Jasmine Wright and Jason Altmeier, CEO of CECU (representing 850 trade schools), discuss how Trump’s "One Big Beautiful Bill"—including short-term Pell Grants and expanded 529 plans—boosted career-focused education, with 21% of for-profit CTE schools excelling in social mobility. Critics argue universities inflate costs with unrelated courses, while Altmeier highlights trade schools’ efficiency and high ROI, though funding gaps persist for upfront tool expenses. A Formula One engineer warns trades alone limit STEM opportunities, but Altmeier counters modern skilled fields demand advanced technical training. Despite debates over the Department of Education’s role, Pell Grants and state partnerships ensure CTE remains accessible, reversing Reagan-era claims of defunding. The episode underscores trade education’s growing viability as a cost-effective, career-aligned alternative to traditional college. [Automatically generated summary]
In the meetings that we have today, we're working really well with this administration and we are very excited about working with you, Marco, and Pate to take the Alliance forward into the future.
unidentified
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
C-SPAN, democracy unfiltered.
We're funded by these television companies and more, including Comcast.
The flag replacement program got started by a good friend of mine, a Navy vet, who saw the flag at the office that needed to be replaced.
He said, wouldn't this be great if this can be something that we did for anyone?
Comcast has always been a community-driven company.
This is one of those great examples of the way we're getting out there.
Comcast supports C-SPAN as a public service, along with these other television providers, giving you a front-row seat to democracy.
Joining us now is a familiar face for C-SPAN Watchers.
He's Jason Altmeier, former Pennsylvania congressman, who's now the president and CEO of the group Career Education Colleges and University.
Jason, welcome back.
Glad to have you this morning.
First, just remind our viewers what your organization is, what the mission is, and what do you do?
unidentified
Career Education Colleges and Universities is the national association representing private post-secondary career schools.
So think of the trade schools, the welding HVAC, blue-collar trades that people think about, truck driving, the skilled trades all across the board related to aviation techs, auto technicians,
and then we have health care programs like nursing and the allied health professions, beauty and wellness programs, cosmetology, massage therapy, and then other types of programs like commercial drone application and things like that.
So we have 850 campuses across the country for career and trade schools.
Now, trade schools have been a topic of conversation both on Congress and at the White House as President Trump is trying to bring back manufacturing and emphasize trade schools in his economic policies.
Part of that was passing the One Big Beautiful bill that addressed some of this.
I wonder what was your interaction with Congress in passing that bill?
Were you able to lobby them to get things put in there that was helpful to your group and your mission?
unidentified
We were very happy with what was in the bill.
Part of our mission is to work with Congress and the administration on behalf of our members.
And with regard to the Big Beautiful bill, some of the things we looked at were the short-term Pell Grant, which is new, very important for trade schools, and our schools were included in that.
Accountability measures for schools.
There's been a long, years-long debate in the country about how to hold schools accountable for their outcomes to make sure students are getting what they're paying for, getting job opportunities on the other end of their education.
We were very involved in making sure that that accountability applied to all types of schools, not just private and for-profit schools, which we represent, but public institutions as well.
So we were very pleased with that universal accountability.
We do have some issues with the formula that is used, but by and large, we were very happy that they applied that accountability to all types of schools.
And things like 529 savings plans for parents, being able to use that students and parents, on trade schools and programs that are important for the future of the country.
Now I want to invite our viewers to join in on this conversation.
Republicans, your line is 202-748-8001.
Democrats, your line is 202-748-8000.
Independents, your line is 202-748-8002.
Excuse me, I actually am going to amend what I just said and say that we are changing some of those lines.
I'll have our producers flash them on the screen, but they are more regional and not specific to public political affiliation.
I want to turn to this NBC news poll because it had some pretty shocking results.
It showed that two-thirds of registered voters say that a four-year college degree isn't worth the cost.
A majority have said that degrees were worth the, and that's a majority that said the degrees were worth the cost years ago.
NBC poll sir Jeff Koritz stated that it's just remarkable to see attitudes on any issues shift this dramatically, particularly on a central tenet of the American dream.
I wonder, what are your thoughts?
unidentified
We are not surprised at those results because we could see this coming.
For decades, we have talked in this country about the four-year path to college being the optimum path for students.
And then if you took the lesser path, what was perceived to be the second choice, that would be then trade and career schools.
And what you're seeing now is it's totally different.
We're going to leave this to bring you live coverage from NASA of the return of astronaut Johnny Kim and two Russian cosmonauts following a 245-day mission aboard the International Space Station here on C-SPAN.
So when you add all of that up, the students can see that is the better career path for some of them than the traditional four-year degree.
Now, I want to clarify those lines for folks who want to call in.
Eastern Central Line, your Easter Central Region, your line is 202-748-8000.
Mountain Pacific Region, your line is 202-748-8001.
And if you have experience with career or technical education, something that we're talking about this morning, your line is 202-748-8002.
But to your point of what's kind of driving the sentiment around colleges and where to go, we have here that inability to pay debts is obviously a looming issue.
Average federal student loan is $39,075 per borrower.
I wonder if you have seen the impact of the president's student loan policies compared to potentially former President Joe Biden's policies on student loans.
Have those changes impacted what we're seeing now for people's ability to go to either technical school, trade school, or a four-year university?
unidentified
President Trump, both in his first term, but he's really ramped it up in his second term, has focused quite extensively on career and technical education.
He's merging portions of the Department of Education and the Department of Labor as they relate to workforce development, better coordinating the agencies across the government.
That would include the Department of Commerce in addition to the other two.
And you're seeing an increased attention paid to apprenticeships, hands-on learning for students to be able to enter the workplace and get that training.
So I do think there's a recognition in the current administration that those are the type of programs that represent the future of America.
Previously in the Biden and the Obama administrations, there was more of a punitive approach to our type of schools, to private and for-profit schools.
There was a lot of attention paid to regulating them.
The accountability measures that I mentioned generally only focused on those types of schools and short-term certificate programs at other schools.
So what you're seeing now, I think, is a more universal understanding and appreciation of the work of trade schools.
My criticism has always been about colleges and universities is that you go in with a major in hand.
Let's say, okay, I want to be a history.
I want to go in and study history.
But I have to take courses in chemistry and all these other courses that have nothing to do with my major.
And that's costing the student additional money.
If he's declaring his major, why does he necessarily have to take these courses that he will never use?
Anyway, that's just my question.
Have a nice day.
There is an argument to be made for students being well-rounded for having a comprehensive education.
You will find advocates for that.
I count myself among the advocates for that, the benefit of that.
However, in trade schools, when you're thinking about career education, the caller is exactly right.
What you see is these are often non-traditional students.
These are people who are probably working full-time, maybe have more than one job, single parents, veterans returning to the workforce for the first time, people who've been downsized, maybe going through a divorce, whatever the situation might be, they are not in position to have to worry about those general education credits.
And if you want to become an underwater construction diver, whether or not you've studied Chaucer is not really part of that equation.
So I would agree with the caller, and our schools generally focus on that, that the student can get in, get out, they have flexible hours, evenings, weekends.
We work with non-traditional students in a way that is not available in other types of settings.
Bravo to Tom, actually, because that is a good thing with the whole scam about colleges and the way that they raked money out of the whole population of people.
But anyways, that being said, I think that there's a huge importance to bring back industrial arts and all of these things back into the public school systems and high schools, middle schools.
It's just, it was a basic back when I was in school.
And I don't know why it was ever taken out just when standardized testing came in and forced everybody to look at being accredited schools or in risk of losing their accreditation.
It really just should be brought back in a big way and then continue with secondary trade schools after that.
Absolutely, you know, a need for it in our country.
We have a whole generation of kids that if they didn't qualify for college or if they weren't college material, they were left floundering.
Thankfully, we have moved away from the situation that I described earlier where taking anything other than that four-year path was considered to be the second choice.
And now when you talk to high school guidance counselors, they're offering trade schools as an opportunity for students.
They're talking about the job opportunities that are going to be on the other side of that.
And nobody is saying that those programs that maybe don't lead to four-year degrees at quite the same rate as others are less important or that the four-year degree is not the right path for some students.
All we're saying is that there are students that are interested in the trades.
There's great job prospects on the other side of that education all across the country.
And if you look at the highest demand occupations in this country, oftentimes they're in the skilled trades and the healthcare professions.
And that's exactly the type of student that we serve.
You know, I appreciate the conversation, but I think it gets a little bit narrow when it starts suggesting that a technical or that type of education would be good for everyone.
I have a spouse who did a technical education and then bounced into doing almost a four-year degree, but then he just kind of decided it wasn't working or wasn't worth it because he'd already has an engineering job.
It's a good job.
And then I have a four-year degree, which I struggled to get because of my family's economic level, but I worked very hard at it.
But then because I kind of left to raise kids at a point or de-escalated it to raise kids, I didn't feel like I got to keep going with what I was doing.
And it just left me kind of floundering.
But I think there's something in the middle between the technical and because I met people who only have a technical background, and then they don't have enough of those higher skills to kind of just be out of the box and figure out what to do and kind of some of those other skills.
But I think we should let kids do that already advanced learning that they do in high school, like if they're in college prep, we should give them the college credit for it, which some of them now can earn, and then allow them to go from there.
but we should kind of hybrid some of the education so that we're getting both those tech skills and those higher skills.
Because I just think we're in need of all of those skills.
And people suggesting people don't need a college education anymore is a weird idea because this is a very complex world.
And almost nobody will hire you if you don't have a degree.
Honestly.
No one is suggesting, at least I'm not suggesting that it's not worthwhile to have a college degree if it takes you in the career path that you have in mind.
I think what Jasmine was referencing was great concern among students in this country and people who are thinking about what their future is going to look like about whether the four-year path is the preferred option, is the best pathway for them to achieve success.
In many cases, it very well may be.
Now there is a discussion ongoing about what's the role in the federal for the federal taxpayer to finance that student's education and that includes state tax subsidies as well.
If you're a student and you're interested in anthropology or art history or film studies, whatever it might be, you know, if you look at the outcomes, there may not be a heavy payday on the other end of that.
But you may have a passion for that.
That might be the career that you want to pursue.
And with regard to the skilled trades, it's no different.
There are people who like to work with their hands.
There are people who go into health care because they want to help people.
And these are jobs that, again, are growing.
They're in demand in this country.
So there's no one-size-fits-all for everyone.
All we're saying is that people should have the opportunity to pursue the career of their choice.
And I think to that point, I want to put this New York Times chart on the screen here because it shows a graph which basically says that a fraction of long-term unemployed people with a college degree has grown from about one-fifth a decade ago to about one-third today.
One, I want to talk about why that is.
And, you know, some people say it's because of the growing amount of debt that you get from going to a four-year college.
And then maybe to that caller's point, do employers have less of a need for folks who have been through these four-year universities?
unidentified
You've seen all across the country in not just private sector jobs, but even in government jobs, a move to really re-evaluate the jobs for which a college degree should be required.
And now when you see these job postings, you'll often see when they list the education criteria, they don't mention that you need to have a college degree for that.
And I think there's been a reevaluation of that.
I think in the minds of students and people thinking about what they want to do in the future, they do think about whether or not they want to take on that debt, whether or not they want to spend the next four years of their life at a traditional campus in a physical setting, whereas they could go into a different profession, get some hands-on training, and go right into the workforce.
Well, what I was calling about is that I'm surprised that people do not think there are enough trade schools.
And there are quite a few.
And then there are also quite a few for-profit trade schools.
When I was in high school, we had what we called the Career Center.
And you could spend two years of your high school part-time in here and learn a trade or a career or become a licensed practical nurse.
And that was my stepping stone for getting into nursing and getting my professional degree.
And it was, I was a, I was not a young, I was a young adult, but I was also a single parent when I went to college again.
And I, you know, it's not impossible to do those things.
At times I had to take a little bit of time off, but I ended up with my nursing degree.
And I was very fortunate.
I had an associate degree and I could start working right away.
And now if I wanted to get a new job in a hospital somewhere, I'd have to have a four-year degree.
Nursing is a profession.
It is a professional degree, unlike what our president says.
If you look at, the caller mentions for-profit schools, if you look at the jobs that are produced in this country, for-profit schools produce about one in five of the nurses in this country, about 25%.
The collar is a perfect example of the type of students that those type of institutions serve.
Non-traditional folks, maybe a little bit older, who are either changing careers or just getting started.
And nursing is a good example of that.
But that applies to the skilled trades as well as the healthcare professions.
And if you look at, for example, the Carnegie classifications, which for many years had judged the best institutions of higher education in the country based upon grants and research and the amount of funding that they were generating for those endeavors, they totally changed the way that they classify schools now working with the American Council on Education.
And they look at two things.
They look at the students' ability to rise up from where they start from, social mobility as a result of education.
And they look at student outcomes.
What's the quality of the education that the student is getting?
And it might be a surprise to some that if you look at the current Carnegie classifications, that category where institutions are the best of the best, they are providing a high quality education and they are helping students rise up, often from disadvantaged circumstances.
It is the for-profit schools that have the highest percentage of their membership that is in that.
21% of all for-profit schools in the country are in that highest category of the Carnegie classifications compared to 16% of private schools and 14% of public schools.
And I think that goes a long way to thinking through why are the skilled trades, why are these health care programs so popular with students?
It's because they're working, they're achieving success in moving disadvantaged students up the economic ladder and improving their life circumstances, and they're offering the highest quality in those programs that's available anywhere in the country.
Can you walk us through exactly what career and technical education CTE is?
I mean, I know that the previous caller was talking about nursing, but what roles and jobs typically come from that education in those schools?
unidentified
Whether or not nursing counts as a trade or a profession is a debate that's occurred in this country for over 100 years.
We were looking recently at a study that came out in 1929 where they were making these same arguments.
And for us, it's not about what you call it, how you classify it.
Nursing and the healthcare professions are high demand.
They can be short-term, credentials, shorter-term.
You can get an associate's degree, but you can also get a four-year all the way on up to doctorate degree in nursing.
And if you want to lead a nursing unit at a hospital, certainly if you want to be faculty for nurses, then you probably are going to need an advanced degree.
But you can get into the nursing field with an associate.
So when you think of career and technical education, I think most people think about those health care professions, but they also think about the beauty and wellness sector, which I talked about, cosmetology, massage therapy, and then certainly the blue-collar trades that I think most people have in mind when they hear that term skilled trade.
So that's truck driving, that's welding, that's aviation, auto-techs, HVAC, those type of programs.
Oh, good morning, and thank you so much, sir, for taking your time and speaking on this.
I'm liking what you're saying regarding uplifting people and getting them out of their circumstances or providing opportunities for them and their families because education sometimes trickles down and across a family.
From a philosophical standpoint, I studied lots of things when I went to college, but from a philosophical standpoint, college is a transformative space to allow critical thinking, pursuing truth, and transforming and personal growth.
In some circles, there are people who say that these are indoctrination places, but as you mentioned, it's for growth.
Also, I'm having a hard time discerning why we should label things from Donald Trump, who was in charge of a for-profit school that turned out to be a fraud, now caring about education.
It's the same thing where they say, well, hey, we're not going to be behind student loan forgiveness, but yet offer $1,000 accounts for every child born after a certain age, which, if you're saying I'm not socialist, how do you propose that?
How do you square that circle on getting people to believe things where even the party doesn't want to increase the minimum wage?
So we want people to do these manual labor jobs, but this is the same party that shipped the jobs overseas or have cheap labor and now want to export people out of the country.
So I'm having a hard time understanding where the shift is and what the language is and why we feel as though a four-year degree, regardless of what it's in, isn't beneficial.
And I'll wait for your response.
Thank you.
We don't have a position on many of those issues that you talked about.
They're kind of beyond the scope of the trade school issues that we're talking about.
But we do care very much about whether or not the student is getting a good return on their investment for their education.
And I think part of the concern that you're hearing with regard to students being apprehensive about do I want to really take on that debt to go down the four-year path?
Is that the right pathway for me?
Then I think it is worth looking at return on investment.
And I would point the viewers to the Georgetown University Center for Education and the Workforce.
You can Google it, it'll come up.
Every three years, they do a study on return on investment.
So the student pays an amount to get the education that they are seeking, and then what is the long-term implication of that investment?
Are they able to recoup over the long term?
And how much money are they going to make?
Who's getting the best return on that investment?
And what the Georgetown University Center finds is, as I mentioned earlier, for-profit schools, often career and trade schools, are hugely disproportionately represented at the top, the top 1% and the top 10% of schools that offer the highest return on investment for the students.
So career and technical education can work for students if that is the path that they choose.
You can make a quick return on investment and you could do very well in your career as the years go by.
Yeah, I was going to ask you actually about the impact of AI on these careers.
I just pulled up a Wall Street Journal article.
The headline from November 29th is, data centers are a gold rush for construction workers.
I think going back to what the last caller just said, an investment boom in artificial intelligence is creating a thirst for massive data centers and a bonanza for workers building them.
It's unclear how long that boom will last, but for now, workers like Chambless are cashing in on high demand for their services.
They are enjoying the trappings, including perks, bonuses, and in many cases, pay boosts.
Joe from Dayton, Ohio.
Your line is open.
unidentified
Good morning from a sunny day in Ohio.
Mr. Altmeyer, thank you for this topic.
I just want to share a successful story of my life.
My parents were both born in Italy, lived under Benito Mussolini, and came here to the United States legally after World War II.
I have lived the American dream.
My mother told me at the age of 14 years old, get a trade, son.
Went to school at Fairmont West Vocational Program in Kettering, Ohio.
I graduated at 17 years of age.
I went directly to work at Rubicon Cadillac.
I became shop foreman there at the age of 22.
I started my own business at 24, retired at 57.
I owned the business and the property.
I retired a multi-millionaire.
That is the true American story.
The problem is, and actually people bang it on Trump, but Idvanka Trump under the first Trump administration was pushing vocational programs, which is fantastic.
But the problem is in the automotive business, these young kids have to spend upfront a lot of money and tools.
I wish the government would help them with some kind of financial aid.
But Mr. Altmeyer, I just want to thank you for this topic because I'm a big advocate for vocational trades.
Thank you, sir.
Thank you for that.
And that's an inspiring story.
It's compelling.
And we hear that a lot from people who have chosen that career path.
You can't guarantee everybody's going to become a multi-millionaire.
It sounds like the color's done quite well.
Yeah, but we have some great schools in Ohio, in Kettering, and in Dayton, and all across the country that are transforming lives.
As I said, these are often people who are struggling.
It's not just their second chance.
Often career education is their last chance.
And we are turning their lives around through the education that they're receiving.
And they're able to get a family-sustaining wage and they can grow over time as they grow in their careers.
That is folks to call in who have experience with technical, with experience with career and technical education.
And just quickly before we go back to calls, I want to point to this NBC article that I read off the top of our conversation because I don't think that we showed it on the screen.
But I just want you to see for folks listening in on just how different it is.
The title is, Members of Both Parties Have Soured on the Value of College, but Much More Among Republicans.
Republicans, you can look in 2013, 55% say it's worth the cost.
Only 38% say not worth the cost.
This year, 2025, only 22% say four-year education is worth the cost.
74% say not worth the cost.
If we go to Democrats in 2013, 61% said the value of college was worth the cost.
Now in 2025, only 47% of Democrats say the value of college is worth the cost.
So obviously pretty dramatic numbers here.
Gene from Dublin, Virginia, who is calling on the line with expertise in technical or career education.
Your line is open?
unidentified
Good morning.
Welcome calling you from snowy southwestern Virginia this morning.
I'm going to be a little bit of a fly in the ointment in this discussion because my life has been on both sides of the divide.
I started out as a mechanic who later on went on and got an engineering degree at 29.
And I can tell you, my life fixing cars was never as good as it was when I ended up designing them.
I hear this a lot from, it's very popular to say you don't need a four-year degree, which is true, but it's always somebody with a degree and an advanced degree probably telling everybody else you don't need one.
I can tell you as an inner city lower-class Philly kid who ended up spending 12 seasons as an engineer in Formula One, my engineering degree got me to places that I only dreamed about as a kid.
unidentified
I also see a lot of this as kind of having worked so long with young engineers out of Oxford, Cambridge, University College, London, etc.
These kids are smart and they're hot and they're from a society that pushes their children to be smarter, to go to get more education.
I mean, right now, someone working the line assembling Mercedes-Benz's is probably a lot better educated than the people we have working on the line at Ford.
So I don't want to take up too much time here, but this whole thing just seems to be a lot of, you know, the continuing of dumbing down of our society.
We really need smart STEM kids because we're going into an era when technical independence is going to be paramount importance for us to survive as a country.
And we need these kids to be smart and technical so that we can survive.
Hope I didn't sound too crazy.
No, I understand the point that you're making.
And we are certainly not saying that if you have an interest in a four-year degree or beyond in STEM education, in any type of training or career path that you choose, please go for it.
If you have an interest and an aptitude, we're not trying to dissuade people.
We're just trying to give opportunity for those who want to take a different path for whatever the reason might be.
Life circumstances, finances, interest and skill.
Those are reasons why people get into it.
And I would say that when you think about the caller mentions, you know, auto technicians, you shouldn't have the view today that these are folks underneath the car with the grease dripping down on them with screwdrivers and wrenches.
It's a lot more technical than that now.
These are electronic cars.
They're smart cars.
You have to have skill.
You have to be a technician to do that work.
It's an antiquated view to think that it's all about grease and tools.
A lot of it is about using technology in a way that's not been done before, not just in auto repair, but in aviation technology and other fields.
One question that we got on X from Merlene, Tacoma, Park, Maryland is, where is the money for training and education?
Diverse education and training workforce development programs are essential, not one at the expense of other.
Closing the education department doesn't help.
These programs existed in the public and private sectors for decades that have been eroded over the past 50 years.
That is what our tax dollars should support.
unidentified
We agree with what the ex-user is saying in the sense that we do think that it's important that you have funding available for students to pursue these careers.
What's happening with the national debate on the future of the Department of Education, those programs that fund education, these especially career technical fields that we're talking about, that funding is not going to go away.
When you look at the debate that's happening over the future of the Pell Grant, shorter-term workforce-driven Pell Grants, that's a very positive development that had not existed before Congress acted this year.
That's new funding available for these programs.
States all across this country are talking about how can workforce development agencies work better with employers to design curriculums that are going to train students for jobs that are going to be here in five years rather than jobs that were here five years ago, having a more futuristic vision of what that curriculum and career path is going to look like and then having the funding necessary to allow students, especially from low-income populations, to pursue that education.
I'm 65 years old now, but I remember when I was going to school, trade school was free.
You went half your school day at the trade and the other half at school.
Many of my friends got trade certifications, but led them to become entrepreneurs.
Ronald Reagan killed the programming.
He killed the funding for that and pushed college, right?
So that put a lot of minorities now could not afford to go to college, and now you had to pay to go to trade school.
And so he killed that.
And this is why you have, and what happened with that, because he pushed college, every year they kept increasing the tuition, increasing the tuition, and now you have it where now you end up $100,000 in debt.
That's my point, is that they could have continued with what they were doing.
But it just seemed to me that it was a racist, motivated thing that killed it because I knew a whole bunch of people that were benefiting.
They were coming entrepreneurs, creating generational wealth, and he killed the funding.
You mentioned, the caller mentioned that it was free.
Of course, free is not free to everyone.
Those are taxpayer funds that are assisting the student in pursuing that opportunity.
And I do think you're seeing a renewed recognition of the value of career and technical education.
You're going to see great competition in this country in the years ahead with community colleges, with high schools bringing back what used to be known as the shop classes that have gone away over the years.
You're going to see those come back.
You're going to see apprenticeship for hands-on workforce training, working with employers, giving students the opportunity to learn those trades.
You're going to see our types of schools, of course, continue to grow.
I think you are going to see, there's been this discussion about Harvard and the president having a discussion about Harvard starting their own trade school.
I do think you're going to see some traditional universities get in to this type of education because as we've talked about, this is where the future is in this country.
This is where many of the highest job demand exists.
It's where students want to go and they see security.
And I think you're going to see traditional universities get into this in a way already that they do adult education and they do some non-traditional learning.
I think you're going to see them get into the trades in a big way.
I also learned lifelong lessons about just being mechanically inclined and turning a wrench and doing a lot of things that still hold with me today that I appreciate.
unidentified
But I realized really early that I didn't want to do that particular profession.
So I think that occupation or that these occupational schools are also really great for finding out whether you like to do something or whether it's not for me.
And I moved on to something else and I'm really happy with that.