More high school grads should go to work, not to college

The corridors of power may or may not be paved with good intentions, but they are definitely paved with unintended consequences.

The grand-daddy of all boneheaded policies was the decision made decades ago that all kids should go to college — and that Uncle Sam should lend unlimited funds to every high school graduate seeking an advanced degree. That lending was more or less indiscriminate, not governed by students’ abilities or by whether investing taxpayer funds in a given field of study would prove economically worthwhile.

Today, U.S. taxpayers are on the hook for $1.7 trillion in student loans owed by nearly 43 million borrowers, many of whom have pursued studies that in no way prepared them to earn a living. At the end of last year, nearly 11 percent of outstanding federal student loan debt was in default — that’s almost 9 million borrowers. According to the Education Data Initiative, 42 percent of students with loans “have had to choose between making student loan payments and paying for basic needs.”

The staggering amount of student debt, which has crippled an entire generation, is only one symptom of our education establishment’s folly. Another is that we have not been training kids to fend for themselves, resulting in a dire shortage of skilled workers.

Beginning in the late 1800s and continuing through much of the past century, public high schools taught useful skills, offering vocational training or “shop” classes for boys. Funding (and encouragement) for these studies was provided in part by the federal government though the Smith-Hughes Vocational Education Act , passed in 1917. Legislators doubled down on that support in 1963. President Lyndon B. Johnson celebrated the 50-year anniversary of those programs, noting that during that time , “approximately $1.7 billion has been made available to the states under federal vocational education laws.”

During that era, young men graduated high school knowing how to build furniture, fix an engine or weld a piece of pipe. But then do-gooders decided that such studies were discriminatory, funneling some children into blue-collar livelihoods instead of preparing them for the college track.

Johnson would be dumbfounded to discover how education spending has exploded in the years since.

That kids were sorted into different groups according to socio-economic circumstances, often linked to race as well as aptitude, was undoubtedly true, so it is not shocking that vocational education fell out of favor. But unhappily, social engineers resolved not to offer kids and families a choice, but instead dismantled the training that had prepared so many to build homes, families and productive lives.

The result is a vast pool of under-employed young people who hold philosophy or English degrees, weighed down by suffocating student debt and financially unable to move into independent adulthood. What is worse, we have a critical shortage of skilled workers able to take advantage of one of our country’s biggest-ever building booms.

Meanwhile, the gusher of money that has poured into college education has driven tuitions through the roof. Fifteen schools, including Duke University, Vassar, Fordham and others, are now charging more than $100,000 per year . Many others are close behind, putting these schools out of reach for everyone but the very wealthy, kids with huge scholarships or rich foreigners who can pay full freight.

Higher tuitions don’t always produce a better education or improved job prospects. The Wall Street Journal analyzed the return on investment at some of these schools. Harvey Mudd College, for example, where tuition runs $104,512 , ranked 50th in terms of the future earning power of its graduates. The University of Chicago ranked 60th , and Duke came in at 166th; both schools charge more than $100,000 per year.

Meanwhile, as anthropology majors take gig jobs to stay afloat financially, kids learning electrical, plumbing and other trades are making good money. Not only are they helping themselves, they are also helping the country, replacing retiring boomers and providing much-needed labor.

The race to build out the infrastructure needed to support the explosive growth of artificial intelligence requires hundreds of thousands of construction workers, supervisors and other blue-collar tradespeople. We cannot build fast enough, in part because we don’t have enough trained workers. Consequently, the opportunities for young people without college degrees have never been better: unemployment for those between 22 and 34 years old is near a 20-year low .

Yet the traditional market-place advantage for college grads is shrinking. Though they still command premium pay, and although unemployment in their ranks compares favorably to that among young people without a college degree — unemployment for degree holders ages 25 to 54 stood at 2.7 percent on average for the year ending in July, compared to 4.7 percent for high school grads with no higher education — the gap has narrowed significantly.

That’s because more college grads are being produced each year , with AI reducing demand for entry-level white-collar employees. The need for skilled workers, on the other hand, is endless, since fewer are being trained in our schools.

That’s why the Building Futures Skilled Trades Coalition , a group of some 75 companies, is setting up shop across the country to train the labor our nation desperately needs. Apple recently opened its Advanced Manufacturing Center in Houston with similar ambitions: to equip kids with the skills needed for the building of tomorrow’s industries. Private companies will work feverishly to do what our schools should have been doing all along.

The elimination of vocational training perhaps made sense when our country decided to ship most manufacturing overseas. In retrospect, trade pacts that hollowed out crucial industries were boneheaded. Thankfully, under President Trump, manufacturing is recovering.

Liz Peek is a former partner of major bracket Wall Street firm Wertheim and Company.