For a long time in America, we treated the skilled trades like a second choice.
Go to college. Get an education. Don’t end up doing what I do.
I have heard versions of that statement throughout my life, and what always struck me was how often it came from tradespeople themselves.
These were mechanics, electricians, plumbers, welders, carpenters and other skilled workers who spent decades building careers, buying homes, raising families and putting their own children through college. Yet somewhere along the way, many were made to feel that the work they did wasn’t quite as valuable as the work being done by the person wearing a tie in the office next door.
I think that is finally changing.
And that is one reason I am encouraged by what DEWALT and Stanley Black & Decker are doing through the DEWALT Grow the Trades initiative.
DEWALT has committed $60 million through 2030 to initiatives supporting current and aspiring tradespeople. According to Stanley Black & Decker, $27 million has already been invested since 2023. The company has supported scholarships, grants, tools and partnerships with organizations involved in workforce development and trades education.
As a Dean who oversees skilled-trades programs, my first reaction to that is pretty simple:
Thank you.
Seriously.
I think there are smart people at companies like DEWALT who recognize the workforce problem in front of us and genuinely want to see more people prosper through careers in the trades.
And, sure, if DEWALT helps you become a carpenter and you spend the next 30 years buying DEWALT tools, I think everybody understands how that works. Lol.
There is nothing wrong with an investment being good for the trades and good for business at the same time.
The more important question to me is this:
Where can investments like these make the biggest difference?
Start With Teachers
If you gave me millions of dollars tomorrow and told me to strengthen skilled-trades education, my first investment would not be a shiny new piece of equipment.
It would be teachers.
We need better preparation for CTE instructors, and we need compensation that makes teaching a realistic option for talented people coming out of industry.
One of the mistakes we make in technical education is assuming that because someone is an outstanding tradesperson, they will automatically be an outstanding teacher.
They won’t.
You can be a great foreman and a great journeyman and still not be a great teacher.
Teaching is different from working.
The power dynamic is different. The relationship is different. A student isn’t an employee receiving a paycheck from you. In fact, they are paying for the opportunity to learn.
I think of that student as a customer—not because the customer is always right or because we should lower standards, but because that person had choices.
In most places, there are multiple community colleges, technical colleges, apprenticeships and training providers they could have selected.
If a student is standing in front of you, that means somebody trusted you with their education and, to some degree, their future.
That is an honor.
Good CTE instructors have to understand their trade, but they also have to understand people. They have to know when to be stern and when to show empathy. They have to be present and relational. They need patience, emotional intelligence and a genuine desire to see another person succeed.
Technical expertise gets you into the classroom.
It doesn’t automatically make you a teacher.
Then We Have to Invest in the Programs Around Them
Equipment absolutely matters.
But I think colleges sometimes misunderstand what equipment investment actually means.
It isn’t always the new, shiny multi-axis machine that looks great in a grant announcement.
Sometimes it is the welder.
The shear.
The automotive lift.
The HVAC trainer.
The truck your CDL students drive every day.
Those aren’t always glamorous things to raise money for, but they are the equipment students actually touch.
Colleges need depreciation schedules. They need equipment replacement plans. They need maintenance contracts. They need to understand the actual long-term cost of operating technical programs.
You cannot build a sustainable equipment strategy if you are not sure where the money for the equipment will come from and grants are not a sustainable equipment funding pathway for long term program viability.
When someone walks into your program, they are evaluating the value proposition. If they see outdated equipment that barely works, what message are we sending them?
Students want to see that we are investing in them and taking their education seriously.
One of the most tangible ways we demonstrate that is through the tools and equipment we give them to learn on.
Invest in the People Running the Programs Too
We also need administrators who understand Career and Technical Education.
CTE programs are expensive and complicated.
You are dealing with equipment, facilities, industry credentials, faculty recruitment, employer relationships, safety requirements, licensing agencies, grants and labor-market changes.
College leadership has to understand that reality.
If America wants dramatically more tradespeople, colleges cannot want the enrollment associated with CTE without accepting the investment required to produce it.
Employers Don’t Have to Write Giant Checks
When we talk about employer partnerships, I sometimes think we make them sound more complicated than they need to be.
Come visit the program.
Interview students.
Hire graduates.
Tell us when our curriculum no longer reflects what you are seeing in the field.
Serve on advisory committees.
When a college is applying for a grant that would genuinely help build workforce capacity, write the letter of support.
Run an active hiring campaign through the program.
Those things matter.
Employers are one of the best feedback mechanisms technical programs have. If our graduates consistently show up without the skills employers need, we should know that.
Likewise, when a program is producing outstanding workers, employers should be present enough to recognize it.
Not All Training Is Created Equal
The renewed interest in skilled trades has also created a lot of organizations that want to enter the training space.
Some are excellent.
There are specialized short-term trainers filling niches that traditional colleges haven’t filled particularly well. Light Brigade’s fiber-optic training is one example that comes to mind.
But short-term training has to provide real value.
This becomes particularly important as Workforce Pell begins expanding federal Pell Grant eligibility to qualifying short-term workforce programs. The program took effect July 1, 2026, and eligible programs can be as short as eight weeks.
I respect what Workforce Pell is trying to accomplish, particularly its focus on workforce outcomes.
But if a student asks me whether they should spend their limited time and financial-aid eligibility on an eight- or fifteen-week program, my first question is simple:
What do you walk away with?
Can you earn an industry-recognized credential that employers actually care about?
Does that credential serve as a meaningful barrier to entry into the occupation?
Does it communicate employability to an employer without the training provider having to explain what its own certificate means?
A Class A CDL is easy to understand.
A state-recognized CNA credential is easy to understand.
Industry-recognized welding, HVAC, electrical and other credentials can carry value beyond the institution where someone received their training.
A certificate saying you completed “ABC Construction Training” may not.
For an extremely short program, if the credential doesn’t independently mean something in the labor market, I would be very cautious about telling a student to spend their money and Pell eligibility on it.
Short-term training should produce long-term value.
We Also Need to Take Training to People
Growing the trades cannot only mean making the programs we already have bigger.
We need to take education into communities that have historically been shut out of these opportunities.
We also need to stop thinking about workforce development exclusively as training someone for their first job.
What about the person who has been in the trades for ten years?
Technology changes. Codes change. Tools change. Building systems change.
Continuing education and upskilling should be a major part of the workforce-development conversation.
The trades need places where someone can enter the profession, build a foundation and return throughout their career to continue learning.
We Need to Invest in All of the Trades
There is another mistake I think we need to avoid.
When America talks about the “skilled trades,” we tend to focus on the occupations that get the most attention.
Electricians.
Welders.
HVAC technicians.
Plumbers.
Those careers matter tremendously.
But so do roofers, masons and dozens of other occupations that don’t always end up in the glossy workforce-development brochure.
They are working.
They are raising families.
They are building America.
And many of those occupations are experiencing the same workforce challenges—sometimes more severely.
Workforce investment also needs to be regional.
What a community needs in Phoenix may not be what a community needs in Idaho, Washington or Ohio. Training capacity should reflect the employers, industries and opportunities that actually exist within those regions.
There isn’t one national skilled-trades labor market.
There are hundreds of regional ones.
What Would Success Look Like?
When organizations announce enormous workforce goals, I think we sometimes become too focused on the final number.
The first question should be capacity.
Do we have enough high-quality training programs to accomplish the goal?
Do they have qualified instructors?
Do the instructors get along and work well together?
Is the administrator actually present and knowledgeable about the program?
Does the college have a real equipment plan?
Are students earning recognized credentials?
Do instructors themselves maintain industry credentials?
Is the local employer community involved?
No program is perfect.
One weakness doesn’t condemn a program.
But when several of those things are missing at the same time, strong outcomes become much harder to produce.
A few years into a major workforce investment, I would want employers telling us whether graduates actually have the skills they need and whether the training being offered matches the regional economy.
Later, I would want us auditing the entire chain.
Talk to the training providers.
Talk to employers.
Talk to participants.
And, most importantly, figure out what happens when the grant ends.
Grant funding can build capacity.
It shouldn’t become the business model.
Colleges and training providers need sustainability plans because eventually the grant money goes away.
But Training Has Value Beyond the Job Placement Number
There is one place where I think workforce development can become too obsessed with outcomes.
We cannot determine what every person ultimately does with their training.
If DEWALT helps someone learn carpentry, that person might become the CEO of a construction company someday.
Someone else might become a journeyman carpenter.
Another person might use those skills to remodel their own home.
And somebody else might finish the training and realize they absolutely do not want to be a carpenter.
That’s okay too.
Education helped that person learn something about themselves.
So if an initiative ultimately provides meaningful trades training to a huge number of people, I don’t need every single participant to become a tradesperson before I consider that investment worthwhile.
Giving people access to legitimate skills and opportunities matters.
Something Bigger Is Happening
This might actually be the part of DEWALT’s investment that excites me the most.
A recent DEWALT survey of more than 500 WorldSkills competitors from more than 60 countries and regions found that 53% reported feeling pressure to pursue a university or traditional academic path, while 45% said young people aren’t exposed to skilled-career opportunities early enough.
That sounds familiar.
For generations, tradespeople heard some version of:
Don’t be like me. Go get your education.
Think about that for a moment.
People worked for decades as mechanics, plumbers, electricians, carpenters and welders. They built careers. They supported families. They sent children to college.
Yet many were made to feel like what they did wasn’t good enough.
Somebody taught them that dignity came from getting out of the trades rather than recognizing the dignity already present in becoming excellent at one.
I think we’re finally changing that.
The next generation of tradespeople should not have to overcome shame about their profession before they can take pride in it.
The electrician should be able to stand beside the electrical engineer with equal pride in the work each of them contributes.
Neither needs to diminish the other.
We need both.
That is why I’m thankful when companies like DEWALT put their name, money and influence behind the skilled trades.
Yes, America needs more tradespeople.
Yes, we need better training infrastructure.
We need teachers. We need equipment. We need strong administrators. We need employers. We need recognized credentials. We need community access. We need sustainable funding.
But we also need something that doesn’t appear on a workforce spreadsheet.
We need people to believe this work is worth being proud of.
And increasingly, they do.
It is actually pretty cool to be an electrician or plumber nowadays.
I think the tradespeople who spent their careers being told otherwise deserve to see that.
And I hope the generation coming behind them never has to be told otherwise in the first place.
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