The number of US high school graduates who chose apprenticeships instead of college is rising. Those programs are mostly focused on blue collar roles.
This next item is interesting college aged kids on both sides of the Atlantic deciding to forego college and head right into the trades or into a career apprenticeship immediately after high school. The Wall Street Journal (47:10): has an interesting story about how more of the brilliant kids in Britain are turning down offers to go to places like Oxford and the UK’s top universities. Instead, they’re going into quote white collar apprenticeships. And I admit, I don’t know how some person with only a high school diploma is ever going to become a lawyer without a law degree, but this is the sort of thing that they’re talking about. A lot of these apprenticeships are in finance or other white-collar jobs. One girl the Wall Street Journal interviews was offered a place at Oxford and turned them down to apprentice at a law firm.
The college route would have given her a degree, she said, but also mounds of student debt, no real practical experience, and they say that it’s a dangerous position in a legal industry rushing to adopt AI productivity tools.
