Roads Beyond the Diploma

Alternatives to college for men deserve scrutiny through cost, competence, employer demand, and the counsel of trusted brothers.

The bank screen shows an automatic student loan payment beside a framed bachelor’s degree hanging over the desk. The man studying both has a job, a respectable title, and the creeping suspicion that he purchased admission to a room where nobody knows his name.

He is a composite, assembled from ordinary details men recognize. He followed the approved route. Counselors praised it. Relatives announced it with the solemnity of a board appointment. The university printed his name in expensive ink, shook his hand, and released him into an employment market that treats entry-level applicants like suspicious packages.

Today will touch his education, work, money, and future four separate times. He will miss the connection every time.

The reader gets the better seat.

The Payment Clears First

His first encounter arrives through the bank account. The payment clears without ceremony. Banks possess a marvelous gift for removing money with the emotional warmth of an airport scanner.

The degree still carries value. He learned how to research, write, meet deadlines, and survive group assignments with people who considered punctuation a colonial construct. He met professors who took their work seriously. He formed friendships. He grew up.

He also borrowed for a credential that never guaranteed the position attached to its marketing brochure.

Federal Reserve Bank of New York findings place about 42% of recent college graduates in jobs that do not require degrees. That figure describes underemployment rather than failure. Many of those graduates are capable people doing honest work. Their diplomas simply outran the positions available to them.

The distinction matters. A man can work hard, perform well, pay his bills, and still discover that his chosen route carried a weak connection to the work waiting on the other side. There is no shame in the work. The problem sits in the sales pitch.

College became the prestige default because prestige makes decisions feel safe. It allows parents, schools, employers, and young men to borrow one another’s confidence. Everyone points toward the same gate. Nobody wants to be the adult who suggested a different road and later gets blamed when the road turns rough.

Prestige is a terrible career counselor because prestige never has to make your loan payment.

Ken Goodrich first held a flashlight for his father working at night when Goodrich was 10 years old. That scene contains a kind of vocational education no glossy packet can manufacture. A child sees skill applied under pressure. He watches a man diagnose a problem, work through fatigue, and finish what he started.

That experience did not automatically settle Goodrich’s future. It did give him a view of work as something concrete. Work had tools, customers, deadlines, errors, and consequences. Competence produced an observable result.

The man at the bank screen received a different education about work. His counselors spoke in broad categories: success, opportunity, advancement, and a good career. Those words can fill an auditorium while leaving every chair empty.

Good counsel gets specific. What does the training cost? How long does it take? Which positions require it? Which employers hire from the program? What does the first year of work actually involve? Which credentials can be added later? Who has completed the route and built a stable life from it?

A man choosing a vocation needs someone willing to ruin the ceremonial mood with practical questions.

That person often looks less impressive than the university banner. He may be an uncle, manager, coach, church elder, older employee, or friend who knows the field from inside. He has seen payroll tighten. He has watched talented people advance and polished people stall. He knows which credentials open doors and which ones decorate walls.

The payment clears. The man closes the banking application. He blames himself for feeling dissatisfied and heads to work.

The Job Posting Drops the Gate

His second encounter appears in a government job posting during his commute. He scrolls past it because the position feels unrelated to his current path. He never notices the missing requirement.

On his first day in office in January 2023, Josh Shapiro signed an executive order removing the four-year college degree requirement for roughly 92% of Pennsylvania state government jobs, about 65,000 positions. In a July statement during his 2026 reelection bid, Shapiro called unnecessary degree requirements arbitrary barriers for people who possess the required skills and want to enter public service.

The political incentives deserve scrutiny. Shapiro has been expected to win his 2026 reelection bid easily in polling, and opening state positions to non-college workers can become useful material if he enters the 2028 Democratic presidential primary field. Politicians rarely discover working people without first checking the electoral map.

Still, removing an unjustified credential barrier is sound policy. A useful reform remains useful even when someone places his name on it in oversized lettering.

Donald Trump’s administration has also emphasized skills-based hiring in the federal government and training for skilled occupations. In June 2020, during Trump’s first nonconsecutive term, he signed executive orders directing federal agencies to prioritize job skills and remove unnecessary college degree requirements unless the law required them. That approach expanded after Trump returned to the White House.

Both parties have recognized the same awkward fact: employers used bachelor’s degrees as screening devices for positions where the daily work never required four years of university study.

A degree requirement makes an applicant pool easier to sort. Ease for the organization becomes expense for the applicant. Human resources gets a cleaner spreadsheet. The young man gets a loan balance and a ceremonial robe that makes everyone look like a minor wizard.

The proper question for any position is brutally plain: What must a person know and do to perform this work well?

If the answer includes a bachelor’s degree because the occupation requires deep academic preparation, keep the requirement. If the answer involves specific skills, judgment, communication, reliability, technical knowledge, or supervised experience, test those things directly.

Corporate leaders should examine their own hiring filters with the same discipline. Pull the job descriptions. Mark every position carrying a degree requirement. Ask the manager who added it. Ask which daily responsibility depends on it. Ask whether an apprenticeship, certificate, associate degree, industry credential, work sample, or documented experience would establish competence.

Some managers will discover that nobody knows why the requirement exists. It came from an old template, which came from an older template, which was probably carved into a stone tablet by a consultant billing by the hour.

That lazy filter costs companies capable employees. It also teaches young men that credentials carry more weight than demonstrated ability.

A hiring standard deserves respect when it protects the quality of the work. It deserves deletion when it protects the convenience of the hiring process.

The man on the commute never opens the posting. He sees a government seal, assumes bureaucracy, and moves along. A gate disappeared in front of him. Prestige trained him to keep searching for gates with familiar names.

The Meeting Has an Empty Chair

His third encounter comes during a company meeting. The leadership team discusses automation, staffing, and entry-level work. Nobody promises layoffs. Nobody promises safety either.

The language stays polished. Positions will evolve. Teams will adjust. Technology will create efficiency. Every sentence arrives wearing a badge and carrying no identification.

He glances at the org chart and wonders where a young employee is supposed to begin once software absorbs the work that used to train young employees.

That concern has already changed educational choices. Eric Jochim said many students entering a California-based cosmetology program already hold bachelor’s degrees. They arrive concerned that entry-level positions in their chosen fields remain available as artificial intelligence reshapes office work.

Some men hear that and sneer at the graduate for choosing poorly. That response requires no thought and offers no help. A young person followed the route praised by nearly every authority in his life. Later, the market changed, employers shifted requirements, or the available work failed to match the credential. Mockery adds another invoice without paying the first one.

Brotherhood starts where mockery ends.

It sounds like an older man saying, “Bring me the program details and your bank statements. We will look at both.” It sounds like a manager explaining which positions are growing inside the company. It sounds like a friend calling out a prestige decision before the enrollment agreement gets signed.

Honest counsel also has teeth. A brother tells you when your plan rests on vanity. He asks whether you want the work or the identity attached to the work. He separates the daily responsibilities from the title printed on a business card.

A vocation chosen for applause becomes an expensive performance once the audience leaves.

I have made career decisions while staring far too lovingly at the title. Titles are tidy. Work is messy. A title fits neatly beneath your name. The daily burden arrives through contracts, budget meetings, direct reports, customer complaints, and decisions that refuse to pose for a photograph.

Anyone who leads a company learns this eventually. The impressive title gives way to the P and L statement. Payroll approaches. A strong employee needs direction. A weak process keeps producing the same failure. The title sits quietly while the responsibility makes demands.

Young men need access to adults who can describe work at that level of detail. A counselor should be able to explain the Monday after the ceremony. A mentor should know what the first assignment looks like, how advancement happens, why people leave, and which skills remain useful when an industry changes.

This is where alternatives to college for men deserve a serious hearing. The phrase covers more ground than electrical work or construction. Chris Harrington, state director of North Carolina’s State Apprenticeship Agency, has pointed to apprenticeships in healthcare, education, information technology, advanced manufacturing, and other professional and technical occupations.

An apprenticeship is a talent-development model. It combines structured instruction with supervised work. For some occupations, a bachelor’s degree provides the proper preparation. Other occupations align with a Registered Apprenticeship, certificate, associate degree, or a combination of employment and education.

The paths can connect. A man can begin as an apprentice, earn an industry credential or certificate, progress to an associate degree, and pursue a bachelor’s degree later when that degree adds value to his work.

That order has an advantage. The man encounters the work before purchasing every available credential associated with it. He learns which knowledge he lacks. Education becomes attached to responsibility rather than prestige.

The company meeting ends. The man has taken careful notes about automation. He leaves the room believing his degree will protect him because his degree once represented protection.

The empty chair on the org chart says otherwise.

The Numbers Refuse the Script

During a break, he sees a short item about enrollment changes. He registers the percentages, forgets them, and returns to his tasks.

National Student Clearinghouse data show enrollment in undergraduate certificate plans increased 10.2% in spring 2026 over the same period in the previous year. Students new to bachelor’s degree programs increased just 1% during that comparison, though the number of students was essentially the same across both.

Preliminary fall 2025 data showed especially strong growth in mechanic and repair technology and engineering technology programs at two-year colleges, according to Scott Beaulier, economist and dean at the College of Business at the University of Wyoming.

Those figures measure enrollment choices. They do not prove that every certificate produces a strong career or that every bachelor’s degree has lost value. They do show that more people are examining routes once treated as consolation prizes.

Paul Iaccerino runs a five-year electrician apprentice program in New York. Gen Z participants make up about 70% of its 145 apprentices. Many arrived after trying other routes, including traditional college, and the average age of entering apprentices has been getting lower.

That detail carries more weight than the fashionable argument about generations. These men did not reject education. A five-year program requires study, supervised work, discipline, and repeated evaluation. They rejected the assumption that education must arrive through one institution, on one schedule, under one social label.

A certificate can be useless. An apprenticeship can be poorly run. A college program can change a man’s life. Every path requires examination. The prestige ranking fails because it substitutes social approval for investigation.

Men considering college alternatives need a decision file, preferably one plain enough to survive contact with a skeptical friend. It should contain:

• The full cost of tuition, fees, required equipment, transportation, and financing.
• The length of the program and the hours required each week.
• The credential earned and the organizations that recognize it.
• The employers that have hired recent participants.
• The work performed during the first year after completion.
• The route from entry-level responsibility to higher compensation or leadership.
• The academic credits or credentials that transfer into later education.
• The names of people who completed the program and will describe it without a recruiter present.

That file will puncture fantasy on every side. It will expose universities selling weak programs through status. It will expose apprenticeship providers selling vague promises through cultural resentment. It will expose the young man who wants rapid income without study, discipline, or patience.

Every route has its own salesman. The university salesman displays architecture and alumni names. The vocational salesman displays demand and earning potential. The technology salesman promises that a compressed credential will place you on the first rung of a glowing future. They all become remarkably spiritual when the financing paperwork appears.

Brotherhood gives a man somewhere to carry the paperwork.

A good group of men can ask what the brochure avoids. One knows hiring. Another understands debt. Another has changed careers. Another has watched an industry expand and contract. None possesses the whole answer. Together, they reduce the odds that prestige or panic will make the decision.

This counsel requires tenderness because the decision reaches into identity. A man wants to believe his life is moving. He wants his parents to feel proud. He wants to answer the question about his future without staring at the floor.

There is dignity in that longing. There is also danger in letting it sign contracts.

The enrollment figures disappear from his screen. He remembers the 10.2% increase for a moment. He cannot remember why it bothered him.

Congress Finds the Door

His fourth encounter arrives through a message from a friend. The friend mentions short-term training and federal aid changes. The man replies with a polite sentence and returns to the quarterly forecast.

Congress has started adjusting policy around work-based education. Workforce Pell Grants were extended through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act to certain qualifying short-term workforce programs. Tax-friendly 529 savings plans also expanded under the act to include many more vocational programs.

The details matter because government money changes institutional behavior. Once federal aid enters a category, programs reorganize themselves around eligibility. Administrators study the rules. Providers adjust schedules. Lobbyists discover a passionate interest in human potential.

Registered Apprenticeships face restrictions involving Pell eligibility rules, timing requirements, and other narrow parameters. Harrington has emphasized that the Pell expansion recognizes postsecondary learning outside traditional degree structures while fitting awkwardly with Registered Apprenticeship, where people work and learn simultaneously over a longer period through classroom and supervised instruction.

That friction is predictable. Government programs prefer clean boxes. Human development refuses to remain inside them.

The Skills-Based Federal Contracting Act has passed the Senate and awaits presidential sign-off. It would effectively prevent federal agencies from requiring contractor employees to hold college degrees. The proposal targets the same lazy filter already removed from many direct government positions.

The current administration has also set a goal of surpassing 1 million active Registered Apprenticeships and committed hundreds of millions of dollars toward expansion, according to Fraser Patterson, CEO and founder of Skillit.

A goal remains a goal. Money committed to expansion still has to pass through agencies, providers, employers, and administrators before it becomes useful training. Washington can announce a number in a room full of flags. A young man still needs a competent instructor, an employer willing to develop him, and a program connected to actual work.

Government can remove barriers. It can recognize credentials. It can redirect aid. It can stop forcing employers and applicants through arbitrary degree requirements. It cannot replace the older man who looks at a young man’s plan and tells him the truth.

That relationship carries a kind of accountability policy never captures. The mentor sees when the man starts drifting. He knows whether the missed assignment came from confusion, laziness, exhaustion, or trouble at home. He can encourage without flattering and correct without humiliating.

Institutions manage categories. Brothers know names.

This matters for men whose families have limited experience with college, apprenticeships, corporate hiring, or financing. They need counsel without condescension. They need someone to explain contracts, interest, credentials, and employment terms in plain language. A family should never have to become fluent in institutional dialect before it can protect a son from a weak program.

Parents also deserve room to revise old assumptions. Many pushed college because they wanted stability for their children. They remembered physical strain, uncertain employment, or opportunities denied without a degree. Their advice came from love, experience, and the information available to them.

Now some parents are encouraging high school and older children to consider growing industries, apprenticeships, certificates, and technical programs. That shift deserves respect. Changing counsel after the facts change takes humility.

The man’s friend sends another message. He offers to introduce him to someone running a training program. The man says he will think about it.

He means it. He also has a forecast due.

The Desk Has Its Own Uniform

Late in the workday, he passes employees doing technical work inside the building. They carry equipment and speak in precise terms about a problem he does not understand. For a moment, he envies the visible connection between their knowledge and the result.

Then his old hierarchy returns. Office work sits above physical work. A bachelor’s degree sits above a certificate. Management sits above technical competence. The ladder appears in his mind because years of respectable people drew it there.

That ladder has always been crooked.

Goodrich has emphasized that these industries include administration, sales, and customer service positions along with technical roles. Growing companies need employees across the organization. They need people who can manage schedules, serve customers, build systems, lead teams, interpret financial statements, sell responsibly, and develop employees.

The tired division between white-collar and blue-collar work obscures how companies actually operate. A technical business can have a sophisticated leadership team, complex software, a sales organization, substantial payroll, regulatory obligations, and demanding customers. A university can employ maintenance experts, technology specialists, financial managers, and facilities professionals. The labels reveal less than people pretend.

Working behind a desk also carries a uniform. The badge, laptop, calendar invitations, and quarterly language signal belonging. Plenty of men pursue that uniform because it appears safe and socially legible.

I understand the performance because I have participated in it. Give me a polished board deck and a serious conference room, and I can briefly believe civilization depends on the alignment of three bullet points. Then an employee asks a direct question, and the theater lights come on.

Work earns dignity through service, competence, and integrity. A man solves a problem for another person. He keeps his word. He grows capable enough to carry greater responsibility. He receives compensation and uses it as a steward.

Faith places a hard boundary around ambition. The work cannot become an idol. The title cannot become an identity sturdy enough to replace character. Money remains provision, freedom, generosity, and responsibility. It also becomes a cruel master when a man uses it to prove he matters.

The same warning belongs in every educational path. A man can worship the university name on his diploma. He can worship the toughness associated with a technical occupation. He can worship entrepreneurship, independence, income, or the admiration of people who approve his choice.

Changing the costume leaves the performance intact when a man still lives for the audience.

Honest counsel asks a deeper set of questions. Does this work fit your abilities? Can you perform it with integrity? Will the training make you useful? Does the debt restrict future choices? Can your body sustain the physical demands? Can your mind sustain the academic demands? Does the path allow growth? Are you serving people, or merely collecting symbols?

The answers will differ. One man belongs in a university engineering program. Another belongs in an advanced manufacturing apprenticeship. Another needs an associate degree followed by work experience. Another should keep his current position while studying through a flexible program.

Thomas Weston has said students in the current economy need the flexibility to work and study at the same time. That requirement should shape program design. Adults with bills cannot pause responsibility while institutions preserve schedules built for a different life.

Scott Beaulier has also argued that education routes can complement one another. A successful technical professional can later benefit from business education in accounting, entrepreneurship, or management. That sequence respects the connection between learning and responsibility.

The man returns to his desk. He sees his reflection in the dark edge of the monitor. The badge is clipped straight. The uniform fits perfectly.

Two Tabs Stay Open

At home, he opens the website of the university where he once considered graduate school. The photographs show stone buildings, attentive students, and the sort of trees institutions seem to keep under contract.

Another tab holds information about a local apprenticeship. It describes study, supervised employment, credentials, and advancement. The language feels less prestigious. It also feels closer to a job.

James Flannery, 26, faced a version of this choice. He studied cybersecurity at a New York college, decided the path did not fit him, and became a first-year electrician apprentice. His father owns a hardware store in the Bronx, where Flannery was working when he chose the apprenticeship. He has said school presented college as the dominant route and that he feels happier about his future after changing direction.

His decision does not prove that apprenticeships suit every man. It proves that changing direction can be an act of judgment rather than defeat.

Men need permission to revise a plan without turning revision into shame. They also need brothers who refuse to celebrate every pivot as courage. Sometimes a man changes direction because he learned something important. Sometimes he runs when work becomes difficult. Wisdom knows the difference, and wisdom usually arrives through people who know him well.

A brother can ask whether he gave the first route a fair effort. A father can describe the consequences of debt without using fear. A manager can point toward roles the man has never considered. A pastor or older friend can remind him that his worth does not rise and fall with a credential.

This counsel works best before the contract, before the loan, before the announcement. It still matters afterward. Grace has always done some of its finest work after men discover they chose poorly.

The man compares the two tabs. One offers a familiar symbol. The other offers unfamiliar work. He sends the apprenticeship page to the friend who contacted him earlier, then erases the message before sending it.

He reaches for the university page and pauses.

Both tabs remain open, throwing pale rectangles across the framed degree on the wall.

What to do about it

Open one page this week and compare two routes into work you could respect. Record tuition, fees, equipment, transportation, financing, time required, credential earned, and the employers that hire from each program.

Call one graduate or apprentice from each route without a recruiter present. Ask what the first year actually required, which promises proved accurate, how compensation grew, and what he would choose with the benefit of experience.

Take the page to a trusted man who understands hiring, debt, or the field itself. Let him challenge the identity attached to your preferred choice, then leave both tabs open until cost and daily work can answer the framed diploma.

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