Exactly this, without the "give up" part. Why is going into a trade giving up? It's choosing a different path than the one that has been shoved down all our throats like it is the only respectable option. University is not for everyone, and not everyone can go there. There's simply not enough room.

I think going into trades is what I want my son to do. I love Mike Rowe's thoughts on this - you can make excellent money, get started fast and be working for yourself by the time you would get a precious 4-year degree. And trades are in serious need of new people; seems like a great opportunity.

I went to college and dropped out, so the value of my non-existent degree is literally zero. But I got a ton of value out of my time there. I met a lot of friends, grew significantly as a person, and found a job opportunity that started me on my career path.

I still think college is way too expensive these days, but if you think of it as only purchasing a degree, you're missing a lot.

My general impression is "has a degree with min GPA x.y" is a HR check-box that is necessary to get past an initial screen for a lot of large company roles. After you've got a couple of years experience no-one on the interview panel likely cares about the school you went to (and if they do, maybe give that firm a miss) compared to what you've done in the past 3 years.

Barely scraping through an engineering degree or getting a degree in architecture at texas tech is certainly a bad idea, but the average engineering graduate is doing better than the trades.

More of this data is public now on graduate outcomes, e.g. https://www.collegesimply.com/colleges/texas/texas-tech-univ...

There are some paths where the university choice does matter, others that don't.

Going into the trades is not a bad idea I think, but again it needs to be a conscious decision for the pros and the cons.

I think the key bit is do some research, try and get a week long internship in the job that he is looking for and/or try to speak with seniors/grads.

Problem is we always keep hearing about these selective schools in the media and that colours out perception a lot. Of course try as much as possible to get into a selective school, but if one is unable to, there are still opportunities.