Re:US college enrollments are falling, except for graduate d...
by chongli on Tuesday September 29, 2020 @10:24AM
(#24628187)
There are new skilled trades coming up now. My friend is a robotics welder. Unlike a traditional welder, he does most of his work from a computer terminal. He programs the robot to weld a specific joint and then the robot repeats that weld for every part that comes through his station on the line.
The old guard of skilled welders who did the welding by hand are being replaced (and not happy about it) by young guys like him. My friend learned his job through a 3-year program at the local community college. His job involves a lot less of the tacit knowledge a skilled welder would have (judging the quality of a joint by feel) and a lot more theoretical knowledge of metallurgy. Instead of intuitive judgement, he relies on the methods of nondestructive (x-ray scanning) and destructive (cutting a test weld in half and inspecting it under an electron microscope) testing.
At the factory attached to my place of employment, I'm not sure what jobs are actually left that are related to any of the skilled trades. Most of our workers are assemblers. We do hire people with 2 year trade school degrees, or equivalent military service training. When our welder retires, we will probably outsource the welding.
Now we get pieces from shops that have skilled trades such as machinists, but I don't think those shops require a 4 year degree. I don't think carpenters, roofers, or plumbers have bachelors degrees. Many of the businesses that hire those people are family owned, and hard to break into if you're not connected.
As for health care trades, well, employers might be willing to bear the cost of the training, if there was only one employer: The government.