Everything’s a trade, so everyone should go to trade school
100% of high school grads should go to trade school. One hundred percent.
Because EVERY career is a “trade.”
Historically, when people hear “trade,” they think of blue-collar work. Construction. Welding. Plumbing. Electrical. But really, a trade is any realm where people apply a set of skills to deliver a good or service in exchange for money.
And skills aren’t limited to physical labor:
Writing software is a skill.
Analyzing data is a skill
Selling is a skill.
And people get paid for using those skills. Thus:
Software development is a trade.
Pharmaceutical sales is a trade.
Risk management is a trade.
Ultimately, every single one of us enters a trade. The only distinction is whether it’s blue-collar or white-collar, and once you see this clearly, a lot of things snap into focus:
if white-collar careers are trades, then the question becomes, “why don’t we train for them the way we train for blue-collar trades?”
Blue-collar trade schools aren’t perfect, but their core model is vastly superior to the traditional university model when it comes to preparing students for what comes next.
They’re designed around skill acquisition.
They focus on applied learning.
They’re a fast, affordable, and effective way to successfully prepare students for those careers.
Whereas universities look absolutely nothing like that even though what comes after college is the (white-collar) workforce.
They are designed around esoteric knowledge acquisition.
They focus on lectures, textbooks, and exams.
They’re long, expensive, and do almost nothing to prepare students for those careers.
Once we stop pretending that white-collar work is somehow not “a trade,” we can finally build educational models that make sense for the world people are actually entering.
And the path forward becomes obvious.
after high school, everyone goes to trade school
The only question is: blue-collar or white-collar?
