…the titles being useless shit like “PhD in Gender Studies”, “Vice-President of DEI”, etc. Of course, Mike Rowe, bless his dirty, calloused hands, has noted this trend:
Kilmeade asked Rowe to comment on the data, which comes from the National Student Clearinghouse. It showed a 16% increase in overall enrollment for vocational-focused community colleges compared to 2022. The Journal also noted an increase of 23% for students pursuing construction jobs and a 7% rise in students enrolled in Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning (HVAC) and vehicle repair.
While the “Dirty Jobs” star said he wasn’t “ready for the victory lap” after seeing the data, he said that he believes Gen Z is more willing to consider trades, which he believes is positive.
“The color of collars is no longer the thing it used to be,” Rowe said, referencing the classification of blue-collar versus white-collar workers. “I just don’t think it matters.”
However, in his usual forthright fashion, Rowe noted also:
“The idea that the generation that has become the biggest target for entitlements and a lack of work ethic… I mean, these guys are an easy target. They’re snowflakes, essentially. But… we’re the clouds from which the snowflakes fell.”
Which is uncomfortably true. (My own kids are Millennials, and despite my best efforts they’re only a shade away from having Gen Z values, alas, but that’s a story for another time.)
And let’s be honest: there will come a time when “learn to code” will be as obsolete a piece of advice to future youngsters as “get a degree” advice has become to the current crop. Why?
Because at some point, “coding” will be left to the sardonically-named “artificial intelligence” — in fact, unless I miss my guess, most technological work will be performed by A.I.
But there will always be a need for guys with toolbelts, because A.I. can’t build houses — design them, maybe, but not actually hammer nails and pour concrete — and believe me on this, the Baltimore bridge rebuild will never be accomplished by A.I.
And once again, from Rowe:
“They’re seeing all of the craziness… Brown and Dartmouth and Harvard. They’re seeing a $52 billion endowment at Harvard. They’re seeing all the craziness that’s constantly in the headlines. And they’re just saying, ‘Look, why do I want to start a career in a major I haven’t even declared yet and go that far into debt to pursue a job that probably doesn’t even exist, when we got 10,000 other jobs over here… that don’t require a four-year degree?’ “
Maybe, just maybe, a future generation will see the inherent value in and the pride engendered by those “dirty jobs” that Mike Rowe supports, and eschew the dubious values of what non-STEM university degrees have degenerated into.
Jeez, I’m getting sick to death of folks intellectualizing and over-analyzing this state of affairs. All a young ‘un needs to ask himself is “When the crapper’s backed up, who you gonna call? An EEO Officer or a plumber?”
You’re giving them (unsupported by the evidence) credit for having an inquiring mind and the ability to form a cogent hypothesis.
Back in the late 60’s early 70’s I was doing a 2 year vo-tech course in drafting while also going to high school because I wanted to be an architect. My dad was a concrete construction company owner and told me I should work in the trades so that if my architect dream didn’t work out I’d have something to fall back on. So in the summers I worked on concrete and carpentry crews and learned about electrical and plumbing too. Plus, construction jobs paid a lot higher wages than the service jobs and working physically outside in the Florida sun kept me physically fit. win-win-win.
Now, at the age of 69 and about half a century of architecture and engineering work behind me I still regularly draw on the knowledge and skills that I learned way back then. And, as the random texan eludes to above, I rarely have to call home repair people.
A vocation is a job that just keeps on paying all of your life.
I tried to instill this mindset in our son (born 1979) but it never stuck and he is constantly at the mercy of repair people and barely knows what a hammer is….but he can code like 4 motherfuckers….
@Ghost ..
You remind me of a good friend of mine. He’s an architect/designer but in a former part of his life grew up on a farm and then later became a welder. I swear this fellow can build or fix just about anything. And he’s very outspoken about the fact that if the architecture / engineering world in which he works falls to sh*t, he can haul out the welding gear and go to work, fixing and making stuff. Currently he uses the welding / metal working skills for weekend side jobs and such, and those monies fund his 2A obsession.
I’m about 10 years younger, but just about anybody from our generation whose parents grew up either rural or poor knew about the jack-of-all-trades designation. You were either too poor or too far away for any sort of help, so you basically had to self-teach yourself to fix anything and everything, sometimes with the proverbial duct tape and bailing wire. That was my Dad to a T. I can’t recall ever seeing him hire someone for home repair or car maintenance. We did everything ourselves. Me and my two brothers picked up that habit, and I tried like hell to pass it on to my two sons. The oldest I thought was a lost cause up until he moved out, got married, and started a family. Guess he saw just how far (or how short) his paycheck went and now he’s doing all sorts of home repair himself. Makes me proud.
Grew up on a small Ranch, and we as kids learned, shoulder to shoulder with Dad, how to repair equipment. Still can, still do. My first “real” job was as an apprentice drywaller, didn’t do that vocationally but it gave me a skillset I have used my entire life so far, remodeled several of my own houses.
I work in the IT field now and have acquaintances ask, “How does my son/nephew/niece get into that career path?” “That kid knows everything about computers.” My response is “Do they fix their own car?” Because if you can repair your own car you can do what I do, processes are the same, subject matter is different.
Agreed. The two worlds are merging. Was talking to an automotive Tech a few weeks ago. Told me that a large portion of his time is now spent on his Laptop plugged into the port on the car or truck . He reviews the service order but chances are neither the vehicle owner or the service writer ( salesperson) has a clear understanding of what’s actually wrong. The diagnostic computer and the cars data recorder will tell what’s broken and needs to be replaced.
Spend some time on UTOOOB ( Lara Farms for example ) and you’ll see just how much Technology is involved in what used to be simple row crop farming. A computer drives the Tractor keeping the rows straight, Controls the seed planting and fertilization, tracks the harvest and maximizes the yield all tracked and mapped by GPS down to a few feet. Modern Tractor Cabs look like mission control stations and allows three people to run a 5,000 acre Farm.
As to AI taking over coding. Ok…..maybe some of it, but someone still needs to write the instructions for the AI. A large part of what I did as a software developer was to take a stored procedure written by someone else and modify it due to changing requirements or upgrades. Over time, it becomes bloated and full of useless junk code. Today’s fast computers can paper over a lot of badly written software. Just like an old tech car it needs to be turned occasionally and sometimes ripped out by the roots and replaced. Don’t think AI can do that yet.
The biggest spike in the hart of “White Collar Work” was Elon Firing 75% of Twitter employees without negative impact on company performance.
Let’s not lose track of the fact that music, literature, visual arts, and “thinking about thought” are as valuable as the skills that give us shelter and food. Finding some infested trees doesn’t justify burning the forest. There still are a few surviving elms, here and there.
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Nope – Food Shelter and Defending your territory are must haves and therefor priorities. Music, literature, visual arts, and “thinking about thought” are nice to haves, but only after you have secured the first three.
My boss just used ChatGPT to generate a make-work vision statement our upper poo-bah’s wanted from him. If A.I. ends up replacing upper management jobs country-wide. I gotta admit, I’m torn.
A company has moved to town. They sell a machine that’s basically a 3D house printer. With concrete. City claims they will build low income housing with it.
I bet the houses will look like a WWII bunker, or a concrete shipping container.
cool, they’ll feel right at home in their prison like apartments. Will they even notice the difference between the apartment and prison?
Look at a Public School here in the US. Other than the absence of concertina wire, it’d be hard to distinguish it from a prison.
Brutalist architecture!
A slightly different perspective, if I may. Study your a$$ off, and get a plumbing or electrical masters ticket (or equivalent in other trades). Then, become a small business owner not just an employee. IMHO the culture as a whole would greatly benefit if more people thought like an owner and less like “in 1 hour it’s Miller time”.
As noted above “Today’s fast computers can paper over a lot of badly written software”. And we’re not better off because of it. When I started down the path of software engineering lo those many years ago, we’d re-write the code to save 100 bytes (characters) of storage. Sloppy and outdated code are part of why we have the IT issues we do. Of course, in corporate America, where the eye is on your annual bonus and everything else take the hindmost “ain’t nobody got time for dat”.
you’re absolutely right. I wish I had done things differently.
I believe entrepreneurship should be driven into people’s minds at a young age. Get a degree or trade that allows you to become your own boss. Electrician and plumber are two that require licenses in most regions of the US. You can always learn carpentry, roofing and such. if you want a profession then become an attorney, accounting, physician, nurse practitioner, engineer, architect or the STEM courses are the way to go.
> But there will always be a need for guys with toolbelts, because A.I. can’t build houses —
> design them, maybe, but not actually hammer nails and pour concrete
No, but it can design and program robots that can. Think Boston Robotics.
#ButlerianJihad.
Here in the UK we have Higher National Diplomas which lead to the equivalent of a university degree, and also the Open University where people study part time, getting their degrees in 6-8 years.
Does America have anything similar?