Tens of thousands of high-paying blue-collar jobs that don’t require a college degree are unfilled because too many people think college is necessary, according to the Hechinger Report.
“While a shortage of workers pushes wages higher in the skilled trades, the financial return from a bachelor’s degree is softening, even as the price, and the average debt into which it plunges students, remain high,” it noted.
So many high school graduates have been coached and primed to get a four-year college degree that highly paid jobs requiring less expensive and time-consuming training remain unfilled. That “poses a real threat to the economy,” according to the Hechinger Report, which focuses on news about colleges.
High-school students have been instilled with the erroneous belief that college “is the sole path for everybody,” says Chris Cortines, co-author of a report on Washington state career and tech education programs.
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