Ensuring that the skills of America’s workers match the needs of its employers is an urgent task, and one that K-12 schools have increasingly embraced. They’re investing in new post-high school pathways that include career exploration, on-the-job internships, and industry partnerships.
Now, that focus is part of heated debates erupting among politicians and economists over international trade. The subtext? The need for well-paying jobs that don’t require a four-year college degree.
But what’s the best approach to creating those jobs? That’s where one key political figure’s position has notably changed.
When President Donald Trump announced an aggressive slate of tariffs this month, promising to “supercharge our domestic industrial base” by leveling overseas competition and bringing back manufacturing jobs, Vice President JD Vance stood beside him to defend the policy.
But Vance took a different position in a 2017 interview with Education Week. Then he said education—not protectionism—is the key to ensuring prosperity for American workers.
“So many of these jobs that have disappeared from these areas, just aren’t coming back,” Vance said in a video interview about the opioid epidemic eight years ago. “They haven’t disappeared so much from globalization or from shipping them overseas; they’ve largely disappeared because of automation, and because of new technological change, and the only way to really address that crisis is to actually train people for the next generation of high-quality jobs.”
High school graduates need career pathways that fall between minimum-wage service jobs and higher paid positions that require a four-year degree, argued Vance, whose book, Hillbilly Elegy, which details his mother’s addiction to prescription painkillers and the societal shifts in his native region of Appalachia, had risen to the top of the New York Times bestsellers list.
Training workers for the jobs of today—and tomorrow
Academics who study economic mobility are more likely to agree with the Vance of eight years ago than the Trump-Vance administration of today, said Zachary Mabel, a research professor and the director of research at the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. The center studies the alignment between education and workforce demands.
Even if the United States eliminates its trade deficit with other countries, economists have projected the country would not return to an era when plentiful, secure manufacturing jobs allowed middle-class workers to support their families, he said. That’s largely because more sophisticated processes made it possible to produce more goods with far fewer workers.
“Our real challenge is: How do we train workers for the jobs of today and the jobs of tomorrow in our country?” Mabel said.
The conversation about tariffs is “just sidestepping, frankly, where there are already tremendous shortages [of workers] in occupations that are available to folks who don’t have a bachelor’s degree,” he said.
Such jobs typically require some post-secondary education and training after high school, like a professional certificate or associates degree.
“But they offer higher earnings potential, and we’re not producing enough talent to fill many of those jobs as it is today,” Mabel said.
Then & Now is an ongoing feature that explores stories from Education Week’s rich archive of more than 40 years of journalism. We aim to examine what has changed, what hasn’t, and how those shifts inform today’s education conversations.
From Education Week’s Archives: ‘Hillbilly Elegy’ Author J.D. Vance on Poverty and the Opioid Epidemic
Published: Jan. 6, 2017
The Takeaway for Today’s Educators: Schools must cooperate with employers, policymakers, and higher education to prepare students for jobs in a changing economy.
By 2031, 52 percent of such “middle skills” positions will be considered “good jobs,” compared to 36 percent of positions that only require a high school degree, the Center on Education and the Workforce found in a July 2024 report.
The center defines a good job as “one that pays, nationally, a minimum of $43,000 to workers ages 25–44, a minimum of $55,000 to workers ages 45–64, and a median of $82,000 for all good jobs.”
But middle-skills training isn’t keeping up with demand in many employment sectors and geographic regions, CEW researchers have found. And the credentials workers do earn don’t always align with the most in-demand fields, including health care, construction, and law enforcement.
To solve this problem, policymakers, K-12 schools, employers, and higher education need to collaborate to define needs and help students identify pathways to employment that match their skills and interests, Mabel said. Also needed: Starting career counseling as early as middle school, rather than waiting until adulthood, he said.
K-12 education adopts a workforce focus
K-12 educators have increasingly heeded that call to action, especially as school districts work to strengthen their relationships with a public that is increasingly skeptical of institutions.
At its March conference, AASA, the School Superintendents Association, unveiled its “Public Education Promise,” which includes a goal of better alignment between schools and employers and teaching “the new basics,” like collaboration and the use of artificial intelligence, to better meet workforce needs.
Eighteen governors representing both major political parties stressed high school career and technical education programs and apprenticeships in their 2025 state of the states addresses, according to an analysis by the Education Commission of the States.
About a fifth of community college students are now high school students in dual-enrollment programs. And public school districts have gotten much more sophisticated about preparing students for the world of work.
For example, students at the Township high school district outside of Chicago pick among 40 career pathways that merge academic work, credentials programs, and on-the-job experiences in fields ranging from manufacturing to health care. A student may graduate high school with a credential as a certified nursing assistant, a paying internship at a local hospital, and plans to earn a bachelors degree in nursing while working.
“The goal isn’t that we think you’re going to figure out what you’re going to do for the rest of your life,” Associate Superintendent Lazaro Lopez, a 2025 EdWeek Leaders To Learn From honoree, said in February. Instead, the district seeks to give students the tools they need to “make more informed decisions about the next stage” after graduation.
States have aided schools in their efforts by creating longitudinal data systems—systems that track students’ progress, year over year, from early childhood to college and career. The goal: Identify the steps students must take to land in desired career paths, including those that don’t require a four-year degree.
Such efforts could be strengthened through a broader use of third-party organizations that can convene multiple school districts, colleges, and employers to scale up promising solutions, Mabel said. For example, Team NEO in northeast Ohio provides data and support to help employers, like a local industrial pipe-fitting company, identify high school students with transferrable skills and provide them with hands-on learning experiences.
Preparing Students for What’s Next
The pathways to college, internships, and work have changed. What does that mean for secondary education? Explore the series.
Advocates for such programs have pushed Congress to reauthorize the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, the federal law that governs adult education, vocational training, and career-placement programs. A proposed bipartisan bill would give states more flexibility to use federal workforce development funds to “upskill” adult workers by training them for “critical industries” in their areas. That bill would also give states more flexibility in how they design youth workforce programming.
Whatever happens with tariffs and international trade, the United States must train Americans to fill the broad assortment of middle-skills jobs that already exist, Mabel said.
From ‘never Trump guy’ to tariff supporter
When Vance spoke with Education Week in 2017, he had risen to prominence as an self-described “never Trump guy.”
In the years between then and his decision to sign on as Trump’s running mate, Vance’s rhetoric on trade has shifted to be broadly sympathetic to Trump’s position, CNN reported in a story that cited Education Week’s interview and other statements Vance made while promoting his book.
“Vice President Vance has been crystal clear in his unwavering support for revitalizing the American economy by bringing back manufacturing jobs and sticking up for middle-class workers and families since before he launched his U.S. Senate race, and that is a large part of why he was elected to public office in the first place,” Vance spokesperson Taylor Van Kirk told CNN.
Compare that statement to the position Vance took in the 2017 interview, part of Education Week’s reporting with the PBS Newshour on the effects of the opioid crisis on schools.
At the end of that conversation, reporter Lisa Stark asked Vance if he had any advice for the incoming Trump administration. He responded with a laugh, as if to suggest the new president wouldn’t likely turn to him for advice.
“The only piece of advice I’ll offer is to recognize that so many of the next generation of jobs require training and skills that we’re not necessarily preparing our kids for right now,” Vance said, “and to the degree we can focus not on how we can bring jobs back from China, but how we can prepare people for the 21st century knowledge economy, I think that’s a very important part of actually solving these very significant regional economic crises that we have in places like West Virginia or Ohio.”
