More than 1M fewer students are in college, the lowest numbers in 50 years

There are a lot of things wrong with doing manual work:

Pay sucks dick.

Unless you bust ass and work overtime/meet management's obscene expectations (you won't unless you're on meth), your pay is going to suck.

If you want a more relaxed environment (residential stuff, "small," few employees, lifestyle biz) your pay is going to be even lower.

Commercial pays better, but it's more soul-sucking and kills your body quicker.

If you're not in a skilled trade (big 3: plumber/pipefitter, electrician, or HVAC; physical IT/wire-pulling) it's even worse.

If you don't have a family/friend connection, good luck breaking in to anything worth anything (that includes a union. If you're non-union, you're basically screwed, unless you're high-skilled/massive amount of certs and can negotiate for yourself).

LUNA (or whatever the labor union goes by nowadays) is pretty decent if you've got a lot of problems in your life, but can come to work sober (and on time), do the work without bitching, and be productive. All the other unions worth anything are, once again, almost impossible to get into (unless you wait years, have a connection, or have a track record). Everyone wants to be an electrician (so much so, that even non-union shops aren't accepting any "apprentices,"---cheap labor---that don't already have experience; this is no different from the unions).

If you get in, it's a golden meal ticket for the uneducated; but pay caps out quickly (and any white collar professional with a shred of ambition will surpass you in pay in their 30s).

Hours are uncertain.

You can sometimes be working 2 hours a day, and sometimes 12. Overtime is cool, but it doesn't beat getting home and having a few hours to do anything at all, instead of passing out on the couch and waking up at 5am to go back to work.

Past that, any other jobs that pay better (tow truck operator, lineman, etc.) have even worse/more dangerous conditions. Your body will start hurting in your twenties, and you'll feel like you're 60. This won't go away unless you stop doing any physical labor for a while, but if you do that, you won't make money, nor gain "hours" (for those sweet union pay bumps after you pass a certain amount of hours -- regardless if you're the most efficient and most experienced apprentice, you'll still be getting paid the same as the bumfuck nephew of the owner who's only there because family takes care of family).

If you're a citizen of the U.S., there's no real reason to do manual labor, unless you really don't care that much about money or starting a family (most people in manual labor). For illegal immigrants, the pay is fucking amazing compared to what they get paid back home. They can work for a few seasons, save up their cash, then go back home where American dollars let you live like royalty.

I work in tech now. I get paid more than 2,000x what I did being a tradesmen, my body feels amazing now, I can fuck around all day doing whatever I want because I'm remote, and---in comparison---I barely do any work. These are my anecdotes.

Taxes don't just go to one thing... We spend more on healthcare and education than European citizens and that's not counting better public transit.

> If the last decade is any indication, skilled labor - especially those not afraid to own their own business, are set to make a killing.

It's almost always been this way. I remember a reading a quote from a prolific 19th century author (whose name I can no longer find online, thanks to broken phrase searching in Google) complaining about enterprising carpenters earning more than his government salary.

The issue is that it's not an apples to apples comparison. Small business owners who provide blue collar services can make significantly more than salaried white collar workers. However, runnig a small business requires a completely different set of skills, and the percentage of blue collar workers who can do their trade and run a successful small business is far lower than the percentage of people doing blue collar work.

Also, you're more likely to get a smaller lecture for Calculus and maybe some of the Physics or Chemistry at a junior college because they're higher level courses there. At a university, those are lower level courses and may be in giant lecture halls, which is not great for Calculus anyway. For science, lab sections are usually small because you can't fit that many students in a lab, so you get some smaller class size stuff there at least.

But certainly, not all community colleges are alike. If you want to transfer to a bachelor's program, you want to find a community college with a competent transfer program that is hopefully aligned with your destination and at least has a track record of transfering students who go on to get their bachelors. Some community colleges aren't great at that.

Also, California community colleges are very affordable, but some states don't have that. If community college has costs in line with 4 year schools, then it might not be a great choice.

Which country? I don't know of any that get close to "advanced education for all".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tertiary_...