Shop Class 2.0: Rethinking High School to Accelerate Electrification

Bringing vocational training back into high schools will help us ditch fossil fuels, bridge the skilled workforce gap, and empower more young people to succeed.

Public high schools are vital to bringing more young people into the clean energy workforce to address the critical labor shortage

If we’re going to reach our emissions reduction targets, we need to rapidly accelerate the pace of electrification. That means millions of heat pumps, rooftop solar panels, EV chargers, and induction stoves installed in buildings all across the country in a matter of a couple decades.

But there’s a major problem undercutting our progress. We don’t have nearly enough skilled workers to get this job done at the speed required. It’s estimated that we’re going to need 1 million more electricians and 400 thousand new HVAC technicians in the next ten years.

Tradespeople are the true lifeblood of the clean energy transition — they do the critical on-the-ground work to rewire homes, upgrade electrical panels, and put solar panels up onto roofs. Without enough of them, we risk falling short of our climate goals, while frustrating the very early adopting customers we need to kickstart the transition to fully electrified buildings.

To fix the electrification worker shortage, we need more young people to enter into the trades, and fast. While adult retraining programs are part of the solution, they alone will not be sufficient to bridge the skilled labor gap in the time required. A quarter of construction workers are now over the age of 55 — their imminent retirement will further dwindle the number of available talent at the precise time when we must be quickly reversing this trend.

One untapped resource that holds immense potential to address this skilled labor bottleneck is our public high schools. High school is a formative time of exposure and professional exploration, and we aren’t doing a good enough job of building on-ramps to the trades during this pivotal period. And although full-time vocational high schools are another key piece of workforce development, they aren’t available everywhere, have limited capacity, and their enrollment represents less than 10% of high schoolers in the U.S.

We need to do more to engage the 13M+ young people who sit at the desks of public high schools across the country. In short, we have to make becoming an electrician just as appealing and respected as attending college for these kids, and provide them with supported pathways to build careers in these high-demand trades.

Now is the time to retool our education system for the workforce we need to build our electrified future, while simultaneously providing more young people with a pathway to good, family-sustaining jobs.

The Narrowing Trades On-Ramp for High School Students

How is it that we ended up with a historic tradesperson shortage at the precise time when trillions of federal dollars are starting to flow into building new infrastructure and clean energy capacity?

The American education system has recently narrowed the on-ramp to the trades. In the 1980’s, the U.S. began shifting away from vocational training and pushed more young students toward a 4-year college degree. Education reform movements dating back to the Reagan era placed a greater emphasis on a core academic curriculum (e.g. math, English, science, social studies) and standardized testing, often at the expense of vocational programs. Shop class, once a staple of the American public high school experience, started disappearing around the country.

As these changes to the education system took hold, a “college-for-everyone” mentality gripped our culture. Societal norms permeated that college & white-collar work was the path to success — while the trades and blue collar work was branded as remedial and undesirable. This resulted in a dip in the number of skilled workers and tradespeople as more young people opted to go to college instead. Over time, this dynamic is what leads to the mismatch between the growth of clean energy jobs, and the availability of qualified workers to fill them.

In addition to labor shortages, higher education is not working for a growing number of young people. Nearly 4 of 10 entering college students never graduate. At the same time, debt from student loans has skyrocketed as college grads fail to recognize an ROI on their degree. This has financially crippled enough young people to warrant the recent attempts to cancel student debt writ-large. This is all occurring while 37% of college grads do work that only requires a high school degree.

This all adds up to large amounts of wasted time, money, and effort sending many young people down the wrong path in their formative years.

A Vision for ‘Shop Class 2.0’

The question is: what can we do about this? In short, we must summon the courage to collectively revisit our assumptions about education and forge a new path that better serves the future of our country and our young people.

It’s time to bring vocational training back into our public high schools — ushering in the era of Shop Class 2.0. This bold vision seeks to retool our high school education system to meet the pressing need for more skilled tradespeople, while also providing on ramps to well paying, high impact careers for more young people without requiring a college degree. Shop Class 2.0 augments traditional high school academic curriculum with career-oriented technical coursework to provide alternative pathways after graduating.

Shop Class 2.0 encompasses the following key elements:

1. Exposure to skilled trades for the clean energy economy. Technical coursework provides a direct pathway for a young person to join the modern electrification workforce — and build a durable, financially stable career with significant impact. Given the greatest shortage is in the electrical field, prioritizing training in this area is crucial.

2. Flexible post-secondary pathways. Students can engage in exploratory trades-related classes while pursuing their comprehensive high school education, rather than replacing it. This approach offers the flexibility for students to choose various paths after high school graduation, whether they opt to enter a trade directly or pursue an advanced degree.

3. Blended hands-on and theoretical learning. Connects coursework with opportunities for real world apprenticeships with local contractors and clean energy initiatives. This strikes a balance between practical, hands-on experience and theoretical understanding.

4. Complement to full-time vocational high schools. Reach the 90+% of students who don’t attend a full-time vocational high school and expose them to careers in the trades. This approach is particularly beneficial for students who may not be ready to commit to joining the trades after middle school, or who were not accepted into vocational high schools.

5. Eye on diversity. We need to break the pervasive homogeneity of the trades workforce. Shop Class 2.0 proactively removes any and all barriers for women and people of color to be exposed to, and grow their skills in the trades.

To bring this to life, here’s a visual of how a clean energy vocational curriculum could be integrated into the public high school system:

‘Shop Class 2.0’ can provide more young people with the ability to pursue a career in clean energy with multiple paths after graduating high school.

As a specific example, imagine a high school ‘Introduction to Electrical Wiring’ course. Students in this course learn electrical theory principles and engage in hands-on simulations of building circuits and using tools safely. They could also earn hours towards becoming a Journeyman Electrician as part of the coursework and participate in project-based learning alongside local electricians.

After graduation, these students have various paths to choose from. One path is to become an Apprentice Electrician, immediately entering the workforce and earning money without taking on college debt. Right after high school, this apprentice could start earning $30k-$50k per year as they work towards their license — which could double their income in a few years time.

Alternatively, they can pursue advanced degrees at community colleges to earn technical credentials for subspecialties, or apply to four-year colleges to pursue careers as electrical engineers or other relevant fields.

This is just one theoretical example of how reintegrating vocational training into public high schools can unlock the potential of our young people and build a robust workforce ready to build the clean energy future. It could provide a compelling pathway for students to enter a high-demand sector, gain valuable skills, and embark on fulfilling careers that offer financial stability. Moreover, by eliminating the ‘college-for-everyone’ mentality, we can minimize waste and create a more efficient and inclusive system.

The Tides are Starting to Turn

Fortunately, after decades of deprioritization, public funding and support for vocational training in high schools is beginning to return. These resources provide an essential foundation to expose more young people to the trades.

One notable example is the recently announced Clean Energy Innovation Pathway program in Massachusetts. This program focuses on growing the clean energy workforce in the state by offering a new set of courses and work-based learning opportunities in public high schools. The first 6 schools will pilot the program in the 2025 school year.

Governor Maura Healy’s Administration is building a talent pool to fill the additional 66,000 clean energy workers needed in the state by 2050 to reach its net-zero goal. In particular, growing the number of tradespeople who can electrify more than 2 million buildings across MA is one of the key stated outcomes of the program. After exposure to the pathway in high school, the curriculum is designed to lead students to careers in the clean energy industry — with many that do not require a college degree.

The Clean Energy Innovation Pathway offers a blueprint for what is possible in reimagining the high school experience to simultaneously build the electrification workforce, and connect more young people with meaningful, family-sustaining jobs. However, much work remains to implement these types of programs effectively and at the scale required to address the skilled labor shortage.

Looking Ahead

With 1.4 million new electricians and HVAC technicians needed over the next few decades, we need to get started training a new cohort of young, diverse tradespeople to join these fields immediately. Relatedly, we must ask honest questions about how our education system can evolve to build the workforce needed for our future, while giving any individual the opportunity to prosper.

A bold vision is required to retool our high schools and add more on-ramps to the trades. This is a necessary accelerator in our race to electrify everything, and can help more young people join the middle class. We don’t have any time to waste.