[nsnick]

No one is deciding to work a trade instead of going to Stanford.

[fortran77]

How many Stanford students are even capable of working a trade?

[non-entity]

I'd wager most of them

[chasd00]

it would be interesting to see the ambition and execution discipline of a young person who made in to, and through, Stanford applied to a traditional trade. If i may use a dirty word, "disruptive" comes to mind.

[32notp]

What do you mean by that?

[elliekelly]

Do you not see programming as a trade? Do you not see accounting as a trade? Nursing? Medicine? Law? Pharmacology? I would consider all of those “trades.”

The non-trade courses of study aren’t particularly popular with college students anymore. I don’t know many people with degrees in english or latin or history or philosophy. And the few that I do always planned to go to trade school (law school) so their undergrad course of study didn’t much matter.

[chrisseaton]

> I would consider all of those “trades.”

Well good luck communicating with other people because is not how anyone else anywhere uses the word ‘trade’.

They’re not ‘trades’ they’re ‘professions’.

And I would guess you already know this and you’re trying to be contrary rather than you’re genuinely misunderstanding a basic word.

[ceilingcorner]

No one considers these things trades. Trades and trade school have a very specific meaning in contemporary American English.

[watwut]

I would not count them as trades, because people typically talk about trades when they talk about work that requires manual or mechanical skills.

I never seen anyone talk about medicine as a trade nor mean doctor when they said trade.