In 1983, a federal commission warned that American schools were drowning in "a rising tide of mediocrity." Four decades later, the country has a different problem: not enough people to wire its buildings.
Forty years of federal policy pushed students toward college. Now the country doesn't have enough electricians to wire its data centers
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In 1983, a federal commission warned that American schools were drowning in "a rising tide of mediocrity." Four decades later, the country has a different problem: not enough people to wire its buildings.
After spending 40 years funneling money and students toward four-year colleges, federal and state policymakers across both parties have cut funding for shop classes, squeezed trades programs out of the school day, and replaced welding, electrical work, and machining courses with college prep.
The country produces fewer tradespeople than it needs, and has done so since the Reagan administration. Now the data center construction boom is running into a structural labor shortage.
The turning point was "A Nation at Risk," the 1983 report from the National Commission on Excellence in Education. Commissioned by Secretary of Education T.H. Bell and delivered to President Ronald Reagan, the report framed U.S. education as a national security concern. Its recommendations centered on academic rigor: four years of English, three years each of mathematics, science, and social studies, and a half year of computer science as minimum graduation requirements. It urged four-year colleges to raise admissions standards.
The report said nothing about dismantling vocational education. But its effect was to reorient the American high school toward college preparation. As states adopted tougher graduation requirements and schools shifted resources toward the academic core, vocational coursework fell by the wayside.
According to the National Center for Education Statistics, hands-on coursetaking among public high school graduates declined through the 1980s and early 1990s. The share of graduates who concentrated in occupational education fell from 33.7% in 1982 to 27.8% by 1990. With academic requirements taking up more of the school day, vocational courses became an ever-smaller part of the average student's schedule, even after the raw enrollment decline leveled off.
The 2002 No Child Left Behind Act accelerated the trend. According to the U.S. Department of Education, NCLB required states to implement statewide accountability systems based on annual testing in reading and mathematics for Grades 3 through 8. Schools that failed to make "adequate yearly progress" faced corrective action, restructuring, or loss of funding.
The law didn't mention vocational education at all. It didn't need to. Schools facing high-stakes testing in academic subjects redirected instructional time and budgets accordingly. Electives, shop classes, and career-technical programs often lost out.
Then, in 2009, President Barack Obama told a joint session of Congress that "every American should commit to at least one year of higher education or vocational training." Later that year, after announcing the American Graduation Initiative, he set an explicit target: By 2020, the U.S. would "again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world."
College enrollment got the bump everyone wanted. According to NCES data, the share of high school graduates who enrolled in college climbed from 49.3% in 1980 to 62% by 2022.
The policy push toward college didn't just redirect students. It diverted money. Between fiscal year 1985 and fiscal year 2014, Congress grew discretionary funding for elementary and secondary academic programs by 153% and left the Perkins Act, the federal government's main career and technical education funding stream, roughly flat. Inflation eventually ate away third of its value.
At the local level, Perkins grants pay for the physical infrastructure of trades training. A 2014 federal assessment found that 70% of recipients used the money for equipment purchases, and for some programs it was the only funding source available. Schools that could afford a new AP section but not a new welding station made the obvious choice.
Money isn't the only thing working against trades programs. Vocational programs at community colleges are still "perceived to be for the less able," according to a study in the Community College Journal of Research and Practice. The colleges themselves treat them that way, underfunding shops and equipment while investing in programs that feed students to four-year schools.
But the labor market doesn't care about the stigma. The Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce counted 30 million jobs in the U.S. that pay a median salary of $55,000 without a four-year degree requirement. The positions growing fastest require only a two-year credential from a community college.
The workforce the country does have is aging out. The share of construction workers 55 and older nearly doubled between 2003 and 2020, from 11.5% to 22.7%, and as those workers retire, the Bureau of Labor Statistics projects 81,000 electrician openings per year through 2034. Apprenticeships have nearly doubled since 2010, to 636,000 across every industry, but 40 years of attrition won't reverse in a decade of modest growth.
The country borrowed $1.8 trillion in student debt to send a generation to four-year colleges. It worked for millions of graduates. But every electrician who retired without a replacement left a job no college graduate can do. The data center boom is absorbing that shortage. So will whatever comes next.
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