that's true, but those people working those low end salary jobs probably enjoy it quite a bit.  I, for example, am a teacher.  Do I make a lot of money?  No, I do not.  Do I love my job, yes I do.  Am I glad I went to college and paid to get this low paying job, you bet!

I havent posted here in years but after reading some of the BS in here, whew I have to say as a tradesman it gets by blood boiling.

First of all there is nothing wrong with getting your hands dirty at work or breaking a sweat. Stop being pussies, stop looking down on people who enjoy doing more work with their body then mind. These people grow your food and build your homes, plumb in your water and gas and fix your vehicles.

I think a lot of youth are scared to take labour jobs not because they dont want to work, that is something that comes with experience. But because society has cast these essential roles in a negative light.

What do I do? Im a welder, as a first year apprentice with little to no experience and no technical training I made $72,000 my first year. I know many journeyman welders who make over $100 an hour and top $250,000 a year and I will be happy to join them when I go for my last term of school in oct.

He's obviously not super young as he started two successful businesses before entering any type of secondary education. What you're saying falls pretty flat here.

I dont know what his age is, but starting two successful business could mean starting Two Subway restaurants which is easy to do (not saying that's what he did); just plunge down the initial fee (100-150k) and you got ur "business". Going back to school after you find out you should have been there in the first place is hard to do. How many ppl you talk to wish they had gone to school but thinks its too late for them to go back due to age or family or financial pressure? Plenty.

Keep ditching maths and college and we'll keep importing software engineers from India and China and they will be the one earning 80k+ a year.......

Maths, physics, electronics, biology is where all the good paying jobs are now and demand only rises in those sectors and weirdly enough the US has to import a lot of qualified people in those areas as american traditionally dislike those topics...

Good for you kid! I agreed, all the good science professors I had in college were Indian, Chinese, and Germans with heavy accent; when that's the majority of University in USA, you know that we are not doing enough from home-base.

Completely disagree

The only thing that needs to change is the expectation that a college degree will automatically get you a job. At the same time, however, a well-rounded liberal arts education is invaluable. To reach our true potential as people, we need to be more than economic animals, and while laboring trades are perfectly acceptable things, nothing's stopping an educated man from doing them, either.

Half the software engineer at the small company where I work were not born in the US ( myself included, I am french), and it's not for a lack of trying to find american born engineers, it's just very hard to find a software engineer with good math skills and the issue isn't that we offer poor salaries or benefits...( we don't offer stuff as good as Google either but the mix of employees at Google is the same as at my company..).

Fact is outside of a few super college like MIT maths is not a path that american students like or are encouraged to follow whereas in some countries it's still considered the best path for students ( it's the case in France or India, not sure about China).

Chinese education is heavily emphasized in physics and math, but recent years business majors are popping up all over.