Apprenticeship vs College: The 10-Year Money Math

Ten years is the window where this argument actually gets settled. Not four. Not one. Ten, because that is long enough for the apprentice to finish, top out, and put some experience behind their name, and long enough for the graduate to get four raises and knock a chunk off the loan.

I ran both paths through our model using national BLS OEWS May 2025 wages. Across every trade we track, the degree never caught the apprenticeship inside those ten years. Not once.

That surprised me less than it should have, and I want to show you exactly why, including the places where the number lies to you.

Two Kids, Same September

One signs an apprenticeship agreement. The other signs a promissory note.

The apprentice works about 2,000 paid hours a year next to journeymen and sits through technical instruction on top of that: theory, code, blueprint reading, safety. The student takes 15 credits and earns nothing while enrolled.

Our model gives the college path $15,000 a year in tuition and fees, which is College Board’s 2025 blended average across public in-state, public out-of-state, and private nonprofit. It graduates in four years with $37,850 in debt at 6.39 percent, the federal undergraduate rate for the 2025-26 award year, and starts at $60,000 with 3.5 percent raises. That is a fair, middle-of-the-road degree, not a worst case.

Here is the head-to-head for an electrician, running national medians.

Year	Electrician apprentice, cumulative	College path, cumulative
1	$24,095	-$15,000
2	$65,169	-$30,000
3	$115,721	-$45,000
4	$172,592	-$60,000
5	$235,782	-$2,419
6	$298,972	$57,443
10	$593,232	$321,441

The apprentice clears $172,000 in the same four years the graduate spends $60,000. That is a $232,000 swing before the graduate has worked a single day, and it is the whole ballgame.

Catching up on a $232,000 head start takes a salary gap the degree does not have here. A $60,000 starting salary with 3.5 percent raises reaches about $71,000 by year ten. The journeyman electrician is sitting on a $63,190 national median by year five and ramping toward the $83,940 seventy-fifth percentile in years eight through ten. The gap never closes. It widens.

Year 10, Trade by Trade

Same model, same college assumptions, different trade. Every dollar below is cumulative earnings minus training costs and loan interest, on national BLS May 2025 medians.

Trade	National median	Year-10 trade total	Ahead of the degree by
Elevator installer	$109,910	$1,022,324	$700,882
Lineworker	$95,320	$881,720	$560,279
Plumber	$63,800	$599,750	$278,309
Electrician	$63,190	$593,232	$271,790
HVAC technician	$61,010	$595,594	$274,153
Carpenter	$60,580	$578,778	$257,337
Welder	$53,750	$529,208	$207,766

Welding sits at the bottom of that list and still finishes $207,766 ahead. That is the part people miss. The lowest-paid trade on the board beats the blended degree inside ten years, because four years of zero income plus $60,000 of tuition is a hole you have to climb out of before you are even at even.

State numbers move this around hard. A Washington electrician works against a $95,220 state median, which puts a first-year apprentice near $47,600 and the ten-year total at $887,817. A California electrician runs against a $76,160 median. Always check your own state, because the national median is not a number anybody actually gets paid. The methodology page lists every constant and where it came from.

The Scale Is Published Before You Sign

Model estimates are one thing. A signed contract you can go read yourself is better.

IBEW Local 110 in St. Paul, 2025-26 contract year: a journeyman inside wireman’s base rate is $56.80 an hour, and the total package with benefits is $94.89 an hour. Apprentices start at 45 percent of scale, which is $25.56 an hour, and step through 45, 55, 60, 75, and 85 percent, with each step requiring at least 1,560 hours. By year five that scale pays $48.28 an hour before benefits.

The elevator side publishes its ladder too. NEIEP apprentices run 50 percent while probationary, then 55, 65, 70, and 80 percent by year, then jump to 100 percent after passing the mechanic exam. Certified welders usually earn more while they are welding.

Read those two paragraphs again and notice what they are. A raise schedule, in writing, before you start. No college financial aid letter tells you what you will be paid in year four.

What This Model Leaves Out, Honestly

I would rather you trust the number than be impressed by it, so here is what is not in it.

Taxes and living costs are excluded from both sides. Same treatment, both paths, which means this is a comparison of paths and not a savings forecast. Nobody banks $593,000 in ten years. They earn it and spend most of it.

The window stops at year ten. Lifetime earnings by degree field are a real thing, and some degrees pull away later. Engineering, nursing, and computer science graduates do not follow the blended $60,000 line, and neither do a lot of majors on the other end.

The trade path also assumes you finish. Apprenticeship attrition is real. If you wash out in year two, you have a partial ladder and no credential, and none of these totals apply to you.

Where the Degree Actually Wins

There are careers you cannot get into any other way. Nurse, teacher, engineer, accountant, pharmacist. If that is the work you want, this whole comparison is noise and you should go get the degree.

A degree is also portable in a way a license is not. Electrical and plumbing licenses are state by state, and in Illinois, Pennsylvania, and New York electrical licensing happens at the city or county level. Moving means paperwork, sometimes exams.

And the body matters. BLS describes HVAC work as having one of the highest rates of injuries and illnesses of all occupations. I have been swinging a hammer for over 20 years and my knees have opinions about it. A trade career that ends early at 50 does not look like the one that runs to 65, and no ten-year model captures that risk.

Getting In Is the Hard Part

The money argument is easy. The seat is not.

Elevator is the highest-paid trade we track and also one of the smallest, about 23,790 jobs nationally, with roughly 2,000 openings a year per BLS. Entry runs through the NEIEP aptitude test and a four-year apprenticeship. A lot of people apply for very few slots.

Electrical is far more open. BLS projects 9 percent growth from 2024 to 2034 against a 3.1 percent all-occupation average, with about 81,000 openings a year, most of them replacing people who retire or leave. That is steady demand, not a boom you have to time.

How I Would Decide at 18

Three questions, in this order.

Does the work you want require a degree? If yes, go. Stop reading.

If no, can you get into a registered apprenticeship in your state? Registered means a published wage scale, defined hour milestones, and technical instruction that comes with the job instead of a bill. Ask for the scale in writing before you sign anything. If they will not show it to you, that tells you what you need to know.

If you cannot land an apprenticeship this year, a short trade program can be the bridge rather than the destination, and many programs give you apprenticeship credit. Ask whether it is Workforce Pell eligible, because that eligibility requires a 70 percent completion rate and a verified 70 percent job-placement rate measured 180 days after completion. That is a free background check on the school.

I came up in a family of carpenters. My dad learned from his dad, and I learned by doing the work badly until I did it well, on real jobs, getting paid the whole time. The math on this page is just arithmetic proving what that path already taught me.

Run it against your own state and your own trade instead of taking my word for it. The calculator uses the same model and the same BLS snapshot as everything above, and it will tell you plainly if your numbers say something different. If you want the funding side first, I wrote up jobs that pay for your training, and if you are weighing a school program instead of an apprenticeship, start with is trade school worth it.