We’ve been shoveled a load of bull!

It was spring of 1992 when I entered the locker room after just leaving the guidance counselors office where the counselor had just scheduled my academic trajectory for the following year – which happened to be my Freshman year in high school.

I remember feeling a sense of shame, and inadequacy in which the meeting caused that would plague me for at least two decades. During that meeting, my counselor assured me that I was not college material and that I should pursue a “business track”. I didn’t really know what that meant, but since my generation was so heavily shrouded in an expectation that everyone “needed” to go to college – at that moment I remember feeling utterly worthless, and that my life would somehow be insignificant.

I was never a great student, and I struggled with the most basic concepts because I would find myself day-dreaming constantly. I remember plenty of nights where I was supposed to be studying at the kitchen table – when my father would bark at me to stop daydreaming, but I couldn’t.

After I graduated high school – I didn’t know what I wanted to do, but I knew that I didn’t want to do just anything, so I enrolled at the local community college. Still not great at school, I somehow daydreamed my way to a bachelor’s degree in History.

Yes, that’s right – HISTORY. I remember telling my father when I picked a major, and he looked at me as if I was crazy, but I didn’t have a clue about what I wanted to do with my life.

Since receiving my bachelor’s degree I had received two master’s degrees in business, one of the degrees being an MBA (Masters of Business Administration).

I am not telling my story to brag about anything, but contrarily how unnecessary some of the “formal education’ that I received was, by people who weren’t connected to the real world of business and industry. Heck, my $40,000 undergraduate debt was useful in about nothing unless Jeopardy instilled subjects like “French and Indian Relations in New France”, or "Popular Art and Architecture".

By no means am I saying that some people shouldn’t go to college What I am saying is that the world is big, and we have oversaturated degrees such as MBA’s to relatively become meaningless. It seems like steadily over the past twenty years’ universities would compete with one another to amass these business graduate programs that were so plentiful that it would, in turn, make some degrees worth nothing more than a certificate of attendance.

Every day, I have the privilege of learning from, doing business with, and partnering with phenomenally smart people that have no initials following their name on a business card. Some of my closest/ best team members, mentors, and overall geniuses in their own right have no advanced degree at all.

The truth is that over the last thirty plus years we placed college education on such a pedestal, causing schools to grow, worthless programs to emerge, student loan debt to skyrocket, while watering down the actual degree programs, because it was all about acquiring more students. New students = more revenue for these colleges and universities.

The irrevocable harm that we have caused by industrializing education has forced people to believe that in order to have a fair wage and good life that they needed to pursue a college education while forfeiting the growth and development of our trades.

Who is going to step up and build our roads, our schools, our power grid and other important parts of our economy’s infrastructure if everyone is trying to milk the same industries?

The hard truth is that we as a society have been fed a load of bull, and we continue to perpetuate this false narrative that “everybody” needs to go to college so much so, that we are seeing the wage scale move in the other direction to put far greater value on a skilled tradesperson opposed to a college graduate with a liberal arts or business degree.

Kids, if you are looking for a career that pays well, is highly skilled, and supports a greater need within our society- learn a skill, sign up for a vocation program, or apply to a trade school. It’s a heck of a lot cheaper, your job competition is going to be less, and you are going to make a great living doing necessary/ satisfying work.

Don’t make the mistakes that I have made, and acquire unnecessary debt in an oversaturated profession. There is a multitude of great companies out there looking for skilled tradespeople to add to their team with great benefits and a great wage.

John F. Hendershot is CEO of DIG-IT, INC. a utilities, power, and telecommunications construction contractor headquartered in Michigan operating throughout the Midwest and the Eastern United States.

John is also the President of the Great Lakes Trenchless Association and has served on, several nonprofit, and municipal boards. John resides in Holland, Michigan.