Peter Angelico, Libertarian candidate for Nepean and successful manufacturing entrepreneur, nails a truth too many policymakers have ignored for decades. Australia spent 30 years selling a seductive but flawed message to its young people: University is the only path to success. Go to uni, get the degree, secure the future. Anything less — especially a trade — was quietly framed as second-rate.
At the same time, governments shuttered technical high schools, weakened apprenticeships, and poured subsidies into higher education. The results are now painfully obvious: chronic skills shortages in construction, manufacturing, engineering, and trades; a mountain of HECS-HELP student debt; delayed workforce entry; and a generation struggling with home ownership.
The Financial Reality Check
Angelico lays out the numbers clearly. A typical uni graduate emerges at 22–23 with $30k–$60k+ in debt, limited work experience, and delayed earnings. An apprentice starts at 17–18, earns from day one, and qualifies by 20–21 with real skills, income history, and no education debt.
That head start matters enormously in Australia's brutal housing market. Banks factor HECS repayments into lending capacity. Early savings from trade income can mean the difference between buying a home in your 20s versus renting into your 30s. Tradespeople also gain the practical base to start businesses — toolbag to employer — faster than many graduates.
A Self-Inflicted Skills Crisis
This wasn't accidental. Policy choices in the 1990s and beyond dismantled vocational pathways just as the "everyone to uni" push accelerated. Hands-on, mechanically minded kids who didn't fit the academic mould lost options. Many disengaged, leading to underemployment, welfare dependency, and lost productivity for the economy.
Today, trades shortages bite hard: infrastructure delays, higher building costs, manufacturing bottlenecks, and regional skills gaps. Apprenticeship numbers have declined in key areas while industries beg for workers. The social cost is huge, a cohort now aged 35–50 who fell through the cracks when technical education evaporated.
Angelico speaks from experience: booted from school in Year 10, he took the apprenticeship route, built real skills, and went on to found and grow manufacturing businesses employing Australians. Practical thinkers weren't "dumb" — they just needed the right pathway, one Australia largely dismantled.
How to Fix It
Rebuilding the apprenticeship pipeline isn't nostalgia, it's pragmatic. Benefits include:
Earlier workforce entry and economic contribution.
Reduced family financial burden and faster independence for young people.
Accelerated home ownership through debt-free earnings.
Intergenerational skill transfer and stronger communities.
Boost to small business creation and industrial capability.
Angelico's core message: Measure twice, cut once. Before pushing every young Australian toward university debt, honestly assess outcomes. For many, the best path starts on the workshop floor — learning by doing, earning while qualifying, and building a tangible future.
Australia's obsession with university-for-all has created a mismatch between education supply and economic demand. Restoring dignity and incentives to trades isn't anti-education — it's pro-reality. It values different strengths, fills critical shortages, and gives practical young people a fair shot at success without the debt trap.
Peter Angelico's piece is a timely call to course-correct. Australia needs tradies vastly more than it needs arts graduates. Time to stop talking a generation out of honest, high-value work — and start rebuilding the pathways that built the country in the first place.