Trump Boosts Trade Schools

President Trump added trade schools to the Pell Grant. The Pell Grant is the largest federal program for students in America, disbursing over $31 billion a year. Starting in 2026, eligible students will be able to get Pell Grants for vocational training programs in skilled trades, manufacturing, and healthcare, enabling quick entry into jobs with minimal debt. Previously, the Pell was aimed at colleges and universities. Political Economist Nicholas Eberstadt’s book Men Without Work documents a persistent crisis in which millions of prime-age men, often with limited formal education, have withdrawn from the labor force due to structural barriers, family instability, criminal records, and mismatched training opportunities. Traditional college routes have proven ineffective for this population, exacerbating workforce non-participation and associated social costs. By validating “vocational” training as a legitimate alternative to college for all, the new policy disrupts and directly targets the left-behind workforce segments Eberstadt identifies. Trade schools and union labor apprenticeship programs have been treated like second-class programs by the higher education industry; the term “vocational education” was scorned, while “shop classes” were pushed out of high schools. Even today, the education establishment refers to “vocational” programs as “career-technical education”. Keith Dunn, who leads the State Building and Construction Trades Council's efforts in Sacramento, has the most effective nomenclature: they refer to “get a real job” educational offerings as “trained and skilled workforce.” The name starts with the end product in mind, which is actually getting people into the workforce earning much more than a living wage, like real money, with benefits and a retirement. The idea that everyone needed to go to a university, and dedicating a preponderance of our taxpayer support to that end, has proven to be a disaster, as the gap between the super wealthy and the poor has gotten worse every year for the last 50 years. Worse than that, upward mobility, more important than wealth, has been headed in the wrong direction, something that leads to social unrest, violence, and chaos. Upward mobility is a better definition of the “American Dream”. It measures whether a person from a poor family can move up the socioeconomic ladder through hard work and by engaging with the systems we build to foster social cohesion, prosperity, and happiness. This move to open “vocational” schools to federal funding is a huge step in the right direction.