Trading up to higher skills

This fall, American four-year colleges saw a big drop in first-year enrollments – more than 5% from last year, based on preliminary figures. While the causes are many, one could be that the academic track in higher education is simply no longer attractive to many 18-year-olds. A Harvard University study of teens and young adults, for example, found that 58% say they feel a lack of direction and little to no purpose.

Both of these trends, however, belie another one: Enrollment in postsecondary career and technical education – or CTE, once known as vocational education – continues to rise. More to the point, the nonprofit Advance CTE that helps define “cluster groupings” for these types of jobs just updated the arrangements to reflect changes in fields from digital technology to agriculture over the past two decades. One big difference in the new job definitions: They focus more on the purpose and impact of the different fields.

Today’s young workers “find meaning in making contributions that positively affect those around them – coworkers, customers, and society more broadly,” concluded a study this year by American Enterprise Institute.

More states, such as Texas, Georgia, and Maryland, have increased funding for CTE. Many companies are dropping a college degree requirement for some positions, such as work in semiconductors. The gist is that the trades, or building and creating, are both needed more and better appreciated.

A good example of this shift is Skylar Eastman, a young woman from the Columbus area in Ohio. She is about to graduate from high school with three welding certifications and a job lined up.

“My family’s always pushed trades onto all of us, because it’s something that is always going to be needed,” she tells the Monitor. In Ohio, she is a part of a growing number of students and families who view career and technical education as a ticket to upward economic mobility.

“When I first saw [welding], I was like, ‘That would be really fun to do,’” Skylar says. “I could see myself having a career out of it.”

For one assignment, shop workers in her class built metal chairs and barbecue smokers. Some of their craft is on display at her school and a source of pride for the students.

In the midst of ever-advancing technology, some young people are falling in love with making things with their hands. They are also discovering ways to earn a living, using social media to both market themselves and develop close connections with consumers.

Making things for others is an opportunity for empathy, wrote Glenn Adamson, author of books on the meaning of the craft industries. “Just as a skilled maker will anticipate a user’s needs, a really attentive user will be able to imagine the way something was made,” he wrote in a 2018 book, “Fewer Better Things.” An appreciation of the deep skills needed to change the material environment, he said, opens us up to  “better understand our fellow humans.”