In recent years, some of the loudest voices on one side of the political spectrum have been waging war on the idea of going to college.
“College is for fun and proving you can do chores… not actually learning,” Elon Musk has said. Peter Thiel has created the Thiel Fellowship, which pays young entrepreneurs $100,000 to drop out of college. President Donald Trump has called higher education an incubator for “radical left” and “Marxist” ideology.
The irony surrounding these anti-college declarations, of course, is that Barron Trump goes to NYU and Elon Musk’s older kids attend college as well.
It’s a classic case of “do as I say, not as I do,” because, of course, college gives most people a leg up in the job market. Prominent figures seem to want your kids to skip college, while theirs happily attend.
While Ford CEO Jim Farley has never come out against going to college, he has been sounding the alarm about the lack of technically skilled workers in the U.S. He says the lack of mechanics, electricians, and plumbers has reached crisis levels.
But unlike the examples listed above, he and his son are living by the words he preaches.
Ford CEO’s son works with his hands while attending college
Last year, Ford CEO Jim Farley raised the alarm, telling a podcast that “we’re in trouble as a country” because of the declining blue-collar workforce that makes the country run.
That type of thinking has trickled down to his son, Jameson, who recently sparked a debate in the Farley household about college attendance after Jameson started working with his father to build custom vehicles in his spare time. That hobby blossomed into a love of working with his hands and led to a family discussion about his future.
“My son worked as a mechanic this summer and he said, ‘Dad, I really like this work, I don’t know why I need to go to college,'” Farley told the Detroit Free Press. “And Leah (Farley’s wife) looked at me and said, ‘Is he serious?’ Like, should we be debating this? It’s in a lot of American households. It should be a debate.”
Following the debate, it was decided that Jameson Farley would do both. He will attend college and do hands-on work with a NASCAR team as a fabricator. Fabricators are specialized technicians responsible for building, modifying and maintaining race vehicles. The pay ranges from $17.25 to $22.50 an hour, according to ZipRecruiter.
Of course, being Farley’s son probably didn’t hurt his chances of landing the gig, but it’s almost impossible to imagine Barron Trump or one of Musk’s progeny swinging a hammer or changing a light socket in their spare time like Jameson Farley will be doing this summer.
“He feels like that’s more fulfilling than doing summer school at some fancy college,” Farley said. “I think that’s ironic and also a bit satisfying — that we’re rediscovering the value of these jobs that indeed powered all of us to go to college.”
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Jim Farley gets real about blue-collar worker shortage
Ford CEO Jim Farley says that blue-collar jobs not only pay well, but are critical to the health and defense of the United States.
“The essential economy, we are in trouble in our country,” Farley warned last year. “We are not talking about this enough. It’s a very serious thing. We don’t have trade schools. We are not investing in educating the next generation.”
He estimates that there are currently more than 1 million unfilled mechanic, emergency services, factory worker, plumber, electrician, and trucking jobs in the U.S. Farley went on to say that U.S. workers are not adequately trained for these jobs, which allowed his grandfather to build a middle-class life and raise a family.
At his own company, Farley says Ford has 5,000 openings for mechanics.
“A bay with a lift and tools, and no one working it. It’s a $120,000-a-year job, but it takes you five years to learn how to do it. Take a diesel out of a Super Duty; it takes a lot of skill. You need to know what you’re doing,” Farley.
But if good pay and a path to the middle class aren’t enough to attract interested workers, what can we do to address the problem?
“If we work together like we always have in America, we start to shine a light on the problem, and we start getting like-minded people together… and we get after this with the government. Through education, we can solve this, but we have a lot of work to do,” Farley said.
Related: This is how Ford CEO Jim Farley “future proofs” F-Series trucks
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