I would like to comment on
the recent article by Malka Weintraub in the Pesach 2024 issue, and the
subsequent reaction by Josh Hurewitz and response by Malka Weintraub in the May
2024 issue.
I am
uniquely suited to offer commentary on this topic. I graduated from junior
college with a certificate in electronics as well as a First Class
Radiotelephone Operators license. Subsequently, I went to college and obtained
two bachelor’s degrees, one in chemistry and one in biology. I later attended
Johns Hopkins and obtained a masters in chemistry. Therefore, I know something
about trade school, and I know something about college.
In Malka
Weintraub’s article, she makes the point that not everyone needs to go to
college, nor, indeed, should go to
college. She is 100% correct. College is one option out of many. The problem is
that, for many decades here in the United States, high schools have been
presenting college as the only option for a person to be successful, whereas
someone who does not go to college, and instead trains in a trade is a complete
loser. The current administration under President Biden has doubled down on
this wrong-headed approach. As a consequence of this misguided policy, the U.S.
is currently seeing shortages in many of the trades, including construction,
pipefitting, diesel mechanics, heavy equipment operators, welders, etc. Many of
these trades pay in the six figures at senior levels.
Let’s be
clear: This country runs because of the trades. Without diesel mechanics, the
U.S. would grind to a halt. Without concrete workers, welders, heavy equipment
operators, rail personnel, etc., our transportation infrastructure would become
unusable. Without specialists to work in electrical power generation and
transmission, we would not have reliable electrical power to run our country.
These are important, honest, and honorable jobs – and can provide good
livings.
Mike Rowe,
an Emmy award winner best known as the creator and host of Discovery Channel’s
“Dirty Jobs” show, is the CEO of the mikeroweWORKS Foundation. He has spoken
about this for years. His website, mikeroweworks.org, promotes employment in
the trades and offers scholarships for people wanting to go to trade school.
The fact that there is a serious shortage of people to work in these trades,
also known as “blue-collar” jobs, means there is a lot of opportunity for
someone willing to put in the hard work to learn them. Here is how Mike Rowe
puts it:
In spring 2013, mikeroweWORKS launched its
newest initiative, Profoundly Disconnected. Rowe states, “Many of the best
opportunities that exist today require a skill, not a diploma. The purpose of
this site is to promote that simple truth.” While in high school in 1979, Rowe
saw a poster in his guidance counselor's office that read “Work Smart, Not Hard.”
The point was that working smart, according to the poster, was being a white-
collar worker, whereas under working hard was being an auto mechanic. Rowe hated
that poster so much that he changed it to “Work Smart AND Hard”; he now prints
such posters and wants them hanging all over the country to get people to
change the way hard work is perceived.
The sad
fact is that this perception of blue-collar jobs also permeates the
Torah-observant community. This needs to change. Young Torah-observant people
are getting married and need a way to support themselves. To teach them that
the blue-collar trades are “not for young religious people” is irresponsible in
the extreme and robs them of what would otherwise be productive, well-paying
blue-collar jobs. Indeed, you don’t require college to make a decent wage. The
principle of working is this: If it is easy to do, if you don’t need any
training – then
anyone can do it, and the pay is going to be low. The harder something is to do
and the more training it requires, the more it will pay. That is a fact. Once
you understand this fact, you will understand how to make a higher wage: learn
something that is hard and become very good at it.
Now, if a
person is interested in white-collar jobs, such as accounting; business
management; engineering; psychology; pre-med; pre-dental; nursing; pre-law; the
pure sciences, such as physics, chemistry, and biology; mathematics; history;
or language studies leading to a degree in a particular language, such as
French, Russian, Arabic, or Chinese, etc., then college is the right play. Art
and music may be studied at many universities or at specialty schools like
Peabody or MICA here in Baltimore. Also noteworthy is that there are many
specialty programs at colleges and universities around the country in lesser-known
fields, such as petroleum engineering. So there is a wide array of
possibilities.
I think
that a lot of people entering college in this country are doing so because they
have been told the lie that college and only college can set you up for
financial security. This type of thinking is complete nonsense and has ruined
the lives of many young people who would have been much better served by going
into a trade. One of the main ingredients for success in college is to have a
clear idea as to why you are going and what you hope to accomplish. If you do,
it is quite possible to gain much benefit from a college education. Not only
that, but being exposed in college to the beauty of the fine arts, of classical
music in its various forms, of the great poets such as Robert Frost or Lord
Tennyson, or of great novelists such as Dickens, Hemingway, or Tolstoy is
invaluable and expands a person’s ability to appreciate beauty and to think
critically. In this way, I definitely agree with Josh Hurewitz’s response.
Obviously,
colleges and universities are going through a crisis right now, which includes
a clear trend to supporting woke ideologies and Marxism, the outbreak of
antisemitism on campuses everywhere, grade inflation (even at high level
universities such as Harvard), DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion, aka
racism), affirmative action programs aimed at limiting Jews and Asians in
university (here comes the Jew quota again!), and out-of-control tuition
increases the like of which we have never seen. Where this will end is hard to
predict. However, if you do your research, I believe a quality college or
university education – one free of wokeness and teaching the classical subjects
in a straightforward way – is still very possible. There are many good programs
out there, especially here in Maryland.
One very
troubling point that Josh Hurewitz brought up is that, considering the way frum living in Baltimore has developed,
one must make an unrealistic amount of money just to survive. This is putting
impossible pressures on young couples starting out. Essentially, what we have
done here in Baltimore is to completely eliminate a frum middle class. With a decent middle-class job, a small house,
and a used car, it used to be possible to raise Torah-observant kids and
survive. Josh Hurewitz claims that this is no longer possible, and I think we
should listen to him. He was in the middle of this when he was head of Mesilah
organization, which counseled religious couples on financial management. He
didn’t mention how much money you would need. But this is a crisis in the
religious community that needs to be addressed.
Not
mentioned in Weintraub’s article or the responses is the very real possibility
of working for the local, state, or federal government. The benefits are very
good, and there usually is a steady upward mobility through the ranks.
Government employment is where a college degree can be a real benefit. Plus, it
is usually stable employment. Many people from our community, including myself,
have worked and do work in federal jobs. Not only that, but once you start in
federal employment, you can go anywhere in the federal system. It is all one
system. The military also offers a good career path, although the military is
not for everyone.
In
summary, we should not view career preparation as either college/university or
the blue-collar trades. Rather, there is a great variety of different
occupations/careers, and one is not better than another. The choice for each
person will depend on what their strengths and aptitudes are and also on their
interests and what they enjoy doing. And we can leave it at that.
