Many young people seem t0 be deciding to pursue education in the trades, partly because college now seems less practical and more expensive, partly because the right is intentionally driving public distrust in higher education.
Yet neither the federal government nor the states are creating space for them in affordable public community colleges. Public vocational schools and high school programs have thousands of students on wait lists. Union apprenticeship programs have many more applicants than they can enroll.
So students are, again, taking the rocky path of enrolling in for-profit trade schools that charge much higher tuition than public programs and are less regulated. The for-profit schools are again marketing to lower-income families with promises of high earnings and quick pathways to graduation ... if only students will take out student loans and then sign those loan checks over to the Wall Street investors behind these schools.
For-profit trade school revenue — much of it from student debt – is booming.
The federal government seems to be making the problem worse. The Department of Education is redirecting TRIO grants that were intended to assist marginalized young people in prepping for and applying to college to steer marginalized students into vocational programs.
Yet they're doing little to expand space in affordable programs or to control costs. Choosing to be become an auto mechanic or HVAC tech would be a fine choice if students could enter the trades without going deeply into debt, but the "profit" of these for-profit programs comes from charging tuition so high that students have to gamble on potentially- crippling loans.
While some Pell grants will now be available for short-term vocational programs, the ground rules for those new grants may have negative consequences for low-income families. And, the Pell programs have already been underfunded for decades.
We've already been down this road of for-profit colleges exploiting students with too few options. The Obama and Biden administration cancelled billions in student debt for students who were deceived by earlier iterations of fraudulent for-profit colleges and trade schools that left students deeply in debt for worthless coursework.
The same vulnerable populations are now being steered into this new wave of trade schools as states and the feds decline to fund affordable options for students heading either to college or to the service bays at auto dealerships.
The billionaire Secretary of Education cannot imagine a world in which we take a public interest in the education of all students, as citizens and as thriving members of their communities.
