> give up and go into a trade

Exactly this, without the "give up" part. Why is going into a trade giving up? It's choosing a different path than the one that has been shoved down all our throats like it is the only respectable option. University is not for everyone, and not everyone can go there. There's simply not enough room.

I think going into trades is what I want my son to do. I love Mike Rowe's thoughts on this - you can make excellent money, get started fast and be working for yourself by the time you would get a precious 4-year degree. And trades are in serious need of new people; seems like a great opportunity.

I have many family members in the trades. "The trades" is not a homogenous group of jobs. Some of them got lucky and got good union jobs. Most of them work hard jobs that are hard on their bodies. They have an income that's enough to live on, but money is always tight. I know very few tradesmen in their 50s and 60s who would tell their children to follow their career path, other than the relative few who have managed to work their way up so that they are managing tradesmen, not working as a tradesman.

If you have a very specific career in mind then sure go for it, but just telling people to "go into the trades" is probably harmful.

The average debt for recent college grads is around $30-40k, quarter-million figures are outliers . Doctors may accumulate hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt, but they easily make up for it in income.

About 7% (3.2 million) of federal student loan borrowers have over $100,000 in debt. Many of these are likely law (avg $145,500), pharmacy ($179,514), veterinary ($183,302), medical ($201,490), and dental ($292,169).

right, and those jobs also tend to pay the most

Law is very bimodal. The median engineer likely makes more than the median lawyer.

Pharmacy: If you get a doctorate and work in a hospital (e.g. in ER), you'll get good pay. The average pharmacist in the pharmacy: Not as much in the future. And there's been a lot of wage pressure due to:

1. Amount pharmacies have to pay to obtain the drugs (i.e. what drug manufacturers charge).

2. Amount insurers will pay for medicine. These are contractual. So if you have insurance and go in, there's an upper bar on what the pharmacy can get from you.

The profit a pharmacy makes is between these two numbers, and that margin has shrunk a lot in the last decade. The upshot? Pharmacies are cutting staff, and cutting hours. In my state, there are towns with no pharmacies at all - they had to shut down as they were losing money.

If you want to be a college grad hired by Google, college name matters. If you want to move across the country, college name matters. If you want to stay in the region/state, not choose a garbage tier college is all that matters. It's not Ivy league or bust, but choosing top 100 university for chosen field is a good bet.

If he doesn't want to be in the trades, he should go to Texas Tech. The degree will serve him just as well as a degree from any other school, bar a handful of elite institutions.

Texas Tech is a fantastic school. If he chooses to go there and majors in a STEM field, he'll have a bright future.

The degree is only part of the value proposition of a college, though. The actual education you get (not just the paper proving it), the meaningful experiences you have, the social connections you forge, and the opportunities you encounter in the environment are all hugely important.

I went to college and dropped out, so the value of my non-existent degree is literally zero. But I got a ton of value out of my time there. I met a lot of friends, grew significantly as a person, and found a job opportunity that started me on my career path.

I still think college is way too expensive these days, but if you think of it as only purchasing a degree, you're missing a lot.

My cousin seemed to have it worked out. Do as many relevant AP classes for credit as possible, finish the first two years worth of credits at a community college for $cheap and then transfer to a brand-name school for the final part.

My general impression is "has a degree with min GPA x.y" is a HR check-box that is necessary to get past an initial screen for a lot of large company roles. After you've got a couple of years experience no-one on the interview panel likely cares about the school you went to (and if they do, maybe give that firm a miss) compared to what you've done in the past 3 years.

There is a lot of defeatism floating around these days that isn't really warranted, there's good evidence that what you study matters as much as where, e.g. https://www.air.org/news/press-release/when-it-comes-your-pa...

Barely scraping through an engineering degree or getting a degree in architecture at texas tech is certainly a bad idea, but the average engineering graduate is doing better than the trades.

More of this data is public now on graduate outcomes, e.g. https://www.collegesimply.com/colleges/texas/texas-tech-univ...

I feel the key bit here is to look at the outcome of the education. He is right to be worried about a quarter-million dollar tuition bill, and there is absolutely no point in doing so for a path with poor job prospects.

There are some paths where the university choice does matter, others that don't.

Going into the trades is not a bad idea I think, but again it needs to be a conscious decision for the pros and the cons.

I think the key bit is do some research, try and get a week long internship in the job that he is looking for and/or try to speak with seniors/grads.

How many people are getting into selective schools? It cant be more than a few thousands, so indeed there are opportunities for those who go to non-selective schools. It depends in the end.

Problem is we always keep hearing about these selective schools in the media and that colours out perception a lot. Of course try as much as possible to get into a selective school, but if one is unable to, there are still opportunities.

>How many people are getting into selective schools? It cant be more than a few thousands,

Much more than that. The ivy league admits ~20k a year. That number jumps to a few hundreds of thousands if you extend to flagship state schools & the Dukes, Northwesterns, and Stanfords of the world.

I know some pretty good biotech start ups spun out from Texas Tech - I wouldn’t dismiss it out of hand

They are not that different. I graduated from a no name school a few years ago and am doing fine.