America is drowning in MBAs and BAs while $120,000 trade jobs go begging. The country’s starting to crack under the weight of its college obsession.
Chamath Palihapitiya is calling time on what he sees as a dangerous national delusion: glorifying degrees while sidelining the trades that keep the economy running.
“We have too many colleges graduating kids into suffocating student debt and worthless degrees,” the venture capitalist posted on X. “Mechanic, Nurse or Electrician >> Masters in a fringe degree + $200k in debt.”
His comments came in response to a warning from Ford CEO Jim Farley, who revealed the company has 5,000 open mechanic jobs, each offering six-figure salaries, and no qualified applicants.
“America’s running on economic fumes,” Farley said on a recent podcast. “We do not have trade schools.”
Today’s auto repair demands five years of training in diagnostics, robotics, and EV systems. But the talent pipeline hasn’t kept pace. Community colleges still teach outdated curriculums while dealerships rely on lidar and AI to service next-gen vehicles.
Despite Ford throwing $4 million into scholarships, the labor gap remains. The auto industry alone faces a 37,000-technician shortfall, and manufacturing jobs are missing 400,000 skilled workers.
Palihapitiya argues that the real crisis is cultural. “We’ve created an artificial societal culture that celebrates a ‘BA’ or ‘Masters’ or ‘PhD’ without asking the critical question: ‘In what?’” he wrote. He called for a mindset shift that values post–high school decisions based on economic reality, not prestige.
There’s a glimmer of movement. Trade school enrollment just jumped 16 percent, the biggest spike in years. But as Farley warned, the stakes are high. “This ends one of two ways. A workforce renaissance or a future where your $90,000 EV sits dead in the driveway because no one’s trained to fix it.”
