Students are opting for hands-on trade classes, like the electrician training program, at Apex Technical School in Manhattan, New York. Photo AFP
"I think it's definitely shifting," said Nizier Lawrence, in his early twenties.
Prior to the pandemic, "people weren't really talking about going to trade school, vocational schools, stuff like that. It was like: 'Go to college, get your four years.'"
The New Yorker spent three years at Keuka College, a private school upstate, before changing plans. "I wanted a break," he remembers, partly because he was "homesick" for the city.
He subsequently enrolled at Apex Technical School in Manhattan to train as an electrician and hasn't looked back.
