Student access to trades careers expands, but obstacles linger

Senior Jasmin Zinn was putting her finishing touches on her last manufacturing project June 3. 

The hanging lamp, complete with fairy lights, was made of wood and metal and inspired by a “fire and ice” theme. Zinn was proud of her work, but nervous about what came next.

It was her last week at North Eugene High School. On Friday, her shop class friends and teachers would have their annual cookout using a metal grill made in class. It was a highlight of the year. After that, however, she would graduate and enter the real world.

Zinn got into metal and woodworking to feel connected to her late grandfather, who did woodworking. She ended up loving shop class — the belonging she felt as a “shop rat” was special and the ability to take a vision and make it tangible was freeing.

“If it’s not dangerous, you can make it,” she said.

While she won’t pursue a career in wood and metalworking, she learned in her shop classes that she likes working with her hands. She now plans to go to trade school and become an electrician. 

It’s a path that sets her apart from many of her friends, who are going to four-year colleges. And, she said, it’s a path that public schools could do a better job of showcasing to students. The majority of the information she learned about the trades has come from her plumber father and her shop teacher, Tyler Tjernlund.

“Whenever (other teachers and counselors) talk about college, they’re always advertising four years,” Zinn said. “I’m like, ‘I want to work with my hands and a four-year college isn’t going to get me there.’”

But that may be changing as the price tag of higher education grows. 

According to a 2023 Pew Research Center poll, 22% of Americans believe the cost of a four-year degree was worth the investment, even if a student had to take out loans. But nearly half —  47% — said the degree would be worth it only if the student did not need to take out loans.

Local schools generally do not collect nuanced data on students’ post-high-school plans. Eugene and Springfield school counselors and college and career advisers, however, report similar anecdotal data of students’ increasing aversion to the cost of four-year colleges — and the resultant debt.

Students like Zinn who want to go into the trades have always existed in Eugene and Springfield schools, and have historically faced barriers to finding their path post-graduation due to a lack of support from schools and industries.

But as a new generation enters the workforce, educators and trades professionals are working to bridge the gap for students eyeing careers in the trades.

Hands-on training in the trades

Hayden Melendrez, a senior at Thurston High School, attended class four days a week at the HOPE Factory this past semester. 

His classroom was a warehouse where professional tradespeople assembled manufactured homes for families facing housing instability or loss from natural disasters. The HOPE Factory is a partnership between Lane Education Service District’s Lane Career Academy and HOPE Community Homes and is in its third year of offering students like Melendrez hands-on training in trades including building, welding and plumbing. Any student in Lane County can enroll in the HOPE Factory course, which serves as a regional extension of each high school’s career and technical education (CTE) classes. 

The experience was eye-opening for Melendrez, giving him an opportunity to explore more trades than he had exposure to in his metal and drafting classes at Thurston. While he aims to get an associate degree in mechanical engineering, his backup plan is going into a trade. He was pleasantly surprised to learn he liked plumbing.

“There’s a lot to it,” he said. “I think it’s the satisfaction of making everything work together.”

Students at the HOPE Factory are able to get certifications, including the Bureau of Labor and Industries preapprenticeship certificate, CPR and first-aid training, and entry-level health and safety training for construction and other trades work.

Immon Idlewild, an educational assistant for the HOPE Factory class, said two of her former students received $10,000 scholarships from local utilities to attend lineman school. The certifications they received in the class were among the reasons the utilities chose the students, she said.

When Idlewild was in high school, any career technical education her school offered was not well-advertised or was labeled as being for “problem kids.” Being a part of the shift in K-12 education’s attitude toward the trades has been refreshing, she said. 

More student choice, more need for guidance

When school counselor Matt Adams started at Springfield High School 20 years ago, Springfield prided itself in its industrial-education programs, including metal, wood, auto and drafting shops. 

But counselors gave students three post-graduation options: college, military or the workforce. The school didn’t advertise trade schools or track who attended them. And the district lacked classes in other trades like health sciences and cosmetology.

Now, through the steady increase in state funding for CTE over the past decade, each of Springfield’s large high schools has 10 categories of CTE classes or “pathways” in addition to a popular cosmetology program at Gateways High School. Students can earn certifications through the cosmetology and certified nursing assistant programs before they graduate. 

Anecdotally, Adams said, the number of students choosing to attend college has stayed fairly steady over the years, but the number of students taking advantage of the career pathways has increased, especially in health sciences. 

“Schools are providing a lot more options for students,” he said. “Students are noticing.”

But work remains to reshape a system that is still focused on funneling students into college.

“In early education, educators are still like, you’re going to college,” he said. “That message is just embedded in education. And then really, when they get here, we’re like, actually, you’ve got all these cool options. And they’re like, wait, what?”

Money talks 

Having candid talks about money is also part of school and career counselors’ work.

Miranda Page, college and career center director at Willamette High School, said many of her students come from low socioeconomic backgrounds and equate any type of college, even community college, with debt. At the same time, her students rank good wages and work-life balance highly on their values assessments. 

Page provides a lot of education about scholarships like the Oregon Promise grant, which covers all or part of community college tuition for those who qualify. She recommends students interested in the trades to go to Lane Community College to start their careers, because private schools can be expensive, selective and often don’t accept public scholarship money. The process of getting an apprenticeship in the trades can also be complex, making career counselors and other experts, like industry professionals, important resources.

“Dad and Grandpa and uncle or whoever, they can’t help the kids because the world has changed,” she said. “They don’t understand how to navigate the new kind of trade system.”

Partnering for better trades access

A panel of six trades professionals sat in front of a crowd of students and parents April 28 at Reynolds Electric, Plumbing, Heating and Air for a question-and-answer session. 

The professionals shared the best and worst parts of their jobs and qualities they were looking for in future employees. Randy Shelton, a talent acquisition manager at large machinery company Peterson Cat, said high school students who want to go into the trades need to treat it just as seriously as students wanting to go to a four-year university.

“They seem to think they could roll into one of these trades,” he said. “They’ve got to be just as committed from their side of things to set themselves apart.” 

Jessica Auxier, HR manager at Reynolds, put on a series of trades career events for the first time in April and May geared toward high schoolers. The series included a workshop where students learned interview and resume skills, a question-and-answer panel, and a talent-match event, featuring mock interviews and meet-and-greets with hiring managers.

Auxier’s passion for high school students comes from her stint as a college and career counselor at Thurston High School. The experience opened her eyes to the obstacles trades-oriented students faced.

“Anything that we, as an employer, can do to help with (awareness about trades careers) is just going to help our students,” she said.

Warren McKillop, a senior at Sheldon High School, was at the panel. He attended the employability workshop two weeks before and had appreciated learning how to perform better in interviews.

“And you wore your button-down shirt today,” Auxier said. “You listened.”

McKillop is an aspiring electrician. He’ll start by taking classes at Lane Community College in the fall, which will earn him points towards getting an apprenticeship. The road to becoming an electrician, however, was not something McKillop learned about at Sheldon.

“I think there’s a lot of kids who don’t really know where they want to go and the trades would actually fit them, but they just don’t even know about it,” McKillop said.

Just 4 miles away from Sheldon, at North Eugene High School, Zinn walked through the school’s state-of-the-art shop classroom with confidence.

Her access to manufacturing classes is special to North Eugene, and it gave her the opportunity to discover a career in the trades. But she also gives credit to her teacher, Tjernlund.

Zinn said Tjernlund not only helps connect students to the professional world, he also reassures students when they make mistakes, and challenges more advanced students to teach others.

“When you’re not so confident, it’s kind of harder to make yourself seen and get the opportunities that you’re wanting to obtain,” Zinn said. “He really teaches you how to be confident with yourself so that you can succeed in life.”