This Trump proposal is a silly populist token — but it does create an opportunity

Trump’s latest idiotic idea of redistributing $3 billion in grant money from Harvard to trade schools, which he posted yesterday, masks a larger and more serious issue.

It’s absurd that a four-year college degree has become the only gateway into the American middle class.

Many high school seniors feel compelled to go to college because they’ve been told over and over that a college degree is necessary.

But not every young person is suited to four years of college.

Some may be bright and ambitious but won’t get much out of college.

An estimated half of recent college graduates are in jobs that don’t even require a college degree.

And they’re stuck with a huge bill — and may be paying down their student debt for decades. Trump’s Department of Education has restarted collections on defaulted student loans. For the first time in years, borrowers who haven’t kept up with their bills could see their wages taken or face other punishments.

If young people start college and then drop out, they feel like total failures.

The biggest frauds are for-profit colleges that are raking in money even as their students drop out in droves, and whose diplomas are barely worth the inkjets they’re printed on.

America clings to the conceit that four years of college are necessary for everyone and looks down its nose at people who don’t have college degrees.

This has to stop. If the election of Donald Trump has taught us anything, it’s that people without college degrees — fully 60 percent of adult Americans, most of whom voted for him — need better jobs, better wages, and more respect.

Young people need an alternative to a four-year college degree. That alternative should be a world-class system of vocational-technical education.

A four-year college degree isn’t necessary for many of tomorrow’s good jobs.

The emerging economy will need platoons of technicians able to install, service, and repair all the high-tech machinery filling up hospitals, offices, and factories.

Along with people who can upgrade the software embedded in almost every gadget you buy.

Who can implement machine-learning algorithms. Process natural language for AI. Install and service robots.

Today it’s even hard to find a skilled plumber or electrician.

The vocational and technical education now available to young Americans is wildly underfunded and inadequate.

And too often, vocational and technical education is denigrated as being for “losers.”

These programs should be creating winners.

Germany — whose median wage (after taxes and transfers) is higher than ours — gives many of its young people world-class technical skills that have made Germany a global leader in fields such as precision manufacturing.

A world-class technical education doesn’t have to mean young people’s fates are determined when they’re 14. Instead, rising high school seniors could be given the option of entering a program that extends a year or two beyond high school and ends with a diploma acknowledging their technical expertise.

Community colleges — the under-appreciated crown jewels of America’s feeble attempts at equal opportunity — could be developing these curricula and credentials.

Businesses could be advising on the technical skills they’ll need and promising jobs to young people who complete their degrees with good grades.

Government could be investing enough money to make these programs thrive. (Trump’s $3 billion to trade schools would hardly make a difference.)

Instead, we continue to push most of our young people through a single funnel called a four-year college education — a funnel so narrow it’s causing applicants and their parents excessive stress and worry about “getting in”; that’s too often ill-suited and unnecessary, and far too expensive; and that can cause college dropouts to feel like failures for the rest of their lives.

Trump’s attack on Harvard and other prestigious universities will only harm America. And his idea of redistributing grant money from Harvard to trade schools is a silly populist token.

But it does offer an opportunity to rethink one of the central tenets of American society: It’s time to give up the idea that every young person has to go to college.

America should offer high school seniors a genuine alternative route into the middle class.

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Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/