1102: College vs. Trades | Skeptical Sunday
The Jordan Harbinger Show
Jordan Harbinger
4.8 • 12.3K Ratings
🗓️ 12 January 2025
⏱️ 57 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Want to make bank without the bank breaking you? Anglo-Saxon poetry enthusiast Nick Pell weighs trades against degrees on this week's Skeptical Sunday!
On This Week's Skeptical Sunday, We Discuss:- While college graduates earn more on average ($77,000/year) compared to trade school graduates ($67,000/year) and high school graduates ($47,000/year), this comes with significant student loan debt — averaging $37,000 for a bachelor's degree.
- There's a severe shortage of skilled trade workers in America, with examples like a deficit of 500,000 plumbers and an anticipated shortage of 1.9 million manufacturing jobs, suggesting strong job security and demand in these fields.
- Advanced degrees show diminishing returns — a master's degree costs an average of $65,000 and only provides about a 16% salary increase, while a doctorate costs $127,000 for grad school alone with relatively modest income gains.
- The college versus trade school decision isn't purely financial — it should factor in personal aptitudes, desired lifestyle, and how someone wants to spend roughly one-third of their adult life working.
- There are multiple paths to success, and you can make informed choices by: taking a "gap year" to work and explore interests, completing general education requirements at more affordable community colleges, researching program costs versus expected salaries, and considering apprenticeships which have doubled since 2013 and offer paid training opportunities.
- Connect with Jordan on Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. If you have something you'd like us to tackle here on Skeptical Sunday, drop Jordan a line at jordan@jordanharbinger.com and let him know!
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Skeptical Sunday. I'm your host, Jordan Harbinger. Today I'm here with Skeptical Sunday |
| 0:08.1 | co-host, writer, and researcher, Nick Pell. On the Jordan Harbinger show, we decode the stories, |
| 0:12.5 | secrets and skills of the world's most fascinating people and turn their wisdom into practical |
| 0:16.7 | advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you. Our mission is to help you |
| 0:21.3 | become a better informed, more critical thinker. And during the week, we have long-form conversations |
| 0:25.6 | with a variety of amazing folks, from spies to CEOs, athletes, authors, thinkers, and performers. |
| 0:31.1 | On Sundays, though, we do skeptical Sunday. That's where a rotating guest co-host and I break |
| 0:35.2 | down a topic you may have never thought about and debunk common misconceptions about that topic. Topics like sovereign citizens, circumcision, |
| 0:42.2 | e-commerce scams, diet supplements, the lottery, ear-candling, self-help cults, and more. |
| 0:47.1 | And if you're new to the show or you want to tell your friends about the show, I suggest |
| 0:50.3 | our episode starter packs. These are collections of our favorite episodes on persuasion and |
| 0:54.6 | negotiation, psychology, disinformation, cyber warfare, crime and cults, and more. That'll help new |
| 0:59.4 | listeners get a taste of everything we do here on the show. Just visit jordanharbinger.com |
| 1:03.3 | slash start or search for us in your Spotify app to get starting. So today, if your family was |
| 1:08.8 | anything like mine, there was just no question about it. You were going to |
| 1:12.6 | college after high school. Now, however, many people, myself included, are skeptical that college is really |
| 1:18.8 | a good deal at the end of the day. You might have heard more and more people talking about the |
| 1:22.7 | idea of skipping college and going straight to work or entering the trades. But is college really useless? |
| 1:28.5 | Is it a bad investment? Or is this just another talking point without facts to back it up? |
| 1:32.9 | Here to give us a little higher education on the topic is Anglo-Saxon poetry enthusiast |
| 1:37.5 | Nick Bell. Before we go any further, Nick, you went to college, correct? |
| 1:41.1 | Not as much as you did. Well, your bank account certainly thanks you for that. |
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