It depends on what you're comparing it to. You can go to a trade school and learn contracting, or be an electrician, or an HVAC installer, and in your late teens and early 20's you'll make a lot more than most college grads. But unless you branch out into your own business your income is capped lower than a generic college grad's probably is. And importantly, those careers are typically hell on your body. I know we all like to talk about the dangers of sitting all day but it doesn't compare to doing physical labor for a living, by any stretch. If you have particularly onerous private loans funding a marginal degree from a for-profit institution, you might net less lifetime earnings than a very skilled electrician in an in-demand market.

If you're comparing it to unskilled labor, retail, customer service, or stuff like that, it's absolutely no contest you're still better off with the degree.

And yeah your last bit there seems like the typical HN "let's reinvent this thing that already exist but 'from first principles!!1' but forgetting all the reasons it exists in the state it does now." Public colleges have too much overhead but some of it is justified and necessary to ensure licensing, credentialing, etc.

> and in your late teens and early 20's you'll make a lot more than most college grads.

I question even this. I live in an area of the US without a strong union culture, and known a lot of people in the trades and it doesn’t seem uncommon to see job postings for X apprentice starting at $13-$15 and hour. I could get close to that at a shitty gas station clerk job.

Compare the apprentice to the college student: the apprentice gets paid to learn, while the student has to pay (borrow).

Isn't "apprentice" like an intern. Just the first 1-2 years of on the job training until the wage goes up?

I have a cousin he started as an electrician making $18 an hour as an apprentice. He started making six figures 4 years into the job. Granted he works quite a bit.

It's a feast or famine industry. It's been a feast for a while, and a lot of people who are relatively new to the industry haven't experienced a famine.

My father is/was an electrician and 2008 decimated the industry. He was de facto laid off and worked part time for the better part of three years after. Of course, today there's tons of work and no one to do it. Any young'uns who came in between like 2002-2008 didn't make it through the GFC and switched careers, and the old-timers who weathered the storm don't have enough juice left to work the insane hours.

How competitive are these apprenticeships? A super smart super hard working friend of mine really wanted to do an electrician apprenticeship but at the time (about a decade ago) the wait-list was several year long so he went to college instead.

I'd like to see some harder numbers on this, too. I'm from a similar area, but, maybe things are different in other places. It would be great to see the figures adjusted for cost of living.

It’s hard to get good data broken when you’re looking into things like career level, etc. but when I go on the BLS salary page for my MSA I can see the following

HVAC Repair. It’s a pretty common trade out here. I have a number of family who’s done it at one point. There’s probably a pretty strong demand given how miserable I was when my AC died the other day. Annual median is $42,640

Insurance Claims Processors, which in the particular city I live in tends to be one of the big options for otherwise unskilled college graduates. Annual median: $43,570

Not that big of a difference, though I suppose you could argue the former has the slight advantage of not having as much educational debt burden, which probably exceeds that ~$1k difference.

However like the GP noted, a person in the latter position likely has better options late career.

Your idea sounds like a public university.

We could even collectively own it through our state government.