Trade vs Higher Education

A trade apprenticeship deserves a closer look than most 18-year-olds give it, because you are paid to learn instead of paying to learn. An electrician can finish with zero tuition debt and become a licensed journeyman around 22-23, with a median wage of $62,350 nationally in May 2024 per the Bureau of Labor Statistics^[S1], with journeyman rates running higher in high-cost regions. A four-year degree still wins when the field genuinely requires the credential.

If I could go back, I’d seriously consider a trade

My second-guessing of my own four-year-degree, especially for the next generation.

I took the degree path. I have the diploma, the years in the field, and I’m not writing this to talk myself out of a path that’s worked out fine for me.

Fine isn’t the same as optimal.

Being real about the years between 18 and 26, the van, the slow climb, the duplex that eventually changed things, a chunk of that struggle would have looked different if I’d taken a different path at 18. Specifically: an electrician’s apprenticeship, or plumbing, or something along those lines.

I’m not saying “trades are underrated” but I’d like to make a specific, dollar-for-dollar comparison of the path I actually took versus the one I didn’t, and why I think the second one deserves a harder look than it gets from most 18-year-olds and the adults advising them.

Side by side: the two paths

Here’s the framing that almost never gets shown, because the two paths get evaluated by completely different people with completely different incentives. High schools are measured partly on four-year enrollment rates. Trade programs don’t have the same lobbying presence in a guidance counselor’s office. So the comparison just doesn’t happen for most kids, and it didn’t happen for me.

Run those two timelines forward to age 30 and the apprenticeship path is very plausibly ahead in both net worth and zero-debt position, while the degree path is often still paying down loans from a credential that, for many fields including mine, didn’t move first-year earnings dramatically above what a trade offers.

I’m not saying this is true in every field. Some degrees (engineering, nursing, certain accounting and finance tracks at the right firms) clear this bar easily over a career.

Almost nobody runs the numbers before committing four years and tens of thousands of dollars to find out.

It is not true nearly as universally as the “go to college” default assumes. There are also plenty of majors that are shockingly low-paid. If I were in one of those, this post might just be my expression of regret.

What AI is doing to entry-level work

And that’s all before you get to the impact of AI on our current graduating classes. I don’t have a crystal ball, but over a decade into my career even I am worried about being replaced.

Recent graduates are facing very high barriers to getting a job, in part because of outsourcing to cheaper labor markets and also because some entry-level tasks can be handed to AI. Just last month a discussion with the CFO of my company surprised me when he noted I may be managing AI instead of people in the near future.

What actually makes the trades undervalued

• You’re paid to learn, not paying to learn. This is the single biggest structural difference and it rarely gets said this directly. A registered apprenticeship is a job with a training requirement attached, not school with a job attached. Every year you’re in it, your income is going up, not draining down into tuition.
• The skill is directly useful to the exact path this site is about. Every house-hacker, every small multi-family owner, every landlord eventually needs an electrician, a plumber, or an HVAC tech, and pays a premium for it because those trades are in genuine shortage in most metros right now. Having one of these skills yourself doesn’t just pay a wage, it removes a recurring cost from every property you ever own, and you can monetize it on the side indefinitely.
• Demand isn’t going anywhere. A meaningful share of the electrician and plumber workforce is aging toward retirement faster than new apprentices are entering the pipeline, in most regions. That is a labor-market fact reflected in wage growth in the trades outpacing a lot of white-collar entry-level wage growth over the last decade.
• The stigma is doing real economic damage to 18-year-olds. A four-year degree got coded as the “smart” choice and trades got coded as the fallback for kids who “couldn’t” do college. That coding has nothing to do with lifetime earnings potential and everything to do with status signaling by people, guidance counselors, many parents, university marketing departments, who have no financial skin in being right about it. As a result we’ve had at least 20 years’ worth of kids graduating wondering if it was worth it.

Where the degree path still wins

I want to be fair to my own path, because the comparison isn’t one-directional. A four-year degree wins clearly when:

• The field has a genuinely high ceiling that requires the credential as a gate (medicine, law, many engineering disciplines, certain finance roles)
• You have substantial scholarship or grant funding that makes the debt load small or zero (see the companion post on this site about treating scholarship hunting like a paid job, this is exactly why that math matters so much)
• You have a specific, realistic plan for the degree, not a vague one, “I’m getting a nursing degree because nursing is in shortage and pays well” beats “I’m getting a degree because that’s what you do” by an enormous margin
• The career you want simply requires it, full stop, and there’s no trade-equivalent path to the same outcome
• Developing your soft skills, networking at school, having a common experience with a large chunk of the population that is often later employed in roles that can control/influence hiring is a sort of intangible and highly valuable quality for college grads.
• I’m an advocate for learning about ourselves, our world/context, and also for developing our minds (which requires education), in addition to exposure to a diverse range of ideas, cultures, perspectives that are often quite difficult to get outside of higher learning and travel (or both). This is another priceless intangible.

So clearly the problem isn’t that degrees are bad. It’s that “go to college” got treated as the default answer for every 18-year-old regardless of field, cost, or alternative, and a debt-funded vague-major degree is a meaningfully worse financial bet than most trade apprenticeships, for most people, most of the time.

What I’d tell an 18-year-old version of myself

I’d tell young me a ton. I’d tell him to bet on the Giants against the Patriots (both times) and then maybe none of this would matter too much. But really, here is what I’d say:

1. School is critical, and you should go, but only so far as you can fund it with minimal debt.
2. Work the whole time. Seek out weird lucrative scholarships to pay tuition and other school costs.
3. Pick a degree in a field you are interested in first and foremost.
4. At the end, hopefully with minimal debt, still take a look at median apprentice and journeyman wages for electricians.
5. Complete an internship in your major field, and start an apprenticeship after that if the internship didn’t reveal a path worth staying on.

And take seriously that a path where you earn while you learn, finish with zero debt, and step into a skill that’s both well-paid and directly useful to building wealth in real estate later, is not the consolation prize it’s been made out to be, it means, really, you can do both and make an informed decision. And having a degree is never going to hurt your apprenticeship.

This is one person’s reassessment, not a universal recommendation, the right path depends heavily on your specific field, region, and goals. If you’re weighing options, look up real apprenticeship wage data for your state (most state labor departments publish it) before deciding either way.

If college is still the right call for you, avoid the school debt trap and treat scholarships like a job.

Frequently asked questions

How much do electricians make

The national median wage for electricians is defined by the Bureau of Labor Statistics as $62,350 a year in May 2024. This post notes it runs higher in high cost metros and higher again with overtime.

How long is an electrician apprenticeship

A registered apprenticeship is defined as a paid job with a training requirement attached, and for electrical work it runs about 4-5 years. That puts a journeyman license in hand around age 22-23, against about age 27 for the degree path described here.

Do you have to pay for a trade apprenticeship

A registered apprenticeship is defined as training you are paid to do rather than training you pay to receive. The path in this post finishes with $0 in tuition debt, and the wage scales up with each year of the program.

Is a trade better than a four year degree

The comparison is defined here by field and cost rather than by status. A degree wins when the career gates on the credential, when grants and scholarships keep the debt small, or when there is a specific plan behind it. A debt funded degree with a vague major is the case where the apprenticeship usually comes out ahead.