With tuition costs at four-year colleges high and Americans carrying nearly $2 billion in student loan debt, some young people are questioning the benefits of a traditional bachelor’s degree and choosing to work with their hands.

Trade school enrollment rose 16% last year, hitting a record high since the National Student Clearing House began collecting data. Generation Z has even been dubbed the “toolbelt generation.”

While the majority of skilled trades workers are men, more and more young women are choosing to work with their hands. In 2020, according to the U.S. Department of Labor, 11.6% of vocational training graduates were female.

“It’s time for people to finally realize that if you do things with your hands, you can make more money, have better career opportunities, live a happier life and, in the long run, have a better family,” says Victoria Carl, a 25-year-old Albany woman who runs her own auto repair show.

Meet her and three other young New York women who work in the trades – and are successful.

Victoria Carl: “I own my own repair shop”

“They told me I couldn’t do it, so I did it,” Carl told The Post about getting into auto repair.

At age 21, she took over a business with a 50 percent stake from her parents and named it “Carl’s Advanced Automotive and Truck Repair Center” in Albany.

Today, at age 25, she employs four full-time technicians, rolls up her own sleeves, and expects net sales of over $1 million this year.

“I grew up around cars, racing go-karts and restoring trucks with my dad,” she said. “My family knew the previous owners and they always joked that I would own the shop one day, which was funny – until it wasn’t and things got serious.”

While attending Voorheesville High School, Carl participated in a two-year Board of Cooperative Educational Services (BOCES) program that allowed her to take heavy-duty trucking courses in the eleventh and twelfth grades of high school.

At first she met with resistance.

“My guidance counselor said, ‘No way, why don’t you go to a vocational school for nursing or cosmetology or go to college?'” she recalled. “And honestly, it was horrible at first when I was the only woman in the class, but eventually I became more confident.”

She then earned an associate degree in agricultural diesel technology from the University of Northwestern Ohio.

“As an employer, I now see the value of the trades,” she said. “I’m constantly hiring. I can’t hire people fast enough to become good mechanics.”

Carl also sits on the advisory board of the local automotive school and has witnessed a change in people’s perceptions of her and her female colleagues.

“These older men are really starting to understand how valuable women are in this industry,” she said. It’s “fantastic.”

Bri Loomis: “I helped build the Bills Stadium”

At just 19 years old, Loomis is already behind the wheel of some huge trucks.

“I don’t really know what drove me. My dad always told me I could do anything I wanted,” Loomis, who lives in Chautauqua and drives trucks for New York state, told the Post. “And now when I see other women working on the road, we always wave. It’s like our own little community.”

Every day, she works on drainage or ditch clearing crews and drives Mack and International trucks. In the winter, she also salts and clears state roads – a critical task in the harsh winters of Western New York State.

“I could imagine working for the government for a very long time,” she said. “I just love what I do.”

Loomis attended a BOCES program in 11th and 12th grade and spent half the school day learning how to use heavy equipment. Like Carl, she initially encountered some resistance.

“I remember telling my principal I wanted to do this, and she said I was too smart for that – I should go to college or be an engineer. And I told her, ‘No, that’s what I want to do,'” she said.

The highlight of her short career so far was helping to build the Buffalo Bills’ stadium. Last summer, she spent eight weeks on the construction site operating dump trucks, quarry vehicles and bulldozers.

She enjoyed the experience, but ultimately decided to take a job that would require her to work closer to home.

“I’ve seen what it’s like to work 50, 60 hours a week and never be home,” she said. “I don’t have a family yet, but starting one is also one of my biggest life dreams, so I’m happy that I’ve found something that I enjoy and gives me the time for a healthy work-life balance.”

Shauna Irving: “Women build their cities”

At 33 years old Irving is the youngest president of the women’s club of her electricians’ union, Local Union No. 3, and she is using her platform to recruit more young women into the industry.

“I take every opportunity to show girls what a trade is, and I always tell them they can do pretty much anything,” Irving told the Post. “You can make just as much money as a man in this profession, which is not guaranteed in other fields.”

Irving grew up in Brooklyn, where her father worked as a plumber.

“He showed me the things he was building and I thought, oh man, this is so cool,” she recalls. “My dad is like a real Iron Man.”

She thought she would like to be a teacher or a doctor, but her father suggested she become an electrician, a job he described as “the prima donnas of the construction site.” (It’s also a lucrative career, as many electricians in NYC make six figures.)

So in 2011, after high school, Irving enrolled in a NEW (Nontraditional Employment for Women) program in Manhattan, where she completed training in conjunction with union training programs.

Soon she was getting up early to be on the construction site at 6 a.m., while her colleagues were just falling asleep after long nights of partying

“I was quickly raised to become more responsible,” she said.

After the death of several family members and an injury threw her off track, Irving completed her training in 2019 and now earns $62 an hour plus benefits.

While Queens residents said some questioned her abilities as an electrician because of her gender, she also encountered many helpful people.

“Not everyone thinks we belong there, but there are more brothers who are very supportive,” she said. “Without the men who have supported me all this time, I wouldn’t have been able to make it in my career.”

And more and more often, she is no longer the only woman in the room – or on the construction site.

“I’ve noticed that more and more women are getting involved,” she said. “They’re starting to see the benefits of having people from different backgrounds involved in building their cities.”

Emiley Filuta: “This has been my dream since I was five”

Her father and grandfather were both mechanics and she knew from a young age that she wanted to follow in their footsteps.

“For as long as I can remember, I was always out there helping them fix trucks and cars,” Filuta, a 17-year-old from Troy, told the Post. “I always knew that’s what I wanted to do.”

When she was in eleventh grade, she enrolled in a two-year automotive technology program at Questar III BOCES.

“It was mostly boys, so it was intimidating both socially and personally at first,” she recalls. “But once everyone felt comfortable, everyone was very welcoming. I was really surprised at how included I felt.”

She took advantage of BOCES’ youth training program and got a job at Rensselaer Honda.

Since last summer, she has been earning $17 an hour—slightly more than the average summer job in New York—while receiving valuable training.

“I’ve learned different specializations,” she said. “I do a wide range of things, from smaller things like oil changes and tire rotations to minor engine work, which is what I enjoy most.”

This fall, she plans to study automotive engineering for two years at Hudson Valley Community College – and she has no regrets about foregoing the traditional college route.

“Personally, I think that trade school is smarter for some people. No matter what happens, as times change, you’re always going to need a trade,” she said. “I love the feeling of being able to look at something and figure out what’s wrong with it. It’s just a great feeling to know that I can do this.”