It’s Time to Rebrand Vocational Education for the Future of Work
Vocational training has received a bad rap due to many reasons. However, it is crucial, especially in today’s job landscape. In this article, Luke Sophinos, founder and CEO, CourseKey, discusses the benefits of vocational education and how the industry can improve its image.
For far too many years, vocational education has been getting a bad rap. And now, staffing agencies and HR managers for skilled trades are dealing with the consequences.
The United States is grappling with a dire shortage of tradespeople, and those responsible for filling such jobs have an uphill battle. There are simply not enough skilled workers, from nurses to truckers to construction workers to phlebotomists, to keep America running smoothly.
Demand for blue-collar workers continues to grow. Even with President Biden’s infrastructure plan, which allocates just $15 million to career skills training, awareness and education, the U.S. will remain critically short of the necessary number of workers to actually complete the work.
How Did We Get to This Point?
The increased access to higher education that resulted from programs like the GI Bill (1944) and the Guaranteed Student Loan Improvement Act (1979) resulted in a surge in enrollments in four-year colleges. But by over-emphasizing the value of a four-year degree, suddenly, those who did not pursue this path were labeled as failures. Two-year vocational degrees became the ugly stepchild of U.S. education.
What’s more, in recent years, vocational education has been overwhelmingly blamed for the student debt crisis, a claim that is both misrepresented and misinformed.
But the stigma is starting to fade. Students are waking up to the reality that trade school is more cost-effective and might be a better path to employment. And that is good news for hiring managers in the trade sector.
The benefits of a vocational degree, particularly in today’s labor market, are many:
- It is quicker. Students earn their degrees in one to two years rather than four, so they can enter the workforce sooner, providing a steady stream of qualified candidates to hiring managers desperate to fill jobs.
- It is cheaper. Student debt from 4-year college degrees is crushing many young people. Tuition for a trade school degree is $30,000 on average. That is the cost of just one semester at many private universities — yet their starting salaries can be similar. The more young adults are made aware of the promise of vocational school, the better for them and for hiring managers around the country.
- Employment is virtually guaranteed. According to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, “If every unemployed person in the country found a job, we would still have nearly 5.4 million open jobs.” That is bad news for the country and hiring managers but great news for trade school students.
See More: The Future of Work Requires More Transparent Management
A Rising Tide of Interest
Since the pandemic, thankfully, more students have started to see the value of a trade school education, and many schools are reporting a slight upward trend in enrollment. That is largely because we have started celebrating our essential workers, like healthcare workers, plumbers, truckers, and electricians, who have become much more visible during these trying times, not to mention the aforementioned reasons of cost, timeliness, and job placement.
It is no wonder people are beginning to realize the job security and financial benefits offered by these roles. Demand is growing for career training, and the students are younger than ever. For example, in New England, the popularity of Career and Technical Education (CTE) in high schools is increasing.
In Connecticut, over the past three or four years, about 6,000 students applied for 3,000 seats in CTE high schools. One of Connecticut’s technical high schools saw a large increase last year, with nearly 1,000 applications for 200 seats. They can only accommodate a fraction of the applicants they get.
But even with these trends, we need to do more work to put our country to work. We need to remove the stigma entirely and rally the support of the entire community, including school administrators, students, parents, technology providers, and government officials.
Steps to Rebrand Vocational Training
Here are some of the specific steps we can take to give vocational training the image makeover it deserves:
- Advocate for the value of vocational degrees. Connect with educators, state and local leaders, and private industry to realign the value of higher education in the U.S. and enable a path to prosperity for everyone.
- Debunk the myth that vocational degrees inevitably result in huge student debt. Compare that to a 4-year degree, and the choice can be obvious, purely from a cost perspective.
- Educate potential students about the wide range of vocational jobs that are essential right now. We need more than just plumbers and electricians. Highly skilled tradespeople in technology and renewable energy are also in high demand.
- Invest in technology to help institutions and students succeed. For too long, organizations of all kinds have relied on horizontal software, i.e., general productivity software, rather than vertical software, which is more customized. For example, industry disruptors are emerging to support administrators and students in every stage of the vocational education process, from enrollment through job placement.
Hiring managers know that America needs more skilled workers, and for many, vocational education provides a path to new skills and job placement. But the stigma associated with a degree in the trades has held us back for far too long. To close the skills gap in America and start filling those jobs, we need to enlist advocates across the education and HR spectrum, and we need to be more active and engaged with the people who make America run.
We need to invest in vertical software that can take our trade schools into the 21st century. Such software can aid enrollment, retention, compliance (there are many federal and state regulations around achieving a trade certificate), and finally, job placement.
There are also recruiting tools built for the trades out there, such as BlueRecruit, which connects skilled tradespeople with hiring companies across America.
And we need to build on the momentum created during the pandemic to stop treating skilled tradespeople as somehow “less than” and celebrate them for their essential work. There is no Future of Work (or future of our country’s critical infrastructure) without more skilled tradespeople.
How do you think the industry can improve the image of vocational education? Let us know on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
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