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Brigid Bergin: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Welcome back, everybody. I'm Brigid Bergin, filling in for Brian today. Now we turn to higher education. The pandemic upended how kids think about higher education. The percentage of students who enrolled in college after graduating high school fell from 70% in 2016 to 62% in 2022, according to The Wall Street Journal. Where are all the kids going?

Enrollment in vocational training programs is surging as overall enrollment in community colleges and four-year institutions has fallen. It rose 16% last year to its highest level since the National Student Clearinghouse began tracking such data. Students are increasingly interested in jobs like HVAC maintenance, vehicle maintenance, and construction to get them in high-paying jobs right out of school with very little student debt. Joining us now to discuss her latest reporting is Te-Ping Chen, Wall Street Journal work and work culture reporter.

Hi, Te-Ping, welcome to WNYC.

Te-Ping Chen: Hi, thanks for having me.

Brigid Bergin: Listeners, we're wondering if we have any young tradespeople, those currently in a trade program tuning in now. We're calling all new electricians, HVAC, plumbers or carpenters. Why did you choose trade school? Was it the rise in the cost of college, the job security, post-graduation, or something else and how's it going? Whether you're in trade school now or have recently graduated, give us a call. The number is 212-433-WNYC. That's 212-433-9692. You can also text at that number. Te-Ping, I want to start with the kinds of vocational focused trainings that are out there that are seeing this increased interest. Is it limited to just a few professions or has participation gone up across the board?

Te-Ping Chen: Really across the board, I was struck to see some of that enrollment data and the increases that you mentioned just because I think it does run so counter to a lot of the perceptions I think people have of this gold trade of it's shrinking, young folk aren't interested. I saw those numbers and I almost didn't believe them. I started calling programs across the country and was just struck whether it was in welding or HVAC, plumbing, et cetera. Really hearing the same thing across states and cities that, yes, we are seeing this drop and it's real and it's pronounced.

Brigid Bergin: That's so interesting. Te-Ping, the shift in higher education is of course coming post-pandemic where some young people saw their parents, so-called white-collar jobs up close, maybe too close. You spoke to a 20-year-old welder who always thought he'd go to college until he saw his parents work from home at their desk jobs, probably in front of a computer. What did he tell you?

Te-Ping Chen: Absolutely. He was seeing his parents work from home, take their calls from home, effectively sitting in front of a screen eight, maybe more hours a day, and that didn't seem very appealing. Also you have to remember he was also part of millions of students across the country who were doing the exact same thing during the pandemic. For a lot of students, education looked like sitting in front of a screen for years. He walked away from that experience feeling like I definitely don't want to spend my life working in front of a screen and I also don't want to spend more time learning seated in front of a screen.

Brigid Bergin: Not surprisingly, we're getting a good number of callers who have similar experiences to some of the folks you talk to. I want to start with Robin in Norwalk, Connecticut. Robin, thanks so much for calling.

Robin: Oh, hi. I'm a mom of a person who did exactly what you're talking about. He didn't want to be in front of the screen all the time, and so now he's looking into a trade. He's actually finding it a little bit difficult to find the trade that he wants to do. I should mention, it's not cheap to do that. It's not always easy to join a union if you don't have connections in the union, which is fair. I'm not complaining, I'm just saying. It's a fact.

Now he's pursuing welding. He's going to say, "Do I like welding?" It's going to be $3,000 to do the first welding class. Then it's going to be the next class with another $3,000. It's expensive. Luckily, he can live with us. He's privileged in that regard. He can live with us. He has a job, but he lives with us while he figures out what he wants to do. He's very excited. He wants to do the trade stuff.

Brigid Bergin: Robin, thank you for that perspective. That was the parents' perspective. Let's go to Pat in Nyack. Pat, thanks so much for calling WNYC.

Pat: Hey. I am actually in a weird situation, or I love my situation. I'm a Princeton graduate, and a carpenter. I went to Princeton, did my undergrad there, graduated, worked in the white-collar world for a bit, hated it. Luckily, my father is from Ireland, so I grew up working a classic immigrant child life, as a carpenter's apprentice. I continued to do it on the side after, while I was doing white-collar work. Then eventually I lost my job, and was like, "You know what? I'm just going to do this full-time."

I was in the union for a little bit, and now I work for myself. Just to the point of vocational school and whatnot, you can go do it, however, like that last caller just said it was expensive. An old-school apprenticeship is not always free, but always paid. That's great.

Brigid Bergin: Pat, thanks so much for that call. Let's take one more. Raquel in Rockland County. Raquel, thanks for calling WNYC.

Raquel: Hello, how are you?

Brigid Bergin: I'm great. Are you pursuing a trade?

Raquel: Yes, I am. I'm actually a hairdresser pursuing cosmetology.

Brigid Bergin: Why did you choose that route as opposed to something else after high school?

Raquel: Actually, I was able to study cosmetology while I was in high school, and it was completely free. I had absolutely zero debt, and that was the route that I could take to have no debt. I also knew that right after high school, I wanted to focus on my volunteer work. I'm one of Jehovah's Witnesses, and I wanted to be able to do more, versus going to a four-year that would take more of my time away from my purpose and my family.

Brigid Bergin: Raquel, thank you so much. Is part of what you're doing there, Raquel, with an eye towards running your own business, doing this on your own, as opposed to working in someone else's salon?

Raquel: I am currently working in someone else's salon, but that also provides flexibility just with the type of job that I have. I can choose when I want to take my clients, but I also have the support of an employer and a team.

Brigid Bergin: That's great. Raquel, thank you so much for calling and sharing that perspective. Te-Ping, before we get back to some of your reporting, any reactions to some of the callers that you heard there? We heard a parent with some concerns about the cost of some of this training, but then a couple of young people who seem really happy with the flexibility and the life it's providing them.

Te-Ping Chen: Yes. I would say with the cost, that is something that it does cost money, or it can cost money, certainly, to go to trade school. Some of the folk that I spoke to in reporting this piece were using their 529 programs that they had intended to use for standard four-year college to transfer that money to trade school. That's one mode of financing that some parents and families I spoke to took. Others were going to cheaper community colleges that have a vocational focus.

There's also the route which one of our other callers outlined, which is that you can go the apprenticeship route, and in many of those cases, your employer will pay for your schooling and will also pay you a wage, and often a very good wage while you're working and getting trained.

Brigid Bergin: From the young people you spoke to, was there a sense that trade careers are more secure than white-collar jobs, and were there clearer paths where you, generally knew what the next steps were for advancement, and how much you might be making in the future?

Te-Ping Chen: Absolutely. I would say that that was a really big part of the calculation for a number of the young workers I spoke to, the sense that these are jobs that are not going to be automated away, and they're not going to be offshored. COVID was a period of incredible flux where people saw white-collar jobs, other sorts of jobs, too, getting decimated, the sense of uncertainty, the world getting shaken up, which I think has only been augmented, especially as we think about the rise of Gen AI.

Yes, the sense that these kinds of skilled trade work are not going to be disappearing anytime soon, and that there's a path that you can take. When I spoke with a number of workers, they could tell me really clearly often what they're going to make in five years because their union scales dictate it, so they know. Look, if I'm planning to buy a house by the time I'm 24, I know I can because I know my salary is going to be there if I stick to this.

Brigid Bergin: We also know the demand and pay for certain skilled labor is very high. Any homeowner who's had a leaky toilet or a broken boiler can attest to that. What kind of earnings can newly-minted trade workers expect to make right out of school? How does it compare to those who perhaps went to a four-year college?

Te-Ping Chen: No, that's a great question. Well, medium pay for new construction hires actually rose 5% to over $48,000 last year. That actually outstrips what's the same comparable medium pay for new hires in professional services was last year. Last year, new hires in professional services were earning an annual 39,500 so you can see there's a gap there. Pretty striking. Over the last five years, when you speak to different trade groups and contractors around the country, the jump in pay has been substantial.

I spoke to one executive director of an HVAC association here in Pennsylvania, where I'm based, who said that five years ago, if you were graduating from one of the trade schools that their association runs, you might've made 35,000 a year, whereas these days it's more like 60,000. Striking. When you look again, the contrast between white collar and blue collar might have seen more striking in years past and often less so these days.

Brigid Bergin: Well, we have lots of listeners who have stories to share. Let's start with Adam in Flatbush. Adam, thanks so much for calling.

Adam: Hi, how's it going?

Brigid Bergin: It's going well. I understand you went to trade school.

Adam: Let me just give you my experience and maybe my advice to anyone who's considering the same thing. I went to a trade school program. You will pay a fraction of what you will for a four-year degree, on average. That's true. You will still pay. When you're done, in New York City at least, in the five boroughs, you're going to enter a market if you don't have experience and you only have trade school or you have minimal experience, you're going to enter a market in the non-union sector that really is not going to pay you a lot for a very long time.

On the order of four to five years, you're going to be making maybe a little bit more than a fast food worker might. If you're young and you're eager and you're bright-eyed and that's something you want to put the body capital and time into, I think it's a great idea because you're making money right away. If you're not willing to stomach that kind of lifestyle and pay grade for that long, then a four-year degree is in the long run, probably going to be more beneficial to you, even though it pains me to say that, and I wish more people would consider the trades.

Brigid Bergin: In the work that you're doing right now, do you feel like you made the right decision for yourself?

Adam: I had to walk away recently, so I would say, my answer is pending.

Brigid Bergin: Okay. Adam, thanks so much for calling and sharing that. Let's go to Dan in Darien. Dan, thanks for calling WNYC.

Dan: Hi, good morning.

Brigid Bergin: Good morning.

Dan: I'm a parent, actually my son is in the first year of a two-year program to become a General Motors certified technician. He goes to school two days a week at a program here in Connecticut under the Connecticut State University and College Systems. Then the other three days a week, he works and learns and gets paid.

Brigid Bergin: As a parent, were you surprised when he decided to pursue a trade or is that something that you were expecting from him?

Dan: Not at all. Good question. I actually introduced him to a local vocational school in Stanford that's fabulous, the Wright School back when he was in middle school. I could see that he had no interest in really book learning and I could see that desk jobs, especially now with AI, et cetera, are under threat. He bravely chose to go this way because in our town, everybody goes off to college, which is basically like four more years of high school, but here he is entering "the real world". He has to be very brave to do that, and I'm proud of him.

Brigid Bergin: Dan, thanks so much for your call. Te-Ping, any reaction to those callers? We have a full board of people who want to share their stories, but I want to give you a moment, since you did so much reporting and spoke to people along the way, how do those experiences and the stories we've heard so far match some of what you saw when you were reporting the story.

Te-Ping Chen: I do think some of the challenges, of course, associated with life in the skilled trades are very real. It's super hard. It's a grind. One of the workers we featured in my story, she wakes up at 4.30 to get to the construction site on time. I also spoke to recruiters who said, "Look, we have a lot of folk who have jumped in and there's more workers coming online." It can be hard to get jobs sometimes, too especially if you're a new, more inexperienced worker. As new construction is slowed in commercial, for example, there's a feeling of, "Okay, sometimes I can't get a job because employers want somebody with more experience."

There absolutely are those challenges and the concern longer down the line. What am I going to do when I'm older? This is a physically taxing trade. I will say a lot of young workers I spoke to were interested in sometimes walking away from college paths because they saw the sense of, "I can be an entrepreneur. I can hang up my own shingle, build this up. By the time I'm older, I'm going to have established myself and have my own business." There's a sense of many paths that you can go into skilled trades, but obviously plenty of challenges to the mix, just as there would be with any other industry.

Brigid Bergin: Let's go to Rebecca in Queens. Rebecca, thanks for calling WNYC.

Rebecca: Hi, I was calling because I actually did a vocational program in high school. I grew up in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and that's where I learned how to weld. My sister did an auto body course. Then I ended up going to art school at NYU and I didn't learn any practical skills there and all of the best jobs I've ever gotten are because I know how to weld.

Brigid Bergin: Are you still doing welding now?

Rebecca: I'm actually wrapping up a welding project as we speak, putting away some tools. Sometimes I wonder, if I had just done the straight vocational program or continued it after high school, if I would be making more money than I am now, because the arts really don't pay very well, and there's no union jobs in the arts.

Brigid Bergin: Rebecca, thanks so much for that call. Te-Ping she raises something that I think listeners who are intrigued by this conversation are probably curious about, in your reporting, you cite a survey of high school and college-age people by a software company Jobber last year, it showed that 75% of respondents said they would be interested in vocational schools offering paid on-the-job training. For people who aren't familiar, what kinds of educational options are available to students who are interested in the trades?

Te-Ping Chen: It's really a spectrum. You can start at the high school level. Certainly there are programs in high schools around the country. They have been obviously, I think, greatly weakened in recent generations as we have, as a nation pursued more of this college for all model. In my reporting, I spoke to a number of high schools that were intent on restarting that traditional shop class, bringing in more resources, allowing you to earn credentials, even at that earlier high school level.

That's something that is important to allow people to get a foothold into the trades, and it's also something that when you speak to high school counselors will say has had an effect also on how people perceive the trades, and helping to combat some of the stigma traditionally that has been associated with a path in school trades. There was a sense for years in many high schools that kids who went the vocational education route were the grease monkeys and they weren't able to hack it in an academic course, and increasingly there's a sense that that isn't necessarily the case.

Well, as you point out, there's survey data showing that students are interested in vocational programs offering paid on the job training. We know that parents often, the same survey found, 80% of them want them to pursue a college education so there is that sense of stigma, and that's an obstacle often that you see more in the older generations. With regard to the different paths they can pursue, yes, absolutely.

High school is one avenue that you can pursue more so than previously in a number of communities. As well, we're talking community colleges, we're talking private trade schools, we're talking get hired at a company that wants to train you up. There's such a demand for labor that you do find a lot of employers will take you. No experience needed, we'll get you there.

Brigid Bergin: Let's go to some more of our callers. Kevin in Denver, Colorado. Kevin, thanks for calling WNYC.

Kevin: Hey, very welcome. I'm Basically retired, though, if the right opportunity comes along, I'll definitely take it. I started out in broadcasting, worked at NBC, migrated into production work, working on commercials and some really minor films many, many, many, many years ago. Then saw an opportunity and migrated into computer technology and worked as a coder and then moved into corporate middle management and then through other kind of layoffs and things like that. I ended up in construction back in the video world.

Brigid Bergin: Huh.

Kevin: Just like, I don't know, keep your eyes open, keep your head up and maybe just go with the flow and you'll get to do a lot of different stuff.

Brigid Bergin: Kevin, thanks so much for that call and for your optimistic view on life and approach to it. If you're just joining us, I'm Brigid Bergin in for Brian Lehrer. I'm speaking with Te-Ping Chen, Wall Street Journal Reporter who covers work and work culture. We're talking about Gen Z, young adults who are going into the trades instead of going into college. We're coming to the end of this segment, but I have a couple more questions for you, Te-Ping and really a completely full board of callers, so if you're waiting, thank you so much for calling in.

One question that I have to ask you is, how much of a factor do you think the rising cost of college has had in many young people's decision to go to vocational school? How do the two forms of education typically compare when it comes to time and money? We've heard some callers call in talking about how these trades still require cost and training, but it seems to be significantly less than the investment of some four-year institutions.

Te-Ping Chen: Yes. I do think the rising cost of college has had a substantial effect here and I think almost every conversation I had with the young worker entering the skilled trades, that was something very much on their minds. Even beyond that, I would say too, it's a combination of high cost and also this question of utility. There was a new study out recently by Burning Glass Institute and Strata Education Foundation, which found that around half of college graduates end up in jobs where bachelor's degrees aren't needed.

I think there is a skepticism increasingly of the sense that, well, I might end up spending a lot of money on a degree that I'm not even going to need. Also we've seen too, a job market in the past couple years that has been often quite challenging for white collar job-seekers, fresh grads. I think all that conspiring to make the trades seem more attractive because at the end of the day, yes, it will cost money often, but substantially, less. As one of our callers pointed out. The students that I spoke to pursuing this path we're paying anywhere for maybe $3,000 to $20,000 for their programs.

That absolutely is an investment, but less of one typically than you would see for a four-year. We're also talking about a quicker path. Anywhere from the student that we're talking about earlier, who pursued a nine-month welding program to another student I spoke to was going into a two-year, we're talking about a shorter timeframe than a four-year college. As one of our other college was talking about, we often do have the ability to pursue this education while simultaneously working and getting paid.

Brigid Bergin: I want to bring in one more caller, another proponent of the trades. Let's go to Tony in a Egg Harbor, Wisconsin. Tony, thanks for listening. Thanks for calling. What's your view on going into the trades?

Tony: Well, obviously it worked out for me. This is 50 years ago. In 1974, I graduated high school. I was never an academic and my dad told me, "Don't go to college. You're wasting your time and my money. Go learn a trade." I enrolled in a nine-month HVAC program. I've owned my own company for 43 years. I just sold it in Chicago. In 1974, the trades were really for those kids that couldn't make it in college. I don't know if it's really evolved past that, but I think it's the best opportunity and I think our trade in particular is egregiously short in having women.

Brigid Bergin: Interesting. Tony, thank you so much for that call. Congratulations on your 50 years in that trade and the success it has brought you. It sounds like there's a lot changing in the trades, and we're going to leave it there for today. My guest has been Te-Ping Chen, Wall Street Journal Work and Work Culture Reporter. Te-Ping, thanks so much for coming on today.

Te-Ping Chen: Thank you.

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