The Growing Gap Between University Graduates and Tradespeople
May 27, 2026 · Frisian News
A new study shows that skilled tradespeople now earn more than many university graduates, yet schools continue pushing four-year degrees over apprenticeships. The wage gap has reversed in less than a decade.
Plumbers now earn wages that rival what many university graduates take home. Electricians are in a similar position. Meanwhile, fresh graduates from liberal arts programs often earn considerably less. These wage gaps have attracted limited mainstream media attention. Everyone else missed the story.
Twenty years ago, the mathematics ran the other way. A university degree meant a clear wage premium over a trade. That premium has shrunk to nothing. For some fields, it has turned into a penalty. Young people with four years of debt and a degree in communications now compete for office jobs that pay less than what their neighbor learned in three years as an apprentice. The schools know this. The government knows this. They have not changed course.
Part of the story is supply and demand. Too many graduates chasing too few graduate jobs has pushed wages down. Another part is that skilled trades have become more technical. Modern plumbing and electrical work require real knowledge, not just physical labor. But the cultural bias runs deeper. Parents still push their children toward the university because they believe it signals respectability. Guidance counselors still steer bright kids away from trades as if manual work carried shame. Universities have bloated their enrollments because they receive government funding per student.
The government could subsidize apprenticeships equally. It could change how schools counsel teenagers. It could publish these wage figures more loudly. Instead, it does none of these things. The education bureaucracy benefits from the current system, so the system stays broken. Meanwhile, a teenager in a small town makes a choice based on prestige and parental pressure, not on facts about their own future.
The question now is whether parents and young people will start ignoring what they are told and looking at what jobs actually pay. The schools bet they will not.
Published May 27, 2026 · Frisian News