 What's happening? It's Shane here and in today's video we are going to be comparing trade school to traditional university. We're going to be going over the differences of getting a college degree versus finishing trade school and going into the trades. And if you're someone that is considering either one of these options, this video is definitely going to help you out. And all I ask is that you gently tap the like button. Let's aim for, I don't know, 2,000 likes on this video. And also hit that subscribe button. I think only little less than 20% of you are subscribed. And out of those 20%, only about 8% of you hit the notification bell and turn on all notifications. Come on now. I think we can do better than that. And it also is something that really makes me happy. And I would appreciate it. Thank you. All right. So jumping right into it, I think everybody knows what university is. Pretty common. Everyone knows what college is. But what exactly is trade school? Like, what exactly is the difference of going to a trade school or going to a university or community college? Well, the main difference between trade school and college is the fact that in college you have to take a bunch of general education classes and a bunch of prerequisite classes that you don't necessarily want to take and they don't necessarily have anything to do with your major. This is because colleges believe that you should have a well-rounded education and they make you take a bunch of, you know, liberal arts, humanities, et cetera classes. And these classes don't necessarily have anything at all to do with your major. It's a scam. Whereas trade school is going to give you dedicated training to teach you a very specific skill where it is known that that is a skill that is needed in society, right? So an example of this is you could go to trade school and learn how to weld and all of your classes would revolve around the skill of welding. Now, there are several different types of trade schools. Basically, there's trade school, vocational school, as well as technical school. Trade schools tend to be a little bit more hands-on than technical schools. Technical schools also tend to be a little bit more like their traditional, like classroom environment. And then vocational school is kind of a little bit of both. But to be honest, these are very subtle differences and a lot of trade schools basically do all three in one. So you might become a dental hygienist at a vocational school. You might become an elevator installer at a trade school and you might become an IT expert at a technical school. But like I said, they are all essentially the same thing. So I'm just going to refer to all of them as trade school. Now, depending on the trade school you go to, the location you're in, as well as the career you're trying to get in, you might end up getting a certificate after finishing trade school, or in some cases, you will actually get a degree. Now, I think a lot of people when they picture kind of trade type careers, they think of like a really buff guy, like holding a wrench or you know, something like that doing manual labor. And there is a lot of manual labor in a lot of different trade careers. But it's not just for guys. And there's a lot of trade careers where it's dominated by women. So I'm just going to go ahead and read some careers out to you. Nursing assistant, dental hygienist, respiratory therapist, radiation therapist, sonographer, massage therapist, aesthetician, all of those have a significant amount of women in the careers. So that stereotype isn't necessarily true. Now some other very common trade careers I think everybody knows about, you know, you've got plumbers, electricians, elevator mechanics, actually all different types of mechanics, whether it be car mechanics, aircraft mechanics, etc. Also a bunch of different technician jobs, welders, carpenters, HVAC mechanics, etc. My brother is actually a HVAC mechanic and he owns his own business. There are a ton of different trade careers out there. Now the next question, how long does a traditional degree take in order to finish and how long does trade school take? Well, a traditional degree, a bachelor degree is supposed to take about four years to finish. Lately for many reasons, some of which I think are a little bit sketchy. A lot of the time bachelor's degrees are taking five years to finish, sometimes even six. So I looked at different studies and everything and there's a lot of different numbers thrown around but usually it's about 5.1 years on average to finish your bachelor degree. Then if you want to get a master's that's usually going to be another two years and then if you want to get a doctorate of that is usually depending on the program you go into it could take another five to eight years on top of that. If you get a professional degree like medical doctor, pharmacist, etc., usually that is going to take four years or so after getting your bachelor's degree so eight years total and then in some cases you're going to do some type of training on top of that some type of residency or fellowship. So long story short college takes a long time. Trade school on the other hand usually takes less than two years. This means that people are finishing school a lot earlier, they're starting to make money earlier and they're entering the job market and getting real-world experience at a much earlier age. On top of that the fact that the school itself is shorter means that you're likely going to be paying a lot less intuition and if that wasn't enough you should also consider opportunity cost and by that I mean while everybody else is paying to go to school still for an extra two years three years or maybe even longer you are making money, your learning skills, your networking, you're getting started with your life. The next question we want to consider is how much do trade careers make versus how much are you going to make if you get a college degree? Now this is where in my opinion it gets very very fuzzy. It's almost like comparing apples to oranges. So if you look at the averages and you compare trade careers all trade careers versus all people who graduate with a college degree the people who graduate the college degree do tend to make more money. At least that's what it says when you look at government reported websites. However what I have found in real life is many different trade careers get paid in cash and for that reason it isn't necessarily reported the same way that it is in a normal job right and so in my opinion many of these statistics and the average salaries that they report on websites like the Bureau of Labor Statistics are wrong. So for instance on BLS it shows the HVAC mechanics make about $50,590 per year about $24 per hour and I have personal experience with this because my brother's one I've met a bunch of you know HVAC mechanics through him um none of them are making that little they're all making more than that whether or not they own their own business okay. So some of the trade careers you have to do a little bit of extra research if you want to figure out what the true salary is and if that wasn't enough the pay is also going to vary greatly depending on where you live whether you're union or non-union and whether you own your own business don't own your own business or you are licensed. So for instance on BLS it shows electricians make about 56 $57,000 per year but if you are an electrician in Oregon you are likely going to be making well over 70,000 per year and dental hygienist median pay is about 77,000 a year but if you live in Washington you'll likely make over 95,000 right so very muddy very difficult to figure out what it actually is in terms of the pay. So construction managers for instance make about 97,000 dollars per year there are definitely some very high paying trade careers um generally speaking if you're a manager you're going to make more also if you own your own business you're likely going to make more as well. Keep in mind that the median income is depending on which source you use to look it up about 35 to 40,000 dollars per year so these numbers are pretty good and the median income of a college grad is usually about 45 to 50,000 dollars per year and with trade jobs you see a lot of different numbers but usually it's about 42,000 per year um on average so very comparable to a college degree and one of the nice things is it costs a lot less which is what we're going to get into in the next section. I've said this many times on this channel college is getting more and more expensive uh usually people are going on average about 37 to 40,000 dollars in debt and overall college costs usually about 80 to 100,000 dollars. Trade school on the other hand on average costs about 33,000 so trade school is definitely a lot cheaper and like I said this is just the cost it doesn't also count the time that it saves you and it doesn't take into account opportunity cost. An opportunity cost might be the most important out of those three. If you are able to save time that means while other people are accumulating debt you are actually making money while they are spending money you are making money you're getting experience. Now by the way the 33,000 uh number there that's just an average some trade schools are going to cost a heck of a lot less than that. Again it's always going to be worth it for you to do your research on this. Also there are many different trade careers where depending on the area you're in the occupation you're trying to get into etc like a bunch of different factors whether you're union or non-union you may not even have to attend trade school right so you might be able to go right in and get an apprenticeship. All right so the next section I'm just going to call x factors this is going to be a bunch of random stuff that didn't necessarily make it into any other section but I still think is very important. All right so the first thing I want to talk about is how much value you get out of each one and how that is rapidly changing. So a college degree used to basically be a golden ticket to success you got a college degree didn't really matter which major it was and you were set for life that was like 20 30 plus years ago things have changed now a college degree is not nearly as valuable as it used to be uh there are some college degrees that in my opinion aren't worth it for the most part and some college degrees that are worth it sometimes and then there's some that are still worth it and you definitely get a good return on your investment so as the value of a college degree has been going down the cost of college has been going up right so this trend will probably continue in the future the value of the college degree will continue to go down and the cost is going to continue to go up trades on the other hand in my opinion because of the fact that so many people have been transitioning into more white-collar type jobs where they're in an office trades have gotten more and more valuable so having these trade skills where you're able to fix things and you know and understand things in a technical way is incredibly valuable so in the future i expect the value of a education in the trades to also continue going up now another thing i want to talk about is future growth potential uh when you look at a lot of the trade careers they do have very good future growth potential and that's basically where they estimate how much need there will be in the future for that career but on top of that trade careers have extremely good job security okay so what i mean by that is you know if something really bad happens in the world some kind of you know catastrophic event are you still going to be able to have a job and for the most part just because trade careers tend to just directly solve a big problem that a bunch of people have the job stability tends to be very very good you know trade careers are essential right that's a big word that we heard thrown around for the last two years right trade careers truly are essential like you know society would fall apart if you didn't have tradespeople making sure that things keep on running fixing things repairing things doing maintenance on them college degrees on the other hand it really depends on which one you get which career path you go down there's a lot of variability there but with that being said when it comes to flexibility trade careers are not going to be as good as a college degree with a college degree especially certain ones you can basically go down like so many different career paths whereas if you go to trade school to become a plumber you're probably going to become a plumber so when it comes to flexibility uh college degrees are going to be the clear winner there another thing we should consider is job satisfaction now this is just it's so difficult to say whether one's better than the other when it comes to job satisfaction that's like saying like this ice cream is subjectively the best ice cream you can't say that everybody has their own favorite ice cream but with that being said if you're somebody who really likes being outside you really like working with your hands doing physical labor trade careers are probably going to be appealing to you generally speaking if you're somebody who wants a desk job where you're working inside you're not really exposed to the weather or anything like that you don't want it to be too physical college degree would probably be the better way to go but there really is something to kind of just like working with your hands uh i've mentioned this before on the channel but you know i did trade stuff when i was a teenager um you know i worked uh i did demolition i did construction i did some landscaping and there really is something to like being outdoors and just like doing physical labor it just really is satisfying in a weird way it's kind of hard to explain but at the end of the day you feel like you put in an honest day's work whereas you know sometimes if you're on a doing a desk job like you kind of feel like you didn't really do anything because you're just sitting down all day so yeah there really is something to that um it's something where you kind of just have to try it in order to experience it but yeah hope this video helped you to make your decision on which one is better for you uh if you haven't done already go ahead check out my other videos right here uh gently tap that like button hit the subscribe button ring the notification bell and comment down below any thoughts comments criticisms etc that you have on the video and i will see you next time