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Go back far enough (WWII and for years after, for example) and you find a state and nation so thick with low-skill manufacturing jobs the big education milestone for a family wasn’t being the first person to graduate from college, it was the first person in the family graduating from high school.
Manufacturing jobs seemed bountiful and training for entry level positions truly trivial, which worked out fine, since many families needed immediate income much more than they needed bragging rights about just how much schooling their kid got compared to yours. If you were old enough to work, go out and get a job.
And while the value of college degrees grew steadily for decades, so did manufacturing, hitting its U.S. peak in 1979, when 19.4 million Americans worked in that sector.
Yet around that time a disconnect began to develop between those seeking to leave high school and go to college, and those looking to get enough training to start a job as soon as they had the sheepskin. Remember when the latter attended a “vo-tech (vocational technical) program while the former were on an “academic track?” The perceived value of a post high-school degree grew to the point that students going to vo-techs were wrongly assumed to be failures, the ones who just couldn’t cut it academically.
People even talked of schools “dumping” those with low-grades into the vo-tech system, talk that became more pronounced (and sadly, more believable) in the late ’90s and early aughts when states started demanding all students take standardized reading and math tests, then started measuring a school’s success by the test scores. You want to keep your school’s test scores up, the theory suggested, nudge the low-scorers into the vo-tech schools.
Downplaying the vo-tech approach of training students in the “trades” (carpentry, plumbing, mechanics, electrical, e.g.) rather than prepping them for college was always a grossly misguided notion. Quite often the reality was (and is) that developing good skills in hands-on trades can lead to a job of equal or better pay than college grads. And those students save money by reducing post high school education costs.
Pennsylvania seemed to realize the stigma of being a “vo-tech” student was both misplaced and indelible. By the end of the 2000s the state Department of Education urged vo-techs to start calling themselves “Career and Technical Centers.” The push included making grants more readily available to renamed schools.
And while the new names initially were simply cosmetic, both the high school CTCs and the post-high school trade programs offered by institutions such as Johnson College and Luzerne County Community College have been forced to adapt as technology impacted pretty much every trade.
As outlined in our recent series “Working the Trades,” the region, state and nation have been experiencing a substantial surge in new manufacturing and in demand for workers to fuel the growth. Wages have risen with demand, backlogs have developed in construction and other trades, and it has very much become an employee market. If you’ve got the skills, you can get a well-paying job. You get to build a career, and family if you want, sometimes very literally with your hands. And you get to see directly the fruits of your labor, the success of your adaptability, and the legacy you physically leave behind.
We may not get back to the boom that lasted through the better part of the 1940s-70s, and it is unwise to assume this boom could last as long as that one. But contrary to naysayers, this surge in manufacturing and the demand for skilled trades workers is real. We think that’s a good thing for the country in general, and that the broadening of opportunities to those not holding advanced degrees is very good for workers and their families.
— Times Leader