America spent decades telling students to go to college. Now it needs trades workers

Forty years of federal policy pushed students toward college. Now the country doesn't have enough electricians to wire its data centers

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 report that started the college-for-all

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.........

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