Blog

The sad fact about college is that the valuable degree you can earn at the end of four years can put you deep in debt. What’s more, getting a college education doesn’t guarantee that there’ll be a job waiting for you when you graduate. Some of the most successful people in today’s business world...

On your way to becoming a plumber, electrician, or an HVAC technician, you’ll have some specialized, on-the-job training known as an apprenticeship. There are plenty of benefits attached to apprenticeships—including the opportunity to earn a decent salary while you learn, helping you to skip the...

Engaging their curiosity makes students hungry to learn. It’s this natural curiosity that draws us to online quizzes. In a best-case scenario, we answer questions and gain insight about ourselves or a subject that interests us. And then sometimes, we come across those “what color is your aura”...

March 28, 2017 A skilled trade requires smarts Pardon my rant, but when something annoys the hell out of me I have trouble keeping quiet. One of the things that sets me off is when college-educated people look down on the trades as something less intelligent people ought to aspire to. Less intelligent...

February 2017 College is increasingly a bad buy Last month the news media was filled with a story that ought to send a chill up the spine of anyone thinking of taking out a student loan to attend college. The U.S. Education Department admitted that it had miscalculated the repayment rates of student...

Service firms in particular clamor for female technicians.   Okay, this myth is admittedly hard to refute. Most estimates peg females as only about 2% to 2.5% of all skilled trade workers. That’s probably doubled since the rise of feminism in the 1960s, but progress has been at a snail’s pace....

Job security is higher for skilled trade workers than most other occupations.   This myth originates in the fact that construction work is highly cyclical. While it’s true that when work slows down many construction workers get let go, this deserves a closer look. In my last entry I said that...

Performance pay often leads to six-figure incomes.   How much do trade workers earn? That’s a difficult question to answer definitively because so much depends on the type of work (construction versus service, residential vs. commercial, etc.), geographic region and other factors, not least of...

Service work is a lot different than new construction.   It’s a half-truth that the work of the trades is dirty and dangerous. A construction project is fascinating to watch, which is why big job sites usually have a fenced-off area with peep holes for onlookers. If you’ve ever poked your head...