This CTE Month, Let's Not Undersell (or Underfund) the Benefits of Post-Secondary Training

February is Career & Technical Education (CTE) month, a four-week long celebration of the important role the CTE system plays in preparing learners to enter the world of work. The nation’s CTE system serves more than 12 million students annually, most of them in high schools and community or technical colleges. Today’s CTE system is markedly different from the vocational tracks of the past, thanks to deliberate reform efforts that have expanded the range of industries CTE students can train for and improved the quality and value of training students receive.

This year, President Trump marked the occasion of CTE Month by proclaiming that, ‘’America will once again champion a culture where hard work is rewarded and equip our people with real skills for real careers that our communities are in desperate need to fill.’’ And one way he promises to do this is by ‘’offering more alternatives to higher education.’’

Sigh. This again.

Trump is right to champion CTE. High school students who participate in high-quality CTE programs have better outcomes, including higher graduation rates, improved college enrollment, and stronger earnings over time compared to peers who did not. But he’s wrong to imply that training programs positioned as alternatives to postsecondary education are the way to address today’s labor market needs. To say so ignores a key factor in CTE’s success and more importantly, just about everything we know about the U.S. economy.

Americans without any education after high school are unemployed at higher rates than those with associate’s degrees, bachelor’s degrees, or other forms of postsecondary training. Most well-paying jobs in the U.S. require some form of education after high school. There are no ifs, ands, or buts about it. Even despite headline-generating moves from governors and CEOs to eliminate bachelor’s degrees from hiring requirements, there’s little evidence to suggest that hiring patterns have changed to create substantially more opportunity for those without some kind of post-secondary training or credential. And projections suggest things are only going to get worse for this group in the future. According to the Georgetown Center on Education & the Workforce, by 2031, a full 72% of jobs in the U.S. economy will require some form of education beyond high school.

Now is hardly the time to convince Americans that skipping post-secondary education is a good career choice. The data is clear: to succeed in today’s economy and certainly tomorrow’s, Americans need some form of training after high school. But that’s not to say that everyone needs a bachelor’s degree, either.

There are plenty of sub-baccalaureate degrees and credentials that lead to good jobs and family-sustaining wages. Many of these--in fact, many of the strongest of these--are delivered through our CTE system at technical and community colleges. These programs may not be bachelor’s degrees, but they are decidedly not alternatives to college.

Demand for these short, career-connected degrees, credentials and certifications is on the rise. Recent data from the National Student ClearingHouse show that community college enrollment is up 5.9 percent over last year’s data. Likewise, in 2025, certificate program enrollment grew for the fourth consecutive year, up 9.9 percent over Fall 2024 numbers. And participation in Registered Apprenticeship programs, which exist separate from the CTE system but often leverage CTE coursework to provide instruction to apprentices, has grown 114% since 2014.

CTE’s growing appeal is the result of many factors, but is due in no small part to the improved quality and value of the training modern CTE programs provide. And, significantly, a key factor in these improvements has been the system’s deliberate efforts to connect to and expand strong postsecondary training opportunities. High school CTE pathways are regularly designed to give students a head start on earning college credits to accelerate their paths to in-demand industry credentials and degrees. And at the collegiate level, many of the best CTE programs offer a mix of technical and academic training, like strong communication and project management skills, to ensure learners are positioned to succeed in modern workplaces. At both levels, the CTE system has made a concerted effort to move away from rapid, narrow training and toward more structured pathway models that, with input from employers, integrate technical training and relevant, foundational academic coursework.

Donald Trump is right that CTE will be critical for expanding economic opportunity for Americans. But he’s wrong to position CTE as an alternative to college and to imply that skipping post-secondary training altogether is a good choice in today's job market.

So far, it has been hard to read the tea leaves on how the new Administration intends to support training for American workers, especially those at the earliest stages of their careers. On one hand, Linda McMahon, the nominee for Secretary of Education has posted on X praise for the Swiss apprenticeship system, a successful national model that’s built on a world-class technical education system. On the other, the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Career, Technical & Adult Education (OCTAE) has lost nearly half its staff in the last month, with some taking the ''buy out'' and others forced to take administrative leave. Meanwhile, DOGE has been busy cutting grants and contracts that support proven career training models like apprenticeship. And with the recent Republican budget resolution instructing the Committee on Education and Workforce to cut more $330 billion over the next decade, it’s hard to understand how the Administration intends to make good on Trump’s promise ‘’[to invest] in the best training and retraining opportunities that will result in a stronger workforce and a booming economy.’’

The Administration has an opportunity to take advantage of decades of improvement and innovation in the nation’s small but mighty CTE system to substantially improve opportunities for American workers and deepen pools of talent for American employers. But to do that, they will need to embrace the critical role post-secondary training and education has played in CTE’s recent success and expand, rather than minimize it. And they’ll need to find ways to fund it adequately, too. Compared to peer economies, the U.S. funds its CTE and workforce training systems at a much smaller share of our GDP. Advocating to protect the system’s funding--or, better yet, to increase it--would be an important and long overdue next step.