Trade School, Education Choices, and Politics

The past few years have been, to say the least, turbulent for institutions of higher education, especially in the United States.

Events such as Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard and the nationwide 2024 campus protests demonstrate this, and surveys show just as clearly that institutions of higher education are at a critical moment in the American public consciousness. 

Such events were highlighted in a survey that was conducted in July of this year by the Manhattan Institute, which made clear reference to the subject matter of each respective event. But perhaps what is most salient is that 46% of respondents viewed private Ivy League colleges and universities with distrust, a lower percentage compared to that of the Presidency, that is, at this moment, occupied by a strong critic of such private institutions.

Earlier this year, the Trump Administration and Columbia University reached a settlement to restore federal funding to the school. However, the administration has not stopped there, proceeding to go to legal war with Harvard University. And though President Trump claimed that a $500 million deal has been reached, no official announcement of this agreement has been made by the university.

In this deal, two things are immediately outstanding: first, the fact that several major American universities, especially Harvard, have reached or are about to reach unfavorable settlements with the current administration should be incredibly concerning. Though this article is not meant to wax philosophical about the importance of educational independence, it cannot go understated just how important it is that universities stay as independent as possible.

Second, there is a focus on trade school for private institutions like Harvard. In July of this year, Brown University agreed to invest $50 million in the Rhode Island workforce development in its agreement with the Trump administration, among a few other items concerning free speech and educational independence. While there may be some dry humor in being able to say that one got their electrician’s license at Harvard or Brown, that doesn’t mean that private institutions cannot or should not invest in local workforce development. Programs like the UChicago Local program or the Princeton Production Workforce Training program exist and continue to operate. 

But Harvard already has a career development program. So what purpose would pressuring Harvard into building vocational schools have? And what purpose is there in the government passing on the responsibility of supporting vocational education and training to schools like Harvard and Brown?

It’s not that large universities that have significant influence in their local should not invest in their local communities: usually such universities are major employers in the area. But it is the fact that there is pressure on these universities to operate and fund a responsibility that is being thrust upon them as part of the conditions to keep them in the good graces of the current administration. Good graces which can and will affect students in uncertain ways.

In 2025, student debt now equals $1.8 trillion, which is kind of a big number. Meanwhile, the cost of college has doubled in the 21st century. Additionally, many members of Gen Z recognize the very real pressure of needing a college degree just to get in the door. In a collaborative 2024 report by the Burning Glass Institute, a private labor research firm and the Strada Education Foundation, a higher education non-profit, they found that up to 52% of graduates are underemployed, and even 42% remain so a decade out. Or, consider the “Dismissed by Degrees” report, a 2017 joint report by the Harvard Business School and the consulting firm Accenture which found that 67% of production supervisor job listings asked for a college degree, despite only 16% of those employed in the field possessing one.

So, perhaps that is what the current administration is aiming to rectify: that there may be many high school graduates who feel pressured to go to college to gain employment in the future, even if it may not be personally or financially the right choice for them. And it’s not like trade school is a bad choice either.

To be blunt, any amount of education beyond high school will most likely net a worker higher earnings overall, which is generally the consensus in the economics of education. However, that should not discredit the value of trade school to others: trade schools can offer flexibility, a fair salary, and just be cheaper. This sentiment is increasingly prevalent among Gen Z, who certainly feel the pressures of rising costs of education on top of an uncertain job market.

It’s not as though trade school and the four-year, or even two-year, college degree need to necessarily compete with one another. Part of the beauty of life is that we should be able to choose the economic and personal paths that feel best for us. It should be obvious that both paths of education are necessary for a functioning economy and country: we need electricians and skilled mechanics as much as we do accountants and doctors. In that sense, I do feel the sting as someone in a four-year degree program that other forms of education and employment are so often devalued just because they are not designing bridges, performing complex surgeries, or increasing shareholder value.

Certainly, conversations must be had between families, advisors, and friends about what is best for one to pursue. And, on some level, we should not romanticize certain forms of labor that are objectively harmful to many in the short and long term.

Thus, my concerns about the new push for trade schools from the current administration is the emptiness and venom of the demand. The administration has shown itself to romanticize certain industries like steel and mining that the United States just does not specialize in anymore. To put it bluntly, we are a service economy: we dominate in consulting, finance, technology, healthcare, and research. And yet, while seemingly trying to increase and encourage vocational education, the current administration has also been pulling out the healthcare rug from underneath millions of Americans. At the same time, ongoing tariffs pass on costs to the consumer as well as to the firms. 

At the time of writing, President Trump cancelled trade negotiations with Canada over an ad featuring Ronald Reagan saying that tariffs do not work. It’s really hard to make this stuff up. Even now, there are probably university administrators discussing whether they should sign an agreement with the administration on certain provisions that threaten university independence from funding to employment to admission, for the sake of maintaining crucial federal funding for research and other university operations.

I think it is perfectly sensible and would even be beneficial to support trade schools. But we should look warily, even suspiciously, at attempts to strongarm universities into agreements that threaten their independence.