The discussion was wide ranging and had a good mix of speakers--a marketer, an economist and a school counsellor--though the moderator could have done a bit more to distribute time amongst all of the panelists.
A story from NPR about a high achieving student choosing the trades over college seems to echo some of the arguments made by the speakers, while also addressing the only the remedial student enters the trades argument. It's a shame that we are still dealing with that stereotype, but this weird belief that only the stupid, usually male, students become tradespeople just won't die in the minds of some parents--and kids.
One area they didn't touch on was when you needed a degree, or a graduate degree, to do the job that you want. For example, if your local authority only hires teachers with a graduate degree to teach in the K-12 schools, you can go to school for a year to be a Teaching Assistant--but that is not a Teacher. And without the four year degree you can never progress into higher level administration or even into instructional or curricular design. In some cases college is the only way to get into a profession, so suggesting that they just pursue the "lite" version of the career is also a waste of their time and money.
However, their point about taking the associate degree, getting some work experience and pursuing additional education with the assistance of their employer is one we try to impress on our students all the time.
There are also some cases where a trade and a degree can go hand in hand. For example, a person who pursues a degree in history but who also works as a carpenter--whether as a full-time worker and a part-time student, or vice versa--may be able to use their trade to leverage their degreed career. As a carpenter and a historian, they could work in a museum (or form their own company) to build and repair exhibits; they can work in historical interpretation as a carpenter; they can also use their skills and knowledge to preserve historic homes or buildings. I wish sometimes that people would consider how a trade and a college degree can enhance one another, rather than the liberal arts depriving our economy of a plumber. (In fact, a chemistry class would have helped the plumber who told me that I could boil lead out of my water--but I consider him to be unusual and not the norm.)
They are also trying to continue the conversation on Twitter with the hashtag #valueofed, but they couldn't have anticipated the Twitter shutdown during their hangout.
Points to PayScale.com for using Google Hangouts. I'm looking forward to more of these.
