders Make $150,000? Bring Back Shop Class.” Its premise was that in rural Ohio, there was such a shortage of skilled tradespeople that employers were regularly hiring welders at salaries of $150,000 a year and up. Mandel contrasted the bountiful opportunities available to blue-collar workers without college degrees with the dismal prospects he said many college graduates faced: “Too many young people have four-year liberal-arts degrees, are thousands of dollars in debt and find themselves serving coffee at Starbucks or working part-time at the mall.” The Atlantic
By some means, this article comes across as a hit piece to me. Particularly with the decision of tracking a single non-traditional student with multiple challenges in life, who hasn't completed the curriculum. Interestingly enough, the very student tracked did receive an improvement in earnings and also had the option of obtaining the very $150k earning potential that the article argues against being common. There are a number of large energy projects a few hours from that location, which have pay pipe welders in the $30-40 range. With the mandatory overtime and per diem, approaching or exceeding $150k is a very realistic possibility.
I didn't read the article but wanted to clarify a couple of things re welding as a career. The first thing is that it requires a fairly specific set of skills and not everyone has them. I can teach anyone to weld but there's only a small percentage that can learn to be really good. I can teach any kid to play soccer but very few are good enough to play D1 soccer. So you can say "You should be a welder! They make big bucks." but there are only a small number of people who have the right characteristics to earn those big bucks. Most work at significantly lower pay and in working conditions that are not especially comfortable. The second point is that while high paying welding jobs do exist, they are small in number and there's a long line of people looking for them. The advice that comes out most often is that if you want those bigbucks jobs you might want to consider going outside the US. And learn TIG welding.
In the trades, most people aren't going to make six figures. One can make six figures working almost any job if the overtime is available, but what's the point of having a lot of money if you never have time to enjoy it? There's also an increased chance that you'll die early in retirement due to the decades of stress and strenuous work. Non-traditional students have just as much trouble completing trade programs as they do degree programs. The answer for someone who will have difficulty finishing college is not always to complete a trade program. When someone doesn't have the aptitude for college, people often recommend the trades. Some of the trades require at least an average aptitude for spatial and/or mathematical work.
