When weighing trade school vs college, it’s important to know what the advantages and disadvantages of vocational education are.

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<div><p>A trade school definition is, broadly, an institution that prepares its students to work in a specific craft, occupation or career. If you like, college may be thought of as a broad, mostly theoretically based study of principles that can function in many jobs, while trade school is highly focused training for one kind of work; often, the training concerns only one job at all. In the past, a trade school has typically dealt with manual or practical labor. If you&rsquo;re considering the difference between trade school vs college, think of it this way: college provides a broad field of study that&rsquo;s mostly based in classroom instruction. Trade schools do a lot of classroom work, but they&rsquo;re very specific to one kind of subject, and often spend time in the field, learning to do a specific job, from bottom to top.</p>
<p>Consider the difference between studying psychology at the bachelor&rsquo;s level, in contrast with studying to become a diesel mechanic. In a four-year degree, it&rsquo;s difficult to get hyper-specific about the practical aspects of psychology, but the theoretical and historical underpinnings of that discipline must be taught. Learning to be a diesel mechanic doesn&rsquo;t require a profound level of depth of knowledge about the history or general <em>why </em>of diesel mechanics. Vocational education would, in this case, lie in learning how diesel engines work, what goes wrong with such engines, how to fix them, and how to maintain them.</p><br/>

<h3>What&rsquo;s Right for Me? Trade School vs College</h3>
<p>The best way to answer that question is to identify what you want to do for a job or career, and how flexible do you want to be; that is, how resistant to fluctuations in job availability do you want to be. There&rsquo;s usually considerable demand for jobs accessible from trade school training. Getting those jobs can be faster than getting a job with a bachelor&rsquo;s. No society can function without skilled trade workers. The &ldquo;skilled&rdquo; part of skilled labor comes from the individual worker having attended a trade school and becoming licensed, certified, or both, by usually a national board. A bachelor&rsquo;s degree simply isn&rsquo;t necessary for that kind of work. However, to think of skilled labor as filled with &ldquo;manual labor only&rdquo; jobs is entirely wrong. While there&rsquo;s a powerful, indeed essential, emphasis in being on-site that isn&rsquo;t there in college studies, trade school produces workers who must be able to think logically, critically, and broadly to get tasks done right.</p>
<p>There are some disadvantages of vocational education. Due to the highly focused nature of vocational education, a person trained to do one job only will find themselves at the mercy of market forces. You only need to look as far as the housing and building market to see this phenomenon. A person with a college degree can leverage that education into several different kinds of work. Sure, we&rsquo;re all living under conditions set by supply and demand, but if you&rsquo;re a master electrician and there&rsquo;s suddenly a glut of electricians in the market, your job opportunities will decrease. People with degrees tend to have more wiggle room in the kinds of jobs they can do.</p>
<p>However, when <a href="https://plexuss.com/news/article/benefits-of-a-college-degree">looking at college education</a>, many of the top-notch careers require an advanced degree, like a Master&rsquo;s. Maximum job fluidity typically happens with the Master&rsquo;s. However, a bachelor&rsquo;s degree also allows a person to keep options open, as there are more branches of work available to a college graduate.</p><br/>
<h3>Careers that Only Require Trade School</h3>
<p>Here are a few jobs that require trade school. Some may also require an associates&rsquo; degree; I&rsquo;ve starred those.</p>
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<td>Dental Hygienist:</td>
<td>Median Pay: $72,000</td>
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<td>Registered Nurse*:</td>
<td>Median Pay: $68,000</td>
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<td>Electrician:</td>
<td>Median Pay: $51,000</td>
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</table>
<p>There are <a href="https://www.trade-schools.net/articles/highest-paying-jobs-without-degree.asp">many others</a>. Vocational education tends to take less time than a four-year degree, and is considerably shorter than undergrad plus grad school, which can take up to 5 or 6 years before getting work in the field. Essentially, the pay is very competitive and the time to getting placed in a job is fairly short. The downside includes a lack of ability to cross-walk skills learned from one&rsquo;s vocational education to other jobs in the trades field. A Master Electrician can&rsquo;t easily jump over to web development if there&rsquo;s a downturn in the need for electricians. If there&rsquo;s a downturn in the job marker for a person in these fields, the choices are slim: get trained in another field, get education to do more with your existing skills, or wait out the shortfall. Getting more education is made a little easier by the <a href="https://plexuss.com/news/article/best-online-colleges">presence of online schools</a>.</p>
<p>College graduates, on the other hand, find that there&rsquo;s a spread of labor they can do. It doesn&rsquo;t insulate them from the vagaries of the job market, but it does provide them with some room to maneuver. Ultimately, answering the question &ldquo;is trade school better than college?&rdquo; comes down to what you want to do. Talking to people who are doing the work you want to do, examining the employment and pay rates of those workers can help inform your decision.</p>
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