trade school vs college argumentative essay

The New York Times

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College Is the Goal. Will These Three Teenagers Get There?

By ANEMONA HARTOCOLLIS

The Times followed three teenagers in Topeka, Kan., as they decided where to apply to college – and even whether college was the right choice for them. Here’s a look at their journey: Senior Year at Topeka High * The Pros and Cons of Delaying College * The Allure of Leaving Kansas * ‘I’m Panicking’ * College Is Not the Only Option * The First in the Family to Go to College * Two Different Paths to College * Is Higher Education the Cure-All? * Imagining Life Away From Home * Mind-Sets Are the Barrier * The Pitch for Technical School * One Student’s Calculation * Confronting Debt * Getting Motivated * What Is a College Education Worth? * Missed Deadlines * Chat: Navigating a Path

One Student’s Calculation: College vs. Trade School

The knowledge Nate Triggs has gained from the farm may not be from books, but it is shaping his vision of his future, and of what he could do after graduating from Topeka High if he gets a college education.

He works construction with his father. One of his favorite projects was the hip roof that they built for his grandfather’s house. I had never heard of a hip roof , but when he took me to see it, I thought it looked like the kind of roof that Frank Lloyd Wright put on his celebrated prairie houses.

Nate had never heard of Frank Lloyd Wright. But he nodded appreciatively at the concept of a prairie house. His father’s farm, outside Holton, Kan., is prairie country. Nate’s experience working construction makes him think that if he goes to a four-year college, he would like to become an architect. He has done the research, and found that Kansas State University has a good architecture and engineering program. He is good at math, so he would like to try there.

Or maybe he will become a game warden, he said. As a hunter, he has seen animals horrifically mutilated by other hunters. He would like to prevent that. In his family, they never kill wild animals wantonly, and they always eat what they kill.

But he is also a good auto mechanic, and can envision working at the Ford dealership in town.

Nate has been hunting and fishing for as long as he can remember – catfish, bass, rabbits, raccoons, coyotes, deer, quail, turkeys, doves. He knows all their quirks and habits.

One recent morning, he loaded his Mossberg shotgun, put on his camouflage vest and headed out through his 80-acre family property with his hunting buddy, Tyler, to the cedar copse where the doves roost.

Two dogs followed: his black dog, Lucky, who commutes with him from Topeka each weekend in his Chevy S-10 truck, and a yellow Labrador trained as a bird dog. It was near dawn. On the horizon, Tyler saw a truck passing slowly on the highway and waved. “It’s loaded down with corn,” Tyler said. “It’s harvest time.”

They could tell the doves by their distinctively angled wings, their quickness and their flight pattern, more soaring than flapping. Tyler took three shots, but Nate never raised his gun. He reminisced about how he once let three male turkeys strut right past him down a creek bed as he sat behind a ground blind, because he was holding out for deer. “I coulda smoked ’em,” he said. “I didn’t think they was quite big enough.”

It is a character trait, this perseverance, this willingness to wait. Isn’t that what college is all about? Delayed gratification.

College or trade school?

He is weighing the benefits of each. “With technical school, you go in for what you go in for,” he said. “With four years of college, you expand your interests.”

His grandmother Ann Matthews, a retired teacher, said it should be up to him. “He’s analytical, so I think he’ll make a good choice,” she said.

Join the Discussion

Senior year at topeka high.

Nearly all high school students want to go to college these days, studies show, but many never make it. Of those who do, many fail to earn their degrees. Researchers call this the “aspirations-attainment gap.”

What stops kids from getting a college degree? Poor academic preparation, rising college costs, the declining value of financial aid and, not least, just managing the process. Applying to college requires a huge amount of social capital — the support of family, friends, mentors and teachers — as well as personal drive and initiative.

In the last month, I have been visiting Topeka High School, talking with seniors, and their parents and guidance counselors, about their college plans as they take standardized tests, decide where to apply, write essays, fill out financial aid forms and send in their applications. I’ve followed their successes and mishaps along the way and will look in again in a few months to see where they end up, whether in college, vocational school, a job or at home.

Why Topeka?

Topeka High is in many ways an all-American school, the largest public high school in this sprawling low-rise city of about 127,000 people. The school has a strong racial, ethnic and economic mix among its 1,800 students. As in many American schools, black students are often the most disadvantaged, despite integration.

But Topeka High also has many poor and struggling white students, as well as students of Mexican descent and children of migrant farmworkers, some undocumented. A handful of students, mainly affluent ones, will go to the Ivy League. But the graduation rate hovers in the low 70 percent range, the principal said; 45 percent of graduates go to a four-year college, and 17 percent go to a two-year college. More than half the students are poor by federal standards.

Topeka High is also where I went to high school, before going on to college on the East Coast. Many of my friends stayed closer to home or chose not to go to college, saying they did not see the value in it. Has that pattern changed or stayed the same? How did the Great Recession affect the ambitions and dreams of students here? I set out to get to know some of the kids and find the answers.

The Pros and Cons of Delaying College

He is Nate in the country and Nathan in the city, torn between two worlds.

Nathan Triggs lives with his mother in Topeka on weekdays. On weekends, he drives his scruffy Chevy S-10 pickup truck to his father’s farm outside Holton, population 3,300, about 45 minutes to the north.

In the country, what matters is what you can do with your hands: baling hay, hunting or fixing a broken U-joint. In the city, what matters is what you can do with your brain, whether it’s understanding the difference between kinetic and potential energy in physics class or being able to explain the meaning of social capital in government class.

Nathan/Nate can do both. That push and pull between these worlds is working on him now as he tries to decide, amid conflicting advice from family and friends, whether to go to college or to trade school. But are the life of the farm and the life of the mind mutually exclusive?

The college decision is a critical turning point and a central point of satisfaction in life, economists say. That’s why college admissions directors say everything matters — not just grades, but also life experience.

Nate, who is about to turn 18, sees a number of gates ahead of him, all attractive. Which one will he choose to go through?

To get to Nate’s father’s farm, you drive north from Topeka on U.S. 75, past the ubiquitous grain elevators and a sign advertising Goodyear, one of Topeka’s largest employers. The landscape undulates from a gritty urban setting to more idyllic cornfields, sunflowers and church spires. About a half-hour on, Holton flashes by in two stoplights.

The gravel driveway to the farm is marked by stars and stripes painted on boards, like a Jasper Johns painting, with a baby’s footprints where the stars should be. Its whimsy hints at the affectionate family life inside. In the kitchen, the grocery list on the chalkboard shows requisitions, in different handwriting, for “man soap” and “sanity.” Well-seasoned cast iron pans hang on the wall, and in a freewheeling spirit, nobody minds that the bathroom has no door.

At school in town, Nathan is the quiet boy in the back of the classroom, whom nobody notices.

The student government leaders and the high school principal have to think for a couple of minutes before he gradually swims into view — lanky, in jeans and cowboy boots. Oh yes, they say, the farm boy. What is he doing at Topeka High? He does not seem to belong.

In Holton, Nate has learned skills that are not clearly measured on a college application. He even speaks differently, mixing his tenses and sprinkling in some ain’ts. In Topeka, he is a committed student who eagerly signed up for a college-prep program when he was still in seventh grade.

“Is that why you’re in all those honors classes?” his grandmother Ann Matthews asked the other day when she heard him talking about his schoolwork. Nate nodded shyly.

His grandfather Al Matthews, a retired insurance claims manager who, like his wife, has a college degree, is pushing the military, saying Nate can find himself in the service before making a life-changing decision like going to college.

“Does one go to college, and run the risk of spending four years and a lot of money and getting out and there’s no jobs?” Mr. Matthews said, sitting on his comfortable front porch in nearby Netawaka, Kan., as Nate listened quietly. “Use the military as an intermediate step while you can see what is going on with the economy.”

Or, he said, “lay out for a year” and work. To which Nate instantly replied, “I don’t want to lay out for a year.”

The Allure of Leaving Kansas

A few years ago, TaTy’Terria Gary and her mother made a pact. After TaTy finished at Topeka High School, her mother would move out of Kansas, and TaTy would consider leaving the state to go to college.

“She feels like Topeka is not a good place for people who have dreams,” TaTy said. “Go where your heart is. There’s 49 other states. Why stay in this one?”

That deadline is approaching, and TaTy, 17, a senior, is one of the few students in the college-prep program here who want to go to college out of state. Not much seems to intimidate her. She is tall and full-bodied. She wears her hair swept up and has learned to look camera-ready through her job selling cosmetics at a beauty store. Teachers sometimes criticize her for being sassy.

She may not always fit feminine stereotypes of being agreeable, but she has steel.

TaTy’s life seems tailor-made for a college application. She has a clear, long-term ambition: to be an obstetrician and gynecologist. She has an instinct to help people that she traces to her childhood, when she helped her grandmother shop for groceries. She has been doing volunteer jobs since seventh grade, like serving food at a nursing home and helping out at a preschool. She does it because the college-prep program requires it, but she has found that “honestly, it’s better than sitting in the house.”

Even with her job and her responsibilities as captain of the school step team, she has a grade point average of about 3.7, she said, with an 87 in human anatomy.

Change has been a theme of her life lately. To escape the jangling police and ambulance sirens of central Topeka, her family moved last year to rural Pauline. “I like seeing the stars at night,” she said. She drives a half-hour to school each morning, sometimes taking her younger brother and sister to school first, which adds another half-hour.

Her mother was turning 18 when she had TaTy, dashing her own hopes of going to college. She now works at a group home for abused and abandoned children, and she is studying for a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice at Washburn University, a public institution in Topeka.

TaTy avoids her father, who, she said, has been in and out of jail. “He likes to blame everyone else for his problems,” she said.

TaTy does not want to have children, she said, so she does not expect to repeat her mother’s experience of becoming pregnant at a young age. For her 16th birthday, she asked for a “purity ring,” a silver ring symbolizing a pledge that she will abstain from sex before marriage, or until she is ready.

She embraces the role of the independent woman. The step team that she leads, a kind of stomp-dancing group, has become a bonding experience for its mostly black and Hispanic members, many of them girls who are not the cheerleader type: too heavy or not popular enough.

She wants to be an OB-GYN partly so she can help young women understand their bodies. “I definitely think that women are so much stronger than they know,” she said.

A Familiar Feeling at 18: ‘I’m Panicking’

Zachary Shaner was truant when other marching band members received their dress uniforms, so the other night he was rummaging around the empty band room, hoping to find one that fit in time for the next game. Then he went down to the cafeteria, where teachers were sitting behind rows of tables for parent-teacher conferences.

“I’ll take that,” said Eric Bradshaw, the band director, snatching the marching band hat out of Zac’s hand as he walked up to the table with his mother for their conference. It is the wrong color hat, and it has a broken black feather plume on top. He can’t wear it.

At that moment, the broken plume seems symbolic of the wounded spirit that is Zac’s senior year at Topeka High School. He is the gifted boy everyone complains is not living up to his potential.

Zac, 18, has been raised by a single mother on disability insurance in a poor part of Topeka. He transferred from his neighborhood’s sports-oriented high school to Topeka High in search of a better education. He sings, composes music and makes his own puppets for puppet shows. He plays so many instruments that when people ask him which ones, he just says, “All of them.”

By all rights, Zac should be a find for an artsy college like Bard or Bennington.

Everyone has known someone like him in high school: the exceptionally smart, glib kid destined for great things despite a troubled background. But in time, that trouble seems to catch up, and the dreams to turn to dust.

Zac may be at that pressure point.

His teachers say that he has chosen easy courses he can glide through with minimal effort, and that he is often late or absent. Zac admits he stays up late at night, composing and recording music, and then has power struggles with his mother over getting to school. He has no license or car, so she has to drive him.

He took the ACT college admissions test without practice and got a 27, about the 86th percentile, a high score for having taken it cold. But he knows that to really stand out, he has to nudge up his score. “I’m panicking,” Zac said this fall, a few weeks before he was supposed to take the ACT for the second time.

The truancy began junior year, when he decided he needed an after-school job to make money to buy musical equipment.

He put on a collared shirt, a tie and dress shoes for an interview to bag groceries at Mike’s IGA, three blocks from his house. “I can’t believe I was worried that I wouldn’t get the job,” he said, laughing.

He earned $7.25 an hour after school, and a dollar more on Sundays. But he was taking hard courses like honors precalculus and trig, and his grades dropped.

He stopped working at the supermarket this fall to concentrate on his studies. But he sees himself falling into the same pattern as his older brother, Chris, 20, who became so depressed in high school that he barely graduated. Chris lives at home, drifting through part-time minimum-wage jobs, contemplating a factory job.

Zac craves success yet fears failure.

He plays bass in the school orchestra, bass guitar in jazz band and saxophone in marching band. He can imitate Johnny Cash’s testosterone-filled growl in “Folsom Prison Blues,” or Art Garfunkel’s angelic high notes in “The Sounds of Silence.”

Broad-shouldered, with a hangdog stoop and long dirty-blond hair, he was once a misfit, teased for using big words. But playing music with his big brother and their band, Pegasi, at Topeka venues like a dive bar called the Boobie Trap has brought him out of his shell.

“My fantasy job would be making it big as a musician,“ he said. “I don’t know what a more realistic option would be.”

At the parent-teacher conference, his band teacher, Mr. Bradshaw, asked Zac what his plans were after graduation. To study sound engineering, Zac replied.

You need to show up, the teacher told him: “The thing about college is, there’s no grade recovery. You get one shot.”

‘College Is Not the Only Option’

In late September, Topeka High held a senior parent information night, encouraged by the new superintendent, Tiffany Anderson, who has made college attendance a priority. The guidance counselors were startled — and pleased — to find a line of parents stretching down the main hallway of the school.

The parents were told that to be assured admission to most of the big state universities in Kansas, students had to have at least a 21 on the ACT, the average at Topeka High, or be in the top third of their class. Scholarships, a counselor warned the parents, are harder to get than they might think.

But the counselors did not assume that all students aspired to go to college. “College is not the only option,” Angela Locke, a guidance counselor, told the audience. “Sometimes it’s not even the best option.”

While the counselors “firmly believe the philosophy that college is great,” Ms. Locke told the parents, “Our world is a different place than when most of us were going to school.”

She added, “I know when I was going to school, if you were going to college, you probably were going to get a very good job.” A very good job could no longer be taken for granted, she implied.

Last year, she said, Washburn Institute of Technology, once the vocational arm of the Topeka public schools and now a division of Washburn University, had added a phlebotomy program. “How cool would it be to be able to work my way through college as a phlebotomist?” Ms. Locke said.

This year, Washburn Tech added cosmetology, which is “wonderful for Topeka,” she added. “We feel pretty confident that they’re not going to take a lot of tuition money from our students and disappear.”

Ms. Locke went on to extol Topeka High’s R.O.T.C. program and the benefits of an apprenticeship or a union. “We are going to help students get from Point A to Point B, and it’s not always going to be college, and that’s O.K.,” she said.

There was little talk of how to prepare for standardized tests like the ACT or the SAT. At the very end, responding to a question from the audience, a counselor said that “a lady from Manhattan” would be offering one session of ACT prep during the school day in the week before the test, and that it would cost $40. The session had been arranged by the school’s gifted facilitator, and people were told that for further details, they could go to the counseling center and pick up a flier. They were also told to go to a website, Number2.com , for free online test prep.

“We do have some study materials for you, practice test booklets” and links to online resources, said Kayla Banzhaf, the testing coordinator.

A parent asked about the deadline to sign up for the ACT. “Last Friday,” a counselor replied. “There is a late fee.“

How to Become the First in the Family to Go to College

For Nathan Triggs’s mother, Tera, Topeka High was the bright light of her life. She hung out at the mall; worked at Bobo’s, a local diner; and performed with the flag team. She loved French class, because it was easy for her and she liked the teacher’s accent. She learned to make crepes in French club. After passing home economics, she took interior design, and fantasized about becoming an interior designer.

But she is also an object lesson in how elusive college can be, and how hard it often is to get there without role models and help from a wealth of people, including parents, teachers and tutors.

Ms. Triggs, 39, graduated in 1995 and wanted to go to college, but somehow the opportunity passed her by and she never applied. “I wasn’t a very good student,” she said, apologetically. “I only made the honor roll a couple of times.”

Soon she was pregnant with Nathan’s brother, “and then I was a mom,” she said.

Now she works in a center for people with developmental disabilities, and was recently promoted from aide to secretary.

As she spoke, Ms. Triggs sat in her cozy living room in a small bungalow on a red-brick street, in a part of Topeka where a real estate agent warned me to watch my back. But on a street without public street lights, the Triggs house is strung with twinkling white decorative lights that blink out a welcome.

As the memories of high school came flooding back, she dashed upstairs to her bedroom. On the bureau, under a pile of clean clothes, was a pale blue-glazed ceramic vase, decorated with rosettes. She had made it in high school art class and saved it for more than 20 years.

It would be “awesome,” she said, for Nathan to go to college.

But Ms. Triggs’s inexperience means she does not know how to help put him through the paces of applying. His father, Tim Sturgeon, never went to college either. His older brother dropped out of high school.

Has Ms. Triggs looked at Nathan’s college choices? “No,” she said.

Has she looked at his essay? “What essay?” she asked, softly, as Nathan sat across from her in their living room, petting his black dog, Lucky.

“I am a very determined person. I have always found a way to get the job done, no matter the level of difficulty the task may hold. I developed this trait at a young age by working for everything that I have by earning money doing farm work. On a farm, nothing comes easy enough.” – from Nathan’s first draft of his college essay.

Two Generations, Two Different Paths to College

“She knows what she needs to do,” Jennifer Womack, a college-prep teacher, told TaTy’Terria Gary’s mother at a recent parent-teacher conference night at Topeka High School. “She knows what she wants to do, and she’s taking care of it.”

The glowing comments from one teacher after another came to sound like a broken record, though with a happy tune.

But TaTy, whose teachers have encouraged her long-term plans to go to medical school, was not the only one on the receiving end. Her mother, Tracy Gary, 35, came in for some of the credit.

“She’s defying that whole stereotype that a single mother cannot raise a child successfully — pshaw!” said Teresa Leslie-Canty, the teacher in a class where TaTy mentors younger students, as mother and daughter sat across from her in the high school gymnasium.

Teenage pregnancy can be part of the high school experience at schools across America, and Topeka High is no exception. Several girls here told me that they had classmates who had become pregnant, and that they felt sorry for them because life was suddenly much harder, and they were stigmatized.

“So many girls are looked down upon because of it,” said one of TaTy’s classmates, Mya McFadden, whose mother was a student at Topeka High when she had Mya and her twin sister, Deja, 17 years ago.

The twins’ mother and father were high school sweethearts, a dream couple, so good-looking that they turned heads as they walked through the halls holding hands. But the gloss quickly wore off when their father, Michael McFadden, had to join the Army to support his children and was posted to the war in Iraq.

He came back with severe post-traumatic stress disorder. The couple split, and the girls went to live with him. Like TaTy, they have taken their family history as a warning, and they are determined to go to college.

Tracy Gary was a senior at Topeka High when she gave birth to TaTy, her oldest child. She turned 18 two weeks after giving birth. Though she was allowed to walk in her high school graduation, she had half a credit left to earn, she said, and did not receive her diploma until more than two years later.

TaTy was not planned, Ms. Gary said, “She was a rebellion against my family.”

But Ms. Gary was also repeating history. Her mother was 15 or 16 when she had a son. Ms. Gary’s sister had her son at about 15 or 16, too. Ms. Gary was raised mainly by her grandmother, because her own mother, she said, had other interests. “My mother cared more about the men,” she said.

She resisted her mother’s pressure to have an abortion, and being a mother forced her to mature. “When I had her, I started to grow up,” Ms. Gary said. “I knew I was responsible.”

Ms. Gary has two other children, a 10-year-old girl and a boy about to turn 14. But as TaTy’s teacher said, Ms. Gary broke the cycle. She worked at fast-food jobs, advancing into management, to support her children, then realized she wanted more out of a career.

So she enrolled at Washburn University, a public institution in Topeka with a neatly groomed campus and a serious atmosphere. She is close to a degree in criminal justice, a field she chose because she always wanted to be lawyer, and this comes close.

Ms. Gary was ambitious in high school but not academically focused. She was a manager for track and basketball teams and spent four years in the Marine Corps R.O.T.C. because she liked the structure and having “somewhere to go, something to do.” She thought about going into the Marines, until she became pregnant, but she did not consider college an option.

She is proud of TaTy for being more committed to her studies than her mother was. She attributes much of her daughter’s success to the guidance of her college-prep teachers. “I didn’t have anybody telling me, ‘Hey, you’re good in English, so you should take those A.P. classes,’ ” Ms. Gary said.

Last year, Ms. Gary moved TaTy and her two younger siblings to Pauline, on the outskirts of Topeka, where the city gives way to antique stores, gas stations and car dealerships, then finally to railroad tracks and cows. The family lives in a ranch house in a subdivision of similar houses. “I’m real big on stability,” she said.

Ms. Gary works taking care of children at the Villages, a group home for children who have been abandoned, abused or in trouble with the law. So she relies on TaTy to help take care of her younger sister and brother.

When it comes to college, Ms. Gary said, she will support TaTy in whatever she decides to do. But she hopes her daughter will go far enough from Topeka that she will not be able to return home on weekends, even if she feels homesick. “I don’t want her to ever think about quitting,” Ms. Gary said. “I don’t want her to walk in my shoes.”

Wondering if Higher Education Is the Cure-All

When Charla Shaner appeared at a recent parent-teacher conference with Zac, she looked immaculate in pressed coral blouse, skirt and smooth blond hair. Few of the teachers realized how much effort went into maintaining that middle-class facade.

Ms. Shaner’s intense focus on her two sons helped steer them into the Topeka public school system’s gifted track, based on their exceptionally high IQ’s in elementary school. She has a bachelor’s degree in early childhood education and for some years ran a daycare center out of her house.

But Zac’s family is downwardly mobile. Ms. Shaner, 51, and her two sons are barely making ends meet, surviving mainly on government benefits. They are emotionally overwhelmed by the day-to-day tasks of life and school.

Zac and his brother wonder whether the American dream of a college education is still attainable for them, and if it is, whether they can afford to go to a college where they will blossom.

About seven years ago, Ms. Shaner lost her daycare license after dropping a 6-month-old on the head while she tried to hold the baby, talk on the phone and watch out for a pot of boiling water in the kitchen.

She attributes the accident to a traumatic brain injury she suffered in a childhood car crash, which left her in a coma. She still has damaged peripheral vision and a squint in her right eye. She misses taking care of babies. But she has not tried to renew her daycare license or find another job in her field, because, she said, the accident made her realize that she should not be taking care of other people’s children.

So she supports the family largely on her disability payments, in addition to small amounts in child support from her ex-husband, which she expects to run out now that Zac is older.

The family lives in Oakland, in northeast Topeka, a neighborhood of small houses, porch ornaments, chain-link fences and barking guard dogs. Ms. Shaner’s parents grew up in the same predominantly white, working-class enclave in its golden era, but the community ties have frayed since then. She rents her house at a discount from her father, Charles Wray, 78, who has worked as a pastor, a Goodyear tire maker and a salesman of church directories. In retirement, he is a self-taught Norman Rockwell-style painter of portraits. Both he and Ms. Shaner’s mother have college educations.

Ms. Shaner sometimes quarrels with her Puritanical father about overdue rent. But she has made paying the water and electric bills a priority. She has seen other houses in the neighborhood go dark, and people without running water who have had to wear donated clothes until they are dirty and then throw them away. She does not want that to happen to them.

She volunteers at her Nazarene church’s food pantry and used clothing bank, partly from the goodness of her heart and partly out of necessity. In exchange, she takes home extra food and clothing for her family.

The food selection can be arbitrary; one week, they ate a lot of pepperoni and tomato sandwiches. The suit jacket that Zac wears in the orchestra came from the charity.

Ms. Shaner’s sons see that going to college – as she did – is not a panacea. She still needs food from the food pantry.

As he considers college, Zac alternates between optimism and anxiety. He has received many fliers in the mail saying he is a “priority candidate” for community college, but he is determined to go to a four-year college despite his spotty school record. “I know it sounds like blown opportunities, but I know what I want,” he said.

Is it living or just existing

If living means a mask

Is it dying or is it trying

If dying means taking it off

— lyrics by Zac Shaner, a.k.a. Shane Wray

For Some Students, It's Hard to Imagine Life Away From Home

Topeka High’s principal, Rebecca Morrisey, understands how hard it is for kids to visualize going to college out of state, or even leaving Topeka.

Ms. Morrisey, who took over as principal this year, grew up on a farm in Atwood, a city of 1,200 people in northwest Kansas. When she first arrived in Topeka, many years ago, it struck her as “a metropolis.”

The first thing you notice when she walks into a room is how tall she is, six feet in flats. Being so tall was her ticket to becoming a basketball player and coach, and a first-generation college graduate. Her coaches helped her figure out how to apply to college.

She cobbled together academic and athletic scholarships and low-income grants to go to St. Mary of the Plains College in Dodge City, Kan. (The college has since closed.) Her three children did not stay close to home. One runs a cytogenetic lab at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., another is in Boston training to be an architect and the third is a nurse-anesthetist in Kansas City, Kan.

“I have kids on the east side who have never been to the mall on the west side,” Ms. Morrisey said. “I grew up that way. My grandparents were six miles and 10 miles from us. I didn’t get to Oklahoma until I was an adult. I didn’t get west of Denver.”

Just persuading students that going away might be an option can be hard. To nudge them, Ms. Morrisey and Phillip Wrigley, one of the college prep teachers, arranged a trip the other week to Rockhurst University, a Jesuit institution in Kansas City, Mo., where Ms. Morrisey coached basketball and Mr. Wrigley earned his master’s degree.

As they walked through the lush, green campus, one of the seniors, Mya McFadden, a petite, spunky twin, told her teacher why she wanted to be a midwife. “I have a soft spot for teenage girls because my mom was 15 when she had me and her,” she said, gesturing toward her twin sister, Deja, walking next to them.

Mr. Wrigley urged her to consider leaving Topeka. Being in Kansas City, at a place like Rockhurst, would open the door to practicing medicine in some of the most sophisticated academic medical centers in the country. “I’m going to say something snobby,” he said. “Stormont Vail is a good hospital, but it’s in Topeka.”

“But I like Topeka,” Mya said.

Topeka Schools Chief: ‘Our Mind-Sets Are the Barrier’

Topeka High was authorized during the Roaring Twenties and opened in 1931, in defiance of the Wall Street crash. Designed as a Gothic temple to education, it is still a high school out of Hollywood casting, so prized by its graduates that it has an on-site archivist, Joan Barker, a 1971 graduate, whose salary is paid by donations.

Yet its record of achievement does not match its lofty architecture. The percentage of students who graduate from high school hovers in the low 70s, compared with about 10 points higher nationally. After graduation, about 45 percent enroll in four-year colleges, and 17 percent in community colleges, in line with the national average for urban schools.

The new superintendent of city schools, Tiffany Anderson, wants to change that.

She arrived in Topeka this summer from Missouri, where she was the superintendent of the Jennings School District. That district adjoins Ferguson, where the killing of an unarmed black man by a police officer who said the man had fought for his gun propelled the Black Lives Matter movement to the national stage. (A grand jury declined to indict the officer.) She was hailed as Topeka’s first African-American female schools superintendent.

When Dr. Anderson began working here, she found that the school system was using a popular program, Advancement Via Individual Determination, or AVID, to identify middle school students with college potential, and to groom them for college by encouraging them to take honors courses and then advising them on the application process. The program has had mixed results across the country.

She said she was bringing a tracking system to Topeka from Jennings, which will follow every senior by name and document whether they have applied to college or the military, how many applications they have filed, whether they filled out a financial aid form, their highest standardized test score, and whether they were ultimately accepted.

In Missouri, Dr. Anderson became known for community-building innovations like installing washers and dryers in school buildings so families could do their laundry. She has already made an impression in Topeka for rushing around in suits paired with white sneakers, accessorizing to match school colors, and refueling with Dr Pepper, a popular drink among Kansans, who pride themselves on being nonconformist.

Dr. Anderson keeps an apartment in Topeka, but drives home most nights to Overland Park, where her husband is an OB/GYN and surgeon. But the commute has shrunk to an hour, as opposed to four hours from Jennings.

She is the general to the troops, issuing inspirational declarations like: “Money’s no barrier, because it’s really not. Our mind-sets are the barrier.”

The Pitch for Technical School Over a Four-Year College

The wood shop and the metal shop have been closed, but if you want to learn how to fix cars, Topeka High School’s legendary auto mechanics class is for you.

The shop is a car addict’s paradise. At the moment, students are cutting a car in half as part of a project to build a homemade electronics trainer, a learning tool for mechanics. They are also overhauling a go-kart and practicing their painting skills on a bus that will be redone in black and gold, the school colors, and paraded at football games.

At the beginning of senior year, the teacher, Dean Fairweather, a blues guitar player who looks like a Hells Angel and speaks with a strong British accent, brought in a pitchman from Universal Technical Institute to speak to the students, so they could see, Mr. Fairweather said, “that there’s more to life than flipping burgers.”

It was a slick exposition, one of the most persuasive the students will hear on the pros and cons of technical school compared with a four-year college.

The pitchman, in fancy cowboy boots and belt buckle, presented the technical institute as, effectively, the Harvard of what he called the transportation industry. After graduation, he told the students, they would be in demand everywhere from Porsche to Nascar.

He did the math. The average rent in Topeka is close to $600, he said. A minimum-wage job brings in, he figured, about $15,000 a year, $1,000 a month after taxes. After paying rent, you still need a phone, a car, utilities, groceries, food, fuel, furniture. “What are your options?”

“Get a better job,” one boy replied. Bingo.

But a high school diploma is not enough, the representative said. “Having just a diploma is like telling an employer you can brush your own teeth.”

The military is a “phenomenal choice,” if you make a career out of it, he added.

A traditional college degree is one approach. “You will never learn too much,” he said. “You will never be too smart.”

But, he argued, if you feel at home in the shop and want to go right into a job, “do not waste your money.”

Americans are overeducated for the jobs available, he told them. “If everybody went to college, there’s going to be a lot of unemployed people like there is — there is going to be a lot of people not working in their fields.”

Nathan Triggs, one of the class stars, was in the front row, listening carefully. He took the trouble to talk to the rep, and they bonded over trucks. Nate signed up for a personal interview — to keep his options open, he said.

Confronting College Debt

“Everyone’s going to have crisp and nice new pants this year,” TaTy’Terria Gary told the group of about 20 girls gathered around her in the second-floor hallway at Topeka High.

They are members of the step team, a dance group that performs at basketball games, and TaTy is speaking to them as their captain.

“From now on, you are upstanding citizens,” TaTy said. “Don’t talk back to your teachers. Don’t be starting fights. Don’t be causing drama. And y’all better be on time.”

She sees herself empowering girls who probably wouldn’t make the cheerleading squad. She does not ask the girls for more than she asks of herself. When something needs to be done, TaTy does it, and it is that ability to put one foot in front of the other and keep moving forward, ignoring any obstacles, that seems to be moving her toward college. When she needs help, she asks for it.

Last Saturday, Oct. 22, was the day for college-bound Topeka High seniors to take the ACT, the standardized test favored by Midwestern colleges and universities. That day, TaTy got herself up, dressed and went to McDonald’s for a breakfast of sausage and cheese on a biscuit with grape jelly and hash browns. She drove herself the half-hour to school in her used 1999 Chevrolet Tracker, and had enough time to socialize with classmates before the test.

The science section was hard, she said; English was easier. She’ll find out her score in about two weeks. Meanwhile, she has filled out the Fafsa, the financial aid form, putting down parental income of under $18,000. She was excited when the financial aid calculator estimated that she could be entitled to nearly $11,000 a year in financial aid.

“If I go to Oklahoma Baptist University, that will cover one-third of everything,” she said gleefully, naming one of the schools she is applying to.

Her college-prep teacher, Jennifer Womack, has tried to give the seniors a sense of the cost of college beyond tuition, including extras like “Walmart runs,” drugstore supplies, gas, parking, and room and board. TaTy has absorbed this lesson. One of the colleges she is interested in has free laundry, she said.

But she is not worried about college debt. She is certain that education is a good investment. She is counting on making enough money eventually as an obstetrician-gynecologist to pay off her college loans. “Let’s say I go into private practice and earn $5,000 a kid,” she said. “That’s very profitable.”

Getting Motivated to Seek That Degree

It was Saturday night, and Zac Shaner’s four-man band, Pegasi, was setting up at the Boobie Trap, a small, dark cave of a bar on a sketchy stretch of Sixth Avenue in central Topeka.

Zac plays bass guitar and sings in the band. This night, his drummer, a finance major at Washburn University who wants to go into bankruptcy law, is the first person in the door, and begins setting up.

“I can tell a lot about someone’s playing just by their attitude,” the drummer said. “How they carry themselves. How they act around people.”

He joined the band because he was touched by Zac’s gentle personality. “I don’t really sense any form of ego with him,” he said.

That sweetness and humility come across in Zac’s interactions with teachers, as well, and have endeared him to them even as they worry that he is not living up to his potential. Is it fear of failure? Perfectionism? They aren’t sure, but they want to help.

He has so much charm and talent, they say. He is college material – good college material – if only he could be more consistent in his schoolwork.

“Talk to me, Zac,” Murray Moore, his business teacher, said to him at parent-teacher conferences the other day.

Zac is taking business class in the hope that he can use the knowledge he gains to promote his music and help his band. His grades range from strings of 100s one week, when he is coming to school, to rows of zeros the next, when he is not.

“He will pass,” Mr. Moore said.

But he could be a star. Zac explained that he goes through “cycles of motivation.” Part of his problem is psychological, he said: “When everybody’s on my back and forcing me to do things, I want not to do it. When people say it’s up to me, I want to succeed.”

Mr. Moore listened, then told Zac’s worried mother, Charla, “He has to help himself.”

Clearly uncomfortable with the discussion, Zac tried to change the subject. “Is that a Jerry Garcia tie?” he asked, looking at his teacher’s neckwear. He has one at home, he said.

“It’s Stacy Adams,” Mr. Moore replied. Then warming to the subject, he tried to turn the question into a homily on positive thinking.

Mr. Moore was an assistant basketball coach for a losing team, he said. He told himself that every time the team won, he would treat himself to a new tie. The team turned itself around and was 19-4. “That got expensive,” he said, but he persisted.

The moral of the story: “You’ve got to invest in you and in what you do.”

“He likes ties,” Ms. Shaner said.

“It’s not about the tie,” Mr. Moore said. “You could buy a new set of picks. Reward yourself. What you need is a Yates banjo or a Scheerhorn dobro.”

Zac grinned shyly.

What Is a College Education Worth?

As they look to graduation, many Topeka High seniors are debating the value of a college education. Is it worth their while to go to a four-year institution? Or should they choose a two-year degree, technical school or the work force instead?

From an economic point of view, studies show there is little contest: The pay gap between people with four-year college degrees and everyone else is bigger than ever.

That gap has been growing since the 1980s, according to an analysis by the Economic Policy Institute, not so much because wages for college graduates have risen, but because the average wage for everyone else has fallen.

“If there is class mobility in America, it exists through the vehicle of education,” Sean C. Bird, an associate dean at Washburn University, a public university in Topeka, said the other day. Mr. Bird focuses on retaining first-generation and disadvantaged students at the college.

College is transformational, he added. “They walk differently, they dress differently, they think differently, they talk differently,” after going to college, he said.

Beyond the economics, proponents of college education point out that there is value in loving to learn, and in knowing how to learn. The market value of a college degree may be less tangible than the value of technical certification in a field like welding or auto mechanics, but college advocates say there is strength in versatility.

“You will be employable on the day you graduate, but it’s impossible to say what you’re going to do,” said E. Whitney Soule, dean of admissions and financial aid at Bowdoin College, a small, highly selective liberal arts college in Brunswick, Me. “Because the exposure in those four years is so broad that the possibilities will be incredibly broad. It will take the student’s experience and motivation to nail down what this will look like.”

But, she added, “It can feel insecure if it doesn’t have a salary attachment and a guarantee of a particular job.”

That conflict between knowing right away what the future holds and being willing — and perhaps able — to assume some risk is exactly what the Topeka seniors are facing. Many of the best students will take that risk, move to more vibrant urban areas and never look back.

“On the whole, Kansas is facing a brain drain,” said Alan Bearman, a Washburn dean who works with Mr. Bird in helping keep students in college. “Some of our very top-achieving students leave after high school, and they don’t come back.”

For those who stay, the goal after high school can be very practical. “We’re looking at the next generation of Topeka police officers, attorneys and teachers,” Mr. Bird said.

In mid-October, some of the students here attended a fair given by Washburn Institute of Technology, the tech school in town. The parking lot was full of pickup trucks and 4x4s. Each presentation, in fields like construction, technology and health care, was crafted to give prospective students a precise sense of the wages they would make on the day they graduated, and the companies that would be likely to hire them.

In computer science, for instance, the teacher told them they would make $15 to $20 an hour in their first year after graduation. If they learned to operate an excavator, they were told, they could make up to $22 an hour. For a machinist, common starting wages ranged from $12 to $17. For masons, $15, “If you’re union,” the teacher said, adding, “It’s a little bit labor intensive, but not like you’re out bucking bales of hay. That’s work. This is fun.”

Data show that the average hourly wage for college graduates rose slightly to about $32.60 over the last decade, double the wage for everyone else.

A few days later, the seniors took WorkKeys, a test to measure basic job readiness skills, and then filed into the auditorium for a mandatory manufacturing presentation. They were told that local factories for companies like Mars chocolate and Frito-Lay were looking for people who were at least 18 with a high school diploma and who could “show up to work on time” and be “part of a team.”

“Does making between $13 and $19 an hour sound good to you?” one of the presenters asked.

But an edge of near-desperation often crept into the presenters’ voices. They knew it was an uphill battle to attract students who could show up to work on time, let alone the best and brightest.

“Sometimes young kids think about manufacturing as a last resort,” Michelle Waggoner, a human resources manager at Mars, said after the presentation. “We don’t want them to view it as a last resort.”

Missed Deadlines Complicate the Quest for Higher Education

Was it perfectionism? Fear of failure? Or just teenage disorganization?

It could have been any or all of those things, but the bottom line was that somehow, both Zac Shaner and Nathan Triggs flubbed taking the ACT test for college admission in October.

Zac, the musician, who has a habit of staying up late, managed to overcome his problem of oversleeping. At 6:30 a.m. on test day, he popped up from the living room couch where he usually sleeps, and woke his mother, Charla.

She made him breakfast. But an hour later, just as they should have been leaving for Topeka High, where the test was being given, he had a sneezing attack. When he couldn’t stop, he decided not to take the test, for fear of disturbing other students and hurting their scores.

“Right as we were about to leave, I started getting really bad allergies,” Zac said the next day. “Even after I took some allergy pills, I was still sneezing. I felt it wouldn’t be responsible for me to go sneezing like that. People would be distracted.”

So ignoring his mother’s entreaties, he went back to sleep.

Nathan’s problem was different. A few days before the test, he was closing some tabs on his computer screen when he realized that he had never pressed the final button to register for the ACT. He had filled out the form, but never submitted the payment – in his case a waiver allowing him to take the test free because of financial need.

“It was a freak accident,” he said later.

It was too late even to pay the late fee. So he registered to take the test in December.

“It kinda sucks,” Nathan said.

Their classmate TaTy’Terria Gary woke up, got breakfast at McDonald’s and arrived at Topeka High in time to take the test, a sign of her disciplined approach to life. She is the captain of the step team, holds down an after-school job and has a 3.7 grade point average. Her top college choice at the moment is Oklahoma Baptist University, because she wants to go somewhere with a spiritual component.

TaTy, who hopes to become a doctor, said she believed spirituality was important for mental and physical health.

“I can’t really make it to church on Sundays because I work,” she said. “I like to be around people who have faith. One of my pet peeves is that you have to believe in something, even if you believe that we were birthed from the stars and the moon. I feel like believing in something helps you strive, helps you be a better person, because you are working toward a goal. Even if you believe in yourself, that’s O.K.”

TaTy’s belief in herself has helped her stay organized throughout the college search. And what happened to the boys shows how indecision, passivity and self-doubt can make an extraordinarily complex process even more daunting. Students must meet all sorts of deadlines for tests and applications, as well as make decisions about a future that may be hard to imagine, not to mention pay application fees and begin to come to terms with the ultimate cost.

Nathan has support from his college-prep teacher, and Zac from a sympathetic counselor. Still, with parents who are cheerleaders but do not have the experience, time and money to drag them through the process, it was easy for things to go wrong.

Such mistakes are fairly common, and the boys can still recover, said Paul Weeks, senior vice president of client relations at ACT and a former admissions dean at Ripon College in Wisconsin. He added that Zac’s “really strong score” of 27 the first time he took the test (without any commercial test prep) and other qualities, like his musical talent and his writing ability – he had a 33 out of 36 on the English section of the test – could propel him into all but the most selective colleges.

A little over half of students who retake the test improve their scores, but by just one point on average, Mr. Weeks said.

His advice to Nathan was to call the colleges he is most interested in and explain what happened. “My advice is always to contact the schools rather than speculate or make assumptions” about how they would react to a delayed ACT score, Mr. Weeks said.

Zac consoled himself that it was just as well that he did not take the test, because he hadn’t studied for it. But he knows that raising his score would help his chances of receiving scholarship aid.

Both boys have somewhat solidified their plans. Zac said he would aim to go to Washburn University, a public institution in Topeka, for the first year or so, where his family’s low income might qualify him for a free ride. He would live at home and return to work at Mike’s IGA – stocking, bagging groceries and running the cash register. Once he had enough money saved, he would transfer to the University of Denver or the University of Central Missouri to study sound engineering. But he would still want to stay fairly close to home, in case his mother or older brother needed him.

“I want to get out and explore,” Zac said. “But I don’t want to be too far, so I could come back in an emergency.”

In English class, Zac wrote a college essay about rebelling against his mother’s religious beliefs, and against his conservative upbringing. “The day I denounced my religion, the day I made my mother cry, was the day I decided to live,” he wrote. His teacher called it “powerful” in a margin note. But Washburn does not require an essay. He has filled out the Common Application, but that also seems like an empty exercise.

“They say that more than 700 colleges accept the Common App,” he said, quoting the website. “But it seems like not the ones I’m interested in.”

None of the people he knows at Topeka High are applying to private universities. “There’s always the kids who get 4.0s and perfect ACT scores, and numerous letters and accolades,” Zac said. “I’m not sure what their plans are, college-wise. I think some of them might go straight for the Ivy League.”

His teachers all say he has spark. Did he ever think of trying to get into a small, liberal arts college out of state? “I look at a lot of these schools that are out of reach right now, and my spark is intimidated,” he replied.

Nathan is thinking of Allen Community College, a short drive from Topeka, as his “safety” application; Washburn University as his “best fit,” because his stepmother works there and could get him a tuition discount; and Kansas State as his “stretch,” because, he said, it is known for its engineering and architecture programs. He does not have any brand-name colleges outside Kansas on his list, and neither do most of his classmates.

Today, Phillip Wrigley and Jennifer Womack, who teach the college prep classes that TaTy and Nathan are in (Zac is in a gifted track), will be asking them for proof that they have filed some college applications by the priority deadline of Nov. 1 – perhaps a screenshot of a confirmation email.

Soon they will be buffing their essays, because even if they are not needed to apply to most local colleges, they will be needed to apply for scholarships. The kids will also be learning the intricacies of financial aid.

Mr. Wrigley said the students thought about college in a practical way. “I think they are thinking about cost,” he said. “They are thinking about feasibility, about what’s going to fit for me. They’re very much pragmatists when it comes to college.”

Yet the other day in class, Nathan was pondering an intangible benefit that college could offer.

He asked his study group to help him understand the concept of social capital, which had come up in government, his favorite class.

“What’s a network?” the teacher, Mr. Wrigley, asked, as Nathan wrote the word on a whiteboard.

“A community,” Nathan replied.

“What defines a community?”

“I have no clue of the definition,” Nathan said. “But I can tell when something is.”

Eventually, the students arrived at the concept of building social capital through dinner parties, mentors, knowledge and connections. The teacher told them that was what they were doing in class.

It’s also something they would do in college.

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Trade School vs. College: Which is Right for You?

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What’s Covered:

Differences between trade school and college, reasons to choose trade school, reasons to choose college, what are your chances of getting into college.

For some, college is the best path. But that’s not true of everyone.

Trade school , also known as vocational school, is sometimes overlooked as an alternative that prepares students for a career in fields like technology, manufacturing, health care, and more. While colleges offer a holistic, liberal arts education, equipping students with soft skills in addition to hard skills, trade school focuses exclusively on helping people develop those technical skills needed to succeed in their chosen field. 

An average four-year college program costs $127,000, while the average trade-school program costs $33,000. In both cases, you can win scholarships and grants, as well as take out loans (loans must be paid back). 

Admissions Process

As anyone who has applied to college knows, the admissions process is very involved. There are essays to write, tests to take, recommendations to solicit, activities to catalog, and much more. That’s not the case for trade school. All you need to do, for the most part, is prove that you earned your high school diploma — it’s far less involved.

The time commitment for a liberal arts college or university is four years. While some students finish their degrees early, there is typically a minimum time commitment. Trade schools vary in length, but it’s rare to find a program that takes longer than a year or so. Community college programs, meanwhile, typically take two years to complete.

Acceptance Rate

Colleges and universities vary in terms of acceptance rates — some are highly selective, while others accept anyone who meets the minimum standards. Trade schools, meanwhile, generally accept anyone who meets the basic requirements, usually a high school diploma (sometimes, you may need to meet additional requirements).

At trade school, you will learn about topics that specifically pertain to the career you’re pursuing. That means you’ll be gaining hands-on skills that directly prepare you for your job after the program. Meanwhile, in a college program, you’ll focus on a specific major, all while exploring a number of other subjects and disciplines. Some colleges have core requirements, requiring you to take specific courses. 

Credentials

Through college, you’ll earn a degree. A two-year program typically means an associate’s degree, while a four-year, undergraduate program results in a bachelor’s degree. This is a minimum requirement for some jobs, although the particular field often doesn’t matter.

Trade school culminates in a certificate, credential, or diploma in a particular area of expertise.

1. You want to hone a particular skill

If there is a specific technical or hard skill you want to gain, then trade school could very well be the right path for you. There are plenty of programs available, and you just have to find the right one for you.

2. You have limited time and resources

Trade school is cheaper and far less time-consuming than college. Plus, you’ll be ready to enter your field of choice immediately upon your completion of the program.

3. You want to be prepared to enter the job market immediately

Although valuable in many cases, bachelor’s degrees aren’t guarantees that you’ll find a job immediately upon completion of your program. When you finish trade school, however, you’ll be prepared to start working immediately. It’s still not a guarantee, but it does offer more assurance that you’ll be equipped with the skills to do the job.

Discover your chances at hundreds of schools

Our free chancing engine takes into account your history, background, test scores, and extracurricular activities to show you your real chances of admission—and how to improve them.

1. You’re not sure exactly what you want to do yet

College is about more than job preparation. For many, it’s a vehicle for exploring your options and growing in multiple areas — not just your professional life. If you’re not entirely sure what the future looks like for you, then this is a great way to explore different ideas.

2. You’d like to gain soft skills and study areas outside of your major

As we’ve discussed, during college, you’ll take courses and gain skills that aren’t directly related to your major. If you’re looking for a liberal arts approach to your education, then college, not trade school, is where you’ll find it.

3. You want to keep your options open when it comes to your future career

Perhaps you have an idea of what you want to study and the career you want to pursue, but you also want to keep your options open. For the most part, degrees are applicable to a range of fields, so your major won’t necessarily dictate a firm career path. (Of course, in some cases, you will need to take certain courses and meet specific requirements, such as if you want to go onto medical school).

Curious about your chances of admission to four-year colleges and universities? Using CollegeVine’s free chancing engine , you can find out your unique odds of getting into schools across the country.

Remember that trade school has far fewer requirements than many college programs. If you’re interested in pursuing this path instead, your chances of admission are higher — 100% in many cases, provided you have a high school diploma.

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The Stigma of Choosing Trade School Over College

When college is held up as the one true path to success, parents—especially highly educated ones—might worry when their children opt for vocational school instead.

Toren Reesman knew from a young age that he and his brothers were expected to attend college and obtain a high-level degree. As a radiologist—a profession that requires 12 years of schooling—his father made clear what he wanted for his boys: “Keep your grades up, get into a good college, get a good degree,” as Reesman recalls it. Of the four Reesman children, one brother has followed this path so far, going to school for dentistry. Reesman attempted to meet this expectation, as well. He enrolled in college after graduating from high school. With his good grades, he got into West Virginia University—but he began his freshman year with dread. He had spent his summers in high school working for his pastor at a custom-cabinetry company. He looked forward each year to honing his woodworking skills, and took joy in creating beautiful things. School did not excite him in the same way. After his first year of college, he decided not to return.

He says pursuing custom woodworking as his lifelong trade was disappointing to his father, but Reesman stood firm in his decision, and became a cabinetmaker. He says his father is now proud and supportive, but breaking with family expectations in order to pursue his passion was a difficult choice for Reesman—one that many young people are facing in the changing job market.

Traditional-college enrollment rates in the United States have risen this century, from 13.2 million students enrolled in 2000 to 16.9 million students in 2016. This is an increase of 28 percent, according to the National Center for Education Statistics . Meanwhile, trade-school enrollment has also risen, from 9.6 million students in 1999 to 16 million in 2014 . This resurgence came after a decline in vocational education in the 1980s and ’90s. That dip created a shortage of skilled workers and tradespeople.

Many jobs now require specialized training in technology that bachelor’s programs are usually too broad to address, leading to more “ last mile ” –type vocational-education programs after the completion of a degree. Programs such as Galvani ze aim to teach specific software and coding skills; Always Hired offers a “tech-sales bootcamp” to graduates. The manufacturing , infrastructure , and transportation fields are all expected to grow in the coming years—and many of those jobs likely won’t require a four-year degree.

This shift in the job and education markets can leave parents feeling unsure about the career path their children choose to pursue. Lack of knowledge and misconceptions about the trades can lead parents to steer their kids away from these programs, when vocational training might be a surer path to a stable job.

Raised in a family of truck drivers, farmers, and office workers, Erin Funk was the first in her family to attend college, obtaining a master’s in education and going on to teach second grade for two decades. Her husband, Caleb, is a first-generation college graduate in his family, as well. He first went to trade school, graduating in 1997, and later decided to strengthen his résumé following the Great Recession. He began his bachelor’s degree in 2009, finishing in 2016. The Funks now live in Toledo, Ohio, and have a 16-year-old son, a senior in high school, who is already enrolled in vocational school for the 2019–20 school year. The idea that their son might not attend a traditional college worried Erin and Caleb at first. “Vocational schools where we grew up seemed to be reserved for people who weren’t making it in ‘real’ school, so we weren’t completely sure how we felt about our son attending one,” Erin says. Both Erin and Caleb worked hard to be the first in their families to obtain college degrees, and wanted the same opportunity for their three children. After touring the video-production-design program at Penta Career Center, though, they could see the draw for their son. Despite their initial misgivings, after learning more about the program and seeing how excited their son was about it, they’ve thrown their support behind his decision.

But not everyone in the Funks’ lives understands this decision. Erin says she ran into a friend recently, and “as we were catching up, I mentioned that my eldest had decided to go to the vocational-technical school in our city. Her first reaction was, ‘Oh, is he having problems at school?’ I am finding as I talk about this that there is an attitude out there that the only reason you would go to a vo-tech is if there’s some kind of problem at a traditional school.” The Funks’ son has a 3.95 GPA. He was simply more interested in the program at Penta Career Center. “He just doesn’t care what anyone thinks,” his mom says.

The Funks are not alone in their initial gut reaction to the idea of vocational and technical education. Negative attitudes and misconceptions persist even in the face of the positive statistical outlook for the job market for these middle-skill careers . “It is considered a second choice, second-class. We really need to change how people see vocational and technical education,” Patricia Hsieh, the president of a community college in the San Diego area, said in a speech at the 2017 conference for the American Association of Community Colleges. European nations prioritize vocational training for many students, with half of secondary students (the equivalent of U.S. high-school students) participating in vocational programs. In the United States, since the passage of the 1944 GI Bill , college has been pushed over vocational education. This college-for-all narrative has been emphasized for decades as the pathway to success and stability; parents might worry about the future of their children who choose a different path.

Read more: The world might be better off without college for everyone

Dennis Deslippe and Alison Kibler are both college professors at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, so it was a mental shift for them when, after high school, their son John chose to attend the masonry program at Thaddeus Stevens College of Technology, a two-year accredited technical school. John was always interested in working with his hands, Deslippe and Kibler say—building, creating, and repairing, all things that his academic parents are not good at, by their own confession.

Deslippe explains, “One gap between us as professor parents and John’s experience is that we do not really understand how Thaddeus Stevens works in the same way that we understand a liberal-arts college or university. We don’t have much advice to give. Initially, we needed some clarity about what masonry exactly was. Does it include pouring concrete, for example?” (Since their son is studying brick masonry, his training will likely not include concrete work.) Deslippe’s grandfather was a painter, and Kibler’s grandfather was a woodworker, but three of their four parents were college grads. “It’s been a long-standing idea that the next generation goes to college and moves out of ‘working with your hands,’” Kibler muses. “Perhaps we are in an era where that formula of rising out of trades through education doesn’t make sense?”

College doesn’t make sense is the message that many trade schools and apprenticeship programs are using to entice new students. What specifically doesn’t make sense, they claim, is the amount of debt many young Americans take on to chase those coveted bachelor’s degrees. There is $1.5 trillion in student debt outstanding as of 2018, according to the Federal Reserve . Four in 10 adults under the age of 30 have student-loan debt, according to the Pew Research Center . Master’s and doctorate degrees often lead to even more debt. Earning potential does not always offset the cost of these loans, and only two-thirds of those with degrees think that the debt was worth it for the education they received. Vocational and technical education tends to cost significantly less than a traditional four-year degree.

This stability is appealing to Marsha Landis, who lives with her cabinetmaker husband and two children outside of Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Landis has a four-year degree from a liberal-arts college, and when she met her husband while living in Washington, D.C., she found his profession to be a refreshing change from the typical men she met in the Capitol Hill dating scene. “He could work with his hands, create,” she says. “He wasn’t pretentious and wrapped up in the idea of degrees. And he came to the marriage with no debt and a marketable skill, something that has benefited our family in huge ways.” She says that she has seen debt sink many of their friends, and that she would support their children if they wanted to pursue a trade like their father.

In the United States, college has been painted as the pathway to success for generations, and it can be, for many. Many people who graduate from college make more money than those who do not. But the rigidity of this narrative could lead parents and students alike to be shortsighted as they plan for their future careers. Yes, many college graduates make more money—but less than half of students finish the degrees they start. This number drops as low as 10 percent for students in poverty. The ever sought-after college-acceptance letter isn’t a guarantee of a stable future if students aren’t given the support they need to complete a degree. If students are exposed to the possibility of vocational training early on , that might help remove some of the stigma, and help students and parents alike see a variety of paths to a successful future.

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Your chance of acceptance, your chancing factors, extracurriculars, trade schools vs. college: which path should i take.

Hey everyone! I'm currently deciding between trade school and a traditional college for my education. What are the pros and cons of each? Can anyone share their experiences or insights about which path might be better in the long run?

Hello! Choosing between trade school and college depends on your goals, interests, and priorities. Both paths have their advantages and drawbacks, so let's break it down:

Trade School Pros:

1. Less time: Typically, trade school programs take 1-2 years to complete, allowing you to enter the workforce sooner than a 4-year college degree.

2. Cost: Trade school is generally less expensive than a traditional college, with lower tuition fees and fewer years of education.

3. Focused curriculum: Trade schools concentrate on a specific skill set, preparing you for a specific job in a chosen industry.

4. High demand: Many skilled trade jobs are in high demand, leading to more job security and good starting salaries.

Trade School Cons:

1. Narrow focus: Trade school programs concentrate on specific skills, which could limit your career and educational growth.

2. Less prestige: A trade school certificate or diploma may not carry the same prestige as a college degree, depending on the industry or employer.

3. Fewer opportunities for networking: Colleges often offer more opportunities for networking and making connections, which can be crucial for career advancement.

Traditional College Pros:

1. Breadth of knowledge: College provides a broader education, allowing you to explore various subjects and fields before specializing in your chosen major.

2. Higher lifetime earnings: On average, college graduates tend to have higher lifetime earnings compared to trade school graduates.

3. Networking opportunities: Colleges offer many opportunities to network with alumni, peers, and faculty, which can help you land internships and job offers.

4. More personal growth: College experiences, such as joining clubs and activities, can foster personal growth and development.

Traditional College Cons:

1. Longer time commitment: A traditional college degree typically takes four years to complete, delaying your entry into the workforce.

2. Cost: College tuition can be expensive and may result in substantial debt, depending on your financial situation and aid options.

3. Potentially broader job market competition: College degrees can sometimes lead to oversaturated fields, meaning more competition when searching for a job.

In the end, the right choice depends on your priorities, interests, and career goals. If you're certain about pursuing a specific trade and want to begin working in a shorter amount of time, trade school might be the right option for you. On the other hand, if you value a broader education, personal growth, and networking opportunities, a traditional college experience may be a better fit. Ultimately, consider researching potential careers, talking to professionals in your desired field, and evaluating your personal preferences and goals before making a decision. Good luck!

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Trade School vs College: The Big Pros and Cons for Each

Deciding on where you want to go to school can be an overwhelming choice to make. Some might even decide that furthering their education is not the right choice. When you begin to look at what the long-term implications of your choice in this matter will be, then it becomes even more challenging to make. Should you be going to a trade school? Or would attending a four-year traditional college or university be the best option?

You could even opt for an online degree or decide to take a year off, find a job, and then re-evaluate whether or not college is right for you.

The truth here is hard to accept sometimes: every choice is one that offers viable options. If you decide to go to a technical college, then you can receive an advanced education and skill-building opportunities that might get you into a high-paying job faster with less student debt. It might also be a complete waste of your resources.

These are the pros and cons of going to trade school vs college to consider if you are in the middle of this big decision right now.

List of the Pros of Trade School vs College

1. Trade schools are more affordable than college tuition. Mike Rowe has this to say on the idea of paying for a college education using student loans. “We are lending money we don’t have to kids who can’t pay it back to train them for jobs that no longer exist. That’s nuts.”

When you go to college, then the average amount of student debt that you’ll carry with a degree can be close to $40,000. Student loans are the second-highest debt category for all Americans, just below mortgages. Since 1980, the cost of going to a college has risen by 260%. If you attend a technical college, then the cost of your entire education is the equivalent of one year at another institution.

2. You can start your career faster with vocational training. About 60% of students need to be in school for six years to earn their bachelor’s degree in their preferred major. Only 19% of college enrollees can earn their degree in four years or less. When you add in that extra time, then it could be another $70,000 in student debt that you earn while experiencing lost wages as well.

If you attend a technical college, then you will graduate with a degree in two years under most programs. Some certificates only require 12 months of study. Then you can begin your job search without as much student loan debt while qualifying for a larger salary because you have practical skills to use immediately.

3. Trade schools have smaller class sizes. If you attend a public college or university, then you might find yourself in a class size of over 100. Professors in that situation do not have the time or resources to manage the individual needs of students. That means it is up to you to ensure that your education standards are met. You can fade into the background at a college if you want.

Technical schools take a different approach. Their class sizes are typically much smaller than what you will find at the local college or university, which means there are more opportunities for some 1-on-1 time with your instructors. This benefit means you have more time to perfect your skills, contributing to a deeper knowledge about the career you wish to pursue.

4. There is a higher learning potential with a trade school. High school students who do not have a college education earn an average of $718 per week. That translates to just under $3,000 per month – and that rate stays with them for the rest of their lives. If you earn a bachelor’s degree, then you can earn an average of $1,189 per week. Graduate degrees boost that figure to $1,451 per week.

The Association for Career and Technical Education found that 43% of young workers with a certificate or license, like the ones you earn from a technical college, allow you to earn more than an associate degree. 27% of students were earning more than those who graduated with a four-year degree. Graduates from an applied science program could out-earn a bachelor’s degree by more than $11,000 per year.

5. Trade schools provide you with more job security. You can earn a decent living by graduating with a certificate or degree from a technical school. Many students find their jobs faster with this option when compared to graduates with a bachelor’s degree.

Most technical schools offer a robust job placement program that is part of the investment you make into yourself with the tuition costs. They maintain close contacts with industry professionals to ensure that their graduates can get into the jobs they want. There is a skilled-labor shortage in the United States right now, with not enough trained workers to meet the demands of certain industries. You can get there by choosing this option over a college.

6. There are a wide variety of programs from which to choose with a trade school. You will find that there are several in-demand positions that a technical school can help to prepare you for when you proceed with enrollment. Some of the top programs in this educational sector including financial advisors, construction laborers, medical services managers, personal care aides, and nurse practitioners. You can learn how to be a physical therapist or a truck driver through some of these programs.

You can learn apprenticeship trades through technical schools as well. If you have an interest in welding, plumbing, or becoming an electrician, then there are opportunities to excel here as well.

7. Anyone can benefit from a trade school education. Going to a college could be a great fit for some people, but it is not for everyone. If you are ready to make a career change, need help with your educational profile to earn a promotion, or just want to try something new, then attending a trade school might be right for you. Exploring the technical options which are available could help you to discover a new career that you may have never thought about in the past.

Enrolling in classes can expose you to new concepts, processes, and best practices that are in your industry right now as well. If you can gain some experience with cutting edge ideas, then that makes you a more valuable asset to your employer.

8. Trade schools are usually right down the street. Most communities have a trade school of some type that allows you to study for a new career without the need to move away from home. The expenses of room and board are not usually calculated into the tuition costs of colleges or universities, so you could find yourself paying several thousand dollars more for the privilege to earn. Since a trade school could be right down the street, it is possible to pursue your career while still living at home. You and your parents can save on expenses, they can keep you on their healthcare insurance until the age of 26, and you will have a quiet place to study while still taking care of the property.

9. You will have less time to wait to start your first classes. The traditional college or university operates on a semester-based structure, which means you might need to wait up to six months before you can start your first classes. Some institutions might ask you to wait until the next educational year!

When you attend a trade school, then the time you wait for classes to begin is minimal. There are almost always multiple start dates available for all of the programs found at the school. If you miss an application deadline, then you can get into the next series of classes when they start. Depending on the career option you prefer, that means a maximum wait of 10 weeks or less is usually possible.

10. Trade schools help you to work on other areas of the application process. You will learn practical skills at a trade school that can help you get into a new job while learning how to manage your career interactions simultaneously. From your first day with this option, you will find that the staff is ready to help you with networking skills, resume composition, interviewing, and similar techniques that can prepare you for what it takes to begin your career. If you graduate from a four-year institution, then trying to find a job can be challenging because you might never know where to begin.

The placement rate for trade schools is usually much higher than what colleges and universities can provide. It is not unusual to for a school to have an 80% or higher success rate, which is 10-20 points higher than the average traditional institution.

11. You might have the option to study online. There are several trade schools operating in the United States right now which offer vocational training opportunities online. This structure gives students with family or career responsibilities an opportunity to pursue the additional skills they need without the time commitment required to travel back-and-forth from classes. Some online certificates are even cheaper too, which means you can receive the advanced training you need while saving even more.

List of the Cons of Trade School vs College

1. Tuition fees vary widely when you start looking at trade schools. Although trade schools tend to be cheaper than colleges, that is not always the case for some institutions. If you were to attend Ohio Technical College, then you would pay over $20,000 per year for that privilege. Attending your in-state public college might be 50% of that cost. For the 2019-2020 educational year, the estimated tuition and fees at the University of Washington-Seattle Campus is $11,445 if you are a resident.

Even the Graduate School tuition and fees at UW, which are $16,590 per year, are cheaper than what it would cost at Ohio Technical College. That is why you need to review the full cost structure of your preferred institution before enrolling.

2. You will face a rigorous schedule when attending a trade school. There are no breaks in your schedule when you enroll in a trade school in your community. These programs provide the advantage of getting you into the labor force as quickly as possible. That means you won’t get a summer vacation or a lengthy break around the holidays to recharge your batteries. The curriculum is non-stop, rigorous, and demanding. That is why you can finish quickly. If you are not ready to put in the work to get there, then you might consider a part-time enrollment instead until you can get used to the demanding schedule.

3. There might not be any financial aid available to you. Students who decide to attend a trade school may not have access to any financial aid. You might discover that the amount for which qualify is significantly less than what you would receive as a traditional university student. This disadvantage can even out over the course of a degree or certification program since you’re spending less on your education, but you might be stuck paying $2,500 or more annually.

If you cannot afford the tuition expenses which a trade school quotes to you, then you can apply for federal aid with your FAFSA as everyone else. Then you will need to wait to see if any funding options come through to support your learning efforts.

4. Trade schools can cause you to become less adaptable. Trade schools do an excellent job of preparing you for entry into the workforce. There are excellent employment opportunities available after graduation. What you might also find is that the learning processes you experienced in the classroom make you less adaptable to the changes that industries face over the years. When you are less flexible with your approach, then that makes you less employable to some firms. You might even find yourself on the outside looking in if your industry changes without you.

By the time that workers are in their late 40s, those who graduated with a bachelor’s degree from a college or university had higher rates of employment compared to those who went through a general education program at their trade school.

5. There is no job guarantee with a trade school. Although you can learn practical skills during your time with a trade school, all of the technical work you will do does not guarantee that you can find a job. Even with the best placement practice programs in the world supporting you, students are going to be on their own when they start applying for positions. Having a certificate or a degree does not result in an automatic paycheck.

Your success is dependent upon what you decide to do with your certificate or degree. It helps to have your career path plotted to ensure that you can stay on track with your goals. Never assume that someone from the trade school will help you find the perfect job because that is a ticket to disappointment.

6. You may not receive exposure to the generalized education classes that you might need. When you go to college, there are reading, literature, mathematics, and history classes that you might be asked to take as part of your overall schedule. These requirements are part of the general-ed criteria which is necessary for you to graduate with a specific major. Although they can be difficult to navigate and expensive to take, the information they provide can help you to have more wisdom about the career you wish to pursue.

When you decide to attend a trade school, then you will receive specialized learning that works toward the career you prefer only. If English composition doesn’t matter, then you won’t be taking that class. It is a skill-based learning opportunity that works with specialized career offerings instead of allowing you to explore generalized interests.

Conclusion of the Trade School vs College Pros and Cons

If you like the idea of starting your career right away instead of putting it off for 4-6 years, then a trade school is a viable choice to make. The classes come from a technical standpoint to ensure that you can achieve vocational success. You’ll be spending more time in the classroom learning practical skills instead of book knowledge, but it can also help you to find a job with a competitive salary very quickly.

There is less adaptability present in the classes you can find at a trade school. That can make you less flexible as a future worker, which could make you less employable to some in your preferred industry.

The pros and cons of a trade school vs college are all about the choices you need to make. There are definite advantages to consider, but this choice is not the right for each career. Talk to local schools, evaluate their programs, and speak with graduates and students to see what it is like to attend. Then you will have a better idea about knowing whether or not this option is right for you.

Trade School vs. College: What’s the Difference?

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Updated May 23, 2023 · 5 Min Read

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Many students earn their degrees at traditional colleges or universities, but others find trade schools more suitable.

Trade schools provide career-focused training for in-demand fields, which can be a practical choice for some careers. Additionally, trade schools offer short completion times and inexpensive tuition rates.

When deciding between trade school vs. college, students should examine their own strengths, interests, and career goals. To help with this process, the following page compares the pros and cons of trade school and college.

What Is Trade School?

Trade schools typically omit general education and liberal arts classes. Instead, they offer dedicated training in a specific, skilled vocation. For that reason, some people call these institutions vocational schools — an umbrella term that can encompass career and technical schools as well. Though these terms are sometimes used interchangeably, there are subtle differences.

Trade school education typically leads to careers in skilled trades, whereas technical and career schools focus on generalized practical training and marketable skills. Additionally, programs in technical schools often feature more lecture-style classes than trade schools.

Trade schools provide diplomas or certificates upon completion. Depending on the trade, graduates may qualify to enter their professions directly, or they may need to sit for a licensure examination or become an apprentice or journeyman.

Most trade school programs offer considerably shorter programs than traditional universities, which allows students to enter their career fields faster.

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Types of Trade School Careers

• Electrician
• Nursing Assistant
• Dental Hygienist
• Commercial Truck Driver
• Home Inspector
• Respiratory Therapist
• Radiation Therapist
• Massage Therapist
• Esthetician

Time to Complete Program: Trade School vs. College

When comparing trade school vs. college, most prospective students will notice the difference in completion times first. While traditional college degrees typically take four years, trade school programs often take less than two years to complete. Here are a few upsides to enrolling in a short program.

Benefits of a Short School Program

Trade school programs benefit students in several ways. First, these condensed programs allow students to enter the job market sooner, which means they start earning money and building experience faster as well. Shorter programs also mean less time commitment, which makes enrolling to pursue an education less daunting.

Second, shorter trade school programs often mean less paid in tuition, even when rates are comparable. With less time spent in school, most students ultimately pay lower school-related costs. That also means fewer travel expenses, fewer course materials, and even a shorter period of time out of the job market, making no money.

Higher education can also be challenging, and some students will find it exhausting. According to EducationData , more than 40% of undergraduates drop out of college, and 30% of those students drop out before sophomore year. Shorter programs may combat this fatigue, allowing students to stay engaged and complete their studies before they hit that wall.

Average Salaries: Trade School Jobs vs. College-Based Jobs

When weighing the pros and cons of trade school, salary potential can fall on either side. Some vocational programs lead to careers with great financial rewards, but overall, careers that require college degrees tend to pay more. We explore the differences more below.

Average Trade Job Salaries

While the average salaries for degree-based careers typically exceed those for trade-based careers , some trade school graduates earn much higher wages than people might expect. After acquiring specialized training, tradespeople can improve their earnings with experience, especially when working in niche fields.

Location can also influence trade job salaries, as some states and regions offer higher-than-average wages due to demand, state requirements, and cost of living. In general, areas with high population densities pay more than rural areas, but students should still research salaries in their local region before committing to a trade program and new career.

As an example, electricians earn more on the East Coast and West Coast than they do in the central states. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), electricians make an overall annual mean salary of $60,370, but they earn $70,000 in California, $75,000 in Oregon, and $79,000 in New York.

Data in the dental hygiene field is similar. According to the BLS , the West Coast pays considerably higher rates for dental hygienists than the national median of $76,000. For example, Washington pays $93,000 per year; California pays $106,000; and Alaska pays $115,000.

Salaries for College-Based Jobs

Compared to trade school jobs, college-based jobs tend to pay more. While both types of jobs pay more with experience, the wage gap between college-based careers and the trades actually increases as professionals advance along their career paths. In particular, management careers tend to offer high wages, but often require a four-year degree to qualify.

For example, as per BLS employment data , business majors can earn median annual wages of $80,000 as business operations specialists. After gaining experience, however, these professionals can make nearly $200,000 per year working as chief executives.

Price of Education: Trade School vs. College

Weighing the pros and cons of trade school often reveals price differences. While trade school programs usually cost less than college programs, learners need to research further to get the most accurate picture.

Comparing the cost of an education in trade school vs. college is about more than just tuition. Students should also consider how scholarship availability and earning potential affect the financial outcome of attending school. To help you do this analysis, the following sections examine the average costs of different types of schools, plus examples and additional factors to keep in mind.

How Much Does Trade School Cost?

The cost of a trade school program can differ considerably depending on the school, discipline, and location. According to U.S. News , trade school students pay an average of $33,000 for their entire education.

While the reasons for cost differences between programs vary, some trade school programs have high overhead costs due to more expensive training materials. Programs like aviation maintenance technology, for example, can cost more than $30,000. Conversely, esthetician programs may only cost $2,000-4,000.

How Much Does College Cost?

Due to the array of college types and study options, breaking down the cost of a college education is challenging. A number of factors impact the overall costs, such as tuition prices and room and board. Prices also fluctuate between private, public, in-state, and out-of-state schools.

According to EducationData , in-state public school students pay an average of $10,440 per year for tuition. When factoring in room and board, the total comes to $21,950 per year. The rate for out-of-state tuition and fees jumps up to $26,820 per year, and with room and board totals, that equals $38,330 per year.

Private school students pay more, with an average of $36,880 per year for tuition alone and $49,879 per year when including room and board. However, private schools tend to offer more generous financial aid packages to help students cover the higher costs, which is something you should consider.

Average Total Price for Four-Year College

In-state public college, out-of-state public college, private nonprofit college.

Source: EducationData

Job Security: Trade School vs. College

Trade school graduates enjoy strong job security: Careers like plumbing and home inspecting typically survive weak economies and recessions. These tradespeople often perform essential services that the world needs at all times.

Meanwhile, college programs may give degree-seekers flexible skills that are widely applicable, but those jobs do not always perform as well during economic crises. In both pathways, experience can improve job security.

Career Flexibility: Trade School vs. College

Due to the specialized training of trade school programs, graduates do not receive as much career flexibility as college graduates. Electricians, for example, cannot move between fields as easily because their skills and training only apply to a specific field. Meanwhile, business majors can apply their skills broadly and access an array of careers.

For degree-seekers, the flexibility of a college degree can be beneficial. According to BLS employment data, the average American switches jobs every four years and holds about 12 jobs in their lifetime. Degree flexibility also allows for more career mobility, meaning degree-holders can advance within their fields or switch industries more easily.

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For a person to decide whether to study in a trade school or a college, one is keenly urged to figure out what they want to do in the education platforms with different advantages and disadvantages. They present various opportunities and experiences in learning, and understanding these differences helps an individual make the right choice. A trade school, commonly known as a vocational training school, is a learning institution that provides a student a career-focused training that is centered on a specific area of interest, while colleges are learning institutions that provide the students with the ability to learn both hard and soft skills and they train on a broad range of academic field. Most people fail to realize that other well-paying opportunities do not require money, time, and extra effort to acquire a degree. Therefore, this study seeks to find out why trade schools are better than colleges.

Trade schools are better than the college because they provide more opportunities and advantages to their students over colleges and this is because they offer career-focused training in the fields where a student desires to learn about through creating skills and experience as they provide real skills, and also offer better chances for students due to their dedicated training in a skilled vocation, which leads to a career in skilled employees who have all the skills required to work in their field of specialization.

It also gives students better performance in their careers because it creates personal fulfillment in the job that an individual is working in, creates stability, and gives a platform and potential to earn a high salary. This is because students choose what they love and are passionate about and pursue it as a course, and they already know what is right for them. Through this, they end up in a career that is fulfilling, thus acquiring personal satisfaction and happiness due to career growth and fulfillment; trade schools also offer to learn based on the specific needs of the student, and they are fully trained in the specific field that they want to learn about which gives them detailed information, more skills, and a better experience as they train skills in a particular career and also creates a platform where one can realize high potential salaries and also start earning after a short period because it may only take few months or years for a trade student to complete their studies and start earning. They can also work and earn while studying due to its flexibility which makes them more skilled and the high qualification, skills, and experience lead to high wage payments (George, 3916). Trade schools also create very competitive people due to the high training offered, and this makes them more skilled as it provides hands-on training, which offers a real-world experience.

The trade schools are cheaper and cost less for a student to be enrolled, admitted, and studied, and it also takes a shorter duration to complete training in a trade school (Holland, 2). For example, for a student to complete training as a plumber in a trade school, they are required to pay approximately $33,000, which would only be fees for one year in a college, and college students are required to spend around $130,000 to complete a course thus trade schools being more cost-effective. The training duration in trade schools takes from only a few months to a few years to complete. They offer shorter education timelines and paths as they train student-specific skills, and within a short period, the students start to earn decent wages. For example, completing a welding course in a trade school will take between 7-24 months, while for a student to complete a nursing course in a college takes up to 4years. The trade students are also eligible to acquire financial assistance as they can also apply for funding from the institutions that give funds to the student (Holland, 2).

However, people argue that college education is better because it gives students increased educational and employment opportunities and options, and this is because they do not focus on a single topic or program but focus on a wide range of courses where students are in a better position to decide and are given the flexibility and also gives them broader learning environment through the incorporation of many aspects and areas in their learning (Chan,6). However, specific training is essential and is required to give students a real experience that is not provided in the college education.

College education also creates better job opportunities for students as some positions require a student to have attained a course to get employment. In addition, it gives high wages and salaries and offers more soft skills (Hout, 1). However, although it may provide chances for many job opportunities, the students may fail to be competitive as they do not receive specific training in how to perform different tasks but gain general knowledge, which may not be helpful in the changing dynamics in the job markets.

Although both trade schools and colleges give students the knowledge and skills necessary to be in the job market and they are both paths to gain access to education, attending a trade school places students in a better position as they can follow their passion and they receive specific training based on the field they would like to e0xplore. It also makes students more competitive as they receive training in the field where they gain experience as they are trained on what is happening in the real world and gain practical skills. Students need to understand what they want to be before deciding which way to go.

Works Cited

Chan, Roy. (2016). Understanding the purpose of higher education: An analysis of the economic and social benefits for completing a college degree. Journal of Education Policy, Planning, and Administration. 6. 40.

Holland, Megan M., and Stefanie DeLuca. “Why wait years to become something?” Low-income African American youth and the costly career search in for-profit trade schools.” Sociology of Education  89.4 (2016): 261-278.

Hout, Michael. “Social and economic returns to college education in the United States.”  Annual review of sociology  38 (2012): 379-400.

Mouzakitis, George S. “The role of vocational education and training curricula in economic development.”  Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences  2.2 (2010): 3914-3920.

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Home — Essay Samples — Education — Vocational Education — Trade School vs College Education: Exploring Career Paths

Trade School Vs College Education: Exploring Career Paths

• Categories: College Education Vocational Education

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Published: Aug 4, 2023

Words: 2686 | Pages: 6 | 14 min read

Table of contents

Introduction, trade school: the growing demand, comparing costs of college and trade school, advantages of college education, advantages of trade school, works cited.

• Arnold, Lauren. 'The Benefits of Trade School.' University of Advancing Technology, 2021, www.uat.edu/news-and-events/advantages-of-trade-schools.
• DesMarias, Gregg. 'The Case for Trade School Over College.' U.S. News, 10 Aug. 2018, www.usnews.com/education/blogs/college-admissions-playbook/articles/2018-08-10/the-case-for-trade-school-over-college.
• Electricians: Bright Outlook for the Skilled Trade. United Association of Union Plumbers, Fitters, Welders, & Service Techs, 2019, www.ua.org/news/ua-blog/electricians-bright-outlook-skilled-trade.
• Mitch, Tim. 'Trade School vs. College: Which Is Right for You?' Investopedia, 22 May 2020, www.investopedia.com/trade-school-vs-college-5023612.

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9.3: The Argumentative Essay

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Learning Objectives

• Examine types of argumentative essays

Argumentative Essays

You may have heard it said that all writing is an argument of some kind. Even if you’re writing an informative essay, you still have the job of trying to convince your audience that the information is important. However, there are times you’ll be asked to write an essay that is specifically an argumentative piece.

An argumentative essay is one that makes a clear assertion or argument about some topic or issue. When you’re writing an argumentative essay, it’s important to remember that an academic argument is quite different from a regular, emotional argument. Note that sometimes students forget the academic aspect of an argumentative essay and write essays that are much too emotional for an academic audience. It’s important for you to choose a topic you feel passionately about (if you’re allowed to pick your topic), but you have to be sure you aren’t too emotionally attached to a topic. In an academic argument, you’ll have a lot more constraints you have to consider, and you’ll focus much more on logic and reasoning than emotions.

Argumentative essays are quite common in academic writing and are often an important part of writing in all disciplines. You may be asked to take a stand on a social issue in your introduction to writing course, but you could also be asked to take a stand on an issue related to health care in your nursing courses or make a case for solving a local environmental problem in your biology class. And, since argument is such a common essay assignment, it’s important to be aware of some basic elements of a good argumentative essay.

When your professor asks you to write an argumentative essay, you’ll often be given something specific to write about. For example, you may be asked to take a stand on an issue you have been discussing in class. Perhaps, in your education class, you would be asked to write about standardized testing in public schools. Or, in your literature class, you might be asked to argue the effects of protest literature on public policy in the United States.

However, there are times when you’ll be given a choice of topics. You might even be asked to write an argumentative essay on any topic related to your field of study or a topic you feel that is important personally.

Whatever the case, having some knowledge of some basic argumentative techniques or strategies will be helpful as you write. Below are some common types of arguments.

Causal Arguments

• In this type of argument, you argue that something has caused something else. For example, you might explore the causes of the decline of large mammals in the world’s ocean and make a case for your cause.

Evaluation Arguments

• In this type of argument, you make an argumentative evaluation of something as “good” or “bad,” but you need to establish the criteria for “good” or “bad.” For example, you might evaluate a children’s book for your education class, but you would need to establish clear criteria for your evaluation for your audience.

Proposal Arguments

• In this type of argument, you must propose a solution to a problem. First, you must establish a clear problem and then propose a specific solution to that problem. For example, you might argue for a proposal that would increase retention rates at your college.

Narrative Arguments

• In this type of argument, you make your case by telling a story with a clear point related to your argument. For example, you might write a narrative about your experiences with standardized testing in order to make a case for reform.

Rebuttal Arguments

• In a rebuttal argument, you build your case around refuting an idea or ideas that have come before. In other words, your starting point is to challenge the ideas of the past.

Definition Arguments

• In this type of argument, you use a definition as the starting point for making your case. For example, in a definition argument, you might argue that NCAA basketball players should be defined as professional players and, therefore, should be paid.

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Essay Examples

• Click here to read an argumentative essay on the consequences of fast fashion . Read it and look at the comments to recognize strategies and techniques the author uses to convey her ideas.
• In this example, you’ll see a sample argumentative paper from a psychology class submitted in APA format. Key parts of the argumentative structure have been noted for you in the sample.

Link to Learning

For more examples of types of argumentative essays, visit the Argumentative Purposes section of the Excelsior OWL .

Contributors and Attributions

• Argumentative Essay. Provided by : Excelsior OWL. Located at : https://owl.excelsior.edu/rhetorical-styles/argumentative-essay/ . License : CC BY: Attribution
• Image of a man with a heart and a brain. Authored by : Mohamed Hassan. Provided by : Pixabay. Located at : pixabay.com/illustrations/decision-brain-heart-mind-4083469/. License : Other . License Terms : pixabay.com/service/terms/#license

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Education After High School: A Guide to College vs. Trade Schools

By: Katelyn Fahrenbruck Weston

The word "college" evokes images of libraries, classrooms, study halls, and dormitories. It also suggests a fairly standardized educational experience for most students. On the other hand, the phrase "trade school" may bring to mind technical classes, long hours, and low pay. College and trade schools are the two most common options a student can pursue after high school, but myths persist about both. These two educational formats are very different from one another, so it's important to understand the differences between them and what they really have to offer before you make your choice.

Admissions Process

The admissions process for colleges and trade schools can vary, but the general process is the same for both types of schools. You'll want to identify a target school and submit an application that includes information about your grades, extracurricular activities, work experience, and more. You may also want to submit your SAT or ACT scores to make a better case for yourself. Once you've built a strong application, you'll want to schedule interviews with the admissions department of the school and make sure to attend any on-campus events for prospective students. When it's time to make your final decision, be sure to take full advantage of all of the resources offered to help you make the right choice.

Affordability

Affordability is one of the biggest advantages of a trade school. College usually requires a large investment over multiple years before you're ready to join the workforce, but trade schools can allow you to get a higher-paying job right away. Trade school may also be more affordable than a four-year program for many students. If you're considering a trade program to earn a higher salary or improve employment opportunities, you might also be interested in how much a four-year degree costs. Some schools offer comprehensive tuition assistance programs that cover eligible students' full tuition, but programs like these can vary greatly based on financial need and a student's academic record.

Trade school programs vary, but many last six months to a year. If you decide to pursue a trade school education, you may be able to transfer credits and finish your program sooner than you might expect. If you need to take longer than the standard 12 months to complete your education, you may be able to take courses part-time to wrap up your training. On the other hand, college programs vary depending on the degree you're pursuing; an associate degree takes two years, and a bachelor's degree typically takes four years.

Salary Potential

People tend to think of trades as low-paying jobs, but the truth is that going to either a trade school or college can help you earn a great paycheck or a not-so-great one. For instance, a bachelor's degree in construction management can lead to a job that pays well and offers good job security, but a degree in art may not. On the other hand, going to trade school can prepare you for a high-paying career in welding, logistics management, or even nursing, but it can also lead to lower-paying jobs in cosmetology or hospitality. Ultimately, how much you can earn will depend more on what you study than where you study.

Job Security

Trade school graduates actually tend to have more job security than college graduates, though both will fare better than people who only have a high school diploma. Like with salary potential, job security can vary greatly depending on the specific industry. College could lead you to a relatively stable job in IT or a more precarious position in journalism; trade school could lead you to a firm footing in phlebotomy or shaky ground in the culinary arts.

Career Flexibility

Trade school provides more flexibility for those who want to change careers, as it takes less time to complete a program to learn a new profession. However, since these programs are specialized, the skills you learn in trade school may not be helpful if you decide to pick up a different trade later on. On the other hand, a four-year college degree also usually leads to one particular career path, and switching careers can be costly and time-consuming if the new career also requires a college degree. But some of the credits from a bachelor's degree can often be applied toward a second degree later on, which can save some time.

Both college and trade school provide students with a great education and great career opportunities, but there are key differences between the two formats. If you're considering a college degree, make sure you consider the cost, flexibility, and time commitment required to complete your degree. If you're pursuing a trade school education, make sure you understand the pros and cons before you enroll in a program.

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Trade School vs. College: Making the Right Choice for Your Future

After high school, many people think about going to college for higher income potential. According to NCES or National Center for Educational Statistics , a bachelor’s degree can earn a graduate about $16,900 more per year compared to a high school diploma holder. That’s a whopping $500,000 over a 30-year career. However, college isn’t the best fit for everyone due to rising costs and other drawbacks.

Trade schools offer a compelling alternative. They provide specialized training and direct career pathways, and are often focused on high paying jobs that are not typically trained for at four year universities. Jobs that trade schools cover can include electricians, locksmiths, mechanics, HVAC specialists, and more. Let’s find out more about trade schools and the tradeoffs you make between trade schools and colleges.

College pros and cons

Dropout rate, employment outlook, trade school as the savvy alternative, what is a trade school, time and cost, job security and in-demand careers, salary potential, consider the road less traveled.

So let’s dig into it: what are the pros and cons of going to college? Below, we outline the various ‘double edged swords’ that college offers. 38% of Americans enroll in college , so you’re certainly not alone in making this choice, and a college degree undoubtedly offers a lot of upside. But now that high costs and other factors are weighing heavier on college students, it’s important to go into the decision with both eyes open.

Imagine spending a solid four years pursuing a bachelor’s degree and graduating at the age of 22. It’s even longer if you’re pursuing a medical degree. That means you’ve missed out on experiencing the “real world” and getting a headstart with your career by years. 

However, the time you spend in college offers chances to expand your skills and knowledge. When you’re a college student, opportunities to explore different subjects, discover new interests, and meet people from all walks of life abound. These experiences not only sharpen your critical thinking but also cultivate cultural awareness and provide a well-rounded education. Furthermore, there is a lot of opportunity in having adult freedom without the responsibilities of a job – many consider college to be the best years of their lives.

Among survey respondents who graduated from a four-year college, 74% say their college education was very useful in helping them grow intellectually; 69% say it was very useful in helping them grow and mature as a person; and 55% say it was very useful in helping them prepare for a job or career. Is College Worth It?, PewResearch.org

Well, we all know this: college education comes with a hefty price tag. A bachelor’s degree in the United States costs around $127,000, according to research done by the Idaho Department of Labor . To pay this price tag, 70% of those who choose to go to college take out student loans to pay their tuition and many end up owing a large portion of those loans after graduation. And let’s not forget about the other expenses too. If you’re an out-of-state student, you will have to pay dorm fees on top of other daily costs, such as meals, supplies, and extracurricular activities.

And on the other hand, that $127,000 cost could be well worth it depending on the line of work that you get into and the salary that you can secure. Remember the $500,000 that you could make over the next 30 years? That is an almost 4X return on your investment! That said, 30 years is a long time and these results are not guaranteed. 

Not surprisingly, you’ll need to complete college in order to receive these benefits (except for some extraordinary exceptions). Surprisingly, statistics from the Institute of Education reveal that a significant 40% of students enrolled in a four-year college program drop out before obtaining their degree. This high dropout rate is a cause for concern, especially considering that even among those who do graduate, 64% take more than four years to complete their studies. Not only does this extended timeframe incur additional expenses, but it also delays their entry into the workforce, hindering their career progression. These blended costs come out to $70,000 per year according to the US News and World Report . Those considering college should make sure they have a firm commitment to graduating – and graduating on time – unless they want to incur significant additional costs.

The job market for college graduates has changed since the 2007 financial crisis, leading to higher unemployment rates among young individuals entering the job market. Data from the Economic Policy Institute indicates that these rates nearly doubled between 2007 and 2014 to 8.7% unemployment and 16.8% underemployment for recent college graduates. This creates challenges for new graduates who face fewer job prospects alongside the burden of student loan debt.

Conversely, a college education is often a de-facto requirement for the highest paying industries like tech and finance. Furthermore, a college education provides students with a curriculum that prioritizes theoretical knowledge, critical thinking skills, and a broad understanding of various subjects relevant to their chosen field. While this approach may require graduates to seek additional training for specific job roles, the advantage lies in the versatility and adaptability of their education, opening doors to diverse career paths beyond a singular focus.

Trade schools, also known as vocational schools, specialize in trade-specific training, with programs that last for two years or less. It focuses on teaching practical skills rather than general education courses. Trade schools, much like college, offer training in various fields such as nursing, electrician work, and culinary arts, which often have high demand and competitive wages. Some trades teach students entry-level skills that allow them to get employment where they then continue their training on the job.

The value of trade schools lies in their differences from four-year bachelor’s programs. Let’s talk about them here:

Attending a trade school instead of pursuing a bachelor’s degree can lead to significant cost savings. On average, a trade school degree costs around $33,000, which is a remarkable $94,000 less than the average cost of a bachelor’s degree priced at $127,000. Taking into account loans with 4% interest over 10 years, the savings on a trade school degree amount to $114,000 compared to a bachelor’s degree costing $154,000. While most students find other sources of income to help with their education expenses, the average student debt for college graduates is approximately $29,900, compared to just $10,000 for students graduating from a two-year technical school.

Aside from the lower cost, trade schools offer the advantage of a shorter graduation timeline. Most programs can be completed in two years or less, and some disciplines have even shorter pathways. With multiple start dates throughout the year, applicants who missed certain enrollment dates may experience reduced waiting times. However, it’s important to note that certain trade school disciplines may still require additional training or licensure, similar to careers that demand a bachelor’s degree or higher.

Attending a technical trade school offers several advantages, including the stability of jobs that are difficult to export overseas. Many jobs in sectors like computer programming can easily be outsourced, but trade school jobs such as carpentry and electrical work require a physical presence, making them less susceptible to outsourcing. Moreover, there is a growing demand for high-precision skills, and as the older skilled trade workers retire, there are increased opportunities for young workers to fill those positions.

Trade schools also focus on preparing graduates for in-demand careers, offering pathways to essential professions, specialized high-paying jobs, and rapidly growing technical roles. Skilled technician roles like wind turbine technicians and solar photovoltaic installers are among the top trade school jobs. Essential careers such as plumbers, electricians, and ironworkers remain in high demand even during economic fluctuations. Companies seeking to fill these positions prioritize candidates with trade school skills and certifications, often leading to job offers immediately after graduation. As one student from Pittsburgh Institute of Aeronautics, an aircraft maintenance school, shared, job offers are almost guaranteed for trade school graduates.

Trade school graduates earn comparable salaries to those with a four-year degree. With a median annual salary of around $35,720 , trade school jobs differ by roughly $11,180 compared to bachelor’s degree holders earning about $46,900. However, trade school programs take just two years, providing graduates with an extra two years of income, amounting to approximately $71,440. When considering the added costs and time spent in college, trade school grads can be over $140,000 ahead, bridging the income gap. 

Location also impacts trade job salaries, with higher wages found on the East and West Coasts. Electricians, for instance, earn between $70,000 in California and $79,000 in New York. Prospective students should research local salaries before pursuing trade programs for insights into potential earnings.

It should be noted that the value of a four-year degree is not being dismissed. It can open doors and lead to higher lifetime earnings. However, trade school presents a viable and often overlooked alternative for individuals who are hands-on learners, don’t want to be burdened by high cost or loans, and eager to enter the workforce as soon as possible.

As you approach high school graduation or support someone making this decision, consider trade school as a wise alternative. Explore the wide range of opportunities that it offers. It’s crucial to explore your options and assess your personal learning styles and career aspirations. Remember, sometimes choosing the less conventional path can lead to extraordinary journeys.

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