Grant Bachand
Team Member

s university really the way to go in the

21st century? That is the question that has
been on my mind after dinner with a bunch
of people from the trades program at CNC.
I had the pleasure of having a dinner with
some gentlemen who work and operate some
different trades based organizations within
Prince George and I must say they certainly
have a compelling case for going into the
trades.

The province has certainly been pushing
trades in the last couple years. With all the
work that is going on with the LNG pipelines,
Huckleberry mine, Mount Milligan Mine,
and Site C to name a few projects, it is
apparent that jobs in trades related fields
are here and are in people are in demand.
If not all the potential job opportunities
don’t make you think about trades what
about the fact that according to Statistics
Canada people in trades related jobs tend
to make 6% more, than other careers. The
average entry-level person in a trades
related job $22.36, that is in itself is huge.

During the dinner all I kept hearing was
the lack of qualified people they had to file

Opinion?

unbc.ca

Is University Worth It?
The Case of John and Allen

positions

in their organization.
These people were going on and on and
they weren’t talking about accountants,
office managers or data entry people, they
wanted pipefitters, welders, electricians,
and plumbers. I thought it would be fun
to look at two different students leaving
high school and compare the two. I picked
for this example John and Allen, for the
purposes of this example they are completely
equal in terms of grades and potential.

John wants to become an accountant and
Allen wants to be a welder. John decides to
go to UNBC to get bachelors in Commerce
majoring in Accounting, Allen wants to go
to CNC and get his red seal in welding. A

red seal is the accreditation that is required
for someone to work in a trades related
industry. John starts off with welding basics
at CNC it is a 7-month program costing
$3,941, now there is also tools and clothing
which need to be purchased as well, so let us
say $2,000 that would cost. All together to
start off John spent $6,000 for seven months
in school. Keep in mind John still needs to
do his apprenticeship, and may need more
schooling for different tickets A, B, C that
can also add to his costs. However, once he
gets out of school he can go to work right
away and make money while doing that.

Allen on the other hand will probably spend
$3,000 - 5,000 a semester in tuition and books
and after 4 years could potentially walk away

with $20,000 - 30,000 in
debt. Allen probably will have to intern or
start off in a low wage job. If he is lucky the
first job he will get will be around $16-19
an hour while he learns the ropes. It will
take longer for him to get a career; he
will have more debt than his counterpart
and once he has his career it will take
longer for him to pay back his debt.

Why is it that jobs that require less
training are paying way more than jobs
that require years of it; simple supply and
demand. Why then, are people crowding
into universities to get degrees and not
colleges to get tickets? I have no idea all
throughout high school all 1 heard was

go into the trades. Here I am getting my
training to be a barista at Starbucks.

Schools have shifted, and so have universities
instead of expanding our minds and pushing
what we think, we download information
spew it back on tests and forget it the very
next day. Our ideas and notions about society
rarely get changed and if they do we end

up sounding like a bad remix of the things
that have already been said. “Capitalism

is bad, love not war, and human right for
everyone.” The biggest scam is that once you
are done school to become an accountant
you aren’t even one yet, now you have to
become certified. Once you walk out the
doors on convocation day you still need

to get your CPA designation and pay more
money and spend more time studying.

Since I was a kid I was told to follow my

dreams and do what
makes me happy. However in our world
today it doesn’t make a lot of sense to follow
your dreams and work at Starbucks for the
rest of your life, unless that is your dream
then your right on track. How do we as a
world still push barriers and expand our
minds and also eat the very next day. Do
governments need to pay more into post
secondary; well that does need to happen
but I doubt that is an answer. It is interesting
to know that once going to high school was
the same as going to college.

Once upon time, people would have
education free in elementary school but

if you want to go to high school you had

to pay. Governments eventually decided
that going to high school was to important
to make people pay and so they made it
free for people. The same might soon
need to happen for college or maybe even
undergraduate programs. Society might
have reached a point where we now must
have people go to post secondary and for
them not to will put them behind other
places, therefore the state should pay for it.

Whatever the future of education may

be it is clear change must come. How can
people be forced, in order to get even a basic
paying job, to go to university and incur
thousands of dollars in debt, then once they
graduate they might not even get a job that
pays half way decent. If we hope to move
ourselves forward as a society it must not be
a huge question for people, do I go to post
secondary and get basic education or do I
work at McDonalds for the rest of my life?