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Don’t dismiss the trades… they hold a bright future

Rob Doherty
Posted 12/31/21

Bethel

This is the fifth and final part in my multi-part series of “Counterpoint: A View from a Reader” regarding the challenges Sullivan County is and will confront over the next …

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Don’t dismiss the trades… they hold a bright future

Posted

Bethel

This is the fifth and final part in my multi-part series of “Counterpoint: A View from a Reader” regarding the challenges Sullivan County is and will confront over the next several years and the plans I believe will help turn those threats into opportunities.

To my Political detractors I reiterate these are my views as a member of a nine-member legislature and are not intended to even suggest that these are the views of any of my colleagues.

         *           *           *

To the editor:

A child is born to a family in Sullivan County, is raised in our wonderful environment enjoying hunting, fishing, hiking and camping.

Perhaps he plays Little League baseball or AYSO soccer. As they grow they attend Pre-K and Kindergarten in one of our many schools. Perhaps they participate in sports, star in a musical or play in the band.

Soon they will graduate from high school and for many – just as very little conscious thoughts go into the move from elementary to middle school or middle school to high school – when they leave high school, they routinely pursue a college degree.  

Throughout history this has been a laudable plan and one best calculated to allow that youngster to continue to grow, start a career, a family and adulthood.  

Today, however, we must question whether that plan is best serving the youth of our county and by extension the future of our county.

College provides tremendous opportunities for anyone pursuing a career in healthcare, education, justice, accounting or engineering. But are we serving the needs of our youth to send them out to major in; undecided, general business, even liberal arts?

Not that education alone does not carry tremendous value, it does. But are we best preparing our youth to return to their hometowns and raise their families here?

Over the past several years we have seen a decline in trades oriented education in our schools. Wood and metal shop – once a standard of a public-school education – have virtually dried up in our schools.

Yet the trades today offer among the most lucrative opportunities for our young people.   Anyone who has had to call a plumber, an electrician, or a carpenter knows well that these folks are hard to find and if your are fortunate enough to find one, command considerable fees to make that critical house call.

Have you brought your car for service recently and found the hourly labor rate in excess of $100. Yet our best students who could flourish in these professions are actively discouraged from pursuing such careers.

Jobs in the trades are plentiful today and offer starting salaries in excess of typical college graduates embarking in the workforce.

Over the past many years Americans have convinced themselves that the best option for many is an expensive four-year college degree.

Many in today’s culture have glorified the Corporate ladder and belittled those who daily climb the Werner Ladder.   Indeed, today we place less value on any path to success other than the traditional college path which frankly is largely a vestige of the 1950’s and 60’s economy.  

As a result of this stigma, which we attach to the trades, we have come to view such options as community colleges, trade schools, apprenticeship programs or other “on the job training programs” as vocational consolation prizes, best suited for those not sufficiently gifted to attend college and earn a four year degree.

The result of this thinking has been an inevitable widening of the skills gap, shortage of those vital trades workers that provide us with many elements essential to life and massive student loan debt.

Today, in the United States, student loan debt is the second highest consumer debt with more than 44 million borrowers owing more than $1.5 trillion.

The student loan crunch has become so pervasive as to convince many of our representatives in Washington that the federal government should forgive the debt and relieve our young people of their obligation.  

This in contrast to the fact that according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics there are more than 7 million jobs available across the country, the majority of which do not require a college degree.

Indeed, take a look sometime, at how many of our local college graduates are relegated to jobs that do not require such an educational foundation and yet they go to work everyday in many cases just to pay back that massive college debt.

Essentially we have all of these “shovel ready jobs” available to a society that actually discourages our youth from picking up a shovel, this while we continue to lend money to people who cannot pay it back to train for jobs that do not exist, particularly in our County.

Perhaps it is time to re-evaluate what economic development looks like in our County. The IDA is completing their 10-year review and among the most prominent issues to come out of our meetings with community leaders is the lack of affordable housing.

In our county and in surrounding counties jobs in the trades are plentiful, not $15 per hour jobs paying approximately $30,000 annually but higher paying opportunities often earning in excess of $50,000 annually.

Perhaps economic development in our county should start with re-thinking how we indoctrinate our young people. Stop stigmatizing the trades that provide a viable alternative to even our brightest young minds.

Encourage them to take up a career in the trades and after four years, instead of a $30,000 per year job may be several hundred miles from Monticello, and upwards of a quarter of a million dollars of debt, they can boast salaries in excess of $60,000, $70,000 or $80,000 annually working within our region and purchasing family homes right here in our county.

Along with those purchases they will be creating, construction jobs, and spending their discretionary dollars on our main streets and in our stores. The result economic development, the pathway though starting not from the middle of the paradigm but right at the start, with good skills and good opportunities for the future leaders of our Community.

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