Diplomas Versus Toolbelts

Dr. Penelope Hartwell: Good evening, and welcome to the programme. I'm Penelope Hartwell. Tonight's question is one families argue about over many a kitchen table: is college still worth it?

Dr. Penelope Hartwell: With me are two guests who, I'm told, disagree rather vigorously. Retired union man Bill, and Karen Kay, who I believe has already started recording.

Karen Kay: I have, yes, and I'd like it noted that my microphone is lower than his. I'm not saying it's deliberate. I'm saying it's noted.

Boomer Bill: It's the same microphone.

Dr. Penelope Hartwell: They are identical microphones, Karen. Bill, let's begin with you. Is college worth it?

Boomer Bill: No.

Dr. Penelope Hartwell: Would you care to expand on that?

Boomer Bill: Not really. Thirty-eight years as a pipefitter. Paid off my house at forty-four. Never wrote one essay.

Karen Kay: And that's a lovely story for nineteen seventy-one, but my son has a bachelor's degree in communications and a minor in leadership studies, so I think I'm the one with the data here.

Dr. Penelope Hartwell: And what does your son do now?

Karen Kay: He's between opportunities. Which is not the same as unemployed, and I would ask that you correct the transcript if anyone says otherwise.

Boomer Bill: He live with you?

Karen Kay: That is a personal question and I'm going to need your full legal name.

Boomer Bill: It's Bill.

Dr. Penelope Hartwell: Let's look at the numbers, shall we? On average, graduates do earn considerably more over a lifetime than people without degrees. Karen, that would seem to support you.

Karen Kay: Thank you. Finally. Somebody in charge who reads.

Boomer Bill: On average. Average includes the doctors. Your kid with the leadership minor ain't a doctor.

Karen Kay: He was pre-med for one semester and the professor had it out for him. I sent fourteen emails. I have every one of them printed.

Dr. Penelope Hartwell: Fourteen.

Karen Kay: Fifteen, if you count the one to the dean's assistant, which I do, because she was rude.

Boomer Bill: In my day, you failed a test, you failed a test. Your mother didn't call the college.

Karen Kay: In your day you could buy a house for a sandwich, Bill, so maybe don't lecture me about how hard everything was.

Dr. Penelope Hartwell: That's actually a fair point about cost. Bill, tuition today is many times what it was when you were young. Doesn't that cut in your favour?

Boomer Bill: Yeah. That's my whole point. Hundred grand for a piece of paper.

Karen Kay: Wait, no, hold on, she was making my point. She was clearly making my point and you just took it.

Dr. Penelope Hartwell: I'm not entirely sure whose point it was, to be honest.

Karen Kay: Well I'd like it to be mine, for the record.

Dr. Penelope Hartwell: Duly recorded. Bill, you came up through an apprenticeship. Tell us about that.

Boomer Bill: Got paid to learn. Old guy named Stan yelled at me for four years. Best education there is.

Karen Kay: Being yelled at is not an education. It's a hostile work environment, and frankly Stan should have been reported.

Boomer Bill: Stan's dead.

Karen Kay: Well, I'm sorry for your loss, but my concerns stand.

Dr. Penelope Hartwell: There is a genuine shortage of electricians, plumbers and welders at the moment. Some of them earn more than people with degrees. Karen, does that trouble your position at all?

Karen Kay: No, because my son is not going to be a plumber. He has allergies.

Boomer Bill: To what, work?

Karen Kay: To dust, Bill. Mostly dust. And some fabrics. And I want it noted that you just mocked a medical condition on a public broadcast.

Dr. Penelope Hartwell: Let's set the allergies to one side, if we can.

Karen Kay: I can't, actually, they're chronic.

Dr. Penelope Hartwell: Karen, leaving earnings aside entirely, what do you think college offers that a trade doesn't?

Karen Kay: It teaches you how to think critically. How to question authority. How to advocate for yourself in a professional setting.

Boomer Bill: Your kid emails the dean too?

Karen Kay: He has me for that.

Dr. Penelope Hartwell: So the critical thinking and self-advocacy are, in practice, done by you.

Karen Kay: That is a gross mischaracterisation, and I'd like to rephrase what I just said into something else.

Boomer Bill: Can't rephrase it. You're recording it.

Karen Kay: That recording is my property.

Dr. Penelope Hartwell: Bill, let me press you. Isn't there real value in reading great books, learning history, being exposed to ideas you'd never meet on a job site?

Boomer Bill: Library's free.

Dr. Penelope Hartwell: That's quite a good answer, actually.

Boomer Bill: Lot of good answers back in my day. Nobody gave us trophies for 'em.

Karen Kay: Oh, here we go. Trophies. Every conversation with a man his age eventually turns into trophies.

Boomer Bill: Kid on my grandson's team got a trophy for showing up. Showing up! I showed up to the plant for thirty-eight years. Where's my trophy?

Dr. Penelope Hartwell: Did you not receive a pension?

Boomer Bill: Well, yeah.

Dr. Penelope Hartwell: Rather a large trophy, I'd have thought.

Karen Kay: Can we go back to my son, please? Because I think the audience needs to understand that he was accepted to four schools.

Dr. Penelope Hartwell: Nobody was questioning that, Karen.

Karen Kay: I'm pre-emptively questioning it so nobody else gets to.

Dr. Penelope Hartwell: Let's talk about debt. Karen, how much did your son borrow?

Karen Kay: He didn't borrow anything. I did. And his father did, before he left, which is a separate lawsuit.

Boomer Bill: So you paid a hundred grand for him to live in your basement.

Karen Kay: It's a finished basement, and I paid a hundred and forty, thank you, because the private school had a better counselling centre.

Dr. Penelope Hartwell: Forgive me, Karen, but a moment ago you said a degree was clearly a good investment.

Karen Kay: It is.

Dr. Penelope Hartwell: And it has cost you a hundred and forty thousand dollars and returned, so far, a lodger.

Karen Kay: He contributes emotionally.

Boomer Bill: Rent's not emotional.

Dr. Penelope Hartwell: Bill, I want to be fair to Karen's side. Plenty of jobs simply require the degree. Engineers, nurses, teachers. You'd hardly want your heart surgeon trained by Stan.

Boomer Bill: Stan could've done it.

Dr. Penelope Hartwell: Could he?

Boomer Bill: Steady hands. Bad heart, though. That's what got him.

Karen Kay: So he couldn't even do his own surgery. Thank you. I rest my case.

Boomer Bill: That's not how that works.

Dr. Penelope Hartwell: Let me try a different angle. Employers increasingly say they're dropping degree requirements and hiring for skills. Bill, that's surely music to your ears.

Boomer Bill: About time. Half the kids with degrees can't change a tyre.

Karen Kay: Neither can half the men your age, Bill, they just call a guy and pretend they could have.

Boomer Bill: I can change a tyre.

Karen Kay: Prove it.

Boomer Bill: We're in a radio studio.

Karen Kay: Convenient.

Dr. Penelope Hartwell: Karen, if a company says it no longer cares about the degree, doesn't that rather undercut the whole argument?

Karen Kay: Then I'd like to speak to whoever runs that company, because that's a bait and switch. We were told the degree mattered. I have the brochures.

Dr. Penelope Hartwell: You kept the brochures.

Karen Kay: I keep everything. That's how you win.

Boomer Bill: Win what?

Karen Kay: Everything, Bill.

Dr. Penelope Hartwell: As we come towards the end, I'd like each of you to give me the advice you'd offer an eighteen-year-old listening right now. Bill?

Boomer Bill: Learn a trade. Show up early. Don't borrow money for a hat with a tassel on it.

Dr. Penelope Hartwell: Admirably brief. Karen?

Karen Kay: Go to college, get the degree, and if anyone treats you unfairly, get their name, get their supervisor's name, and write everything down with the date and time.

Dr. Penelope Hartwell: And if that eighteen-year-old happens to be your son?

Karen Kay: Then he should come upstairs, because dinner's at six and he knows that.

Boomer Bill: See, that's the problem right there.

Karen Kay: Don't you talk about my meatloaf.

Boomer Bill: Didn't say anything about meatloaf.

Karen Kay: You were thinking it. It's on the recording.

Dr. Penelope Hartwell: Well, there we have it. One guest believes college is a hundred-thousand-dollar hat, and the other believes it's an investment, which is presently doing very nicely down in the finished basement.

Dr. Penelope Hartwell: My thanks to Bill and to Karen Kay, whose recording, I'm reliably informed, will outlast all of us. I'm Penelope Hartwell. Good night.