Trade School Enrollments Spike During and After Pandemic
Credit: andresr/ E+ / Getty Images- Enrollments in trade programs have increased since the pandemic as those for traditional colleges have generally declined.
- Growth has been uneven among trade school specialties.
- Healthcare and culinary arts programs have experienced especially high growth rates.
- Overall, 60% of trade school students aren’t pursuing degrees.
While traditional colleges and universities struggle to regain enrollment losses, trade schools are doing just fine.
That’s the essential message of a new report from Validated Insights, a higher education marketing firm, that examines enrollment trends in both sectors before, during, and after the pandemic.
Trade Schools See Steady Growth
Parsing data from the National Center for Education Statistics, the company determined that trade school enrollments grew 4.9% from 2020 to 2023. During that same span, the report notes, traditional higher education enrollments dropped by 0.6%.
To be fair, traditional enrollments have rebounded recently. This fall, total undergraduate enrollment rose 3% overall despite a 5% decline in first-year students. That continues a positive trend that saw growth rates of 2.5% last spring and 1.2% in fall 2023.
Of course, not everything about traditional higher education is traditional. Driving enrollment gains are online programs and dual enrollment students who, technically speaking, aren’t even college students because they’re still in high school. Yet they count.
Incremental gains of any sort are good news for higher education, an industry that lost roughly 3 million students from 2011 to 2023.
Where are students going? Many head straight into the job market, forgoing college altogether and avoiding opportunity cost and student loan debt. Many employers no longer require a bachelor’s degree — or a degree of any kind — for certain positions. The same is true for numerous state government offices.
Others take on apprenticeships in various fields that may or may not ultimately require a degree.
And, as this new report points out, many more are choosing trade schools. In 2023, 1.5 million students opted for that path.
“These findings suggest a shift in the higher education landscape, with trade schools emerging as an attractive option for students seeking a direct path to a fulfilling career,” Yelena Shapiro, founder and CEO of Validated Insights, said in a press release.
The pandemic constituted a turning point for trade schools. From 2017 to 2020, enrollments declined at a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of -0.8%, while the CAGR from 2020 to 2023 was 1.6%.
Similarly, before the pandemic, 4% of teens and 10% of adults “indicated interest” in attending trade schools, the report says, and those figures rose to 7% and 18%, respectively, after the pandemic, almost doubling for each age group.
It’s not entirely clear from this data when “after” begins with respect to the pandemic timeline. Some data references 2020 as the beginning of the “post” era, though COVID-19 was still very much a social phenomenon in 2020 and well into 2021.
Also, the report doesn’t offer any explanation as to if and why the pandemic acted as a fulcrum for trade school enrollments, though we can assume these shifts result from the continued emergence of college alternatives, the devaluation of the bachelor’s degree in the job market, and the plummeting confidence Americans place in higher education.
Uneven Growth Among Trade Specialties
While the trade sector is experiencing a renaissance of sorts, schools under that umbrella aren’t benefiting equally.
Culinary arts enrollments grew by a CAGR of 9.4% from 2017 to 2023 and by 13.4% from 2020 to 2023. Lots of folks evidently aspire to become the next Gordon Ramsay or Rachael Ray. That said, the market isn’t exactly teeming with culinary arts schools: The nation’s 10 largest schools enroll more than 99% of the total student population.
Healthcare has shown positive growth, but with a caveat. While the overall CAGR from 2017 to 2023 was 3.9%, it dropped to 3.3% from 2020 to 2023. Still, in 2023, almost 300,000 students were enrolled in healthcare trade programs.
Enrollments at beauty and wellness schools likewise appear healthy, growing at a CAGR of 3.4% from 2020 to 2023 compared to a -2.1% rate before the pandemic.
Among the skilled trades, welding and driving have shown positive growth, though maintenance and repair, along with automotive and aviation, have declined. Overall, skilled trades enrollments grew at a 1.2% CAGR from 2020 to 2023.
Then there are the multidisciplinary technical schools that enrolled a whopping 733,000 students in 2023. From 2020 to 2023, those schools experienced a modest CAGR of 0.1%.
“The report highlights the diverse landscape of trade schools, with varying enrollment trends across different categories and subtypes,” said Brady Colby, head of market research at Validated Insights. “While some sectors face challenges, others, like culinary arts and beauty and wellness, present significant growth opportunities and shifting student attitudes.”
Not all trade school students chose this path in lieu of degrees, of course. Although 60% of enrollments are in nondegree programs, 20% of students pursued associate degrees, and another 20% were in baccalaureate programs, even though only 8% of trade school programs offer a bachelor’s option.
So for some students, it’s not a matter of if the bachelor’s degree is desirable but rather where they’re looking and what fields seem most attractive. Many of them are choosing the trade school route because it tends to be a faster and cheaper pathway to credentials and career readiness.
As colleges and universities seek to shore up enrollments in light of the pending demographic cliff, attracting more traditional-age and adult students has become increasingly paramount. For those institutions wondering why that task has proven difficult, this report offers yet another clue.