I did some digging and could not find anything that lays out the bottom line, but I did find enough to say that if you work it correctly, you can have a lifetime income/cost advantage in a trade which beats some college career routes.

"You would graduate with one to three fewer years of debt. In 2014, the average mechanic's wage was a little over $37,000 a year, which beats out most liberal arts degrees. As of 2013, the average salary for a registered nurse was nearly $69,000 a year, which far surpasses a lot of traditional degree fields."
https://money.usnews.com/money/blog...-financial-case-for-trade-school-over-college

You aren't going to sit in an air conditioned office shuffling paper with a Trade job, but I always enjoyed, "getting the big muscles warmed up" and a large degree of satisfaction in lighting up a new machine and admiring a whole building ready to serve its occupants. I calculated one tradesman's lifetime income at $4.5 million, but he was a very high performer. In other words, he earned more money selling people new air conditioners they didn't need than he earned doing repairs. If you want to do a reality check, drive by the office of an HVAC company, an Electrical Contractor, or a Plumber and count the number of Cadillacs, Mercedes, and Corvettes in the parking lot.

 

I'm sure a degree correlates to higher income. I don't need to look it up; I believe you.

I don't think the actual situation is so near clear-cut. The news (and college recruiters) always talk about "on average" a person with a college degree makes about a million dollars more over their working lifetime. Of course, a "working lifetime" is often defined as forty years or even more (graduate college at 22 and retire at the Social Security full-retirement age of 67). By the time you take into account time value of money, that million dollars over forty years looks a lot less significant compared to the hundred grand or so of debt over four years or so.

But even if that weren't a bit of an illusion, the very notion of claiming that an "average" means much is laughable. Many college degrees have median incomes that are under $40k, a level easily attainable by high school graduates.

Degrees such as "visual and performing arts" (VAPA) are near the bottom. And this should come as little surprise since most public colleges are filled with "art" that was bought only because many states have passed laws requiring that a certain percentage of funds spend on public works projects must be used for "art in public places" -- a buzz phrase that merely means that taxpayers are forced to buy things from people that can't get enough people to willingly purchase their products. Then most schools require all students to buy season tickets to VAPA events like art shows or plays as part of their student activity fees. Why? Because those events can't generate anything close to sufficient interest on their own to support themselves. So how can students in those programs realistically expect to make a decent living once they graduate?

 

When I went to Florida, the jobs that jumped up in front of me were about Air Conditioning. With my background, it was child's play.

Did you (thoroughly) learn thermodynamics before, or after you went into the AC field?

Right now I have one marked because it is as difficult for me to understand as BR549.

... you too... uh?...

 

I'm sure a degree correlates to higher income. I don't need to look it up; I believe you. But income is only one variable in the formula of success. Another variable is debt. And happiness. Reward of a job well done. Time off. Many factors.

Speaking of student loans vs saving for college... I wonder if (given the ridiculously inflated cost of college these days) it actually makes more sense to take the loan than save up for it. For comparison, my house cost about $200k. If I were to try to save up for that, it would take probably 20 years. Let's say I lived with my parents the whole time so that rent isn't part of the equation. 20 years from now, this same house would probably cost $350k+ and represent another 15 years worth of savings, at which point it would be >$500, so more savings, and so on. So I decided that it was better to take on a huge loan for the house so that its cost to me would be locked in at 2015 dollars for 30 years. I don't care about the interest because inflation rate plus house appreciation rate far surpass the the interest rate. By the time I pay off this $200k house I will have paid a total of $350k but the value of the house will probably be double that.

Now similarly with the astronomical rate of increase in college tuition, rather than saving up a bunch of 2013-2016 dollars (which actually represent a lot if money) to pay for college, would it not be better to lock in the price of college in 2017 dollars and pay it back in 2020-2030 dollars which hold much less value? I mean by the time you pay it back, a college education will probably cost double what it costs now (assuming the trend continues).

I was raised to pay my way and avoid debt. The last time I had any debt was 1997 when I paid off my home mortgage. that's if you don't count credit cards that I pay off every month. Maybe it makes sense to take a student load but that's not my philosophy. But anyway, I would never let my kids go into hock for an education even if they might get loan forgiveness someday - it's my job to help them get a good start in life.

 

I was raised to pay my way and avoid debt. The last time I had any debt was 1997 when I paid off my home mortgage. that's if you don't count credit cards that I pay off every month. Maybe it makes sense to take a student load but that's not my philosophy. But anyway, I would never let my kids go into hock for an education even if they might get loan forgiveness someday - it's my job to help them get a good start in life.

That's the road that we are trying to follow with my daughter. She's 10 and we already have her saving for a car and college and retirement. She doesn't really understand much of it right now, but she understands some of it and she understands more today than she did a year ago. Hopefully we can have her sufficiently brainwashed by the time she starts facing this dilemma that she will have the moral fiber to come down on the "right" side of it (admittedly, as her mother and I view things). And I'm not going to let her just run into it someday -- her and I are going to actively discuss it several times as the occasion arises. In the end she will have to make her own decisions, but they won't be without considering them at length in advance.

 

I was raised to pay my way and avoid debt. The last time I had any debt was 1997 when I paid off my home mortgage. that's if you don't count credit cards that I pay off every month. Maybe it makes sense to take a student load but that's not my philosophy. But anyway, I would never let my kids go into hock for an education even if they might get loan forgiveness someday - it's my job to help them get a good start in life.

That is admirable. I hope you did not take my previous comment as criticism. It was more of an open mouth brainstorming session on my part.

 

You haven't seen the car! It's been ridden hard and put down wet. Total beater. The owner is the daughter of a friend of mine. Growing up, she was the princess. She's a pauper now and seems to be a little shell shocked by that.

I agree about making choices, the millennials seem to not understand that. I recently sold my pickup truck - 1985 toyota, original owner. Paid 6500 for it new and sold it for 1500. Would like to have kept it but got tired of working on it. My friends and family used to make fun of it but it didn't cost me much to own, even the insurance was nothing much.

The "princess" observation goes a long way. The good news is that many entitled kids are capable of learning the hard lessons -- though some of them never will. Hopefully she is coming to grips with reality in a way that will serve her well moving forward.

I can definitely relate to the beater aspect! I've owned one nice vehicle -- until it caught fire! With that one exception (and I admit I really liked driving that car across the country on several occasions), the most I've paid for a vehicle is $8500 and second place is well below that. Of all the vehicles I have ever owned, only one has been sold to someone other than a junk yard (or donated under the "or not" clause of "running or not") -- and that was to someone that wanted to rebuild it from the frame up. I may try to get my wife a nice car someday, but I don't really even want one because I know how I treat them. The main one I drive is a '99 Camry that just passed 200k miles and it has at least five decent dents in it and front bumper molding that is almost hanging down to the ground. I've been tempted to get out the duct tape, but my care hasn't even risen to that level long enough to actually do it. I seldom wash any of my vehicles because I've concluded that the caked mud is probably what's holding most of it together.

When I was working at NIST, I noticed that, with few exceptions, you could tell a person's position in the organization by the car they drove. Group and project leaders had old, rusting out hulks while students had new cars in pristine condition -- my supervisor noted one day that the first time he saw me pull up he thought I must be the new group leader for the group down the hall and was surprised when I showed up in his office for my interview as a co-op student! It was the same thing in the Air Force -- lots of new sports cars in the barracks parking lot -- and most just sat there because the airmen that bought them couldn't afford the insurance. But the NCOs mostly drove 10+ year old well-worn and beaten vehicles.

 

Did you (thoroughly) learn thermodynamics before, or after you went into the AC field?

Long answer:
I did plenty of transistor heat sink calculations in the 1970's, but it's a bit of a jolt changing from a transistor to 10,000 cubic feet. The difference is so vast that I did a math exercise to reconcile Centigrade per Watt with BTU = 1.08 CFM dT but calculating a house in C/W is so awkward it seems like a different language. It's like turning the binoculars the other way around, micro vs macro. Besides, the latent heat of water is about useless with transistors and utterly critical in buildings. It's worse than apples and oranges.

Short answer:
No, I did not know psychrometric relationships when I only worked with transistors.

 

I saw Mike Rowe on This Old House a few hours ago. (Friday night) The old guys are bringing in apprentices. Seems like a good thing because there aren't many people that would rather climb ladders or drag wires through holes instead of sitting in an air conditioned office typing on a computer.

Wow! This old house is still on?

I haven't heard about that show in years. I used to watch it as a kid until I found out one of my highschool teachers places was actually part of the show once. Her firsthand story was that old bob vila was full of himself and utterly useless from top to bottom and never did anything as he so presented and claimed to on the show.

All he did was sit in his luxury top of the line class A motorhome all day, until called on to do his camera presentations, then disappeared again. As she put it nicely, the whole 'This Old House' crew had nothing good to say about the guy. Overpaid celebrity snob was all he was in real life.

Too often the things he claimed he did on camera had multiple highly skilled craftsman working for hours to set up so that he could do the finishing touch shots that only took minutes for him to do.

Sort of the bill nye of the 1980's home improvement shows. All show and no credible substance.

 

Sort of the bill nye of the 1980's home improvement shows. All show and no credible substance.

You sure you don't have him confused with someone else?

 

Sort of the bill nye of the 1980's home improvement shows. All show and no credible substance.

Same thing with Orange County Choppers. Not a show about designing or repairing motorcycles, just a sitcom about a dysfunctional family.

 

Same thing with Orange County Choppers. Not a show about designing or repairing motorcycles, just a sitcom about a dysfunctional family.

And about one critical part that may arrive late.

 

You sure you don't have him confused with someone else?

No, I liked Tim Allens character and the sitcom series.

Growing up I took 'This Old House' to be a good show until I got a first hand account of what things were really like behind the camera and found out old bob was nothing but an arrogant overpaid boob. Rather how bill nye's dirty secrets about who and what he really is have came to light over the years.

 

Same thing with Orange County Choppers. Not a show about designing or repairing motorcycles, just a sitcom about a dysfunctional family.

Yep, When they make a show more about stupid irrelevant drama and crap I lose interest in it fast.

I worked for Praxair welding supply some years ago and one of our store managers got to go meet the OCC crew in person as part of the Miller Welder bike build. He loved that show until he met the idiots in person. The old man was a bonied A-hole psycho and JR was dumb as a rock and nearly as arrogant as the old man . Mikey was tolerable to be around and that was it.

On top of it their quality of builds on those bikes was barely high school shop class grade. Sloppy welds, poor fit and finish and oval half ass workmanship for what they charged for it all. About that time OCC had several bikes out on a national tour and I went and saw them first hand and I have to agree on my manager's assessment. Senior year high school shop class kids could have built better stuff. (I know I and others I went to school did just to pass our classes back in the 90's.)