Trades and Certifications That Pay Well

We love college around here. We fund students through it. Twelve of our young people are on Hope Horizon scholarships right now, and we would not trade a single one of those diplomas. But if the only future a kid can picture is a bachelor's degree, and that path feels out of reach or simply not right for them, we have failed to show them the whole map. There are careers that pay well, hold steady, and take pride in real skill, and many of them do not ask for four years and a mountain of loans. They ask for training, a license or a certificate, and the willingness to be good at something with your hands and your head.

This is not a consolation prize. For a lot of young people, it is the better fit and the smarter money. So let us look at it plainly.

Do the trades really pay?

They do, and we do not have to guess, because the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics counts. In May 2023, five occupations that people typically enter through an apprenticeship had hourly mean wages above the average for all U.S. jobs, which was $31.48 an hour. Elevator and escalator installers led at $48.11 an hour. Plumbers, pipefitters, and steamfitters came in at $32.62. Electricians earned $32.60. Boilermakers and structural iron and steel workers rounded out the top five. None of those jobs requires a four-year degree to start.

Look at electricians for a moment, because it is a job in every city and it is not going away. The median annual wage for electricians was $62,350 in May 2024, comfortably above the median for all workers. And the BLS projects electrician employment will grow about 9 percent from 2024 to 2034, faster than the average across occupations. That is a trade you can enter as a paid apprentice at eighteen and still be climbing in your forties.

And this is not only a hard-hat story. Plenty of well-paying careers reward a certificate or a two-year associate degree instead of a bachelor's: dental hygienists, HVAC technicians, welders, medical and pharmacy technicians, commercial drivers, and lab and imaging techs, among many others. The common thread is not the tool in your hand. It is a credential that proves a specific, useful skill, earned in months or a couple of years rather than in four.

What exactly is an apprenticeship?

Here is the part that surprises families most, in the best way. An apprenticeship is a job. A paid job. You are hired, you show up, and you learn the trade on the job from people who already do it well, while also taking classroom instruction that backs up the skill. Registered apprenticeships usually run three to five years, and your wages rise as you go, so the paycheck grows right alongside your ability.

Put the money side by side and the picture gets clear. A four-year degree often means paying tuition for four years and starting your career afterward. An apprenticeship flips that: you get paid from day one, you graduate with a recognized credential instead of a loan balance, and you already have years of real experience on your resume. For a first-generation student weighing whether a family can carry the cost of college, that difference is not small. It can be the whole decision.

An apprenticeship is the rare school that pays you to attend, and hands you a career instead of a bill at the end.

You can see what is out there through the U.S. Department of Labor's apprenticeship program, which lists registered apprenticeships across construction, healthcare, technology, manufacturing, and more. The trades are the famous ones, but the model has spread far past them.

Why this matters especially here

East Palo Alto sits inside one of the wealthiest regions on earth, and the young people who grow up here deserve every road into it. Some of them will thrive at a four-year university, and we will cheer them the whole way. Others will light up in a welding shop, a dental clinic, or an electrical apprenticeship, and earn a strong living years before their peers finish a bachelor's. Both of those are wins. Both of those change a family's story.

First-generation students carry a particular weight in this decision. Nationally, first-generation students make up about a third of undergraduates, and they complete four-year degrees at lower rates than peers whose parents went to college, often because the money and the map were harder to come by, not because the talent was. A well-chosen trade or certificate can be a surer, faster path to a stable income for a young person who cannot afford to gamble four years on a maybe. Naming that honestly is not lowering the bar. It is respecting the young person standing in front of us.

How a kid actually chooses a path

Consider a composite of students we have known. Picture a high school senior, good with his hands, quick to fix the thing nobody else can fix, who has quietly decided he is "not a college person" and therefore, in his own head, not headed anywhere. That last leap is the mistake, and it is the one a caring adult can catch.

The move is not to talk him into a four-year school he does not want. It is to widen the map. Sit down and look at real options together: an electrical or plumbing apprenticeship he could apply to now, a community college certificate in HVAC, a welding program at a trade school. Look up what each one pays and how long it takes. Suddenly "nowhere" turns into three real doors, each with a paycheck behind it. The kid who thought he had no future had several. He just needed someone to open the atlas to the right page.

That is the work. Not steering, opening. A young person makes a far better choice when they can see the whole field, understand what each path costs and pays, and pick the one that fits who they actually are.

Paying for it, without the debt trap

Trade school and certificate programs cost money too, though usually far less than a four-year degree. The first step is the same one every college-bound student takes: fill out the FAFSA. It is free, it is the gateway to the largest source of student aid in the country, and grants like the federal Pell grant generally do not have to be paid back. Many trade schools and community college programs qualify.

And then there is us. People assume the Open Door Scholarship is a college-only fund. It is not. Our scholarship is open to students attending an accredited college or university, a junior college, a trade school, or an approved Bible school or mission training program. The minimum GPA is 2.5. If a young person in our community wants to become an electrician or a dental hygienist as much as another wants to become a teacher, the door is open to both.

The goal was never a specific diploma. It was a young person with a future they chose and can support themselves in.

A wider definition of making it

For forty years, our aim has been the same: young people with hope and a future. Nowhere in that sentence is there only one kind of future. A confident electrician wiring a new building, a dental hygienist with a steady clinic job, a welder whose work holds up bridges, these are lives worth celebrating, and worth pointing our kids toward with the same pride we point them toward a university.

So we keep the whole map on the table. Four-year college for the ones it fits. Trades, certificates, and apprenticeships for the ones they fit. And an adult beside every kid who says the truest thing there is to say: there is more than one good road, and at least one of them is yours.