Somewhere between the second half of the twentieth century and now, Americans decided that going to college was an act of patriotism and learning a trade was a consolation prize. The country is currently paying for that confusion in ways both measurable and embarrassing: a shortage of electricians, plumbers, welders, and HVAC technicians so severe that contractors in major metros are turning down work, while college graduates with $40,000 in debt and a degree in communications sciences sit at home refreshing their email, waiting to be told what their education was actually for.
A republic that cannot wire its own buildings or fix its own pipes has placed too much faith in paper and not enough in hands. That is not a colorful way of saying something. It is a precise description of what has gone wrong, and it has a cure, if anyone in a position of authority can be persuaded to stop genuflecting long enough to apply it.
There is a tradition in American civic life, older than the republic itself, that holds useful knowledge to be the foundation of self-government. Not knowledge for its own sake, not ornament, not the ability to quote authorities and name schools of thought, but knowledge that can be applied to a real problem by a person working with real materials. The craftsman who understands his trade is not merely economically productive. He is civically stable. He does not depend on distant experts to explain reality to him, because he has spent years making reality cooperate with his intentions. He builds, repairs, and maintains. He knows cause from effect. He votes with a certain groundedness that is very difficult to manufacture in a lecture hall.
The early American ideal was not the university graduate as the model citizen. It was the skilled tradesperson, the self-improving artisan, the person who read not to credential herself but to become more capable. Voluntary associations, lending libraries, mechanics’ institutes, and apprenticeship programs were the civic infrastructure that turned raw talent into public benefit. The idea was frank and unashamed: teach people to do things, and they will organize to improve themselves and their communities. Give them only theory, and you will get theorists who cannot change a fuse.
Here is what the data says we have built instead. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects shortages in the skilled trades running well into the 2030s. The Associated Builders and Contractors estimated in recent years that the construction industry alone needed to attract roughly half a million additional workers annually beyond its normal pace of hiring just to keep up with demand. Meanwhile, the United States has more than 43 million citizens carrying student loan debt, much of it accumulated in pursuit of degrees that the labor market has not rewarded commensurately. College enrollment has been declining since about 2010, which suggests that young people are not entirely failing to notice the mismatch, but there are not yet nearly enough structured alternatives waiting for them when they turn away from the campus gate.
The named enemy here is not four-year college. College serves those who use it well and honestly. The enemy is the ideology that conflated college attendance with human worth, that caused school counselors to steer every capable student toward a bachelor’s degree as though skill learned through the hands were somehow less than skill learned through the lecture, and that caused employers to require degrees for jobs that have no logical relationship to a degree. That ideology was not born from evidence. It was born from snobbery dressed up as meritocracy, and it has been expensive for everyone except the institutions that charge tuition.
The corrections available to us are practical and they do not require waiting for Congress to discover competence. States and municipalities can fund registered apprenticeship programs aggressively and partner them with community colleges that offer stackable credentials in specific trades, so that a young person can earn while learning and accumulate formal recognition of what she actually knows how to do. Employers who participate in those programs should receive straightforward tax incentives, not complicated ones, because complicated incentives help only the people who can afford to decode them.
Secondary schools can restore the shop class, the culinary program, the carpentry elective, not as tracks for students who have been written off, but as serious curricula taught by people who have actually worked in the relevant industries. Bring in a master electrician to teach alongside the classroom teacher. Pay that person accordingly. Stop treating the classroom as the only legitimate site of learning and the teacher as the only legitimate transmitter of knowledge.
Local newspapers and civic associations, the kinds of institutions that once published practical knowledge and organized mutual improvement, have a role to play that they have largely abandoned. Covering apprenticeship programs, profiling successful tradespeople, running practical advice from local contractors: this is not soft content. This is the republic taking its own maintenance seriously. The American Star News has argued for exactly this kind of community-rooted journalism as a pillar of local civic life, and they are right to do so.
Finally, parents need honest information, given without condescension, about what their children can earn and build and become in the skilled trades. A licensed electrician in most American cities earns well above the national median household income. A master plumber running her own shop earns more than most holders of master’s degrees. These are not secrets, but they are oddly absent from the conversation that happens in high school guidance offices across the country.
We have built a culture that spends heavily to produce people who can describe problems at length and very little to produce people who can fix them. A nation that mistakes description for solution will eventually find itself in the dark, waiting for someone who knows where the breaker box is.
Silas Poor Richard is a columnist for The Republic Standard.