All right. So today we're discussing post high school
education students across the US are currently deciding between attending
trade school or a four year college. According to
the National Center for Education statistics, college enrollment dipped
3.8% between 2021 2022. Well, in the same
period, trade fields like construction or H VAC repair
increased by 40% here to help us weigh some of
the benefits of both options. Is David Grosso,
business Reporter and CEO of bold TV. David.
Thank you so much for joining us this afternoon.
Now, college admissions, as you mentioned, they're
out right now. How do you recommend approaching this
decision between trade school and university education? I think
Chloe and I'm gonna go out on a limb here
and guess you're closer to my age. You know
, back in our day, we really didn't consider
dollars and cents when we talked about education. It
was just kind of this magic moment in your life
that you were like, hey, what are you
doing next without any regard for the consequences of what
happens after you graduate? And I think it's gone
mainstream now, people really Consider their decisions when they
are 17 and 18. And what a great topic
. Right. It's easter weekend, passover just passed
. We're all talking to our families about our next
moves and we really have to consider the ROI or
the return on investment of whatever we choose, whether
it's trade school or college. And specifically, we
have to focus on picking the right major so that
we have a job when we're done. Absolutely major
is really crucial. As I'm sure some of us
here know now, as we mentioned, college enrollment
did shrink while trade enrollment has grown in the past
three years. Would you say this is a pandemic
related blip or do you see this becoming a bigger
trend in the future? Well, we have a
fundamental skills, mismatch. What people are studying is
not what's in demand if you are a scientist,
right? And you went to college, if you're
an engineer, if you're a nurse, those are
trades that are very much in demand and mind you
, I'm calling them trades even though you went to
college and you went to university and you went to
medical school, even being a lawyer is a trade
because you have an actual skill that is marketed.
And I think what we've seen now is that a
lot of people went like me and I'm sorry,
Chloe, I'm not really good at anything else besides
reading, writing and speaking, we got liberal arts
degrees and it was a lot harder to find a
job. And I think now there's a cognizance of
, hey, I need to have a marketable skill
, whether it's I'm an air conditioning tech or a
doctor. I have to have a marketable skill if
I'm going to have a job. Now, obviously
, you know, you're kind of implying here that
not all majors are created equally, but you did
cite some majors that are more consistently in demand.
I do want to mention though that we have seen
layoffs in the tech industry pretty widespread this year.
Uh So would you say that jobs in engineering in
technology, adjacent fields are still valuable and will be
moving forward? But if you look at the layoffs
, even in tech, a lot of them and
I don't mean to, you know, denigrate my
own field. A lot of them are like people
like me who are good at reading, writing,
speaking, marketing, advertising, they're not really hard
skills, people, they're not aerospace engineers, they're
not U X U I designers. So I think
even in the beleaguered field of tech, you see
a lot of jobs that are being held on to
are people with hard skills. And fundamentally, as
you probably know, Chloe, those are the people
you see studying in the library when you're in college
. These are hard majors stem is not easy,
stem is hard for everyone which is of course,
science, technology, engineering, math. If you
do plan on going to college and you do are
good at math, which I'm not, but if
you are going into it.