Trading a 4-year degree for a 2-year HVAC cert was the best call I ever made

I dropped out of community college in Raleigh back in 2019 after 3 semesters of racking up debt for classes I didn't care about. Now I fix AC units and make $28 an hour with overtime. My old classmates are still paying off loans for degrees they don't use. My instructor told me, "you'll learn more in a crawl space than a classroom," and he was right. Anyone else trade a degree path for a trade and see their wallet actually grow?

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terry11d ago

Take that crawl space wisdom and run with it, because the real education kicks in when you're sweating your way through a unit install and figuring out why the damn thing won't cool. The money follows the skills nobody wants to do, and HVAC pays off exactly because most folks would rather sit in an office than get their hands dirty. Your instructor nailed it, and five years from now you'll still be the one with a paid-off truck and a war chest for whenever you decide to start your own gig.