Christopher Gonzalez

Professor Jody Rosen

English 1121

2 May 2023

Trade Schools vs College

            In an ever increasingly challenging job market in which people from all walks of life are trying their hardest to acquire employment, education has never played a more important role in making sure an adult has the means to live.  These days, a high school diploma does not even qualify as the bare minimum form of entry into most jobs that exist, requiring those who seek employment to have some form of college education or post-secondary schooling.  The consequence of this requirement is only made more difficult by the fact that four-year schools are notoriously expensive, forcing students to take out enormous loans they would need many years in order to pay off long after they have graduated.  Alternatively, low-income students could attend community colleges that have a far lower cost of entry, but suffer from very poor infrastructure and retention rates.  The worst thing that anybody can do is not have an education, so if college is simply too expensive or not convenient enough, the next option should be attending a trade school.  Trade schools are educational institutions that provide students with training on specific skills that are needed for a specific job.  It is much more cost-effective than college, and courses can be completed in far less time, allowing students to enter the workforce quickly.  More money and emphasis by the government should be invested into trade schools in order to provide flexible opportunities to students of varying degrees of socioeconomic status seeking education.

Colleges for decades have been hailed as the pinnacle of higher education, where students go to master the profession of their choosing and then ascend to a gratifying career, if they can afford it.  To many students from low-income families, taking on hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loans is just a quick road to bankruptcy.  Imed Bouchrika, a Chief Data Scientist and Head of Content on Research.com states, “According to the most recent College Affordability and Transparency List from the U.S. Department of Education, college tuition can cost anywhere between $1,000 and $60,000 annually (U.S. Department of Education, 2020), depending on the type of school you enroll in and whether you are an in-state or out-of-state student.” (Bouchrika).  Astronomically high costs for tuition make higher education unobtainable by the majority of low-income students, barring them from seeking programs and courses that can lead them to good careers.  These expensive colleges are the ones that have the best courses, professors, and networking connections that give students the highest competitive advantage in the job market for their respective professions, but if you weren’t born into a rich family then odds are you aren’t setting foot on any of these campuses. 

If we go to the lower end of the spectrum, community colleges, which are educational institutions funded by the city, then we see a more accessible institution that doesn’t have egregious prices for entry, but are also plagued with terrible success rates as a result of their very poorly handled systems, “With scant advising, many community college students spend time and money on courses that won’t transfer or that they don’t need. Though most intend to move on to get bachelor’s degrees, only a small fraction succeed; fewer than half earn any kind of a credential. Even if they do, a new survey finds that many employers don’t believe they’re ready for the workforce.” (Marcus).  As a result of these defunct systems, for the past decade or so, less and less students have been enrolling in community colleges at all, “The number of students at community colleges has fallen 37% since 2010, or by nearly 2.6 million, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center.” (Marcus).  Under these circumstances, imagine being plagued by poverty and having only these bottom of the barrel institutions to entrust your educational future to, the places that are supposed to give you the necessary credentials you need in order to be competitive in the job market so that you can find a job that allows you to at the very least meet the cost of living.  It’s a system that favors the wealthy who can afford proper education after they have graduated from high school, and while there are programs and scholarships that help students pay for tuition and expenses, obviously not every single person who needs them is going to have access to them.

The ineffectiveness of the government to properly implement good funding and support for the community colleges that need it the most in order to retain students has led to many of them wondering whether or not college is even worth it or necessary for them, but having skills is essential in order to live off of something.  Trade schools offer vocational studies that can be completed in half the time that colleges require, “trade school programs are equivalent to approximately 60 credits of coursework. This is often completed within eight months to two years, depending on how much load you commit to per semester.” (Bouchrika).  Trade schools are also more affordable than college for those on a budget, “trade schools are more affordable, with students paying anywhere between $3,855 and $14,843 in tuition fees. Plus, as the programs are relatively cheaper, it only makes sense that the overall cost is lower as well.” (Bouchrika). So, in reaction to this decline in students enrolling in colleges, whether it’s because of lack of money, lack of time, or ineffective faculty in these places that aren’t providing the students with what they need in order to succeed, a trade school can be a nice bare minimum standpoint to help people at the very least have a skill that can be immediately used to gain a job that doesn’t have them living paycheck to paycheck. 

The first priority for any person living in the United States when they become an adult that has to live for themselves and care for their family is to find a skill that they can be good at and make sure that all of your bare minimum needs are taken care of, everything else has to come later.  Opposers to the idea of expansion for vocational schools in favor of colleges rely on the idea that colleges offer a wider range of learning that can allow a person a much larger skillset as a result of the broader, more flexible education that allows them to fare much better in the competitive job market because of their adaptable nature and ability to learn new things more easily.  However, with so many things outside of the control of a student (money, quality of the college), if the student ends up dropping out of college or never enrolling into one anyway, what purpose does college serve if it can’t get people through the door and have them stay there for the four years?  By that logic, the only other option left is vocational studies at a trade school that can put people into the workforce in less than a year so that the worst-case scenario of them becoming homeless doesn’t happen; because not everyone has the luxury of being able to go to college even to this day, but people still need to live.  If the systems in place work against them in their efforts to try to go to and complete college, then they have no choice but to go to trade school.  It’s a viable option to keep people employed, and I am in support of that.

Works Cited

The Seattle Times, April 2023, https://www.seattletimes.com/education-lab/more-than-a-third-of-community-college-students-have-vanished/#comments