Okay. I'm not talking about the carpenter story that Johnny Cash and June Carter were singing about.

My carpenter is the fellow who puts things together and has no trouble making money in our society. He is busy making a living and does not need the Biden administration to eliminate his college loans.

Well, let me give you some good news for a change. It turns out that more young people want to be a carpenter or electrician than another expert in gender studies or whatever.

Here is the story:

The higher-education industry is having a bad decade.

Some problems are obvious: With wokeness and campus unrest, colleges and universities have lost some of their mystique.

They’ll tell you to “follow the science,” right before they tell you that men can get pregnant.

Violent antisemitic riots haven’t done much to burnish their image, nor have the limp responses to those riots from many university administrations.

Whom the gods would destroy, they first make ridiculous. Mission accomplished!

Then there’s the economics of it: The reward of college was supposed to be a good job at the end.

But jobs for college grads today aren’t as good as they once were, while tuition and fees have skyrocketed much faster than wage growth -- meaning that many students are graduating with massive debts they likely will to be unable to repay.

And so they told us. A good job at the end. Honestly, it turned out that way for many in our generation. In my case, it worked and my three sons are all doing great.

It's turning out differently for many in the new generation who get a diploma and a huge invoice.

The other reality is that students who go for trades end up enjoying the capitalist experience, i.e. they work for themselves and do well.

A year ago, we had a plumbing problem and a couple of young men came out to fix it. They were good and worked for themselves. The same for the fellow from South Africa who came to fix our garage door. I look around and see all these people driving their trucks to a job. They are so busy that they don't have time to fall for all of the anti-U.S. garbage peddled in our schools.

So the trades are back and I think it's great. Share that with the young person who doesn’t know what he wants to “major in.”

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Image: Pexels/Tima Miroshnichenko