A message to graduates: A college degree is valuable, but skilled trades also offer practical paths to success
Across the country, members of the Class of 2025 have been hearing powerful messages from commencement speakers about purpose, ambition and changing the world. Graduation is a moment that calls for big dreams.
There’s also another message I wish someone had delivered. This is what I would tell graduates if I had the opportunity: A college degree may be personally meaningful, but it might not get you where you want to go financially. In many cases, a technical school or skilled trade could offer a more reliable path to both income and independence.
On his CNN broadcast on May 24, Michael Smerconish cited long-running research from economists Owen Zidar and Eric Zwick. Their forthcoming book, titled “Stealthy Wealthy: Who Is Really Rich in America and How They Got There, was recently profiled in The Wall Street Journal.”
It highlights a truth that’s long been visible to those of us who work closely with business owners: Many of America’s wealthiest people didn’t get there through elite credentials or high-profile careers. They built small to mid-sized regional businesses that quietly produce steady profits: auto dealerships, HVAC companies, beverage distributors, service companies, or manufacturing firms.
These aren’t the kinds of careers students dream about. Very few graduates toss their caps into the air thinking, “I hope one day to distribute auto parts across the Midwest.”
But for many, such business paths lead not only to financial independence, but to a meaningful and deeply satisfying life.
Zidar and Zwick’s analysis of anonymized IRS data showed that many of the top 0.1% of earners in the U.S. get their wealth from business profits in practical, often unglamorous enterprises that meet everyday needs.
I’ve worked with many of these quiet multi-millionaires throughout my 40-year career in financial planning. They were small business owners, often working behind the scenes, staying focused, and reinvesting year after year. They didn’t dream of prestige. They built businesses around utility and grit.
Their Internal Financial Systems™ were self-led. They made decisions from a centered place, guided by long-term thinking and grounded clarity, not by parts chasing recognition, status, or an abstract sense of meaning.
Many of the college degrees we admire appeal to inner drives for significance, creativity, connection, or the desire to understand and influence the world. The quiet millionaires I’ve worked with didn’t abandon those motivations. They translated them. They built companies where integrity, quality, and understanding people — customers, employees, and vendors — were essential. They didn’t choose money over passion. They chose to embed passion in systems that could also sustain them financially. They didn’t settle; they synthesized.
All too often, our cultural narrative sends graduates chasing credentials and careers that may require massive student debt and offer little financial return. Meanwhile, the trades and regional entrepreneurship are rarely framed as first-choice paths, despite their earning potential and independence.
Full disclosure: I hold a master’s degree, earned nearly 20 years after I dropped out of college to pursue a career in real estate and financial planning. My professional training and experience eventually translated into college credits, and I went on to earn the advanced degree. My formal education was not a starting point but the outcome of a technical, real-world education.
So I would say this, especially to high school graduates: If you have any interest in something practical, local, or modest, don’t brush it aside. Wealth and opportunities are built in warehouses, job sites, and service businesses as well as in venture pitches or corner offices.
A college degree may be a milestone that represents one possible career path. But it’s not your only route toward a future that is both financially sound and deeply fulfilling.
Rick Kahler, CFP, is a fee-only financial planner and financial therapist with a nationwide practice, Kahler Financial Group, based in Rapid City. His co-authored books include “Coupleship Inc.” and “The Financial Wisdom of Ebenezer Scrooge.”
Photo: public domain, wikimedia commons
The South Dakota Standard is offered freely and is supported by our readers. We have no political or commercial sponsorship. If you'd like to help us continue our mission to advance independent political and social commentary, you can do so by clicking on the "Donate" button that's on the sidebar to your right.
