We need to end the stigma attached to trade schools — and to trades themselves. College isn’t the be-all and end-all measurement of a successful life. Plenty of my friends are living in hovels, crippled by student loan debt, coddling their master’s or doctoral degrees. No kids, no house: no money.

Tim, and so many like him, aren’t living with mommy and daddy. They aren’t drowning in loan debt. They have stable jobs, jobs that pay well. Jobs that are recession-proof. They can provide for a family.

Isn’t that, in the end, the real American dream?