Fryowa
Administrator
My son wants to be an electrician and I am ALL for it. He is planning on getting his associates degree and going through both the commercial and residential electric programs. You can do it with a certificate/diploma, but my only request was that he just take the extra classes and get his associates degree done so if he does decide to go on and get a bachelors degree he has the first two years done already.The big AI minds in Silicon Valley are predicting a seismic advancement (artificial general intelligence) within 2 to 10 years. They are ever optimists, but looking at the rate of change over the last couple years, nothing about that timeline seems unrealistic.
There are a bunch of people who have not even caught up to what these publicly available chatbots can do (I am just starting to mess around with them), the world is not going to be ready for the next leap. I am thinking about nudging my kids toward the trades...robots are a long ways away from being able to replace what those folks do. But the jobs that require a 4 year degree and the evaluation of information? A bunch of those are going to be replaced, and right soon.
An electrician can’t be replaced by AI in the (foreseeable) future, and by the time it can we won’t need college degrees or even school period. The world will be so different at that time all bets are off. A trained electrician can make a bucketload of money and still have free time to pursue the fun stuff in life while being able to afford it. You also get to see something done with your hands at the end of the day which I miss greatly in my office job. My son has turned down track/XC offers from some pretty good schools but luckily has found a community college with a XC team that would wipe most of those 4 year schools’ teams. And it’s coached by a former Hawkeye all-American which doesn’t hurt my feelings
4 year degrees are going to be obsolete much, MUCH sooner than the hands-on trades. Kudos to you for not thinking your kids are beneath that type of thing. I see a whole lot of educated parents who feel that way and it’s honestly sad.