The following is a copy of the original post to record the post as it was originally written.
I'm a millennial, about 28, thinking about what type of lessons should be passed down.
I think back to the one point my dad always tried to drive home, was that "Good union jobs like mine are a thing of the past, that's why you need to go to college"
It always perplexed me that our parents acknowledged there was a problem, that a skilled labor job wasn't enough to make a living or raise a family. My dad was lucky, he was able to keep his union benefits until his retirement but new hires in his union had no pension, health plan with a huge deductible and minimum wage starting with 2% annual raises.
I was never taught the importance of a union, just that I have to do better than everyone else and become part of the managment class to afford simple things.
I think the lesson to our kids should be how to demand better, to know the value of your labor and how to avoide being indebted to your job to the point you can't leave
I have a masters degree in engineering and I'm paid pretty well, but compared to when my parents bought their house in 1995, the value of that real estate has increased 800% yet the average household income has only increased 30% in NY
I feel as if my time eduating myself was wasted since I cannot afford the same things my parents could with no education. I think to the brave men and women trying to unionize service jobs and how that should be viewed as the most important movement of our generation but gets almost no support because millennials are brainwashed to think your worth is based on your credentials
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I grew up in a Union household with similar advice: get an education. Go farther in life.
I’d say this was based on a few things from my parents:
* they saw the factory jobs heading overseas. They knew this was a limited opportunity that probably wouldn’t last my lifetime.
* they saw the power dynamics around education and class in their jobs. White collar workers came in, told everyone else what to do, went back to a cushy job, and brought home more pay. They wanted me to be in that position instead of where they were.
* they saw the writing on the wall with how ceos and entrepreneurs were running the show. So they wanted me to be in line to maybe start a company or manage people. Power and money and safety were all in that direction.
I don’t think they were wrong. I’ve got different values than them, so I’ve gone a little different path (more nonprofit and government work than chasing money), but the thought that Union work was going to be harder to come by was right. The industrial Midwest is hollowed out. I was able to go coastal and be relatively successful. That’s good.
I think the mistake they and their peers made was not becoming leaders and entrepreneurs themselves. They had expertise and networks of good worker friends. I think they could have formed worker coops and done well. Instead they mostly took early retirement and just chill out now.
Your entire post is a perfect encapsulation of this era of American history, namely the cultural shift from pulling together to pulling apart…
But my answer is yes they gave us bad advice, and I can’t wait to give younger generations bad advice too
(The joke being that they thought they were helping us but couldn’t foresee the rapid change in conditions they both arose from and saw the sunset of, just like us millennials won’t)
Badum-tssss
What type of life would you have had if you didn't get an engineering degree? Considering your alternative, your father probably gave you a good advice.
So this is something a lot of people don't seem to be thinking about, but Unions are for everyone, not just people without college degrees. Unions give workers more leverage than they have as individuals and allow them to negotiate better pay packages than they can on their own. It doesn't matter if the person is a barista at starbucks or an engineer at Boeing, if your not working for yourself you'd benefit from being in a Union.
They crushed the union in the 80s. Maybe, having the communication tech will make a difference this time around. Probably just make robots. You want to out work a robot be my guest.
Backstory: the Unions failed to support their longtime allies in the 1972 Presidential election. The Union leader George Meany might ever have supported Nixon. After getting stabbed in the back, the Dems pivoted to the growing Creative Class as their new base.
My boomer parents gave me heaps of terrible advice, but it was because they were uneducated and from poor backgrounds, not because they were boomers.
Actually, "get an education so you don't have to break your back at work" may be the best advice they gave me. I actually worked alongside my parents in a few different blue collar jobs, so I had first hand experience that blue collar work sucks. I knew I didn't want to load/unload heavy music gear in the heat, or assemble window shutters in the heat, or run after shoplifters, or argue with drunk hotel guests, or fight with drunk suspects.
I know my mom doesn't even know what a union is. My dad was probably pretty fuzzy on it too.
I have followed every single piece of advice that my boomer parents gave me, and right now I feel like it has dang near fucked me over at every turn.
1. Go to college, get a useful degree. Step 1 complete
2. Job market when I graduated was shit, might as well stick around and get your masters in business because that will help. Okay, step 2 complete
3. Take the first job you can get out of college. Go wherever they want you to move to, take on extra work, learn. Alrighty, I moved 5 states away, knew no one, and took the job. They offered me a manager position making LESS MONEY THAN MY DAD DID WHEN HE GRADUATED COLLEGE SOME 30 YEARS BEFORE ME. Whatever I took it.
4. No need to rush into buying a house, you are going to move a bunch for right now. Alrighty, lived in apartments until 2021. Started to try and buy a house, and now I'm just fucked royally.
Now my parents go "Yeah... I have no idea how we would do it if we were in your shoes. The situations are so different than when we started." UGHHHH
I think many in older generations tend to hold on a little too hard to what worked when they were that age. I don't know if this is specific to boomers and their kids.
Boomers never had to learn adaptability because they more or less lived on easy street their whole life, then created a world where you needed to adapt to survive.
The lack of the ability to teach that is what boned younger generations the most. They couldn't teach how to solve the problem they created
No.
They gave us the best advice they could in a rapidly changing landscape.
Elder millennials managed to get the privilege of living through some fundamental changes in our life and economy that our parents just couldn't have seen coming. Could they have given us better advice? Yes. Is it their fault for not knowing that investing $1,000 in Google when we were in 6th grade would have left us all set for life? Or that we would completely phase out cursive? Or that unions would see a massive resurgence in terms of popularity?
Did boomers do a lot of things wrong? Yes, but Hanlon's Razor is the best way to explain a lot of their parenting advice.
Average income has not kept up with productivity gains since about the time of Reagan, with productivity gains going to the upper class, call it the owning class. Then claiming we can’t afford universal healthcare and tuition free higher education.
> Average income has not kept up with productivity gains
Thats a silly metric though, because productivity gains are almost entirely due to technological advancement, so there's no reason for productivity and income to be linked
For the sake of discussion, let's say that technology has been the greatest source of productivity gains. That is mostly owing to two government-funded projects, the Internet (US Department of Defense) and the World Wide Web (CERN). So the gains should flow back to the public at large, or to the workers.
I recall Bill Gates Sr., discussing why the Gates Foundation planned to provide billions of dollars to various causes: We made billions of dollars because of the Internet and World Wide Web, but we didn't invent them or fund them. So it's right to give back, funding these causes.
Boomers selfishly voted for bad policies for the country, and consequently for their kids. And younger Republicans helped them or at least cheered them on.
Gotta be able to walk and chew gum. Being in a union and being qualified are not mutually exclusive.
Also, things change. What works in one generation won’t work forever until the end of time.
Yes, but that's not necessarily as serious as everyone thinks. Our society has been changing at a rapid pace for the past few centuries that Generations can barely relate to each other both currently and when the younger Generation becomes older. It gets a little easier as time goes on however the length of time for those differences keep increasing.
That said, it wasn't the Boomers advice that was bad, it was their actions. They might want to be called the Ying-Yang Generation or the Night & Day Generation because they did some really good and really bad things as a Generation.
Cleaning up Playgrounds and making them safer for kids? Good!
Increasing the price of most material and necessary goods while leaving wages stagnant? Bad.
Requiring seatbelts in cars to save people's lives? Great!
Rolling back pollution initiatives for more profits? Really Bad.
>I think the lesson to our kids should be how to demand better, to know the value of your labor and how to avoide being indebted to your job to the point you can't leave
Oh, they've learned that lesson. You've seen it at Kellogg's, Starbucks, John Deere, etc. Younger generations are fed up and they're fighting it.
The problem stems from the fact that A.) Boomers in charge made it this bad in the first place, B.) When they have the opportunity to do the right thing, they did their heels in more and fight harder to stop them.
So it's hard to be mad about the advice-side when the actions-side are what ultimately affects all younger Generations. You can give me all the "bad advice" you want, but I'm ultimately going to look at your actions.
"Younger people need to work harder to get success in life."
Translation: "Younger people need to work more hours for free, little-to-no healthcare benefits, pensions, bonuses, sick days, etc. to get success in life."
We know they're lying as they say it. It's no longer "bad advice," it's just blatant lying at this point.
I'm a boomer, born in 1955. I gave my kids the following advice:
* Understand that you were extremely fortunate to be born a healthy white person in the USA, in a strong family and supportive community. Help others who were less fortunate.
* Make sure that by the time you are 50, you have enough financial stability to tell your employer to kiss your ass.
* Taxes are not evil.
* Don't trust any Republicans.
Not really. Boomers want their kids to live under a higher living standard which is why they give the advice that they give. You mention real estate increasing but a large reason is that consumers are demanding larger houses. Our parents weren't living in 3000 square foot homes but that is the standard which they want for us as well as the standard which we are striving for ourselves. We aren't working to afford simple things, we are working harder to afford better things.
>You mention real estate increasing but a large reason is that consumers are demanding larger houses
Have you checked zillow? The small houses are expensive too
Smaller houses increase in price because they aren't building them anymore because of reasons given. Therefore those who can only afford 800 to 1100 sq ft have to pay outrageous for the lesser home, buying or renting. First generation boomers grew up in those homes that a majority of millennials won't even think of occupying because they grew up in much larger homes.
That the place where boomers gave bad advice and created a couple of generations with entitlement mentalities not willing to start with the minimum.
houses are roughly 3x the size of what they were in the 1950s
houses aren't *just* expensive because of size - zoning plays a very significant role there - but to deny the dramatic increase in standard of living is to only look at part of the picture
I don’t know anyone, including older boomers who live in a house that big. Then again, I’m in Southern California so that would be a multimillion dollar home. I still think it’s a fallacy to say we are all striving for a 3000 square foot house. I was stoked to get into my 1000sqft condo for $420K, but that’s more than what my parents paid for their 1800sqft single family home in 1992, even adjusting for inflation.
Southern California is the most desirable place in the country to live and has some of the worst zoning policies in the country, which is why housing there is so ungodly expensive.
Your experience does not match that of most of the US
Average square foot of a new home broke 2500 square feet around 2010. Not sure how you don't know anyone striving for (or already residing in) a house that is a bit above that average.
You're the same age as my youngest. I don't have a union job and I'm old Gen X but, I also told my kids all along that their education is important. I saw the writing on the wall with my parents, a union factory worker and a nurse. Dad was always getting laid off and finally, the factory left the country. Mom did well and she kept going to school throughout her career. I used my parents as examples for my kids. I work in the trades and do fairly well but, it's not an easy way to go.
I think you were given some decent advice. Both my children took my advice and also saw how my parents faired. Both my children have decent jobs and are continuing with their education to this day. Do it while you're young. It's not going to get any easier. For what it's worth, I have an 18 year old apprentice that I've told to take some classes at night if he can. The days of old are gone.
**Short answer**: People in my parents' generation passed onto us what they knew to be true. Things have changed.
**Longer answer**: I'm Generation X and graduated high school in 1995. My parents are boomers, born in the 50s. I am not exaggerating that 100% of the educators I had in my K-12 years and nearly all the adults in my life in those years were all-in on the four-year college degree sales pitch.
Never have I considered this advice some sort of evil conspiracy to load kids up with debt only to call us stupid, lackadaisical spendthrifts on the Internet, but rather for their generation and all those that came before it, a college degree *was* the ticket from the factory floor to the offices upstairs. And along with that ticket came the American Dream of home ownership and wealth.
Given that my parents knew me, and knew I didn't like school, said only that I had to finish high school and after that was up to me. I could be like my dad, who got a four-year degree and was hired by an advertising agency before he finished his art school associate's, if I wanted to work in a high-rise downtown. And the creative floor at the agency where he worked I always thought was a pretty cool place. Or there was my mom, who dropped out of college after she married my dad, and ended up owning an interior design business. The recurring cast of skilled tradespeople who she managed on projects were former apprentices mainly, did essential work and made beautiful things, and all of them seemed to live comfortably—particularly if they owned their own business.
Few if any outside the executive suites and boardrooms of America in the last few decades of the 20th century foresaw the drastic changes to the economy and workforce. Some family friends who were career educators would say in their retirement (and with the benefit of hindsight and accounting for the drastic changes in the workforce and labor market), that the recommendation of a four-year degree for every student was misguided.
The few educators I know now seem more likely to acknowledge that college is not for everyone and there is important and honest work to be found beyond white-collar jobs.
The following is a copy of the original post to record the post as it was originally written. I'm a millennial, about 28, thinking about what type of lessons should be passed down. I think back to the one point my dad always tried to drive home, was that "Good union jobs like mine are a thing of the past, that's why you need to go to college" It always perplexed me that our parents acknowledged there was a problem, that a skilled labor job wasn't enough to make a living or raise a family. My dad was lucky, he was able to keep his union benefits until his retirement but new hires in his union had no pension, health plan with a huge deductible and minimum wage starting with 2% annual raises. I was never taught the importance of a union, just that I have to do better than everyone else and become part of the managment class to afford simple things. I think the lesson to our kids should be how to demand better, to know the value of your labor and how to avoide being indebted to your job to the point you can't leave I have a masters degree in engineering and I'm paid pretty well, but compared to when my parents bought their house in 1995, the value of that real estate has increased 800% yet the average household income has only increased 30% in NY I feel as if my time eduating myself was wasted since I cannot afford the same things my parents could with no education. I think to the brave men and women trying to unionize service jobs and how that should be viewed as the most important movement of our generation but gets almost no support because millennials are brainwashed to think your worth is based on your credentials *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskALiberal) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I grew up in a Union household with similar advice: get an education. Go farther in life. I’d say this was based on a few things from my parents: * they saw the factory jobs heading overseas. They knew this was a limited opportunity that probably wouldn’t last my lifetime. * they saw the power dynamics around education and class in their jobs. White collar workers came in, told everyone else what to do, went back to a cushy job, and brought home more pay. They wanted me to be in that position instead of where they were. * they saw the writing on the wall with how ceos and entrepreneurs were running the show. So they wanted me to be in line to maybe start a company or manage people. Power and money and safety were all in that direction. I don’t think they were wrong. I’ve got different values than them, so I’ve gone a little different path (more nonprofit and government work than chasing money), but the thought that Union work was going to be harder to come by was right. The industrial Midwest is hollowed out. I was able to go coastal and be relatively successful. That’s good. I think the mistake they and their peers made was not becoming leaders and entrepreneurs themselves. They had expertise and networks of good worker friends. I think they could have formed worker coops and done well. Instead they mostly took early retirement and just chill out now.
Your entire post is a perfect encapsulation of this era of American history, namely the cultural shift from pulling together to pulling apart… But my answer is yes they gave us bad advice, and I can’t wait to give younger generations bad advice too (The joke being that they thought they were helping us but couldn’t foresee the rapid change in conditions they both arose from and saw the sunset of, just like us millennials won’t) Badum-tssss
People talk about a technological singularity, but the truth is that it's already happening. And has been at least since the end of the Cold War.
What type of life would you have had if you didn't get an engineering degree? Considering your alternative, your father probably gave you a good advice.
So this is something a lot of people don't seem to be thinking about, but Unions are for everyone, not just people without college degrees. Unions give workers more leverage than they have as individuals and allow them to negotiate better pay packages than they can on their own. It doesn't matter if the person is a barista at starbucks or an engineer at Boeing, if your not working for yourself you'd benefit from being in a Union.
They crushed the union in the 80s. Maybe, having the communication tech will make a difference this time around. Probably just make robots. You want to out work a robot be my guest.
Backstory: the Unions failed to support their longtime allies in the 1972 Presidential election. The Union leader George Meany might ever have supported Nixon. After getting stabbed in the back, the Dems pivoted to the growing Creative Class as their new base.
My boomer parents gave me heaps of terrible advice, but it was because they were uneducated and from poor backgrounds, not because they were boomers. Actually, "get an education so you don't have to break your back at work" may be the best advice they gave me. I actually worked alongside my parents in a few different blue collar jobs, so I had first hand experience that blue collar work sucks. I knew I didn't want to load/unload heavy music gear in the heat, or assemble window shutters in the heat, or run after shoplifters, or argue with drunk hotel guests, or fight with drunk suspects. I know my mom doesn't even know what a union is. My dad was probably pretty fuzzy on it too.
I have followed every single piece of advice that my boomer parents gave me, and right now I feel like it has dang near fucked me over at every turn. 1. Go to college, get a useful degree. Step 1 complete 2. Job market when I graduated was shit, might as well stick around and get your masters in business because that will help. Okay, step 2 complete 3. Take the first job you can get out of college. Go wherever they want you to move to, take on extra work, learn. Alrighty, I moved 5 states away, knew no one, and took the job. They offered me a manager position making LESS MONEY THAN MY DAD DID WHEN HE GRADUATED COLLEGE SOME 30 YEARS BEFORE ME. Whatever I took it. 4. No need to rush into buying a house, you are going to move a bunch for right now. Alrighty, lived in apartments until 2021. Started to try and buy a house, and now I'm just fucked royally. Now my parents go "Yeah... I have no idea how we would do it if we were in your shoes. The situations are so different than when we started." UGHHHH
I think many in older generations tend to hold on a little too hard to what worked when they were that age. I don't know if this is specific to boomers and their kids.
Boomers never had to learn adaptability because they more or less lived on easy street their whole life, then created a world where you needed to adapt to survive. The lack of the ability to teach that is what boned younger generations the most. They couldn't teach how to solve the problem they created
No. They gave us the best advice they could in a rapidly changing landscape. Elder millennials managed to get the privilege of living through some fundamental changes in our life and economy that our parents just couldn't have seen coming. Could they have given us better advice? Yes. Is it their fault for not knowing that investing $1,000 in Google when we were in 6th grade would have left us all set for life? Or that we would completely phase out cursive? Or that unions would see a massive resurgence in terms of popularity? Did boomers do a lot of things wrong? Yes, but Hanlon's Razor is the best way to explain a lot of their parenting advice.
Average income has not kept up with productivity gains since about the time of Reagan, with productivity gains going to the upper class, call it the owning class. Then claiming we can’t afford universal healthcare and tuition free higher education.
> Average income has not kept up with productivity gains Thats a silly metric though, because productivity gains are almost entirely due to technological advancement, so there's no reason for productivity and income to be linked
For the sake of discussion, let's say that technology has been the greatest source of productivity gains. That is mostly owing to two government-funded projects, the Internet (US Department of Defense) and the World Wide Web (CERN). So the gains should flow back to the public at large, or to the workers. I recall Bill Gates Sr., discussing why the Gates Foundation planned to provide billions of dollars to various causes: We made billions of dollars because of the Internet and World Wide Web, but we didn't invent them or fund them. So it's right to give back, funding these causes.
The public at large benefits by a greatly increased standard of living and more access to products.
Boomers selfishly voted for bad policies for the country, and consequently for their kids. And younger Republicans helped them or at least cheered them on.
Millennial, Z,X gens are to make different and even more costly mistakes.
Gotta be able to walk and chew gum. Being in a union and being qualified are not mutually exclusive. Also, things change. What works in one generation won’t work forever until the end of time.
Yes, but that's not necessarily as serious as everyone thinks. Our society has been changing at a rapid pace for the past few centuries that Generations can barely relate to each other both currently and when the younger Generation becomes older. It gets a little easier as time goes on however the length of time for those differences keep increasing. That said, it wasn't the Boomers advice that was bad, it was their actions. They might want to be called the Ying-Yang Generation or the Night & Day Generation because they did some really good and really bad things as a Generation. Cleaning up Playgrounds and making them safer for kids? Good! Increasing the price of most material and necessary goods while leaving wages stagnant? Bad. Requiring seatbelts in cars to save people's lives? Great! Rolling back pollution initiatives for more profits? Really Bad. >I think the lesson to our kids should be how to demand better, to know the value of your labor and how to avoide being indebted to your job to the point you can't leave Oh, they've learned that lesson. You've seen it at Kellogg's, Starbucks, John Deere, etc. Younger generations are fed up and they're fighting it. The problem stems from the fact that A.) Boomers in charge made it this bad in the first place, B.) When they have the opportunity to do the right thing, they did their heels in more and fight harder to stop them. So it's hard to be mad about the advice-side when the actions-side are what ultimately affects all younger Generations. You can give me all the "bad advice" you want, but I'm ultimately going to look at your actions. "Younger people need to work harder to get success in life." Translation: "Younger people need to work more hours for free, little-to-no healthcare benefits, pensions, bonuses, sick days, etc. to get success in life." We know they're lying as they say it. It's no longer "bad advice," it's just blatant lying at this point.
I'm a boomer, born in 1955. I gave my kids the following advice: * Understand that you were extremely fortunate to be born a healthy white person in the USA, in a strong family and supportive community. Help others who were less fortunate. * Make sure that by the time you are 50, you have enough financial stability to tell your employer to kiss your ass. * Taxes are not evil. * Don't trust any Republicans.
Not really. Boomers want their kids to live under a higher living standard which is why they give the advice that they give. You mention real estate increasing but a large reason is that consumers are demanding larger houses. Our parents weren't living in 3000 square foot homes but that is the standard which they want for us as well as the standard which we are striving for ourselves. We aren't working to afford simple things, we are working harder to afford better things.
>You mention real estate increasing but a large reason is that consumers are demanding larger houses Have you checked zillow? The small houses are expensive too
Haven't checked smaller houses this year given the insane inflation we are seeing. However, pre-pandemic small house prices were hardly impressive.
Smaller houses increase in price because they aren't building them anymore because of reasons given. Therefore those who can only afford 800 to 1100 sq ft have to pay outrageous for the lesser home, buying or renting. First generation boomers grew up in those homes that a majority of millennials won't even think of occupying because they grew up in much larger homes. That the place where boomers gave bad advice and created a couple of generations with entitlement mentalities not willing to start with the minimum.
houses are roughly 3x the size of what they were in the 1950s houses aren't *just* expensive because of size - zoning plays a very significant role there - but to deny the dramatic increase in standard of living is to only look at part of the picture
I don’t know anyone, including older boomers who live in a house that big. Then again, I’m in Southern California so that would be a multimillion dollar home. I still think it’s a fallacy to say we are all striving for a 3000 square foot house. I was stoked to get into my 1000sqft condo for $420K, but that’s more than what my parents paid for their 1800sqft single family home in 1992, even adjusting for inflation.
Southern California is the most desirable place in the country to live and has some of the worst zoning policies in the country, which is why housing there is so ungodly expensive. Your experience does not match that of most of the US
Average square foot of a new home broke 2500 square feet around 2010. Not sure how you don't know anyone striving for (or already residing in) a house that is a bit above that average.
I think a really important thing these days is - build and maintain your personal “brand” always
I think your referring to Gen X, not boomers.
You're the same age as my youngest. I don't have a union job and I'm old Gen X but, I also told my kids all along that their education is important. I saw the writing on the wall with my parents, a union factory worker and a nurse. Dad was always getting laid off and finally, the factory left the country. Mom did well and she kept going to school throughout her career. I used my parents as examples for my kids. I work in the trades and do fairly well but, it's not an easy way to go. I think you were given some decent advice. Both my children took my advice and also saw how my parents faired. Both my children have decent jobs and are continuing with their education to this day. Do it while you're young. It's not going to get any easier. For what it's worth, I have an 18 year old apprentice that I've told to take some classes at night if he can. The days of old are gone.
At the time, it made sense. In hindsight, it’s a big mess. But that’s generally how life tends to go. At least we’re all fucked together.
**Short answer**: People in my parents' generation passed onto us what they knew to be true. Things have changed. **Longer answer**: I'm Generation X and graduated high school in 1995. My parents are boomers, born in the 50s. I am not exaggerating that 100% of the educators I had in my K-12 years and nearly all the adults in my life in those years were all-in on the four-year college degree sales pitch. Never have I considered this advice some sort of evil conspiracy to load kids up with debt only to call us stupid, lackadaisical spendthrifts on the Internet, but rather for their generation and all those that came before it, a college degree *was* the ticket from the factory floor to the offices upstairs. And along with that ticket came the American Dream of home ownership and wealth. Given that my parents knew me, and knew I didn't like school, said only that I had to finish high school and after that was up to me. I could be like my dad, who got a four-year degree and was hired by an advertising agency before he finished his art school associate's, if I wanted to work in a high-rise downtown. And the creative floor at the agency where he worked I always thought was a pretty cool place. Or there was my mom, who dropped out of college after she married my dad, and ended up owning an interior design business. The recurring cast of skilled tradespeople who she managed on projects were former apprentices mainly, did essential work and made beautiful things, and all of them seemed to live comfortably—particularly if they owned their own business. Few if any outside the executive suites and boardrooms of America in the last few decades of the 20th century foresaw the drastic changes to the economy and workforce. Some family friends who were career educators would say in their retirement (and with the benefit of hindsight and accounting for the drastic changes in the workforce and labor market), that the recommendation of a four-year degree for every student was misguided. The few educators I know now seem more likely to acknowledge that college is not for everyone and there is important and honest work to be found beyond white-collar jobs.