Keep your diploma — Gen Z prefers a toolbelt

• Young Gen Z adults are skipping college in favor of trade schools and tech training.
• In doing so, they avoid student loan debt and enter a fast track to steady employment.
• Skilled trades like electricians and plumbers are unlikely to be taken over by AI any time soon.

Despite a bad reputation for devaluing education and sneering at work, Gen Z might just be thinking outside the box.

Turns out, some young workers have no problem with getting their hands dirty — even really dirty — they just have no interest in a desk job or a 4-year degree to get there.

Trade school and technical training are where it's at these days. The National Student Clearinghouse reported that enrollment in vocational-focused community colleges rose about 16% last year — its highest level since the educational nonprofit began tracking the data in 2018.

From spring 2021 to 2022, mechanic and repair programs saw an increase in enrollment of 11.5%, the number of students in construction trade courses rose by 19.3%, and culinary programs saw a boost of 12.7%, according to the Clearinghouse. Two-year and four-year colleges saw enrollment declines of 7.8% and 3.4%, respectively, over the same time period.

Gen Z just doesn't see college as the only road to a well-paying, stable job anymore, according to a survey by New America, which found more than half of 12- to 27-year-old respondents saying they believe it's possible to find a steady career with just a high school diploma.

"These kids are looking for relevance. They want to be able to connect what they're learning with what happens next," Jean Eddy, president of American Student Assistance, a nonprofit dedicated to helping students navigate the educational system and workforce, told the nonprofit education outlet, The Hechinger Report. "I think many, many families and certainly the majority of young people today are questioning the return on investment for higher education."

Business Insider previously reported on a pre-med Gen Z student who found being an electrician is more satisfying than working in medicine and an 18-year-old in New Hampshire looking to work in the solar industry rather than attend a traditional four-year college.

"Unlike in an office job where you go to the same building daily, I work somewhere different every day. I experience different things and see different people every day," 27-year-old Lexis Czumak-Abreu told BI. "When a job is finished, I feel a sense of accomplishment and closure. I finish it and move on to another. It doesn't feel like one long job forever."

Elaina Farnsworth, cofounder of Skillfusion, an electric vehicle diagnostic technician credentialing program, told BI she has seen a significant increase in Gen Z and other young workers applying for her program and other trade credentialing programs over college.

And she thinks that's a good thing, both for the industry and for the young professionals themselves.

"I think there is more opportunity for — and upcoming workers have more of an appetite for — stackable credentials, or what we like to call microlearning tracks," Farnsworth said. "That includes things like Khan Academy, technical schools, and smaller, shorter bits of information that will equip them to do the work they love. That is the trend that we're seeing and it's much more fulfilling to them."