Press Releases
Interest in Alternatives to a Baccalaureate Degree is Booming
WASHINGTON, D.C.,
January 6, 2022
For decades young people have been pressured into attending traditional colleges or universities in pursuit of a baccalaureate degree despite the high cost. Too many have been forced into a one-size-fits-all box instead of being encouraged to pursue other pathways to success. It is time to stop limiting opportunities for Americans and make skilled trade education more accessible.
ICYMI via The Hechinger Report, more students are discovering that trade schools are a practical alternative to a bachelor’s degree.
Long disparaged, education for the skilled trades is slowly coming into fashion By John Marcus December 31, 2021 …[E]ducation for the skilled trades appears to be returning to fashion, according to enrollment trends, survey data and other signals. “If you look at where the jobs are, the sweet spot is an associate’s degree with a focus on the trades,” said Rounds, a former Army lieutenant colonel who previously taught engineering at West Point and whose desk faces a portrait of benefactor Isaiah Vansant Williamson. One trend reviving interest in education in the trades appears to be growing doubt among high school students and career switchers about the value of a four-year college; the proportion of high schoolers who are considering a four-year education has plummeted from 71 percent to 48 percent since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, according to a survey by the ECMC Group, a nonprofit student loan guaranty agency that also operates three career schools. … Americans can see firsthand the labor shortages in fields such as construction, transportation and logistics, along with rising pay for those kinds of jobs and the lower debt and the shorter timetables needed to train for them. … Trade careers have also gotten higher levels of respect as the labor shortages reveal their importance. … The number of people seeking education and training for the skilled trades is also up elsewhere. In Utah, enrollment rose in the fall at seven of the state’s eight technical colleges, according to the Utah System of Higher Education. South Dakota’s Lake Area Technical College saw an 8.1 percent increase. The number of people training for the trades at Georgia Piedmont Technical College rose 13 percent this fall over last fall, the college says. … “From the student perspective, incomes [in the trades] have increased to the point where you can support a family with a single income from these careers. And it really is a career and not just a job,” said Gary Beeman, New Village’s CEO and founder. … Another analysis by the Georgetown center found electrical and power transmission installers earning entry-level salaries of $80,400 — more than some graduates of Harvard with not just bachelor’s, but master’s degrees. Employers are clamoring for people who can do these kinds of jobs, and often paying them more than in the past. … Because the course of study is shorter and the payoff so evident, completion rates in many trades programs are much higher than elsewhere in higher education, and so are placement rates. … “What people realized is that the backbone of who we are and what keeps our country going,” he said, “is often rooted in the jobs we prepare people for.” Read the full report here. |
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