Welcome to the prosperity gap where we discuss the financial gap that exists between where we are and where we should be. It's time to bridge that gap.
Hey, prosperity nation, Dave Hall the Prosperity Guy. Super excited to be your host today as we share with you another episode of the prosperity gap. If you've not yet had an opportunity to sign up and join as a member of our podcast, please do so. Every week you'll get a new podcast talking about finance, talking about ways you can improve your financial future. Well, as you know, over the last period of time, we've talked a lot about college.
We've had experts on here talking about different aspects of college student loans. Well today we're going to talk about technical schools and I'm actually very excited for this because as many of you know, I have six children, and in that process you have some that are made out for college and then you have some that just aren't made out for college.
And so it's exciting for me to talk about tech schools because they see it as a great option for many people that just don't want to go down the traditional college route. Well, to help us better understand this today, I've got someone from Dixie technology, his name is Dillon Hurt. Dillon, how are you today?
I'm doing great. Thanks for having me on today.
Very excited for the show. I say this all the time. These topics get very exciting to me, but this is exciting because it really hits home. I mentioned it's something that we're definitely dealing with as a family. We see that there's going to be a period in our lives as my younger sons get older, that they'll be looking at these options. But before we get into all of that, talk a little bit about yourself and what got you to this point where you're working with the technical school.
Yeah, so it's a little bit of a story for sure. But I was raised in Southern Utah and my father is an educator and so he started out as a teacher at the local high school and now he's one of the principals over there. And something that's always been important to him is to get an education. He is very much so you got to have a college degree if you want to be successful. And so after I finished high school, I went to West Virginia for a couple of years on church mission.
But when I returned, I started my schooling at Utah state university. I thought I was going to follow that path. My dad kind of laid out for me and Northern Utah is very different than Southern Utah. It's really cold up there. And I quickly realized that I wasn't built for the cold night, enjoy winter as much as I thought I would.
And so I came back home, the st George and I finished up my bachelor's degree at Dixie state university and after accomplishing my bachelor's , I still thought I was going to continue my education and I was preparing to go to law school. I took my L sat test and went out to the East coast to look at a few schools and decide and what my options were going to be. And upon returning, well I guess I'm getting a little bit ahead of myself.
So after I finished at Dixie state, I got this job at Dixie technical college, which is separate from the university and my job entelled doing some recruiting and marketing. And so a lot of the time I was taking prospective students around and showing them kind of what we had the, and the biggest push that we make here is that you don't have to have a degree. to go out and get a job. St George is one of the fastest growing cities in the country.
And so what's in demand here in st George is a lot of construction workers, people in like the electrical industry, plumbing, HVAC, it's also a larger retirement population. So we have all these various specific demands in the community. And so Dixie tech offers a lot faster training for people that are looking to come in and gain a skill and then go get a job in the community.
And so while I was here I realized that all these kids are successful, they're in school for six months to a year and they're going out and getting a job and making just as much as an attorney would. And so what am I thinking? Go into the law school and paying all this money to go into debt, like kind of being stuck in a spot where it going to be in a pinch for the next five, 10 years and suffer through law school. I mean law schools , no easy thing either.
And so I kind of drank the Koolaid here at Dixie tech. I think it's incredible what they're doing for kids in Southern Utah throughout the state. And so that's okay . Brought me to this point. I've been here for about five years and I love every bit of it.
Yeah , that's a cool story Dillon. It's cool to see how even though we may have goals, maybe we have plans, but things can change that things happen and I think as you look at your own life, and I definitely see it in the lives of other people that I talked to many times. It is, it's that path of least cost . When you look at being an attorney, why don't you spend that time? You spent that money, you're pretty much locked in to being an attorney the rest of your life because you need the income.
You need to be able to pay off that debt well by doing what you've done, it opens a lot of doors. I mean, yes, hopefully they continue to keep you happy there. You can stay there for the rest of your career now. You could also do a million other things. You have a lot of freedom to be able to go and do a lot of other things with your life. I think that's part of cool to see people's stories where they leave that door open because we never know in life what it's going to be.
Totally .
So I know you mentioned it briefly about that some of the differences between a tech school and a main college, but let's talk a little bit about that. For the listeners that don't understand, what are the main differences between these two forms of education?
Yeah, so my knowledge is pertaining to the state of Utah, but I think across the board nationally it's pretty similar. But everything that I say is specific to Utah. So here in Utah we have two systems, we have, we call it USHE and that is the higher ed section over the universities. And then we have Utech, which oversees the technical system in Utah. And so the difference is USHE and the traditional universities offered degree based programs.
And so on average it takes you four or five years to get a bachelor's degree and then a couple more years on top of that if you want to pursue a masters or even continue past that. Whereas the Utech system, we're more fast paced training and so students know they want to work on cars like they want to be or a diesel technician. They want to learn how to do welding, get in the construction industry. We get them into our school and most of the programs last about a year max in length.
And we only teach them what's specific to their industry. So as where your traditional university, you have to jump through a few hoops of I your gen ed classes, your general classes, we don't, we cut that stuff out. We kind of cut out the fluff, we save you money, we save you time. And then what's unique about the tech system, because we actually place you in a job after you finish the program.
And so specifically in Utah there is seven other tech schools and we all offer different programs based on the demand of the community. It's like I mentioned earlier, st George, we have a lot of [inaudible] construction, a lot of growth going on right now. We also have an older population and so our programs are built to fill those demands. Something else that is interesting.
St George is one, it's landlocked and so we don't have any access to waterways or ocean and two , we don't have any , railroads that come through the state. So all of our food, all of our clothing, everything that we get in the st George comes in on diesel trucks. So the huge demand for that here locally. And so as a whole, our school actually has a 96% placement rate where 96% of students that finish a program get out and get a
job.And like our cost of tuition max is about $6,000 is the most expensive program that we offer. And then we have financial aid. So like FASFA , we have scholarships and so it's way more affordable whereas that $6,000, that's what I paid per semester. I mean, way more than that per semester at traditional university. And so in my mind it's kind of no brainer. It's a lot more affordable. You get in and you get out, you learn what's important to you.
I mean a bachelor's degree is just a bunch of general classes to that . You might not even care about what you're learning. It's just a step you have to take to get a master's and learn what you actually care about. Where here we have to teach you the information that's pertinent to what you're studying.
I've often wondered how many people actually drop out of college. There's gotta be a percentage. I don't know what it is, but what percentage actually drop out during those first two years? You're just like me, I wanted to be an accountant. That's all I ever wanted to be in . That's what I ended up becoming. But those first two years I'm taking English classes, I'm taking biology and I hated it. Yeah. Very good in my grades either because they just had no interest in these things.
All they wanted to do is become an accountant. So whatever related to that, that's what got me excited and that's what kept me involved in going to school.
Yeah. it'd be interesting to see the numbers on that for, because a lot of kids start colleges cause their parents said so good idea and it's kind of just the traditional way of doing things but they have no clue. I didn't know what I wanted to do for the longest time. That's why I did a business administration degree cause it's pretty broad, allows me a lot of options. But I still didn't know like specifically what I wanted to do.
I feel like a lot of kids get in and I'm like, Oh this is too expensive or this is harder than I thought or this is an interesting to me. And they drop out and there goes a couple thousand dollars down the drain.
Yeah . It's how many of them are still paying for it. Five or 10 years later for an education. They really didn't know . Good. And in this day and age, I hope the college systems change it . At some point I realized there's different reasons for what they do and why they do it. I mean, obviously part of it's to give people exposure to things that they don't know what they want to do, but when you look at it, it's like, man, you can find all this information on Google and five minutes.
Yeah, there's no need. I have to take all these classes. Like when I went, when I went that you'd really didn't have those opportunities. Every registration came through an encyclopedia, somebody that you knew that was extremely smarter , you had to go to college to understand it. And I assume you guys are seeing it in your tech school. As far as the interest , I've got to assume that the interest in tech schools has gotta be sky rocking . Is that correct?
Yes, for sure. And what's nice too is we also enjoy a pretty good relationship with the university, and so there's definitely a need for university. I think it's for people that know they want to be doctors or want to be attorneys or accountants and have to get that at training and half to have it to get into the career. But for everything else, I think the certificate route is a pretty good option for a lot of people.
Whether they don't know what they want to do yet or if they do want to put themselves through traditional university. It's a good way to come here, gain a skill, and increase your wage from minimum wage in Utah, seven 25 if you finish and get a skill, you're anywhere between 14 and $35 an hour depending on what you're doing. That's a good way to at least increase your income while you're figuring out what you want to do for the rest of your life.
You talked about your employment placement rate, which I think is phenomenal. I think you said 96% employment placement. Are those jobs all pretty much in the st George area or are you guys able to help them find jobs in other parts of the state? Maybe in other States?
We definitely have all of our connections here in st George and the way that our programs are developed is we, we bring in members from the community that work in specific fields. So whether it's overseeing diesel or some of our medical people or like culinary, can we bring these people in and they help us write the curriculum and then we're training our students the way they want their employees to work and be trained. And so they're the ones that hire students after they finish.
And so most of our students stay here locally, but if they do want to move out of the state or out of the city we do what we can to find jobs for them elsewhere as well.
What amazing win-win situation though, to basically allow the employers to come in to govern a little bit. What's going on? I mean for them it's great because obviously they're not having to pay to educate these people. They're allowing you to do that. But for you guys, it's great cause saying, look, we're, we're good at educating. We have a program that allows us to educate people. And then once we're Done and allow them to go in and get the jobs that are gonna allow them to progress.
And again, whether they stay in St George or don't stay in St George, the great thing is once you've got that first job, things completely change . Once you had that on your resume and you can say, look, I've worked in the industry, I know how it works. I mean your doors get so much broader in , there's so many more opportunities for you and when you get first get started and it's the first job out of college or out of a trade tech.
Yeah, it's pretty amazing cause I oversee some marketing too. And so we tried to come up with ideas to keep things interesting in our marketing. And one thing that I'm focusing on right now is , I call it the lifestyle, the tech tycoons. And in st George I've kind of picked out people that are well known and successful and yeah , I have a lot of monetary success and I've interviewed them.
And these are people that own like the trucking industry or they have a welding business or they do construction and those are the really well-respected people in the community and in the past these jobs were like called blue collar jobs and I've kind of coined the phrase of gold collar jobs now because people that are willing to work hard, I mean working hard is a lost art and a lost skill. A lot of people don't want to work hard. They want to sit at a computer or do social media.
Yeah , famous on YouTube, that sort of stuff. But people are still willing to work hard. It's not so much blue collared anymore as it's gold collared and they're making a lot of money in these fields.
Another question for you, Dillon, if you look at it based upon age, what are you finding? Is it young kids, they're just coming out of high school, you're getting a lot of middle-aged individuals. They're saying, look, I'm ready for a change time to educate myself and I'll have four years to go through a process. Who are these people that are coming to the technical school?
It's a good variety of students that we have here. The biggest chunk is probbaly going to be you're 17 the 25 year olds, but then we do have a bunch of middle aged men and women coming in that are either looking to reset their career or looking to start a career. A lot of moms when they get done raising their family or want to get an education, they'll come here and gain a skill. Our oldest student, we don't have, so there's no cap on age limit at all.
You can start at 16 and then there's no cap and so our oldest student right now, I believe we'd have a 67 year old doing our auto program and for some of these, these older people, maybe it's more just as a hobby, want to learn a skill that they can do at home. But some people we just selected a student of the year.
Every year we pick a student over here , the represent the school and since she's specific, she probably doesn't want me to share in her age or anything, but she's a little bit in the older generation and she wanted to come get a skill in drafting and she has had been the school and and ages and so she was a little intimidated by the college experience, but she came to Dixie tech and start our drafting program and she's excelled in it and she got a job while she's still in school.
She's getting ready to graduate in a couple of months , but she's working for architecture for now. They can pretty good money and this is her for first career or first started a career. And so it's a pretty broad spectrum of students that we get.
That's super cool. And I think that's one of the great things prosperity nation that you need to understand is that you're never too old to make a change. I know there's a group, especially middle agers that have gone through a career for maybe 20 years and you're just beat up. You're tired, you're done with it.
Yeah. You look at it and say, how do I go back to school for four or five years to change what I'm doing or be where you don't have to do that again for five, six, $7,000 you can take a one year program and yeah, it may cost you a little more in additional debt to able to get yourself through that year. Well now you can get into a new career and start doing something you enjoy. I mean, we don't live forever, so why not enjoy the years that you have and start doing things that you want.
In fact, it was really funny for me, have somewhat of an interest in cooking now be aware and not a master chef. I don't do anything too crazy, but I noticed that you guys had a culinary program. I thought, you know what? That would be so cool too . When I get to a point that I just am retired to go back for a year and be able to just take classes and learn how to be a much better chef and to do some of the cool things.
I'd recommend that. And what's nice too is like I said, we have people from the community that work in like the culinary industry and they come in and help write our program. Well, our students are literally being recruited. We keep our class sizes small .
So our average class size is 12 to 15 students here at Dixie tech and the reason for that is one, we want him to have a more one on one interaction with the instructors, but two , we place all these students in jobs and so because we have limited amount of students in our classes, they're literally calling us up and recruiting our students out of these, these fields. And so we get calls from Lake Powell every summer.
It's one of the fun vacation places for people in Utah is to go out on the Lake in the summer. And these, these, these businesses are calling us and say, Hey, we want your students to come out here and work for us during the summer. Do we want to put them on a yacht? And they're going to be a personal chef for this family that's flying in for vacation.
And so they'll be on the Lake all week with them, just their personal chef cooking all their meals for them and taking care of them or there's some high end restaurants here in town that one our students can work from and so it's just exciting for the students because they feel important. They feel wanted and they feel needed and they're having these unreal experiences in the industry as well.
It's been very interesting as I looked and saw that, because it took me back to about four years ago, I got three or four years ago when one of my daughters was trying to consider whether she went into culinary. In fact, she looked a lot of other schools in Utah. I don't think she ever looked at a tech school and I at that time really didn't look at him either. I just assumed that she was going to go to a four year school and that if she wanted to get in culinary, she would go down that route.
And I think had she looked at a tech school, she may actually still be interested in staying in culinary. Now since she's gotten to a four year institution, she's completely changed now. She wants to do something with psychiatry or something else, which is great. She can go do whatever she wants or work with disadvantaged children and people. And I think that's super exciting.
But it's interesting to see how her path changed because she wasn't really able to get into where she wanted to be initially, which were the tech school. It would have given her that opportunity. She could've done it in the price that she was wanting to spend and it would have given her an opportunity to really get the skills and to really get started.
And I mentioned to you too , one of the other issues that I have right now is I've got a young son who is very interested in mechanics now I'm not that guy. And for those of you that have listened to the show, I've talked about it a little bit on here. I am the typical computer guy, works in an office, manages people well, my son has this big interest in so we got a gocart and I've had to watch a lot of YouTube videos.
I learned a lot of things that I never thought I would learn, but it's been super cool for him to have an opportunity to play with his hands to be able to put this thing back together to paint it. To order parts. I mean do all the things that you needed to do to make it work and really that's what you're teaching people to do. Not necessarily run a gocart it's much bigger than that. Well you're giving me an opportunity to work on things that they really enjoy.
And I think there's a stigma behind technical education that we're finally starting to get past . I mean historically technical education, it's like those blue collar jobs not a lot of people want to do. And you think it's associated with dirty work, working hard, manual hours. It just wasn't a stigma that anyone wanted to the follow or pursue.
And a lot of people had the idea that, Oh, I'm going to go to Harvard, I'm going to go to Yale , I'm going to go to these big schools and that's how I'm going to be successful. I think the last five, 10 years we're finally seeing a change take place in the country and we're realizing the importance of these technical jobs, especially in st George. I mean these are the people that keep our lights on and st George, we need the air, the AC more than we need the heat, but they keep our houses cool.
They keep our dude coming in. Like these are the people that make the city work here in Southern Utah and really across the country. And so it really is important to have these jobs filled .
What's so cool about it too and not that everyone wants to go down this route, but if you are that person who wants to go down this route, I mean once you gain that skill and that knowledge to be able to become a business owner and expand and expand and expand. I have a ton of clients who basically got into business and now multimillionaires because they gained one of these skills. They learned how to be a good chef.
They learned how to do concrete, they learned how to do electrical, whatever it might've been, and then they said, look, maybe I just thought I'd go into business for myself and start expanding this, and over time they built these huge, huge company .
Yes, the opportunities are endless for sure.
That's super cool to see that people have this opportunity and Prosperity Nation. Please look at Technical schools in your area, I mean we're talking specifically about st George, Utah and we realize that that's not the biggest place in the world, but you've got to understand that every state's going to have these technical schools.
Every state's going to have an opportunity for you to get into some type of skill that you want to get into and you have a passion for in a much shorter period of time than you may be looking at if you're going to college, if you're going to spend that for a year or so, look at the opportunities you have. Look at the opportunities to continue to educate yourself because again, just like Dillon saying, the reality in this day and age, people just need a skill. Whatever that is.
If you can gain a skill, no matter what it takes to get there, I look at it even in my own life, my wife's going to Western Governor's university and I don't know how much you know about that, Dillon, but if you look at that school, it's a pass or fail school. I mean, it's college, but there's no A's, there's no B'sS, there's no C's F's. I mean, it's a complete pass or fail. Well, they become very successful.
Cause some people are saying, look, they're getting the education and the skills they need. They're just not, we don't care if they had A's, we don't care if they had C's. We just want to get people that are educated. I think that's what you're seeing in the tech school is saying, look, we don't care. Someone spent four years in college. If you can fix an engine. If you can do construction, if you can cook, whatever it is.
That's what we need and we're happy to put you to work in allow you to start helping us out in our business.
Yeah. And to give you an idea of like the average day of a student here at Dixie technical college, they come in and we do about 70% of the time in the lab . So 70% of time they're going to be doing something hands on, whether it's cooking, whether it's doing construction, working on engines, fixing computers, whatever it is we want to do the majority of their time hands on. So 70% hands on and then 30% is lecture time.
So it's pretty opposite from your traditional university learning or traditional education style. So it's more hands on. And then what's amazing is, I mean no one has a big diesel truck sitting at their house or if they do, not very many students actually have that stuff so there's no homework. Like we supply the tools, we supply the whatever they're working on and they do it here. They get done with class and then they go home and they they want to forget about until the next day.
That's totally fine. Like there's , it's just a different way of learning and today's students are more engaged doing things hands on. They learn a lot better that way and so that's what we tried to provide. Unfortunately we don't have any online classes are options because it is so much hands on training, but if being engaged in learning hands on is the the best way for you or the people listening, then a text was definitely the way that you want to go.
What I find very interesting though is the fact that colleges are basically mimicking you. Yeah . Whether you realize it or not or whether they realize it or not. Cause all of them are getting to a point that if you want to be a CPA, if you want to do these certain things, you've got to intern . They want you to go get that hands on experience that they can't provide. So they say, look, go get an internship and we want you to get a job for a period of time so somebody else can give you that.
Well, what's cool about what you're doing is they're already getting it. You have all the tools, you have all the resources, all that's already there, and then you have the jobs and once you're done to say, Hey, go to work. No , go start making money. Start paying off.
You know, if you had to go into debt, which hopefully most people would pay in cash or through scholarships or the government, but if they can't, Hey , now you can immediately go start paying off that debt and getting yourself back to where you need to be financially.
Every year at graduation, our president, president Kelly Stevens, she does this thing where she asked students if anyone has any college debt accrued while you've been at Dixie tech, please stand up. And in all the years that I've worked here, only one student ever stood up and that's just because they didn't get help. They didn't ask for help with scholarships or financial aid or anything like that. It's only one person has ever had student that after graduating from Dixie tech.
And I definitely attribute a lot of that to president Stevens . She's been a pioneer for the technical industry and the education side of things and she's spearheaded a lot of things here in st George. I mean she's the reason we got this new campus here. She's very like forward thinking and future focused and knows what she wants and how they get it. And she's been a huge pioneer in the state and example to the technical system as a whole.
That's super cool. And prosperity nation, I realize you're all over the country. I realize you're listening to this from many other States, but if you wanted to go to a cool technical school, I will tell you Dylan is not wrong and where their campus sets it actually is set up on the old airport area, but they've got a beautiful new campus that sets up there. I've got a beautiful view and if you're considering technical schools, Dixie tech is not a bad option. Would you agree with that villain?
Yeah. To build on that too. What's nice is st George isn't a bad place to be in general. We're warm most of the year. Hardly ever gets snow and Dixie tech, we have no out of state tuition. So if you are looking to make a big change, if you want to make a move, come to st George, we'll take you. There's no out of state tuition, you don't have to have any residency here. And we are built up on the Hill, the old airport.
And so we always tell students we're training students here to literally like take off. We have the runway, we've prepared everything for you . We're just getting students for the takeoff and go this [inaudible] festival life.
So Dillon, we need to start wrapping this up, but before we do, there's one other topic I want to talk to you about and it's not about Dixie tech. I noticed when I got your bio sent over that you are a pickle ball player.
Yes, pickleball is, I'm super , you've heard of pickleball
so , so I've heard of pickleball but I've never played. It became popular after I left to Utah. I don't know if it's, I assume it's popular other places, but I know it's become super popular in definitely Southern Utah and probably throughout the state. Is it something national? I mean tell, tell people a little bit about what pickleball is I guess to start with.
So it's getting some national recognition. I believe it started in the state. I'm actually a bigger Intuit than you'd think.
So I've done a little bit of research and it actually started in Washington state and this family was at a family reunion and they kind of invented this game where they played a mix of tennis and ping pong and they use the wiffle ball and they had a dog named pickle and they train the dog to go get the ball every time it went to the net or got hit out or anything like that. So they don't want to say pickleball and the dog would go with the ball and bring it back.
And so this sport eventually caught on and Utah and I believe Utah's the largest amount of players. And what it is is you play on a tennis court surface, a little bit smaller.
Yeah, smaller court size.
Yeah. And then you play with the graphite wooden type paddle and it's a mix between tennis and ping pong. So it's slower pace than tennis. Well, on a larger scale than ping pong and it's, it's a fun game. It's super addicting. In st George, the older people actually are the ones that are really good at it. It's more of a softer hit, more technique based sport.
And so these older people here in town, they're whipping up on the younger kids, like they're putting us to shame and they just know how to play the game. It's fun. And I've started to see what my wife and I went to New York last year and I saw pickleball being played. They had put down some tape, they just put down some tape lines on a tennis score, but I saw people actually playing pickleball ball in New York. So I think it's starting to spread. But definitely part of Utah's culture right now.
A typical tennis courts divided basically into 3 sections. As I understand, you got two small sections in the front and then you've got the bigger section in the back, is it, is the court smaller than the two small sections that you would have in the front of a typical tennis court?
It's about that same size. The two small sections makes up the court for pickleball.
Okay. And then is it generally played singles or doubles or really doesn't matter?
Doesn't matter either way. However many people you got, you can make it work.
And , and is it a good workout? I mean in addition to being fun, is it a pretty good workout if you're playing singles, I assume?
Yeah. My grandpa lives down here, he's 85 years old and he plays pickleball every morning with his group of friends, so still gets a workout for any age.
That's super awesome. And I think now they're getting point , they have number of tournaments is that correct? It's become very competitive as well?
Yeah. I don't know across the country if there's tournaments like that, but my wife and I, we like to play with played in tournaments here in st George. We won a couple of gold metals ourselves, which is pretty fun .
So, so who's better you or your wife?
My wife, at everything.
laughing
hopefully this gets some bonus points. I'll make sure she listens to that part.
Well I think it's super cool. And again, one of these days I'd like to play, we love playing tennis. Unfortunately, our tennis court in our neighborhood got destroyed after the hurricane here back in 2017 and I know sometimes it's hard to believe, but they still don't have it up and operating even though it's two years later.
I continue to send emails and complain because we are able to go play in one of the other developments , but it is definitely a game we enjoy so I think we're going to have to pick up pickleball as well and see if we can't make that a family sport here in Puerto Rico.
Hey, I'll come out and visit you in Puerto Rico anytime and I'll bring the game with me.
Okay , that's great. Well Dillon, for those that want to learn more about Dixie tech, where can they go to get additional information and learn more about what you guys are offering there?
Everyone that is interested or even if you're not interested, visit our website. It's Dixietech.edu so Dixietech.edu that has information about all the programs that we have. Phone numbers. If you want to get some more information, if you want to come in for a tour or anything like that, you can check out our website and I also encourage your listeners just to explore it anywhere they are in the country or the world. It's a good opportunity, a good place to gain an education
Dillon, this has been a great show. Very excited about the information I 've been able to share. Hopefully open some minds o f the prosperity nation and those that are looking to get further education or advance their careers. Thank you so much for bringing our show today.
Yeah, thank you very much for having me on
Prosperity nation. You have been listening to the prosperity gap. This is the show where we help you bridge your gap between the financial life you're currently living and the one that you should be. Again, my name's Dave hall. I've been your host and we will see you next week.