Dont' discount the value of learning a skilled trade.

[SunsetBengal]

I stumbled across this article, and it reinforces what I have already known for most of my life. Having a skill that is in demand makes a person much more valuable in the employment market than a person without, or even a person that chose an academic degree path in a field with few opportunities.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/decades-pushing-bachelors-degrees-u-s-needs-tradespeople/

Quote:The United States has 30 million jobs that pay an average of $55,000 per year and don’t require a bachelor’s degree, according to the Georgetown center. People with career and technical educations are actually slightly more likely to be employed than their counterparts with academic credentials, the U.S. Department of Education reports, and significantly more likely to be working in their fields of study.
At California Steel Industries, where Esparza was learning industrial computing, some supervisors without college degrees make as much as $120,000 per year and electricians also can make six figures, company officials said.

Quote:Skilled trades show among the highest potential among job categories, the economic-modeling company Emsi calculates. It says tradespeople also are older than workers in other fields — more than half were over 45 in 2012, the last period for which the subject was studied — meaning looming retirements could result in big shortages.