It is almost expected that today’s high school graduate will go on to college to obtain a bachelor’s degree. However, it wasn’t always like this. Our great-grandparents, grandparents, and even some parents did not attend a university, and yet they did not have trouble finding a job.
Why the sudden push for today’s high school graduates to go to college?
Career counselors will explain that obtaining a college degree is all about obtaining a good-paying job afterwards. In short, all education is preparation for the job market. In fact, a Georgetown University study predicts that by the year 2020, 65 percent of companies will require postsecondary education and training post-high school.
According to The College Board, a student does not have to select a major until the end of their sophomore year. That means college students truly only spend about two years in college actually studying for their career goals. The rest is just required general education courses.
Once a student graduates and they are hired by a company, they have to go through job training. This idea of job training essentially nullifies the objective of college: to obtain a higher education that will prepare you for your career of choice.
This begs the question: If a new employee is going to go through job training anyway, what was the point of attending college?
By requiring a college degree, are companies trying to say that a recent high school graduate couldn’t go into job training straight out of high school and learn how to work at the same level as a college graduate?
This idea that you need a college degree to get a decent job is nonsensical. Obviously, certain careers such as lawyers, doctors, and computer engineers should all partake in higher education due to their respective field’s complexity. Yet, for the rest of careers that require on-the-job training, college should not be required.
The answer to this push-pull dilemma is apprenticeships. Companies participating in apprenticeships would be able to take students straight from high school and immediately train them. This would allow new employees to learn the ins and outs of their job and not waste any time – or money – learning irrelevant information in college.
Such a process would solve another huge issue for many college students: selecting a major that doesn’t have many jobs available. Sure, it’s fine to study philosophy or women’s studies until it is time to find a job.
With apprenticeships, students would be able to select a career path they are truly passionate about and then learn how the job works in the time they would normally spend in college. These new employees would be more qualified and job ready at the end of four years in job training than a recent college grad about to begin the job search. Jumping into the workforce early gives the benefits of getting one’s feet wet early in their career and can also result in early retirement.
So, are apprenticeships the future? The Trump administration, and specifically Ivanka Trump, is pushing for more vocational training and apprenticeships.
A new workforce development program which focuses on vocational training and apprenticeships in order to provide an alternative to college has been put into place. The program, according to CBS News, “will seek to re-organize current workforce development programs and make existing spending more efficient, rather than make a large increase to federal funding for these programs.”
The last question still remains: Is there a downside to apprenticeships? The only real downside is career choice.
It may be difficult for some 18-year-olds to select what career they would like to pursue for the rest of their life. College has helped students explore many vocations in their freshman and sophomore years, no doubt. But once a high school graduate begins training in an apprenticeship, they may decide the job is not for them and can move on from that career choice without being saddled with debt and worthless credits.
Progress has already been made on this issue and will hopefully continue under the current administration.
