Dirty Jobs' Mike Rowe on the High Cost of College (Full Interview)

if we're lending money that ostensibly we don't have to kids who really have no hope of paying it back in order to train them for jobs they clearly don't exist I might suggest that you know we've gone around the bend a little bit hi I'm Nick Gillespie for recent TV and this is the first time I think that we've ever interviewed a bonafide opera singer at reason TV on camera and today we're talking with Mike Rowe who's better known as the longtime host of Discovery Channel's popular show dirty jobs for which Rowe who won sang bit parts for the Baltimore Opera and worked as an on-air pitchman for QVC takes on gigs straight out of Bob Dylan songs working on fishing boats sewer systems oil derricks slaughterhouses you name it his passion these days is drawing attention to what he sees as a dangerous disconnect between the work that he says needs to be done in America on a physical blue-collar level and the way that all aspects of American society seems to demonize and push people away from the sort of dirty jobs that don't require a college degree anymore through the micro foundation and profoundly disconnected a venture between Rowe and the heavy equipment manufacturer Caterpillar Rowe is talking a lot these days about what he calls the diploma dilemma we've got millions unemployed and millions of jobs that are going unfilled Mike Rowe welcome to Reason TV thanks takes you right that I did it's good I only stumbled on it a bit not bad I mean the delivery was good he accuracy I'd put it about 90 95 percent and that's a lot coming from you so let's start with talking about what you see as the real problem that's cropped up over the past 40 years or so in America we're doing everything we can to push every kid to go to a four-year college what's wrong with that so that's not working I mean you got a trillion dollars in debt on the student loan side you have a skills gap something talked about what what do you mean a skills gap well you have right now about three million jobs transportation commerce trades that can't be filled and this is stuff anything from carpentry to electric of being electrician plumbers heating and strong electric you know there's a holy truck driver you know there's a long welders eggwin jobs that typically parents don't sit down and say to their kids if all goes well this is this is what you're going to do but these are actually also jobs I mean not only are they available but they are also they pay well listen yes is the short answer but of course you know pay well it's kind of relative right what they what they are mostly in my opinion are opportunities you know a good welder right now can pretty much write his or her own ticket companies like caterpillar Bechtel you can go down the list they have had open shortages for decades and so you know I talked to a kid the other day up in Butler North Dakota so it's Butler right it's cold but he works on heavy equipment up there and over 100 bucks an hour work when he wants paid for his house in cash raising a family no debt people don't tell his story so so that's part of the problem is that instead we're telling everybody you know just you got to get that sheepskin you got to get the college ba otherwise you're not going to be happy you're not going to have any opportunity it feels that way to me yeah I mean that's that was my experience in high school and I still hear the same platitudes today talk a bit about that because you have a great story about how you were in your high school guidance counselor's office and you saw a sign that said work smart not hard mr. Dunbar yeah well he he called me down as I guess you know millions of kids have been called down to talk about my future and he was looking at some test scores and said look you you're not an idiot you know you got a shot at James Madison University of Maryland maybe some other schools here's here's what I would suggest and I said you know I I don't have any money but more importantly I don't I don't have any idea what I want to do so while I figure that out you know I thought I'd go to a community college at which point he says well that's way below your potential and pointed to the poster that said work smart not hard the thing about the poster wasn't just the bromide at the bottom it was the image on left hand side you've got a college graduate recently matriculated cap and gown Sun setting behind him looking like he owns the world in the future and next to him is a mechanic holding a wrench covered in grease or something worse looking down at the ground like he won the vocational consolation prize of all time and you know that was a very specific campaign for college for higher education and we're talking this is what like late 70s are 70 nice yeah yeah but like all PR campaigns and most everything I'm doing right now really is through the lens of a kind of marketing proposition but all PR campaigns always go too far and they always it seems promote the thing they want to focus on at the expense of something else now it's kind of egregious in education in my opinion but it shouldn't be shocking because look the best way to sell a truck is to talk about how lousy the competitor the best way to get elected is to talk about how creepy your opponent is and the best way to really promote college hard is to talk about how subordinate all the other opportunities and and you've replaced work smart not hard with work smart and hard was what's the difference well a very small of is it a conjunction yes and is that what it is all right so yeah we at the time I thought you know if I had any balls at all I'd reach across mr. Dunbar's office with a magic marker and cross out knot and scratch in and my grandfather would have approved that I didn't do it because my father would have disapproved but years later I've done it and now as part of our fundraising our ongoing dirty campaign for the trades we sell posters that say work smart and hard I now play the role of the Graduate standing there holding my degree looking somewhat confused by the industrial setting in which I find myself next to a far more aspirational tradesman right so it's just another way to juxtapose what uh what are the goals of the work smart and hard campaign okay you know what what are you hoping to effect well in a really general way a conversation exactly like the one we're having and a question precisely like the one you just posed because if you don't talk about it the whole thing is forget it you know we we have to change the conversation and we have to challenge the existing protocol if you will so the first thing is this general PR campaign around the trades the second thing there is a financial component to it I mean the posters are only ten bucks but if I can get twenty or thirty thousand of hanging in guidance counselor's office around the around the country right now well that's fun and we take the money we raise of course and it goes into a into a foundation to keep the conversation going and to award what we call work ethic scholarships what is a work ethic scholarship the scholarship program and the scholarship business as I understand it right now rewards for basic things intelligence we have academic scholarships athleticism if you can hit a three-pointer we have money for you for days talent right I mean we we reward talent we reward athleticism we reward intelligence and of course need you need based scholarships and those are the categories that most scholarships address to some degree or another whose addressing work ethic whose affirmative ly trying to reward the behavior we want to encourage the behavior that the micro works wants to at least talk about really renounce to two things the willingness to learn a useful skill and the willingness to work your ass off combined we think that is something that ought to be affirmative ly rewarded where did that go wrong or when did that disappear the idea that you know you should learn a skill that is actually useful or in need and that you should work hard or I don't know you know I think that's that's a good question for a real social anthropologist my own opinion is just that there's a kind of inertia the most parents would agree exists and it's the desire to see something better for your kids than you had the question of course is what is better you know is it better right now today to have 140,000 in debt but a degree from Georgetown and law or is it better to be that kid I described up in Butler look Marion I don't know right but there is an inertia that says the first one is better than let's talk a little bit about the college loan scam I mean because partly I mean you talk about okay there's a trillion dollars in debt most of that will be I mean it's subsidized by taxpayers but most of the principal will be paid off by the people who take the loans but you're against the idea of taxpayer supported loans going to college right well look it's a it we hold a note right so it's whether I'm against it or not I I get I get a little curious about it when it gets to a trillion dollars so if we're lending money that ostensibly we don't have to kids who really have no hope of paying it back in order to train them for jobs they clearly don't exist I might suggest that you know we've gone around the bend a little bit and our clearly pumping that extra money into the system allows colleges to raise their prices I mean of course know the cost of a degree and this I do know because I've read it in several reputable sources has increased over five hundred times the rate of inflation since the mid 80s five hundred times the rate of inflation nothing else comes close not even health care health care is like two fifty to sixty so this this thing is an outlier this thing that the cost of this thing has increased so exponentially I can't believe it's not daily headline news imagine any other commodity increasing at that rate and think for a minute to you know I get it education is hugely important that if there's if there's only one thing that's more important in education maybe maybe health and fitness right because what's the point if you're not functioning but imagine the conversation we have about colleges today applied to gyms mmm-hmm right imagine saying okay it's important to be healthy and fit so what you need to do is spend a thousand dollars a month at the most expensive club in town otherwise your heart might explode you'll crap your pants you'll get fat and nobody will love you okay meanwhile there's why yeah obviously you've got some background research on me so I didn't want to say anything but there's a there's an odor there is no but you're not anti college not at all yeah so so explain that okay so auntie debt in the same way I'm not anti gym membership look if you if you got a thousand bucks a month and you can go to the place with the shiny equipment and the cadre of personal trainers and the and the and the private Jacuzzi do it and and enjoy your protein shake in the privacy of your own largess right not your large ass your large s but if you can accomplish the same thing for 12 bucks a month you know then I think it would be prudent to at least put them on the table and if I have to pay for part of your membership in either facility then I might get a little exercised about your ultimate choice if you can't pay it back what are the roots of the kind of demon demonization or D prioritization of blue-collar work or of dirty jobs I think it's fear you know I mean you've got kids right yeah so it's got to be very scary to not have a really specific answer to questions like what's the best path that we know and and to have somebody tell you in a fairly convincing way that there is an answer to that question that must be very comforting and it must be very comforting to pass that certainty on to your on to your kid to here's here's what you need to do you need to work hard in school you need to study that that it's not bad advice it's just that like I said before it always goes too far because rather than put a period after work hard and study hard we put an ellipses and that's followed by or else you're going to wind up working down at the construction thing anyway well that you you come from a background of your grandfather was a laborer I mean he worked with his hands he built things did he say to you you know I want you to do exactly what I did or does he watch it you know I want you to have a job I mean would you hear this all the time well you don't have to wash your hands for 45 minutes when you come home before you can have dinner he was he was fairly agnostic about my hopes and dreams I wasn't I very specifically wanted to follow in his footsteps the guy could build a house without a blueprint he only went to the eighth grade but by the time he was in his 30s he was a master electrician carpenter steam fitter pike and you talk you've talked about how one of your the best days you've ever had was kind of where you first learned the pleasures of dirty work when I tell us about that I was I was maybe 10 or 11 we had a we lived in a small little farmhouse and we had one toilet and I went down one morning took care of business and stood up to flush it for whatever reason I liked to watch it go away was something satisfying about watching something was just in me going away you know and on this particular morning it went away and then the toilet made a sound you know kind of like the like that pig noise in the Amityville Horror just a gurgling you know a demonic sort of disappointing screech and everything that had just been in me literally came flying backwards and it covered me and so my grandfather lived next door obviously something between the septic tank and the toilet had gone tragically wrong and my grandfather being a magician of sorts dug up the yard in just the right place found the problem in the pipe replaced the pipe there was welding there was laughing there was cursing my mother brought me my first thermos of coffee my dad and my grandfather and I worked covered in crap for most of the day I took the day off school to do it was a very satisfying day because I was I was with the two most important men in my life and and I saw again certainly not for the first or the last time a problem eel problem corrected and it just made a lot of chronological sense to my brain I wanted to do that the gene that my grandfather had cruelly and horribly skipped right over me right and I washed out of every shop class there was in high school and it was my grandfather who ultimately said look you ought to think about getting a different toolbox so he was like sorry kid you don't have the chops to become a master electrician go into TV no he didn't go that far but what he said was it doesn't matter what you do you think you want to do what I can do what you want to do is work in the way I'm working so in other words whether you're a TV interviewer or an opera singer or a writer you can approach your craft like a tradesman and by that I mean like a freelancer instead of okay I need my job and my job will be 30 years and will come with benefit it's and it will be provided blah blah blah that that's not working anymore and I was never really enamored of it I liked the idea of the the classic freelancer I always have but you know where the word came from by the way tell me I'm going to neck are you ready okay it's actually I am already sitting down so no I love the jacket be that I said that see because I 101 when I put my hat on I'm like people that over I am without my hat they probably don't overview over I I get that a lot yes so in in the olden times a freelancer was a knight who served no Lord he was just the he had his horse and he had his lance and his lance wasn't free it was to the highest bedroom is a very mercenary way to look at the world but it's a great way to sort of step back and protect your margins in these times in my opinion well talk a little bit about them what are the what are the ways that you create or develop a stronger work ethic and people because I agree with you that apart from the skill set you know which is important and that will always change and certainly the things that our parents or grandparents knew for sure we're going to be the you know it's plastics or its computer whatever you know you never know but the one thing that you can know is that if you can adapt your skills to a changing world you're in good shape and if you work hard how do you how do you create or how do you instill better work ethics and B I think it has something to do with being suspicious of anything it's too easy being suspicious of anything that doesn't hurt a little bit you know it has something to do with the willingness to to find and take the reverse commute it's a big lesson on dirty jobs you know there's a there's another bromide another platitude out there that always kind of chop my ass a little bit which is follow your passion you know my Scoutmaster by my reverend my dad liked everybody grown-ups like son just just follow your passion it's terrible advice you know on dirty jobs I met a lot of very passionate people but very few of them followed their passion into their current vocation les Swanson from Wisconsin clean septic tanks you know I asked him one day Oh fine I mean we're literally standing up to we're up to our nipples in the most indescribable bully abase on the planet around I said less will you would you do before this you know it's like 110 the sweats running off his face he looks at me and he says I swear I was a guidance counselor he was a he was a psychiatrist a psychologist and I said why'd you why'd you leave that and without missing a beat he said I got tired of dealing with other people is very funny but it was also it was it was very instructive because he he always thought that what he wanted to do was the thing he was told he should do he became passionate about something he really he really didn't care for when it came time to make the change he just looked around to see where everybody was going and he went the other way took him into a septic tank own business a couple of workers very happy so if you're really asking how do you know that you're going in the right direction how do you really foster a good work ethic I think I think you just have to identify the thing that most people don't want to do figure out a way to do it and then figure out a way to love it what should schools be more in the business of doing vote tech stuff I mean there's a long tradition of you know and this is something that I think people are worried about when they look at a European system of Education where they say hey you know what by the time Timmy is 12 and we've done a couple of aptitude tests we know this guy isn't you know he's not college material so let's make him an auto mechanic you know so you know there's that level that I think people rightly push back against but there's also the question of you know when you were talking about a freelance is there anything less than a freelance system than the public school system that most people grow up in where you seem to have a lot of time service I mean a lot of good teachers but also it's kind of like I got 30 years and out all right so we're you know should it be businesses that are actually doing apprenticeships and that are building up in interest and saying look you know we can offer you a good job at a good wage with you know some honor and integrity I would I mean if I had a big business I would do that I don't know that they should do it you know I don't want to shoot all over anybody but I I think that you know if I if I depended on a skilled workforce then I would not depend on a public education system to provide it for me I would set up my own things internally and I would make sure that I was doing things in the most effective way I could in terms of training the best candidate I could find but I do think that the companies are at a kind of disadvantage because so many kids who come to apply for the kinds of work we're talking about they have an expectation it's not realistic they've been watching American Idol for too long they just have an idea that look I did my time in high school maybe I even did my time in college so where's where's my cheese okay why you want me to do what so there's a there's a real disconnect in the way we educate visa vie the opportunities that are available there's a disconnect between the companies that are providing the opportunities and the parents and guidance counsellors who are advising our kids and yeah in the end I mean that's a long answer to your question but ultimately the company is going to have to step in to provide the training that ultimately is well and you I mean this goes to you're a critic of kind of credentialism the idea that you know you can you jump through enough hoops and then you get the cheese or whatever and you you have your own business and you've talked about how difficult it is to hire people it's a nightmare yeah we'll talk about that well you know why can't you why isn't it an easy thing to just figure out you know because I can't ask you can't ask people the questions everybody would want to ask if they had to hire you you just can't sit down and say okay scale of one to ten where do you fall on the asshole meter you know be honest what are you an asshole it'd be good to know yeah and if you are look thanks for coming by but we you know we we already have we have all the answers but we don't have any oh we don't need another know we were thinking you know you know most but you really you don't need more than what technically we each have we have two sphincters right one here and went and looked at clinically they're identical that's right I mean there's no way to know up from them so how do you how do you get around that though how do you get around or do do you see is there move away it kind of in a world where everybody goes to high school every or everybody graduates high school everybody graduates college it seems do we fall back into a new way of figuring out who's who's a good worker how do we tell who's good and who's bad I don't think we do you know look you said it before it's it's it's one of the reasons we fall in love with credentialing it's the same reason we fall in love with saying one-size-fits-all with education look it's simple all you have to do is go to college look and simply either have your credentials or you don't I was at the Marine Corps ball a couple of weeks ago I go every year I talked to a medic cookie can't find work now eight months earlier he's somewhere over there he's got his service revolver in one hand he's holding the femur or the femoral artery shot you know he's saving a life he's taking a life pretty much it the guys qualified okay but he's not credentialed you know he can't get higher as a nurse right now can't do it so the credentialing system you know all the C words get tricky right compliance you know the hidden costs of compliance in the work industry today is is staggering what do you what do you mean by that I mean that you know the cost of hiring somebody is not simply the cost of paying them their salary and on dirty jobs certainly you you see I've talked to so many employers in every state and after we shoot usually over beer we start to talk about you know the way things really are one of the what are the real problems compliance is always a word and that's compliance with a wide variety of state and federal regulatory agencies or without there are an army of angry acronyms out there and they each have a very specific agenda and I'm a I'm not is not a judgment call on OSHA or the EPA or the SPCA or PETA but you know they all have their letters and they all have their marching orders and none of them are they to make your life easier they're there to make you more compliant and or maybe more credential but really compliant this this really played out so many times in the in the area of safety right I mean safety is obviously a critical critical thing right but on dirty jobs it was really interesting my crew and I we we sat through so many mandatory safety briefings so many compulsory saving it's just done by rote everywhere we went from factory floors to construction sites you'd see safety first and you know after three or four years we started getting hurt we never got hurt you know initially right this time went by we began to realize we were becoming complacent because we were sleeping through all the sleepy briefings that the safety first protocols dictated so I did a special called safety third I wasn't trying to upset people what comes before safety what are the two things you get to fill in the blanks personally I would put uh money and um I guess it's getting the job done mm-hmm right I mean that's right these are the fundamental things doesn't mean Safety's really less important right but then again saying safety first doesn't really mean it's the most important either it's just a bromide you know I sat on the plane the other day it always makes me laugh when I look up and I see the sign that says your safety is our priority right really I was really hoping I'd get a pilot who was deeply interested in getting home to his family because he wanted to get home to sound like or she you know my safety is my priority his safety is priority and you know that's just a very different sort of way of looking at a work dynamic but the acronyms in question don't allow that to happen anymore and so the cost that comes along with it with letting somebody else assume responsibility for your safety the cost is incalculable you know ask an actuary RK EE the insurance issues the regulation is on and on and on I don't even know what the ultimate number is base big let's uh push back a little bit about I mean you know I think one sure that can be leveled against you is the idea well you know you're romanticizing you're in the business of romanticizing uh you know blue-collar work hard physical labor which it wears people out you know is is hard I mean it's you know it's hard to get up you your body aches at unlike a professional football player you don't even have a week or an offseason you got to get up the next day but it's also true when you look at earnings I'm looking at a Bureau of Labor Statistics chart about earnings by earnings and unemployment rates by educational attainment if you've got a high school degree this is in 2012 your median weekly earnings was 652 dollars if you've got a bachelor's degree it's a thousand fifty six if you've got a high school diploma the unemployment rate is eight point three percent if you've got a bachelor's degree it's four and a half percent so you know why isn't college you know like what do you say to that or how do how do you work around that I guess I would get another graph with some other numbers and I'd say okay we're a trillion dollars in debt I get hundreds of letters a week from parents whose beautifully educated snowflakes are back home sleeping on their sofa you know beautifully educated but completely unqualified for any of the work that's available I know what's happening more or less right now I also know that you know the whole notion of the inverted U is is fascinating to me we were talking more about Gladwell's new book which I really like because it's the idea of realizing that in so many areas you don't get the extra credit you think you'll be compensated for going the extra mile but at some point your return on your investment doesn't really hold up I think that's what's happened in education I'm not saying that what you ought to do is go to high school and then go straight to work that'd be as ridiculous as saying what you ought to do is go straight into the most expensive school you can possibly get in and get your degree those those two things are equally fallacious you know no that's why we talk about there's got to be a component of a freelance mentality there has to be a new component a new understanding of basic margins you know the the idea that that the unemployment rate is simply a reflection of X to few jobs it's that doesn't make sense to me if you have 12 million people unemployed right now most reasonable people would go okay so we need 12 million more jobs except we don't it doesn't work that way if it if it did we wouldn't have 3.9 million jobs available right now it's an inconvenient truth to the prevailing narrative in my opinion you know and so I'm not against with job creation I'm not against education not against any of those things I'm just saying that the statistics I've seen that are right in front of us right now scream opportunity the problem is the opportunities they're screaming for have been historically consistently and traditionally beaten out of our own aspirational wish fulfillment now here let me ask you this are you are you really talking about a crisis among men I'm in the sense that a lot of the jobs a lot of the trades have traditionally or historically been dominated by men you know weren't a lot of female carpenters except on Green Acres I don't think there was a you know a female carpenter you know before about 1970 so you know and when you look at the labor force participation rate by women from 1950 to now it just it just goes up for men it's going down is this really a crisis about male identity and you know men goat would they graduate from high school at lower rates of women they go to college at lower rates than women they graduate from college at lower rates than women so is this really a crisis about men I've no idea all right well that was a bit that was a big wind up for now it's a good question I wish had a snappy answer I think that you know there's there's probably some obvious crossing over right more opportunities have been made available more women can avail themselves to them I don't know that one necess displaces right the other but I do suspect there's a if not a finite or fixed certainly a relatively identifiable chunk of opportunity it's being perhaps parsed out a little differently but look I think everything is I don't think it's as simple as that I think I think you can look at numbers and you can look at trends but what about the impact of technology what about the impact of innovation how are those things you know affecting available opportunities well talk a little bit about that because Obama President Obama a couple I guess was a couple years ago when he talked about you know well it's he's good to talk about a couple of things you know when during a stimulus he talked about shovel-ready jobs I mean you know everybody took that kind of literally that he was talking about you know building new roads or repaving them these were these were physical labor jobs that didn't really materialize with the stimulus but then he also talked about how ATMs were taking people's jobs and it seems kind of odd because you know when you talk about an airplane you know airplanes displaced I don't know railroads but then you know you need mechanics to you know to fix the airplanes you need guys to fuel the airplanes you need people walking up and down the aisle serving drinks on airplanes so as technology the or innovation is that the problem here it's not we're oblem it but well you know the displacement theories interesting you know I first read about it in our industry where you know the idea was the the newspaper would displace the I know the Telegraph for maybe was vice versa right and then and then movies would displace books and a TV would displace movement and a DVD and so it doesn't well yeah so that we have I mean you know a good example is how radio was supposedly killed by TV right but now we have more TV and more radio than ever right so it's kind of supplemental oft yeah so but every now and then you know every now and then you know like the 8tracks gone right it's gone yeah you know so some sometimes things are displaced sometimes they're just reimagined but to your first point the first time I heard shovel-ready jobs as a turn of phrase I was I was in a water tower in New York with the guys who replace the water wouldn't wooden water towers on top of on top of skyscrapers and you know a guy had a had a small TV and we were on a break and we were watching it and everybody just laughed at the expression shovel-ready jobs and there was one of the guys I was working with said you know the thing is about all that he's going to have a lot more success selling so shovel-ready jobs to a country that still values the notion of picking up a shovel and it went right into our but the whole micro works manifesto which is you can't assume anymore that the thing that used to be aspirational still is you can't assume an existing opportunity is enough for the opportunity to be filled it isn't you know that that really has fundamentally changed with respect to technology I think you're really talking we're really talking about efficiency versus effectiveness which I've always been interested in you know it's so you have what do you mean by that I mean that if you ask any fortune 500 company what their views are on efficiency they'll they'll talk very grandly and for a long time and they'll show you brochures and no and they'll show you how efficient they are on dirty jobs what I saw was was much more of an allegiance to effectiveness you know back to that inverted you right you you don't need a cannon to do the the job of a of a 22 you know it's effective you know but the love affair with efficiency taken too far will have a consequence Huxley said the greatest enemy of freedom is total anarchy but the second greatest enemy is total efficiency right and so we've become amazingly efficient our PDAs our telephone there's so many some so many examples but the more efficient we become the less need we have for a big workforce they're just their opposite and there's now wasn't that the dream of Karl Marx I mean which is that you know after we get to a certain point the things you know fruit just starts falling off the tree and you know and then we get to spend all our time and leisure they are but we're not there yet or it's not working out the way that he imagined total efficiency is total robots you know I mean what what do you want really I mean so again it's not a rant against efficiency I'm not a Luddite I'm not saying slow down I'm just saying you ought to be aware that you know all the charts and all the data that you have they might be true but what is the real context of of the world we're living it things are happening so fast jobs are jobs are vanishing and people need to somehow recalibrate in this world of hyper run efficiency and that brings back us of that freelance thing I mean we recognize now or it seems like people growing up today as opposed maybe 30 years ago recognize that you know companies like IBM and AT&T you know Sears these these companies are not long for the world and that the companies we assume will guarantee you lifetime employment are not around anymore so part of your message is that recalibration you always have to be ready to spin and move into a new direction look I think the welder is is a really interesting example you know because like the freelance you know he doesn't have a Lance he has a welding torch and and a good welder is really it's a very artistic thing to watch it's many many different kinds of welding exist and the people who are good at it or are almost savant like it used to be called the Industrial Arts you mentioned before how vote tech vanished from high school well all the press that I read about the vanishing thing from high school was was the arts it was really photic that went first and hardest you know but the idea that artistry can still exist with work is really important and when you separate artistry from work you get the same kind of problem you get when you separate clean from dirty or blue-collar from white collar you create a gap and it's that gap into which all kinds of things fall you know including X stations including opportunity and including millions of jobs so you know I look at I look at welding really as maybe the best example of everything we're talking about right now the opportunities exist the opportunities pay well the opportunities are wildly underserved people don't aspire to it and yet everything in this room requires it you know so whether it's smooth roads or runways or cheap electricity or indoor plumbing or basic infrastructure you know we used to look at the people that provided those services as vaguely heroic now it's not it's not that we disparage them we don't look at them or if we do we just don't seem right well speaking of freelance recalibrating dirty jobs is over what is you know what you're doing next is it I'm going to a series of interviews in hotel rooms around this great land I'm talking about the changing face of the modern-day proletariat the bad news is there'll be no money yes but the good news is there's room service there's rip sir and you can mailers TV right now look I'm I'm living as you are in the age of honey boo boo right not a bad thing necessarily it's just that it's transitioning like everything else we were joking before the the Ducks have a dynasty and the Amish have a mafia and a nonfiction television right now is being hugely impacted by writers these shows have writers rooms right again it's okay it's just that dirty jobs is a very tough sell in that environment because I never knew how dirty jobs would end I still don't really accept that it's over so I guess I kind of know it eventually would end but episode by episode segment by segment what was really for sale on that show was uncertainty and a viewer dug it you know people like the idea of you know no rehearsal no scripts no writers no ii take that today makes people really anxious you know and so we're seeing a much more careful measured controlled look at something that should be uncaring measured and uncertain in my opinion so I've taken a year to kind of look around and and honestly rather than jump right into some you know version of dirty jobs that is more controlled I'd rather talk about you know some of the things I learned from doing it and and see maybe if there's a way to you know stay relevant in that space because really look I was lucky I went to a community college then I went to work then I went back to school I got my degree but my real education took place in reality TV mostly in a sewer well we will leave it there I want to thank Mike Rowe for talking to Reason TV I'm Nick Gillespie thank you any time if you want to swap the Pat and a jacket the thing anytime will go OK we could as far as long as it's leather I'm good with it's kind of a pleather yes

Channel: ReasonTV

Views: 1,027,604

Rating: 4.9276009 out of 5

Keywords: reason, reason.com, reason.tv, reason magazine, mike rowe, dirty jobs, discovery channel, nick gillespie, libertarian, college, unemployment, reason foundation, reasontv, profoundly disconnected, qvc, blue collar jobs, mikeroweworks, mike rowe foundation, welding, college loans, debt, university, tv, television

Id: qzKzu86Agg0

Length: 40min 59sec (2459 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 13 2013

Reddit Comments

[u/tomsawyeee]

This is a great video and totally worth watching it all! Very good messages here

[u/slim145]

mike rowe is wicked beast.

[u/lilfuzzy]

I started watching it without looking at how long it was, and at the end saw it was 40 min. I loved every minute of it. I'm the biggest supporter of his philosophy, because I am part of that skilled trade workforce. I'm an aircraft mechanic, and went to a trade school to do it. I make good money. It can and does work. College is not the cure - all answer.

[u/SixSpeedDriver]

Let's not forget the vast oversupply of money into the education industry peddled by the federal government as student loans and grants. While they do definitely afford an opportunity, they really just wall paper over a K-12 education system that doesn't prepare people for the real world. The value of the high school diploma has plummeted because it doesn't make you ready to face the world at 18.

[u/[deleted]]

They talk about the skills gap, but I never see any of the trades or hear about any of the unions advertising for apprentices.

The same exact thing happens in the hospitals I have worked in. Oh you wanna job as a nurse? We are only hiring people with ABC certification and XYZ years of experience. No we are not hiring from within because it costs us too much money to train people, and once they are trained and experienced they just leave to go elsewhere for higher pay.

Nobody wants to train the people they already have and at the same time have no problem stealing people away from wherever they can. And for some jobs like this, these credentials aren't something you can just go take a class for. They require OJT, book work, and certification testing to have it. Radiology is the worst about this. Oh you wanna learn CT or MRI... then you have to have your RT. Oh you want a job as an RT... well we are only hiring people with CT or MRI too. Sorry you need more training/schooling/experience. Then they cry when they can't find people.

This type of thing happens all over the place in many professions... this is just an example from my experiences.

[u/todaywasawesome]

I hope he's promoting a book called "Profoundly Disconnected", because it not, this is way out of line. http://imgur.com/NFdqhsb

[u/wronghead]

While some of what he says is obviously true, he's very much falling victim to what he initially complains about. "Every PR campaign goes too far."

While his tone is reasonable, "safety third," falling behind "money" and "getting the job done" is a mantra that has been demonstrably harmful to workers since time immemorial.

There have been lazy people since time immemorial as well, so pretending that this generation, or the last generation are any less lazy than baby boomers is comical. People are always looking for an angle. Technology has allowed us to "work smarter, not harder," but so did slavery, so has compulsory wage work made things easier for one man to collect a portion of the production of those who work under him.

But we call that "ingenuity," not laziness.

Some people don't appreciate hard work, that is true. Some people have no perspective, and the youth can be over-educated and under-prepared, that is also true. College is far too expensive, that is true. But in this PR... conflict? argument? There is no sense in pushing the scale back to the 1850's. We don't need a generation full of plumbers and farmers any more than we need a generation full of IT consultants.

Some people absolutely should look to manual labor as a method to contribute and be compensated, but there are a lot of dreamers out there that absolutely should follow their dreams. There are actors and painters and musicians, and adventurers, and computer programers and all manner of soft, pink handed, creative, abstract people out there that should contribute and be compensated in a way that is important to them and to the rest of us because they are absolute shit at doing repetitive, boring work.

It takes all kinds. I understand and appreciate the imbalance and understand, in part, his motivations and even agree with them, but Mike's views are colored by his own experiences, and it doesn't seem like he's being terribly objective about the reality of things.

[u/HueyLewis1]

Im almost 100k in debt with a masters degree. I worked with ESPN for a year but had to leave and move back home due to not being able to afford to live where I lived. I wish I had never gotten a masters degree because it took a year out of my life where I could have been getting real world experience in my field. Though there are opportunities in my field, many are held by people who have been in the business many years and the demand for camera operators is not very high. I was mostly forced into getting a masters by my parents but I absolutely do not need it. I feel people see my resume and assume I am over qualified for the job. All I want is to work. What Mike is saying is true, you absolutely do not need a college education to get a job and forking out 50-100 thousand dollars doesn't give you a better shot at those kind of jobs.

[u/Atticah]

Being unemployed this motivates me.