This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, December 23rd, 2016.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Go to College is the popular mantra for the education establishment.

College isn't for everyone, and it doesn't even guarantee a stable income

after you get that vaunted BA.

Jim Sturgio is executive director of the Pioneer Institute.

He argues that public schools today do a poor job providing a bridge to employment for young people who are seeking a quality vocational education.

I have a good friend in Louisville, Kentucky who owns a machining plant and it's been an operation for a really long time and

he is desperately seeking machinists for jobs that in many cases start at somewhere between 60 and 80,000 dollars a year.

And he has a terrible time finding these people, but he has no problem finding somebody with a BA at Starbucks to you know make his

latte and so it's it's a real challenge for him and I guess in in my thinking from the people that I've always associated with about education,

there is this attitude that you're a better person if you go to college than if you become somebody who is a skilled trades

person.

And I think that attitude has had a really negative impact on how young people think about

college, how young people think about vocations.

And it's, it's, these are not easy jobs.

I couldn't walk into a floor in a factory or some sort of skilled trades vocation and do anything. I'd be useless there. These are difficult applied engineering jobs.

Well, that's exactly right. Look, first thing I'd say is go to Starbucks, get someone with the BA in anthropology, they've studied how to use primitive tools. They might be able, he might be able to actually train them to get to work on some modern tools.

Look, the fact is our country for probably now half a century, if not more, has made a

fetish around going to college at all costs.

And we know this, and in part this is the malady of American education policy making,

which is there's always a one size fits all.

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