Mike Rowe Says Death of Shop Class Is Why Country Has $1.6 Trillion in Student Debt

 

“Dirty Jobs” host Mike Rowe said in a Thursday interview that the death of shop class is to blame for the country’s $1.6 trillion in student loan debt.

Rowe joined Stuart Varney on Fox Business to discuss his new book, The Way I Heard It, and was asked why there are “seven million unfilled jobs in our country.”

“Are we just not training people for these jobs? Is that the problem here?” asked Varney.

“It’s not just that. It’s that we have unintendedly maligned an entire section of our workforce by promoting one form of education, in my opinion, at the expense of all of the other forms. Forty years ago, college needed a PR campaign. We needed more people to get into ‘higher’ education, but when we gave the big push for college back in the ‘70s, we did it at the expense of alternative education,” Rowe replied.

He said that the country’s leaders told students if they didn’t get a degree, then they would “wind up turning a wrench.”

“That attitude led to the removal of shop classes across the country, and the removal of shop classes completed obliterated from view the optical and visual proof of opportunity for a whole generation of kids,” Rowe said. “The skills gap today, in my opinion, is a result of the removal of shop class and the repeated message that the best path for most people happens to be the most expensive path. This is why, in my opinion, we have $1.6 trillion of student loans on the books, and 7.3 million open positions, most of which don’t require a four-year degree.”

Yes, Every Kid

“We’re just disconnected. We’re rewarding behavior we should be discouraging. We’re lending money we don’t have to kids who are never going to be able to pay it back to train them for jobs that don’t exist anymore. That’s nuts,” Rowe concluded.

Another Fox News regular, actor John Ratzenberger, said in an August interview that the removal of shop classes from public schools forces people to rely on the government.

“They also canceled shop classes about 30 years ago,” he said at the time. “Just wiped them out. And, who knows, maybe it was political because if you don’t give people skills they have to rely on the government. But if you give them skills, they don’t need the government.”

Watch Rowe’s full interview below:

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Anthony Gockowski is managing editor of Battleground State News, The Ohio Star, and The Minnesota Sun. Follow Anthony on Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Autoshop Class” by the US Department of Education. CC BY 2.0.

 

 

 

 

 

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82 Thoughts to “Mike Rowe Says Death of Shop Class Is Why Country Has $1.6 Trillion in Student Debt”

  1. Maury Runnion

    They don’t have much knowlrdge about tools, standing in a parking lot clueless to change a flat tire.. Yes we do need shop classes..

  2. JDM

    As a recently retired college professor I saw multiple sides of this issue. This is not a two sided issue. In the more than 30 years that I taught on the community college level, I saw academically prepared students (some with four year degrees) returning to college to earn associates degrees to work in a tech field, and I also had many students who already worked in a tech field coming to my classes at night trying to earn a four year degree to get out of high paying, often very dangerous occupations in the petrochemical industry. Rowe cites not having “shop class” as the reason for so many students having high student loan debt. No. The reason for high student loan debt is because too many people STILL use the term “shop class”. Stagnant, romanticized views of these occupations, as well as degreed careers, do not adequately explain the dangers and consequences of having to work as a contractor, or having to move to a more expensive city to begin a career. This last century view of higher ed also does not allow us to see that students studying these tech fields also incur a fair amount of student debt. Cost of attendance (COA) is what leads to student loan debt. Seventeen to thirty year olds have always been fickle in their career path decisions. University grads have always waited tables and worked at Pep Boys. What IS very different is the COA these young (and older) adults are having to pay for the education they get. We need to focus on what keeps driving COA up and leaving it in the hands of college grads to pay. I look forward to having others comment and engage in this dialogue that is not discussed by higher education institutions for fear that it will invite scrutiny on their, sometimes, top heavy administrative structures and high compensation salary scales for its administrators.

  3. Harold Altland

    I think this job thing is a bunch of crap..wnen i was young i walked all over town looking for a job.No one would hire me. This was after i spent 15,000.00 or more on a body shop,The guy i helped could not add2 and 2 to get 4.. so i had one last place to go .A guy that used his equipment to dig out our yard . I called bill strube aircraft parts. I want over he was so backed up in work he was trying to find me something to do that day .I worked there 7 years.He died in 1986 Then it was job hunting again i went to york sheet metal and also Flinchbaugh engineering making clutch pistons for caterpillar tractor. Well they told me if i did not study i would be hanging on a drill press the rest of my life.. I made cemetery markers made ok money at that. No i am 65 and cannot get a job to old talk about discrimination it living well. Bottom line i run into the people seeking help don’t know what the hel l there doing I guess i rambled on and don’t make sense. Life is hard to figure out

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