A young man I spoke to recently—successful, full-time employed, and genuinely happy with his career—made a simple, fascinating statement: 'I'm glad I didn't go to university'.
He wasn't proud or defiant; he was simply content and deeply satisfied with the tangible, skilled work he does. He loves his job, he is good at it, and he holds a quiet confidence that comes from being a competent individual providing an essential service to his community. For a generation that was relentlessly told a degree was the only ticket to success, his casual confidence felt monumental.
It turns out his personal choice is part of a massive, trans-Atlantic movement. The data shows that the wider public is finally pushing back against the outdated four-year degree machine.
In the U.S., a Workforce Monitor survey from the American Staffing Association found a shocking inversion of advice: 33% of adults would advise graduating high school seniors to attend a vocational or trade school, compared to just 28% who would encourage them to attend a four-year college.
The reasons for this shift are twofold: what I'm calling on one hand "the negative push" and on the other hand, "the positive pull".
The Negative Push is the disillusionment with the academic path as reported this week in Fortune magazine:
* An astounding 62% of white-collar workers would happily switch to trade jobs for better stability and pay.
* 55% of workers felt that their training programmes or university degrees didn’t actually prepare them for their roles.
That’s the core problem with the university myth: it's failing to deliver on the promise of career relevance.
But the real story is the Positive Pull—the draw toward working with your hands. These careers offer a constant sense of physical and personal accomplishment. Whether you’re fixing an engine, wiring a house, or laying perfect pipework, the completion of the job is a self-evident success. It's the satisfaction of a job well done and the personal fulfilment that comes from seeing and touching the tangible results of your skill.
Richard Wahlquist, CEO at ASA, summed up the need for change:
"Americans are clearly concerned that colleges and universities are failing to equip students with the workplace-relevant skills that employers need."
Even the US Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell recognises the skills gap.
The message is clear: parents, educators, and policymakers need to stop clinging to outdated notions of success and start supporting paths designed for real competence, stability, and the genuine satisfaction of the 'jobs of today and the future world of work". America won't be made great again by its surfeit of university students.
Sources
One in Three Americans Recommend Trade School Over College for High School Grads, American Staffing Association, 5th June 2025, https://americanstaffing.net/posts/2025/06/05/trade-school-over-college/
(retrieved 2nd October 2025)
Eleanor Pringle, 'The blue-collar revolution isn’t just for Gen Z. Six in 10 white-collar professionals say they’d switch for the right trades job', Fortune (30th September 2025), https://fortune.com/2025/09/30/white-collar-work-gen-z-blue-collar-revolution-career-change-flexjobs/,
(retrieved 2nd October 2025)
Image Credits
Crumbling brick pillars of the corridor at Mission San Antonio de Padua, California, ca.1906 (CHS-4378), picryl.com, http://digitallibrary.usc.edu, public domain, (retrieved 2nd October 2025)
Mason at Work, Stockcake.com, Public Domain, https://stockcake.com/i/mason-at-work_832285_1089245, (retrieved 2nd October 2025)
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