McFeely: We need to encourage our kids to look at trade jobs, not just 4-year degrees

By david.demuthIn standard22nd November, 2015

If your kid, by age 22, could make $45,000 a year with full benefits and have zero college debt, would you tell him that’s something worth looking into?

If not, you might want to get your head examined.
If so, you need to tell them to check it out. Right now. The opportunities are here, by the thousands.

This is not one of those wacky radio commercials that promises a path to easy riches with no effort. This is real. It takes skill, hard work and responsibility but it’s there for the taking.

We need tradesmen in this country and that includes right here in Fargo-Moorhead. We need young people to be electricians and plumbers and construction workers. We need them now and we need a lot of them. Lots and lots of them.

Doesn’t float your boat because we’re not talking four-year colleges and the prestige of a degree? Yeah, well, wait until we get to the numbers.

“There are unlimited opportunities in the trades right now,” said Mark Altenburg, director of advancement at Minnesota State Community and Technical College in Moorhead. “There is a once-in-a-generation opportunity right now. We trained so many guys to do these things in the 1970s when tech school was free. Now those guys are getting to retirement age and we’re not replacing them. I have companies that will sponsor entire two-year educations. They need good people and they’re willing to do whatever it takes to get them.”