The Dirty Truth about Dirty Jobs vs College Degrees with Mike Rowe

Hey, everybody.

It's the end of Charlie Kirk Show. Mike Rowe joins us. What a great conversation this is.

We talk about the muscular class, working with your hands. Talk about do you really need to go to college and more. Check out MikeRoweWorks.org. Email us, FreedomAtCharlieKirk.com. Become a member if you want to join our exclusive Zoom calls. And if you want to be able to listen to all these episodes without any advertisers, members.CharlieKirk.com, members.CharlieKirk.com.

Email me, as always, FreedomAtCharlieKirk.com. Buckle up, everybody, here. Charlie, what you've done is incredible here. Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campuses.

That's why we are here. Mike Rowe is the CEO of MikeRoweWorks.org. Mike, welcome to the program.

Charlie, thanks for having me. I will endeavor to be thoughtful and cogent. Well, very good. So, Mike, tell us about MikeRoweWorks.org. It's a terrific project. Introduce our audience to it, please.

Sure. I did a show called Dirty Jobs for about 20 years. And back in 2008, that show was one of the number – I think it was the number one show on Discovery, maybe on cable. I don't remember. It was a big deal. And a lot of nice things were happening for me. And the country went into a recession, which was not so nice. And then there were 11 million unemployed people, which was not so nice.

And then I noticed, in the course of filming Dirty Jobs, everywhere we went, we saw something really unusual. We saw Help Wanted signs. So that was the first time in my life where I realized that a lot of unemployed people didn't have really anything directly to do with a lack of jobs. There were 2.3 million open positions in the country at that point. Most of them didn't require a four-year degree. They required the mastery of a skill. And so I began to think of these things as dirty jobs opportunities.

And they were all better than most people thought. Many of them provided a direct path to make six figures. Anyway, Microworks started as an attempt to shine a light on those opportunities as they existed back in 2008, 2009. It evolved into a trade resource center that was built by fans of Dirty Jobs so people could go online. And they could search for opportunities in plumbing or heating and air conditioning, electric, welding, mechanical, all those things. So suddenly we had this really cool trade resource center that was going from coast to coast. We had thousands of opportunities being highlighted, again, none of which required a four-year degree. Flashing forward, it's really become a kind of, well, it's a scholarship program. We award a couple million dollars every year in work ethic scholarships.

In fact, we just started a new round yesterday. So I'll be shamelessly flogging that over the course of our conversation. But we also developed a work ethic curriculum, which we finally got into a big high school just last week in Las Vegas. So we're super excited about that. The short version is Microworks exist to shine a light on opportunities that don't require a four-year degree, to make a more persuasive case or work ethic, to challenge stigmas, stereotypes, myths and misperceptions.

They keep a whole generation of kids from pursuing all of these opportunities. And we try and do it with a measure of ennui, self-deprecation, irony and good humor. Well, I love it. And that is certainly on message for us. I have and still am a critic of four-year college in its current form and fashion and what it is not delivering. One of the things I was struck by watching your television program growing up is how much people love their job, even though it was.

Can you comment on that? And I don't know, you were like at some place shoveling manure or I mean, I don't know, just like the stereotypical. And then you would always ask them, hey, what do you think? I love my job. And I was just, you know, it's almost every single episode had some something of that essence. Well, we really look, I wish I could tell you that that was the thing that I always believed in.

My soul was happening in the workforce, but just needed to be elevated. I didn't know that. All I knew for sure is that my my granddad, Carl Noble, only went to the seventh grade and was a skilled tradesman in virtually every field.

He could build a house without a blueprint. And I wanted to do a show that elevated men and women like him who had that that set of skills. But once we got into it, like season two, season three, season four, we did 350 of these jobs. But once we got into it, you're right. People started asking me, what what do these dirty jobbers know as a as a group that the rest of us forgotten? Because they all seem to be having a ball and they're all covered with feces from every species. And toilets are exploding in people's faces and you're up to your neck in misadventures and animal husbandry.

And right. So it just there was a really fun level of cognitive dissonance between the adversity and the challenge posed by all of these jobs collectively. And the great joy and good humor and pride that we found in the people who were doing it.

So I guess it's kind of an obvious thing. I mean, if you grew up with a certain set of values instilled upon you, you would never think to make work the enemy. You would suppose that there'd be dignity in all jobs. But what we learned in 2004, 2005 and certainly today is that our country has to a certain degree made work into the enemy. We have made work the the proximate cause of our discontent. And in so many ways, you can see this play out from Madison Avenue in sitcoms and portrayals of skilled tradespeople and so forth.

And, you know, not not to make it a polemic, but it but it became real clear that there were warring narratives in the country. One had to do with the basic dignity of work and the other had to do with the point I just made, which was the best path for the most people had to be a four year degree. And to challenge those ideas right to to shine a light on the skills gap and say, look, this is not a figment of our imagination. We have right now, Charlie, and I know you know this 11 million unfilled jobs in our country. Most of them don't require a four year degree. They require training. And so, you know, my my soapbox for all this really comes down to the existence of all that opportunity juxtaposed with one point seven trillion dollars in student loans.

And our stubborn insistence to still tell a whole generation of kids that they're screwed without a four year degree. It's nuts. And, Mike, as you were going, you know, episode 30, 40, how happy they are, regardless of what they're doing.

You contrast that if you walk into Google. I don't think that their coders are as happy as someone who is on. I mean, this was it just the stick for the cameras or were they legitimately like joyous?

I mean, I I'm curious because most employers are saying they have a mental health crisis with their workers. Yet you demonstrated over three hundred fifty episodes the joy in doing what most people would even think of doing the incomprehensible. A lot of people thought it was put on. And to be honest, I did, too, for a little while because reality TV has a way of feeding on itself. You know, the Heisenberg. But right.

People start to do what they think you want them to do. But not on this show. We didn't do second takes. We didn't do any rehearsing. We didn't do any casting.

We never did any writing. We were we were true fly on the wall observers of work. And, you know, we showed you precisely what we saw. So, look, the short answer to your question really comes down to job satisfaction and what we're doing today. We're telling kids, look, if you want to be happy in your work, the first thing you do is identify the job you believe you want to do. And then you go about the business of borrowing whatever it takes to get whatever credential is required. And then you'll have the right to sit in a cubicle somewhere and code or do whatever you're going to do.

And then you can let yourself be happy. Well, that's backwards. Right on dirty jobs. These people were very passionate about what they did, Charlie, but they didn't follow their passion. They followed the opportunity and then they figured out a way to love it.

So, Mike, please answer that question. Is there something inherently dignifying for a human being to work with their hands? There's something inherently satisfying dignity, I think is one of those things we get to assign to any task.

That's really up to us. And I guess to some degree satisfaction is too. But one of the big lessons on dirty jobs, and certainly one of the things you can find if you peruse the Old and New Testament, is the satisfaction that comes from always knowing how you're doing. Right?

Yes. I'm sitting here at my desk right now talking to you and I'm looking around and every everything on it is pretty much going to be on it eight hours from now. My desk looks it looks like it looks at 6 a.m. and it looks the same at 6 p.m. So I might sit here and I might write something really thoughtful. I might create something good. I might say something wise.

I who the heck knows. But I don't have any visual cues in my life to tell me how I'm doing when I'm working at my desk. Not really. When you're inspecting a sewer or building a bridge or or mining for coal or gold or something in between or fishing on the Bering Sea or cleaning skulls in Oklahoma City. Yeah, that's a job. You always know how you're doing. And it took a while. Again, I'm not sure how many lessons I learned doing the show or how many lessons I was reminded of that I had forgotten.

But that's a big one. The simple joy of knowing how you're doing at all times is a big benefit of working with your hands and mastering a skill. And being able to track your progress and to have some sort of a destination. For example, hey, I got to put up this drywall.

I have to paint this wall. Can you contrast that, Mike, with the kind of purposelessness, for lack of a better term or lack of purpose that you find in, you know, upper middle class corporate culture where you sit at the desk, answer the phone. And it's kind of as if you're on an endless circle. Well, rather than pick on them, let's pick on our own industry.

Right. I mean, you work really hard. I've seen your work at Turning Point. It's great. I've listened to your show. I like it.

I work hard, too. And then we're done. And what do we do? I mean, if you're me, like, maybe you'll go to your social pages and see what the response is. Maybe you'll go to Nielsen to see if anybody's listening. Maybe you'll go to Podtrack, you know, or whoever tracks your podcast. Is your audience up? Is it down? Are the advertisers happy or are they sad?

Is Rough Greens coming back for six more or eight more? Right. Like, so we want to know how we're doing. And it's not because we're craven or overly materialistic, but it's because we work and we understand there's a cause and an effect. There's a customer, there's a client, there's a listener, there's a viewer, there's a producer, there's a writer.

So, you know, being aware of all of those things that are inherently true in the human condition, I do think helps everyone navigate whatever path they they put themselves on. My complaint is what we've done as a society. My complaint is the way we've put our thumb on the scale and promoted one form of education and all the types of jobs that come with it at the expense of all the others. Under the names of DEI and ESG, the largest asset managers have been using your money, your savings, to push politics into America's corporations. For years, they've implemented an agenda that is anti-American capitalism at your expense without your permission. There's an alternative. At Strive, the only agenda is maximizing shareholder returns, pro-capitalism and pro-meritocracy, shareholders first, period.

To learn more about Strive's shareholder first investment options, visit Strive.com now. Mike, please finish that thought. Well, we were just talking about the way society elevates or de-elevates forms of education and by extension certain jobs. This happened, well, I mean it happens all the time, but in my life, I first noticed it when we pulled shop class out of high school. If there was a dumber thing fraught with more unintended consequences that's ever happened in the history of education, I'm not sure what it would be. When we pulled shop class out of high school, we removed from view an entire category of jobs. And we basically sent a message to a whole generation of kids that said, don't even bother. I mean, don't even bother looking at opportunities in mechanical repair or carpentry or plumbing or electric or heating and air conditioning.

That was a remarkably powerful and profoundly stupid thing to do. But we did it because we were trying to elevate the importance of a four-year degree. And to be fair, back in the 70s, those degrees needed to be elevated. We needed more engineers, we needed more teachers, we needed more doctors, fine. But to promote that path by telling a whole generation of kids that they would be doing themselves a disservice by taking any other path, that's where we got into trouble.

And so on the one hand, I'm just saying it's PR. We elevate what we value and that's a very conscious decision. And so today we don't just have a skills gap, we have a will gap. We have really identified a whole category of jobs as vocational consolation prizes, as something subordinate in other words.

And now we're reaping the whirlwind. And so I speak a lot about the topic of not going to college. I wrote a book called The College Scam. I didn't go to college and so I'm the best and worst person to address this. And the objection I get from parents, they'll agree, hey, the colleges have gone, you know, ideologically off the reservation, but they'll always lean in and almost whisper, Mike, but I still want my kid to go to college. Of course, because they're scared, Charlie, they're scared. There's no playbook. We don't want to screw our kids up.

We want to give them every hope, every opportunity. But look, the magic of college has become, in my view, decoupled from the education you can attain. A college degree has nothing to do with wisdom.

It has nothing to do with smarts. That's what they're selling. But that's not really what's for sale. What's for sale are connections and prestige and fear and a great many other things that go into the pressure that many, many, many millions of kids have felt when it comes time to sign on the dotted line. They don't know what they want to be. They don't know what they want to do.

They don't know what they want to major in. But all of these questions need to be answered and then vast sums need to be borrowed and then the screws get tightened. And that's what we did.

You know, it was a colossal disservice, in my view, and we're still doing it. I'm looking at an article. You should see this thing. It's over on Axios right now. I saw it this morning. I was going to ask you. It was on the deck to actually ask you. I was going to play devil's advocate. If we're talking about the same thing, which is that college is still necessary. By the way, the data they share is all nonsense.

But please, Mike, I'd love to... So the chart. Okay, that's the chart on this thing.

Okay, so the chart shows two things. It shows people with four year degrees, earning an average of $60,000 a year. And then it shows people with high school diplomas, earning much less something like $40,000. And the author is just basically creating a giant advertisement for higher education, the same kind of ad that's been running for decades.

It's nonsense. Are you kidding me? Look, that's like saying that an expensive four year school is going to lead you to make more money over the course of your life than if you stop your education at 18 years of age.

It's like saying joining a really expensive gym is going to lead you to be healthier and more fit if you stop working out when you're 18. Well, no kidding. Of course.

But they completely ignored Charlie. What about the kid who graduates high school, and then goes to a trade school, goes through an apprenticeship program, starts welding, starts plumbing, buys a van, hires some friends, starts a mechanical contracting business, and is now making $350,000 a year. People who go through my foundation every day, they're out on the chart.

You know, Mike, I have so much respect for the muscular class. When I need HVAC or air conditioning work, they charge whatever they want. I ask them what they're making, and they're making a lot more than their counterparts who got some flashy degree from the university down the road.

I'm so glad you saw that Axios piece, and I just want to add kind of my take on it as well. Number one, they don't mention that nearly that nearly I think it's 41 percent of people that enter college don't graduate. They don't graduate. So there's the national dropout rate and they don't factor in continuing certification or being able to get skills after high school.

Yes, if you just stay as a high school graduate with your high school diploma, then you very well might stay in a certain income level. And also, it doesn't factor in, by the way, it doesn't factor in your ability to ascend in the job and get more skills to become an entrepreneur, own your own business, and they don't factor in the debt burden, not to mention the ideological type pollutants that you very well avoid when you go to college. Mike, I want to talk about this article here. I just get the title so our audience can follow along.

But your thoughts, Mike? Well, they don't factor in any of the many individual characteristics that are within our ability to control work ethic, delayed gratification, curiosity, initiative, ambition, all qualities that have a direct impact on the likelihood of a person to prosper. What they do is they assume that all of those virtues are baked in to a diploma, right? That's the working assumption. And it's completely backwards. It's causation without correlation. It's like that old study I remember reading about when I was in college that talked about the incredible way that reported ice cream sales increased in lockstep with reports of sexual assault.

It was amazing. And people were like, what's happening here? Is ice cream leading men to commit more rapes, more sexual assaults? No, no, it's just that in the summertime, when it gets hot, all sorts of interesting things start to happen sociologically. Ice cream sales, for instance, go up, but so do all forms of violence and attacks. And so it's so easy to be confused by facts that really aren't correlated at all.

And my argument today is really exactly that. Yeah, a college degree is a thing, and it can absolutely help you. And in no way am I opposed to being curious and becoming as educated as you can, if you can afford it. A college degree at any cost is laughable. That's like saying a house at any cost, a gym membership at any cost. The cost matters. Never mind what you were talking about before vis-a-vis indoctrination and actually the quality of the education. Assume it's all decent. You can't simply argue, as this author is, that a degree is sacrosanct regardless of its price.

That's right. And if I had to speculate, Mike, I know Axios, they do a lot of industry-type articles. This feels as if this is a college industry article. Would you agree that college enrollment is going down, faith in college is going down? This feels like an article that's a paid-for-type article. They're scared.

They're scared to death. You can look at the numbers. I'm not going to take a victory lap, but I do think my foundation—we're 16 years at this now. I know we're moving the needle. I know we've had an impact at least getting people to at least think through the cost of the transaction. But look, this is an existential problem. If you really look beyond articles like this, which are just silly on their face, the college president scandal here of late, that's not silly. Having donors who routinely stroke checks for many millions of dollars to Harvard and Penn and MIT and so forth, having those people go, Hey, you know what? Not this year.

I think I'm going to take a miss this year. Right? 50 charges of plagiarism? Really, Claudine?

50? $51 billion in an endowment sitting there at Harvard alone, just sitting there. And meanwhile, the whole country is watching a conversation where student debt is being forgiven, even as it's being shouldered by the people that my foundation helps train. People who affirmatively avoided the debt and learned a skill that was in demand.

One of these muscular jobs, as you described them. They're the people who are going to pay the freight. And articles like this perpetuate the thinking that brings us to a place that I think is fundamentally unfair.

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Go to covenanteyes.com slash Charlie. So, Mike, I could still I could tell you that, you know, I'll visit the suburbs of Chicago where I grew up and certain friends and people that I know, they'll come up, they'll say, Charlie, you know, it's nice that you run Turning Point and you got 400 employees, all that stuff. When are you going back to college? And they mean it with a straight face. They'll say, you know, we really got to get that piece of paper figured out, that diploma.

Mike, how do we deprogram that? It is embedded in the psyche of dare I don't want to say the ruling class, but just the managerial class in this country. It is a it is a thought terminating cliche that if you don't have a college degree, you're almost looked at as the unwashed in this country. Yeah, it's look, the the problem with the PR campaign that we were talking about before that higher education did need back in the 60s and 70s is that it went too far. And it went so far that it came at the expense of all other forms of learning. You're asking how do we unwind that?

Yes. Well, I think I think the same way we wound it up in my foundation, what I try and do is, I mean, initially, there wasn't much I could do except tell anecdotal stories about what I had seen and raise a lot of money. We've given away about $9 million in work ethic scholarships so far, but we didn't start to move the needle until I was able to circle back to people who we had assisted four or five years earlier and ask this question.

How's it going? And all of a sudden, on camera, I'm listening to men and women, some of whom got a $6,000 welding certificate. Tell me about the second kid who's on the way. Tell me about the house they bought. Tell me about the conspicuous lack of debt on their personal finance page. And then tell me about the $140,000, $180,000 a year they're making as a result of mastering a skill that's in demand.

When you get people like that talking passionately to me about the opportunities that they unlocked by taking one of these skilled jobs, that moves the needle. So we have to do that. We have to carpet bomb the internet, and we have to make a much more persuasive case for the opportunities that exist by challenging the myths and misperceptions and stigmas and stereotypes to keep people from giving them an honest look. But the other thing that has to happen, and shout out to Walmart because they're doing it, they're removing the box. They're doing it. Coke Industries is doing it. I wish I had the whole list because those companies deserve a big shout out because it's risky. It's scary.

And when the author of that article we were talking about sees big companies doing that thing, that's when they can feel the foundation starting to crumble beneath them. Because look, ma'am, here's my final point on this, and it's an important one, because I get the same kind of pushback that you do when you go out there and you start challenging the primacy of a four-year degree. I didn't have this thing. And for the people listening, I'm holding up my cell phone right now. I didn't have this device in 1984 when I was in college. Part of what I paid for back then was access. I needed access to information. I was curious enough. I was interested enough. And I certainly benefited from some good instructors, but really the cost of college came down to access.

That's gone now. I have access to 98% of all the known information in the world. I just watched a lecture at MIT last week for free. For free on a plane. The same thing these kids are paying thousands of dollars for. So I'm not saying an internet connection is the same thing as a degree from Harvard, but I am saying the information is the same. The access is suddenly free.

And what are we doing? How in the world did the cost of college go up during Zoom class, during the lockdowns? How did they do that with a straight face? How did Columbia increase everybody's tuition at a time when they weren't even welcomed in the classroom? It's upside down, man.

And Mike, that was always one of the one-liners that parents would give me. Well, they get to meet a lot of people and it's a good chance to network. You couldn't even do that during COVID.

It was all Zoom class, man. You can do that in jail. You can meet all kinds of interesting people in prison. I don't recommend you send your kid, okay? Look, again, my point was I am not anti-education. And even though I loved your book, The College Scam, and even though I agree with most of it, I'm not anti-college. I'm anti-cookie cutter advice.

I'm anti-bromide. I'm anti-debt. I just wish people looked at this, one of the most consequential financial transactions in their life through the same lens as they look at any other large purchase and ask themselves the same practical questions separate and apart from, oh, it's an investment in your future. No, it's not. It's not an investment in your future.

It's a conscious decision you need to make about the best way to satisfy curiosity. It's ridiculous to attach trillions of dollars to that. Mike, can you also talk about how employers, you mentioned Coke and Walmart, they're not moving as far as them, but they're less and less satisfied with the crop of talent that college is producing.

Can you speak about that? I can tell you in 1955, the average GPA of the average Harvard graduate was 2.5. Today, the average GPA for the average Harvard graduate in 2023 was 3.9. Now, did kids get that much smarter over the last 55, 60 years? Or is it possible that the standards in the Ivy League have dipped? Is it possible that we all got wind of the fact that what we're really buying is a credential and not necessarily an education? Your point is exactly right.

I have friends now. I know a guy who runs a law firm and he still hires Harvard grads. He might very well wind up with a smart, curious young man or woman who has a great work ethic and is dedicated to being the best lawyer they can possibly be. Or he might wind up with a third generation legacy kid who had a great time and showed up to some classes and used chat GPT to write some essays and got his 3.9 or hers. It's hard to know. And you're right. It's a very strange thing to continue to bet on. But that's the power of inertia. And that same tendency among a lot of companies to hire from certain schools and assign a certain value to an old rubric like a GPA, that's not dissimilar from the fear that parents have. That's what Varsity Blues was all about. By any means necessary.

Get my kid into the magic lane where the doors will swing open. So that's what you're fighting against. So when you see a company like Walmart eliminate that box, you have to give them credit.

You know, there's a big story a couple of weeks ago. I don't know if you saw it, but it's the $400,000 job at Walmart. $400,000 a year to manage a supercenter.

No college degree required. And they promote. That's not an easy job.

Just everyone's clear. I mean, every day someone's doing something weird, stealing something. You had inventory supply chains that that is I wouldn't want that job. However, I bet they love it because it's fulfilling and it's you could track your progress. Not to mention it pays very well. You can manage a Costco, manage a Chick-fil-A.

Those pay very, very well. And so so, Mike, the other talking point that some people will use is but Charlie, the robots are going to replace all these jobs. Now, hilariously, it turns out that the first wave of job displacement are the coders and the artists and the people that got these goofy degrees.

Mike Rowe, how do you answer the looming artificial intelligence? The robots are coming to unemployed the working class talking point. Yeah, I mean, look, history is a wheel, Charlie.

It spins. And anybody with the aforementioned Internet hookup can just Google the Luddite rebellion. And you can read about what the loomers did and what happened in the weaving industry in England hundreds of years ago when technology came along and posed an existential threat. It was crystal clear to the smartest brains out there that all the weavers were going to lose their jobs because of the advent of the loom. It didn't happen. Was there disruption?

Yeah. But it changed in ways that we simply couldn't have anticipated. My crystal ball is super cloudy with regard to where we're going to be in 10 years, courtesy of the robots, the tech and the AI. But I, I firmly believe that it's one door closes, another door opens.

This is I'm not an expert in this area. I do believe we're going to live to see self driving cars. I think we're going to live to see AI running buildings. I think Nvidia is probably going to double and then double again.

I hope so. I own some, but it's hard to know how to feel about it because it also scares the heck out of me. I got a thing in the mail the other day. I said, Mike, you'll love this. I asked an AI program to narrate these two paragraphs in the style of Mike Rowe narrating an episode of Deadliest Catch. I clicked on the link and you know something? Had I not known it was computer generated, I would have assumed it was me narrating an old episode.

I couldn't tell the difference. So look, this is Pandora's box. This is a tool. And how it impacts work is only one question. Because like all tools, it can be used for great good and great mischief. It's like a gun. It's like the smartphone.

It's like so many other things out there. So look, we're being asked to get up to speed with regard to a great many different types of tools. And it's making us anxious for good cause. But we've been here before, folks. There is nothing new in the world.

It all feels new because we're seeing it for the first time. But we have been there and we have done that. And in the end, there's still going to be a list of jobs that are not going to be replaced. No way, no how.

Plumbers, steam fitters, pipe fitters, mechanics, welders. They're here to stay and we're here to train them. If you want to check out MikeRoweWorks.org.

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So I would recommend you give the supplement at least two to three months to see the changes in your body. Go to StrongCell.com and learn more for yourself. That's StrongCell.com forward slash Charlie. And don't forget to use discount code Charlie at checkout to get your special 20 percent discount for Kirk listeners or you can call 888-596-0155 to order over the phone.

That is 888-596-0155 or visit StrongCell.com forward slash Charlie. Mike, tell us more about this scholarship. You're giving away one million dollars. We historically give away about two million a year in work ethic scholarships. It's happening right now at microworks.org. These are scholarships specifically for men and women who do not wish to pursue a four year degree but who would instead prefer to learn a skill that's in demand.

Any of the construction trades but also cosmetology and farriers and so many jobs out there right now that are open. That require training, not a typical collegiate credential. That money is set apart for those people. There are some hoops to jump through.

These are work ethic scholarships. So you've got to make a case for yourself. You're going to have to write a few paragraphs about this and that.

Maybe make a video. You've got to provide references and so forth. Things you need to do in the real world. We've been doing this. The foundation started in 2008 on Labor Day and the scholarship program has been going on now for about nine or ten years. We do it because we do want to help individuals who are possessed of the sorts of qualities that we want to elevate. But we also do it because, full disclosure, I want to use you in a couple of years.

I want to be able to talk to people who are making a go of it in the trades. Because as we discussed before, their testimony is powerful and fundamentally what we're trying to do at MicroWorks is change the attitude that has brought us to this place where so many millions of parents are convinced the best path for the most people is the most expensive path. That's why we have the scholarship program. We also have a curriculum, a work ethic curriculum.

We're super excited about this. We finally got it into a big high school in Las Vegas. This is a simple curriculum that is designed for 10th and 11th graders primarily.

I didn't think of it as an antidote to CRT or ESG or DEI, but it kind of is. It gives teachers a chance to work through with their students a basic understanding of what work ethic is and why it's important and how it can help you. But what's really cool about this program, Charlie, is that of the 750 kids in the freshman class over at Western High in Clark County, Las Vegas, the top 50 will be given a full ride scholarship to any trade school in the country. So we finally figured out a way to elevate work ethic, to talk about it in the classroom, and then to reward the kids who most persuasively embrace it.

That's what we're up to. OK, check out Mike Rowe works dot org. We are seeing a profound need in this country. Eleven million unfilled jobs in this country. Eleven million unfilled jobs. And so, Mike, just for those that are in the audience that are curious, kind of just go through the list of some of the technical training areas where people can start that they might not have thought of. Job openings, opportunities.

Obviously, we talk about plumbers, electricians and welders, but it goes a lot deeper than that from auto repair mechanics. And you have this quote I want to just have you elaborate on. Never follow your passion, but always bring it with you.

Mike Rowe. Well, I mean, that's another dirty jobs lesson, you know, and I think about you've seen them, the successories, you know, they they they hang on the walls of God knows how many conference rooms and they say things like, you know, teamwork. And it's a picture of guys rowing a boat together or something or persistence and some guys climbing a mountain or, you know, always stay the course. You know, some guys sailing a ship. By the way, always staying the course makes good sense if you're sailing in the right direction.

So on dirty jobs, we took sort of a dim view of these bromides and we offered sort of a dirty alternative to them. One of the big ones was always follow your passion. And I think that so many kids wind up going down the wrong road precisely because they followed their passion. That's not to say you shouldn't have a dream. And certainly not to say you shouldn't be passionate about whatever it is you're doing. But the idea that your quest for job satisfaction, or happiness in general, whether you're looking for your dream job or your soulmate, the idea that that search would be led by your passion, I think is a mistake. And of the many dirty jobbers I met and worked with over the years, I've just seen this born out over and over again.

I mentioned it at the top of the show. But it's worth circling back on because the happiest people I know today are not working in the field they thought they wanted to be in. In other words, it's not a straight line between what you want to be when you grow up to what you wind up doing when you're grown. And if you use passion as the sole barometer of that, as your true north, you're going to get led all over the place because passion is a fickle thing. But if you follow opportunity, and if you conduct an honest inventory of your own skill set, and you enhance those skills, and you apply it toward the opportunity at hand, it's perfectly within your power to decide to feel good about that, and to be passionate about it. So yeah, on Dirty Jobs, we said never follow your passion, but always bring it with you. And not to torture the point unnecessarily, but for further proof, just look at any early episode of American Idol.

Watch the auditions, hundreds, thousands of people following their passion, only to learn for the first time, usually on national TV, that they can't sing. Thus, their dream and their skill set is suddenly revealed to be wildly out of whack with what they hope to do. So yeah, that's a long way of saying follow the opportunity.

Figure out how to love it later. Any closing thoughts or things you want to plug for our audience? More about your foundation scholarship opportunities, please, the floor is yours. Well, opportunities are everywhere. And it worries me today of all the things that our country is wrestling with. I think the idea that opportunity is dead is one of the most dangerous. I just saw a poll the other day in the Wall Street Journal that said 64% of Americans believe the American dream is dead. And I worry about what might happen when that number continues to creep up.

A big part of what we're doing at MicroWorks is showing you where the opportunities are, and offering to train people to become proficient in those opportunities. Because look, the evidence is out there. And it demands a verdict. Great book, you probably saw it, Charlie, once upon a time, a guy named Josh McDowell wrote it. It's called The Evidence Demands a Verdict.

That was a book on Christian apologetics. I'm talking more about the undeniable fact that opportunity is still out there. And there are forces at work for reasons that elude me that are determined to tell kids that the opportunities are dead, and that the system is rigged, and that there is no hope. I don't believe that. My foundation makes a persuasive case to the contrary, and anybody in your life, including you, who wants to learn a skill that's in demand, we'd love to help pay for the training.

You can apply for work ethic scholarship at microworks.org. Micro, God bless you. That was an excellent hour. Thank you for being generous with your time.

And I pray it impacts our audience and someone in the middle that might be looking for a new career, a new path. Thanks so much, Micro. Thank you. Thanks, Charlotte. Thanks so much for listening, everybody. Email us as always. Freedom at CharlieKirk.com. Thanks so much for listening and God bless.