Career · After High School · Video Lesson
College or a Trade: Run the Numbers
College or a trade? Students run three paths out of the same high school class as running totals over 40 years, check a lifetime-earnings claim, work out what a student loan really repays, and test the average against four degree fields.
For Teachers
Lesson at a glance
- Topic
- Career & Paying for Education
- Grade Level
- Grades 9–12 & Adult Ed
- Resource Type
- Video Lesson + Worksheet
- Estimated Time
- 50 minutes
- Format
- Whole class, pairs, individual quiz
- Materials
- Video, printable worksheet with answer key, and a calculator for pages 1 and 2
What Students Learn
Learning objectives
- Compare three paths after high school as running totals of money earned minus tuition, and explain why which path is ahead depends on when you ask.
- Find the year a four-year degree catches up with a paid apprenticeship, and explain the part time until earning plays.
- Check a lifetime-earnings claim, and explain what it compares and what it leaves out.
- Calculate what a student loan repays in total and in interest from its monthly payment, and describe what the video says about borrowing and aid.
- Explain why an average hides a lot, and show that a degree job paying more each year can still end behind.
- Compare the day-to-day trade-offs the video describes, and use its better question and its three look-ups to plan a decision.
Materials
What you’ll need
- Internet access to play the video (6 minutes 0 seconds — the plan plays it once, with one pause)
- Printed copies of the worksheet — the three paths on page 1, the loan and the degree fields on page 2, the quiz on pages 3–4, answer key on page 5 for the teacher. Print single-sided, because pages 1 and 2 go out at different times
- A calculator for pages 1 and 2, which ask for running totals in whole dollars and a loan’s total in dollars and cents
- Board space for three columns headed Job, Apprenticeship and Degree, kept up until the end
Key Terms
Vocabulary
- Apprenticeship
- A paid job with training built in. You work, you are taught, and your pay rises as your skills grow.
- Tuition and fees
- What a college charges for classes. It does not include housing, food or books.
- Running total
- A total that is kept up to date year by year: this year’s figure added to everything before it.
- Lifetime earnings
- Everything a person earns over a working life. Researchers often count 40 years, from age 25 to 64.
- Median pay
- The middle figure when everyone’s pay is lined up from lowest to highest: half earn more, half earn less.
- Total repaid
- Everything paid back on a loan: the monthly payment times the number of payments. What is left after taking away the amount borrowed is the interest.
- Unsubsidized loan
- A student loan whose interest starts adding up while you are still in school.
- Self-employed
- Working for yourself, running your own business, rather than for an employer.
For Teachers
Lesson plan
Estimated time: one 50-minute class period. The six steps below run 42–48 minutes, which leaves the rest of the period for handing out, settling and collecting. In a 45-minute period, set the quiz as homework and run steps 1–5 — they come to 36–41 minutes, and the quiz detaches cleanly because every item is answerable from the video alone. If time runs short inside a 50-minute period, the written parts are what get squeezed: let pairs finish the tables on both pages in class and set the closing questions (page 1’s three parts, page 2’s four) as homework or the next day’s warm-up. Collect the handouts before the quiz either way.
Before you start: nothing on either handout depends on a real school, employer, place or date. Every pay figure, tuition figure, loan and degree field is invented and printed on the page, and the one real rule the lesson uses — the 15-year standard repayment plan the video describes — is named as the video’s. The video’s own figures are dated reporting and stay in the video and the quiz. Neither handout tells a student which path to take.
Lesson sequence
- Who is ahead? (4–5 min). Draw three columns on the board: Job, Apprenticeship, Degree. Ask for a show of hands: four years after high school, which of the three has the most money to show for it? Twenty years after? Keep the tallies on the board; step 5 comes back to them.
- Watch the video once (8–9 min). It runs 6 minutes. Ask students to note three things: what an apprentice pays to train, what the video’s lifetime gap compares, and the question it says is better than “which one is better.” Pause at 2:41, where the chapter on how much college pays off starts, and ask: after four years, what has each path cost, and what has each one earned? Take two answers and play on. These are video notes for the handouts; they are collected before the quiz.
- Three paths. Page 1, in pairs (12–13 min). Hand out page 1 only — the two handouts go out one at a time, in the order they print. Path 1 is worked on the sheet; do Path 2’s year-4 box together so every pair has the running-total idea before going on. Pairs finish the table, circle the path ahead at each checkpoint, then find the catch-up year and check the ad. A calculator helps. Do not say which path is ahead; the circles ask.
- The loan and the average. Page 2, in pairs (9–10 min). Now hand out page 2 only. Students keep page 1, because page 2 compares each degree field with a total from it. The first loan and Field A are worked; make sure every pair can say where the 180 payments come from before they go on. Pairs share the tables; each student writes the last question alone.
- Check both pages, then back to the board (3–4 min). Read out the checkpoints from the answer key — the year-10 row, the catch-up year and the Field C total — so students can find their own slip. Then return to the step 1 tallies: which of them held up, and at which checkpoint? Use one or two of the discussion questions below.
- Quiz (6–7 min). Collect pages 1 and 2 and any video notes first, then hand out the separate 12-question quiz on pages 3–4, one point per question. It prints after the handouts and is taken without them, because several of its options state what the handouts ask students to work out. The answer key is page 5, for the teacher, and detaches from the back.
Activities
- Ask a different question. Pairs write three headlines from page 1 that are all true — one where each path comes out on top — then say which checkpoint each headline quietly picked.
- A normal Tuesday. The video ends with the one question no figure answers. Students list three things about a workday in the trades and three about an office job that the video mentions, and say which would matter most to them.
Assessment
Students complete the separate 12-question multiple choice quiz, worth one point each, so it is out of 12. Every objective is assessed by at least one quiz item or one handout question. Both handout pages also carry marks of their own, printed on each page and broken down in the answer key. Running three paths, finding the catch-up year, totaling a loan and testing the average are weighted onto the handouts rather than the quiz, because they are production rather than recognition tasks. The quiz covers the video; the handouts cover the arithmetic. If you grade only one handout alongside the quiz, make it page 1, which carries the most marks.
Extension
- A five-year apprenticeship. The video says an apprenticeship takes four to five years. Students redo Path 2 with a fifth year at the training pay and find whether the catch-up year moves earlier or later, and why.
- Two years first. Students invent a cheaper first two years for Path 3 — lower tuition for years 1 and 2 — and find how the running total at year 10 changes. The article for this video links a guide to starting at a community college.
- Three look-ups. Students pick any job they are curious about and look up the video’s three things in the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook: what it pays, what the training costs, and how long until you are earning. No figures from home are needed or collected.
Discussion
Discussion questions
- Before the video: if you had to decide today between college and a trade, what is the first thing you would want to know?
- On page 1, a different path led at different checkpoints. If someone told you one path “wins,” what would you ask them first?
- The video says an apprenticeship is a job, not a class you pay for. What does that change about the first four years?
- On page 2, Field C paid more each year than the trained electrician and still ended behind. What would have to change for it to end ahead?
- The video compares a normal day in the trades and in office jobs. Which differences would matter most to you, and which would not matter at all?
- The video’s better question is: what job do I actually want, and what is the cheapest way to get there? Why might that be easier to answer than “which is better”?
Printable Worksheet
College or a Trade: Run the Numbers — Handouts, Quiz & Answer Key
Two student handouts worth 33 marks, a 12-question multiple choice quiz based on the video worth 1 point each, and an answer key for the teacher — 5 pages. Print single-sided. The PDF is part of Full Membership.
Teacher Notes
Notes for teachers
The article for this video. Our article Is College Still Worth It? College vs Trade School (2026) covers the same ground for a general reader, with the student-loan example worked out and a short FAQ. It is a good reading for a student who misses the video.
The lessons to pair it with. Student Loans 101: The Basics explains what a student loan is, federal against private, before anyone signs; this lesson adds up what one repays. The Careers & Paying for Education unit spends five days on choosing a career and building a college budget; this lesson is the side-by-side comparison of paths that the unit does not make.
Where the video’s figures come from, and why they stay off the handouts. The video, published September 25, 2026 by Money, Basically, uses Bureau of Labor Statistics pay and unemployment figures for 2025 and August 2026, Department of Labor apprenticeship figures, College Board tuition averages, this school year’s federal loan rate, New York Fed figures on recent graduates and Indeed job-posting data. Those are dated, so they appear in the quiz as the video’s own and nowhere on the handouts. Every path, pay figure, loan and degree field on pages 1 and 2 is invented, and neither page names a school, a company, a place or a major. The 15-year standard plan is the real rule the video describes.
What the lesson does not say. It never says college or a trade is the better choice. The video’s own conclusion is that “which one is better” is the wrong question, and both handouts are built so the figures give different answers depending on when you look and which job you mean. Nothing on either page promises a salary or a job.
Page 1 is built so no path wins outright. Its figures are chosen so the path that is ahead is not the same at every checkpoint, and so the path with the best pay once working is not ahead early on. An invented ad’s lifetime figure is correct arithmetic and still a different comparison from the page’s; the closing box asks why. The apprenticeship is four years, the short end of the video’s four to five, so both training paths take the same time. The answer key sets out every figure; this page does not, because it is public.
Page 2 is the video’s “averages hide a lot” point in numbers. Students total a student loan from its monthly payment, then replace page 1’s one degree salary with four lettered fields and compare each with the apprenticeship. The fields are letters on purpose, so no real major is shown as the poor choice. The page never states what the comparison shows; the key has it.
Hand out pages 1 and 2 one at a time. Page 2 uses a total from page 1, so students keep both until they are done. The quiz is pages 3 and 4 and every item is answerable from the video alone — but collect both handouts before it goes out, because several of its options restate what they establish. Collect the notes students took during the video as well.
Nobody is asked about their own money. Every path, pay figure and loan is invented, and each student page says so. No prompt asks about a student’s or a family’s income, savings or college fund.
What this lesson deliberately does not do. It does not teach how to apply for aid or fill in the FAFSA, or how to budget a year at college — the Paying for College lessons do. It does not rank careers or majors, and it does not advise any student which path to take.
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