The Rise of the Trades

Rethinking the Factory Model of American Education

A few years back, a woman in my town locked horns with the school district over its reading program for her dyslexic daughter. She gathered research, assembled a team of powerful moms with dyslexic kids, confronted the school, and got some changes made.

After a hard-fought school victory, most people walk away and vow to never enter a school building again. These school battles are deeply exhausting, leaving lasting scars. But this woman decided to double down. She bought a chain of Huntington franchises, because she realized that it can be highly profitable to provide a service for “things that public schools do badly.” She’s a very rich woman now.

Taking a page from my friend’s model, I started an education consulting business last March aimed at families with neurodiverse kids. After spending three years working to create a post-high school plan for my autistic kid, I took all that information and packaged it up for other parents. With a background in academia and journalism, sharing information comes naturally to me.

Now, I’m running evening webinars with 120 participants. In a few months, all those participants will get ads for my e-book. In the spring, I’ll start working in a similar capacity for a larger entity.

Schools are run like a factory with a big conveyer belt that pumps out identical 18-years olds sprayed with the same educational product. The high school conveyer belt is designed to connect up with the college conveyer belt, which then produces an identical batch of accountants and middle managers at insurance companies. It’s the system that works for many in the beginning, but over time, few remain on that conveyer belt.

Most people do not hold a four-year college degree. According to data from Pew, only about 1/3 (38%) of Americans over 25 have a BA. So, imagine an automobile factory where only 40 percent of the cars are actually completed as planned. That factory would not last long, right?

If the factory isn’t working right, then we need to rethink things. Taxpayers are giving billions to the K-12 and the college systems, so we have obligation to determine whether we need to fix both systems or get rid of them entirely. Aside from the money, we have to the right thing for kids. We should be setting them up for success, not failure.

In the meantime, the private sector is taking notes. There are folks like me and my Huntington Franchise-owning friend who support those that fall off the conveyer belt between kindergarten and grade 12. After high school, it’s all about trade schools.

Community colleges are seeing a big jump in students signing up for their offerings for professions like automotive repair or plumbing, but the biggest increase has been in private vocational schools.

In New Jersey, every community college in the state has an automotive repair program, which costs less than $10,000 per year. But when Mark, a local kid in AP classes, decided to skip college to pursue his dream of fixing race cars and luxury automobiles, he chose a private trade school, rather than the community college. He wanted to learn to fix Ferraris, not Toyotas, and the community college didn’t have the program for that.

In her book Lower Ed, Tressie McMillan Cottom, a former recruitment administrator at a trade school skewered the industry saying that these schools took advantage of minority students, leaving them with lots of debt and no skills. But trade school presidents tell me that that they have reformed, and now have to prove a higher ROI than community colleges. And young people are flocking there.

Young people tell me that they prefer private programs over community colleges, because the private trade schools offer them better on-ramps for good jobs and quicker time to completion. It costs more, but it’s worth it, they tell me. A two-year Associate Degree in Ultrasound Technology leads to a job that starts at $89,000. While trade schools cost more than community colleges, they are a bargain by 4-year college standards.

And the business model is good. There’s are many reports about rising enrollments in these programs. High schools are even sending some of their students to attend those schools, rather than come up with special in-house vocational programs. Lincoln Tech, a local trade school, is doing really well:

Vocational schools like Lincoln Tech saw a 16% increase in enrollment last year as students opted out of traditional four-year colleges to learn specific trades. Shaw highlighted that students are not just fresh out of high school; many are in their 30s and 40s and are seeking a career change. “Our students come from all walks of life. Some have tried college and found it wasn’t right for them, and others are following their passions directly into the trades,” Shaw stated.

Public schools need to modernize and meet the growing demands for an alternatives to academic programs. Not everybody wants to read Shakespeare. Some people want to jumpstart their careers early, and we should help them.

We should explore the German model, which provides early specialization with better vocational options. We should provide greater support for all kinds of learners, instead of treating all students the same. We should educate students and parents about the wide variety of opportunities, so they don’t feel trapped into the factory model of education.

Photo: Photo by East Riding Archives on Unsplash