You're still failing to grapple with the point that being a "skilled tradesman," even if it may provide more income security than unskilled jobs, is not a route to upward mobility.
Besides, the vocational skills that are relevant today aren't just in becoming an electrician or a plumber. Like I noted in the article (or the comments afterwards), accounting, marketing, and similar programs are essentially vocational (although still flexible in their application) college programs that are hugely beneficial to people who might not go to grad school.
Even if you are so narrow-minded that you see the sole purpose of education as something that should directly translate into career options, a college education is still an increasingly necessary requirement in the modern economy. The health of our economy demands more and more people who have acquired at least a college education, and those kinds of "vocational" college degrees provide opportunities that no trade profession offers.
A few weeks ago, I took on a three-part series by conservative “scholar” and author of the infamously racist The Bell Curve, Charles Murray, who argued that most Americans are too dumb for college, and that most college educations impart no meaningful skills. Clearly following my lead (I am, of course, on the cutting edge of today’s journalism), the New York Times Sunday Magazine mentions some of the same critiques of Murray’s argument.
Citing the income gap between those with and those without higher education, the piece underscores the value of a college education, and goes beyond Murray’s simplistic conception of learning. Most importantly, the article focuses on the value of education as a general signal, pointing out how the modern economy’s greatest rewards “have gone to those whose intelligence is deployable in new directions on short notice, not to those who are locked into a single marketable skill...”
A college education isn’t the end-all, be-all of a meaningful existence. As undergraduate education becomes more accessible, perhaps some of its prestige will fade and transfer to graduate education. But, the point still stands. A college education is still a worthwhile and vital component of upward mobility and the American dream, and Charles Murray is still a moron.
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Besides, the vocational skills that are relevant today aren't just in becoming an electrician or a plumber. Like I noted in the article (or the comments afterwards), accounting, marketing, and similar programs are essentially vocational (although still flexible in their application) college programs that are hugely beneficial to people who might not go to grad school.
Even if you are so narrow-minded that you see the sole purpose of education as something that should directly translate into career options, a college education is still an increasingly necessary requirement in the modern economy. The health of our economy demands more and more people who have acquired at least a college education, and those kinds of "vocational" college degrees provide opportunities that no trade profession offers.