Why Trade Education Should Be Run By Tradespeople, Not Investors

With my experience as a contractor, an instructor, and a school owner, I have a unique perspective from sitting on both sides of the trade school pipeline. So when I say the wrong people are running too many trade schools in this country, I am not speculating; I am speaking from experience. 

There’s a saying most of us have heard: “Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.” In the skilled trades, that couldn’t be further from the truth. Without real experience, you are not teaching the trades, you are merely describing them.  

The Wrong Incentives Are Driving Decisions 

Businesspeople running trade schools, not tradespeople, are primarily concerned with enrollment numbers, and tuition revenue, not job sites. Since those are the numbers that matter to their investors, those are what they optimize for.  

This isn’t an isolated problem, as investment banking data from Capstone Partners shows that private equity and institutional buyers have accounted for over 54% of all deals in the education and training sector. Wall Street firms are aggressively acquiring independent vocational schools because they view career training as a high-margin, recession-resilient asset class. 

When a trade school becomes a portfolio asset, metrics such as tuition growth, enrollment numbers, and earnings replace job-site performance as the primary business objectives. Contractors are left dealing with the fallout of poorly trained graduates. 

Curriculum Built for the Classroom Instead of the Job Site 

When administrators who have never worked in the trades create the curriculum, the result is predictable: theory first, practical hands-on training later. That is because everything is tied to a semester calendar borrowed from academia, which works fine for most majors, but not for learning how to wire a panel or braze a copper line. 

The trades are learned by doing tasks early in the process and repeatedly, so what you teach first is vital as it shapes everything that follows. Schools run by people who have actually managed job sites understand this and build a curriculum around what is needed to know to do the job right, keep a client, and not get someone hurt. That is different than what ends up in a syllabus designed by a committee. 

AI Makes Quality Training More Important Than Ever 

Everyone talks about the shortage of workers entering the skilled trades, which has contributed to the labor shortage contractors face today. While this has been true for many years, that trend is slowly beginning to change as AI puts pressure on some white-collar careers. With more young adults and job seekers considering the trades as a serious career path, the industry needs to make sure proper training is ready for them. 

An influx of new talent doesn’t fix the labor shortage if the training is flawed. A graduate who can’t perform at the level the job requires isn’t filling the gap; they are only adding to it. Now a contractor has to spend time correcting training that should have already happened or cut their losses and start over. That cost falls to the employer every time. 

When a school’s incentive is enrollment, it recruits. When the incentive is outcomes, it trains. Right now, too much of the trade school industry is in the recruitment business.  

Schools run by people who have worked in the trades make decisions that look strange on a spreadsheet but are obvious on a job site. Students are put into real-world scenarios early because that’s how knowledge sticks. For these schools, their reputation is tied to every graduate they send out into the field, so they stay connected to contractors, knowing that their feedback is the only honest report card that matters. 

Trade education should be led by people who have spent their careers doing the work. Contractors can be proactive by asking the hard questions of the programs they recruit from. The schools that deserve trust are the ones that have earned it through their graduates’ performance, not their enrollment numbers.