Mike Rowe tries to give away free money...

...and apparently is having a time of it.

Via The Smallest Minority:

Mike Rowe (of Dirty Jobs fame) has an organization he runs, MikeRoweWorks.com, that gives scholarships to students studying the trades. He posts on Facebook today:

Question: If I were to form "The American Idol Scholarship Fund" and announce $15,000 of professional training for anyone who wished to become a pop star, how long do you think it would take to give away a million dollars?

A day? An hour? A minute?

What if I offered the same money to anyone who wanted to learn how to maintain and repair diesel engines? How fast would the million dollars go then?

Currently, this question has no official answer. But I can tell you this - for the last month, mikeroweWORKS has been offering FULL-RIDE scholarships to one of the best trade schools in the country. And as of now - a big chunk of that million dollars is still up for grabs. Why? Because mikeroweWORKS scholarships do not reward fame or celebrity. They reward work ethic, and the willingness to learn a necessary skill. In other words, they are designed to train people for jobs that actually exist.

Last month, I shot a few commercials to announce my latest partnership with Universal Technical Institute https://www.uti.edu/mrw As you may know, UTI trains the technicians that keep America's trucks on the road. Not as sexy perhaps as the next American Idol, but a great place to find a few American Icons. Truth is, our Trade Schools play an important role in maintaining this thing we call "civilization," and given the preponderance of Help Wanted signs currently papering our transportation industry, I wanted to help draw some attention to another specific career that too many people simply overlook.

Anyway, this particular commercial didn't make it past Standards and Practices, for obvious reasons. But since I’m the only censor in these parts, I've made it available here, for the refined taste and sophisticated worldview of my 835,000 closest friends. http://profoundlydisconnected.com/naked-mike-unauthorized-video/ (Warning - Partial Nudity and Poor Judgment abound.)

Mike

I really like the work Mike Rowe is doing with this. For those of you who don't know me, I tried college and gave it up because it wasn't working for me. I picked a trade, applied my self and was making pretty good money in a couple years. With no student loan debt.

Now my case may not be typical, but who's is? The point is there are other paths to making a decent living besides college.

Here's a fairly recent Reason.tv interview with Rowe that sums up his thinking on these things. Well worth the watch.