Apprenticeship: The Other Bachelor’s Degree | Victoria Gordon | TEDxHayesStreet 

I dropped out of university when I was 19 and became an electrician. I am now 29, a journeywoman & own my own business!! The trades are very hard work but also a very rewarding path to take. ✌️❤️

I’m entering into my fourth year in August for a journeymen apprenticeship for injection plastics molding technician. It’s been a pretty fun journey and the school at our community college has been great. My company paired with a state program to offer us this opportunity and the workers at the community college has worked with our company to not just get us a certificate upon completion but creating an Associate degree in apprenticeship studies. So we will take a handful of general studies courses in addition to our technical classes and actually graduate with a degree as well. I am in my late thirties and it’s been amazing to have this opportunity and wish I could have been offered it at a younger age instead of bumbling around aimlessly in my youthful years.

Everything one needs to know can be found at the library. I am a locomotive electrician. I learned about this as a kid being interested in model trains. What I didn’t know then was how much actually crosses over into full size diesel electric locomotives. I just wish I could have gotten into the field much younger than I did. I laugh at job descriptions that require a bachelors degree in electrical engineering for a sixty thousand a year job. I got everything I needed from on the job trial and error and the library. My mother did the same to land a technical publications editor’s position with the Army.

Many high school guidance counselors tell kids the ONLY way to success is a college degree. They are dead wrong. I was a product of a union apprenticeship program and managed to have a successful career in energy production and pollution control systems. I graduated with a journeyman card as a boilermaker field mechanic and used that education to travel all across North America from Pruhdoe Bay to Palo Verde Arizona. I raised 6 kids, 5 of whom chose university degree programs and 1 who went through an apprenticeship program. Guess which one has NO educational debts? All of them are successful in their chosen fields, but one has much less debts. My advice to young people- post secondary education is mandatory for success in today’s world. Find a field of interest and be serious about your studies and training. Take some time to research the department of labor statistics about what skills will be needed in tomorrow’s world. There’s no point in training for a career that is dieing. Do not accept that university degrees are the only way to success.

As a Swiss I can totally relate and agree (Apprenticeship is really valued in my country, thankfully). I started my automation technician apprenticeship at the age of 15, which allowed me to then get a Bachelor and a Masters degree (Engineering) that I recently finished, at the age of 23. I am way more at ease in the workplace than my other young colleagues who followed a more traditional university degree. I strongly promote this path :)

College should be free, should be about raising social beings having a wider knowledge of the world and also ability of critical thinking. It is not about training cogs for the wheels of capitalism.

I wish I had thought about apprenticeships back in 2014, before applying to colleges. I graduated with a BA in a liberal arts field in 2019, have a ton of debt, and still don't know what career path to follow, and have no skills (besides a recent TEFL certificate)

As a contractor looking for workers i go to highschools and i talk with kids and tell them about the trades. Tell them that yes it is nice to go to U of M. or to MSU but if they want a job that pays them now and does not give them bills for the next decade then think about going to the community colleges taking trade courses learn a trade. Start making 23+ an hour go to work 3 weeks and school 1 week out of every month. Be a mill right, plumber, electrician, pipe fitter, welder, carpenter.

I agree that apprenticeships for many years have been underrated while college degrees have been over emphasized. Great video!

my union apprenticeship essentially cost me nothing. I've been in the trade for over 13 years and now own my own business and a second business in real estate. None of which would have been possible without pursuing the trades.

Yes, I can relate, achieved my apprenticeship as a building drafter in Germany, which lead to a education in computer science and a climb of the “Ladder” to a VP of IT OPS for a large US based insurer, to a specialist in building and operating corporate data centers! I love Google and Wikipedia, but both can’t compete with the hands on teaching of an apprenticeship!

Snobbery pure and simple. I did a HND sandwich course in Electrical Engineering; college 6 months followed by six months in industry repeated for three years. What's not to like.

Here in California, the Employment Development Department and jobs training programming applies to community colleges as services.

I agree with this assessment. I have a BA in English and as time goes by the BA/BS degree becomes less valuable. A HS diploma is not going to help either. So the only solution I see is going to a cheap local college and get a degree there and avoid the expensive colleges including Ivy League schools. I got my degree from Columbia and many people don't care I went to an Ivy League school. Apprenticeships are not offered in many places in the US here so I would like to see more money put into creating apprenticeships. That way people have options. A perfect example of the value of apprenticeships is Leonardo de Vinci. He apprenticed under Andrea del Verrocchio and when he completed his training he was able to make a living as an artist! I would like to see America offer more artistic apprenticeships and prevent many people from becoming "starving artists." We need it in filmmaking - for ex - because a college degree does NOT guarantee a career in filmmaking. They offer it in the Ballet field and it works out very well. It keeps dancers making a living.

Great one

I am a Machinist and for the 20 years so far in my career, I average around 80k in annual wages. No degree whatsoever.

Sending love from a small RU-vidr 💖🌷💖🌷

Yes After Completion Of Education.. Really Need Apprenticeship Program's...

فديو جميل جدا بالتوفيق ان شاء الله روعه بجد 🥰💜

"I wanted to be John Lennon" - The janitor in breakfast club

How do you get into a apprenticeship??

Im leaving nursing and going into cosmetology to become a cosmetologist and eventually a master hairstylist with a focus on color. Most of my fiends are going to community college where they tell me they fell like they are learning nothing or to private cosmetology schools like Paul Mitchell where they have to take out a loan for 20,000 US dollars. I have chosen to join an apprenticeship where I learn hands on in an actual salon and go to class once a week and only had to pay $2,500 upfront and another $2,500 spaced out over two years. I am learning more then any of my friends and the funny thing is...after my friends graduate they still want to become a salon assistant/apprentice so they can learn how hair is actually done and learn all of the modern up to date styles. By the time they do that I will already have learned what I need to know and have my own clientele and be taking real clients. I strongly encourage apprenticeship programs, its really setting me up for a successful future and I also dont have 20 thousand dollars of debt. I'll actually graduate with no debt. AND my apprenticeship in the salon pays me hourly just like a job. I think I made a better choice then any of my friends., They are definitely not getting paid to go to school lol. Cant not say enough good about an apprenticeship program..what you learn in school and what is being done in the real world are two totally different things My friends do roller sets and perms over and over and over..I don't know many people getting perms or roller sets these days lol.

I agree with her because we should be saying to her future generation of children that you’re going to be broke when you go to college when going to the actual physical college should be there right there right to education

This kind of makes me want to not go to college but there's a lot that u can only get at college for me I hope to play in The WNBA for which I need to play in the NCAA and a degree is required for a contract maybe they should change that

❤️❤️❤️

For a european it is so weird to see how expensive college is...it is like 300€ in germany and u even get free public transport

If you want top out at middle management and have to always train your new boss....listen to this woman. APA ?

une traduction en Français est -elle disponible ?

Take the government grants and loans from College and they would have to be more competitive...not less. The more big government got into education, the more the price has gone up.

❤

I'm still paying my daughter's student loan and she still in my house working 2 jobs

Hi love myself

isn't funny how doctors opinions always involve using their service

Why so fast?

0:29 among us

Have any kurdish in there?😞😁

The first rt one 😌

Apprenticeships are nice for some but not practical for really anyone studying STEM.

Auf Deutsche

Hello.. First comment

First

Kelimeler nerenden çıkıyor. Yavaş yavaş

Lol no

hi i am the first human being to comment in this video