Vocational enrollment is up among younger Americans as the toolbelt generation takes shape, and one nurse-turned-union ironworker thinks it's a good opportunity for students to secure their futures.
"I think going into a trade school is a great opportunity because, with a lot of trade schools and especially apprenticeship programs for the union, by the time you're done, and you turn out as a journeyman, you don't have any debt that you have to worry about," Tiffany Younk, a Michigan-based ironworker, told Fox News Digital on Wednesday.
Tiffany said the "go to college" mindset was drilled into her mind as a younger millennial. She decided to deviate from that path and follow in her father's footsteps in trade labor after realizing the traditional college route — and her earlier dreams of becoming a graphic designer as well as her later venture into nursing — weren't satisfactory.
"I told her, ‘You can be whatever the hell you want,'" Robert Younk told Fox News Digital. "And I think that women can be whatever they want."
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Robert, who retired from ironworking in January, said he spent approximately 35 years in the trade. When asked to give advice for young adults who are on the fence about enrolling in trade school, he said it's "the only way to go."
"Back when I was growing up in the ‘60s and early ’70s, it was preached back then by my father, ‘trade schools, trade schools, trade schools.’ We didn't have the money to go to trade school, but we lived 250 miles north of the big cities, up in the country, so it wasn't an option up here," he said.
Robert praised a multimillion dollar training center his union funds.
"I'm sure quite a few of the ironworkers across the country have [something] like our training center," he said. "We have a multimillion dollar training facility. We could teach these young kids anything from welding to rod tying and conveyor work, putting a building together and working with cranes, and they can come out of that four years later not in debt."
With skyrocketing college costs, it's a far less expensive option than earning a traditional four-year degree.
"We paid very little for our tuition. I think it was like $180 a year," Tiffany explained," I think $96,000 is what it costs to send somebody through our apprenticeship, and that's not my debt. Collectively, [as a union] we all pay for that together, so I think trade school or an apprenticeship is a great avenue to go down."
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Tiffany and Robert were among the thousands of trade workers who poured their time and effort into renovating Michigan Central Station, a historical landmark in Detroit slated to reopen this summer.
In the process, they bridged the gap between work and family, working together as a dynamic father-daughter duo.
"There are a lot of sons out there who work with fathers sometimes, but you very rarely ever see a father-daughter team," Robert told Fox News Digital.
"I know a couple of women in our trade that've gotten a chance to work with their father but for a short time. Either they retired or they got on different jobs."
The two spent three years together in the field, and Robert used his background in welding to train Tiffany.
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"She got good at it, and she'll never have to worry about a job ever again," he said. "As far as any kind of welding job, she's good at it, and she'll stay good at it."
"I actually postponed my retirement by three years just to work with her," he added.
Tiffany said her father was one of her biggest influences when she considered entering iron work. It had been a part of her life from an early age, she recalled, noting she had spent time with Robert on job sites since she was about three or four years old.
"Around that time, when I was three or four, I would spend the weekends with him in our shop up north at home, learning how to weld, and doing that kind of stuff with him," she added.
They each described a sense of pride in their work, of being able to point to the buildings they helped construct and knowing they had contributed to something significant.
"Nothing I have felt so far that matches that," Tiffany said. "And it's just really neat to contribute to something."
