Former New York City Mayor and billionaire Michael Bloomberg has some advice for high school seniors: forget college, become a plumber instead. “Today if your kid wants to go to college or become a plumber, you’ve got to think long and hard,” said Bloomberg Monday at the annual meeting of Wall Street trade group SIFMA.
“If he’s not going to go to a great school and he’s not super smart academically, but is smart in terms of dealing with people and that sort of thing, being a plumber is a great job because you have pricing power, you have an enormous skill set,” he said.
The founder of financial data and news services company Bloomberg L.P. even went as far as to say that students considering Harvard should do the math. You could pay $50,000 to $60,000 a year to Harvard or you could make that much as an apprentice plumber, he explained.
