When it comes to the pursuit of a college education, the goal is seldom questioned, even if the methods occasionally are. As a parent, I am often quick to forget that my child may not fit someone else’s model of the ideal student. And perhaps the ideal of college is not the right choice.

I grew up in the late 1970s, when a strong vocational alternative to the college prep curriculum was offered. In the last 25 years in California, three-quarters of our schools’ technical training programs were cut. Now, investment is up. This according to an article in the Christian Science Monitor. “High schools, community colleges, universities, parents, and employers are all beginning to realize that … to be competitive, our educational system needs more than academic theory.”

But don’t expect to see wood shop make a resurgence:

Fields of study today are likely to include more forward-looking careers: crime forensics, composite-plastic fuselage design, robotics, nanotechnology, radiological diagnostics, 3-D animation, and the burgeoning field of “industrial maintenance technology” (keeping the high-tech systems in a modern industrial building up and running).

I am reminded every day that there are many roads to success. Perhaps your child’s cuts through a different landscape.