Writing for The Atlantic several years back, George Mason economics professor Bryan Caplan remarked on his 40 years of education before asking about the practical value of the “thousands of hours” American students spend with subjects he calls “irrelevant to the modern labor market.”
Noting that “human beings have trouble retaining knowledge they rarely use,” Caplan argues that the proverbial class clown snarking “what does this have to do with real life” may, in fact, be “onto something.”
More people today are reaching a similar epiphany, reflected in the worrisome continued decline in public trust in traditional higher education, with a Gallup poll last year showing “sharply lower” numbers of respondents expressing confidence (37%).
Opens in new windowAmidst this crisis of confidence in higher education broadly, there is evidence of growing interest in alternative pathways for advanced, post-secondary education. In a 2023 representative survey by the Chronicle of Higher Education, nearly 90% of respondents stated that compared with getting a bachelor’s degree, some kind of professional/technical training or trade school would be a similar or better choice to achieve a successful livelihood.
Caplan also suggests that time and money “would be better spent preparing students for the jobs they’re likely to do,” which he notes has long motivated occupational, vocational and technical education that “revolves around learning by doing,” rather than only “learning by listening.”
This insight is at the heart of a growing network of technical, business and career-oriented schools across the country and in Utah, dating back to the first in the state, Ensign College in Salt Lake City. This 138-year-old school takes what they call a “certificate-first approach” for its 2,037 on-campus students (and 8,182 remote, served through BYU-Pathway Worldwide), aiming to provide some kind of industry-recognized credential early in a student’s education, so they don’t have to wait years for practical benefits and are “prepared to earn a working wage quickly after graduation.”
Half of the 16 institutions in the Utah System of Higher Education are also technical colleges, with an enrollment of 34,616 students across the state between 2022 and 2023, 86% of which are part-time and 70% of which are adults (vs. still in high school). These other skills-oriented institutions of higher education talk about student learning that is “industry-driven,” “hands-on,” competency-based” and “employer-guided,” while preparing those enrolled to be “job-ready” and “career ready.”
Rather than absorbing learning through lectures primarily, students across these campuses are mentored more directly by faculty in how to problem solve real-world challenges across various business, medical and technological settings. As Ensign College President Bruce C. Kusch put it in a 2019 TEDx talk, “Why isn’t college a lot more like the world of work?”
A rich history of hands-on learning
This is not a new conversation. While the earliest known universities emphasized theology, history and philosophy, apprenticeships in skilled trades have an even longer history. It wasn’t until the early 19th century, however, that more organized coordination began to take place between the fledgling U.S. public education system and the American workforce. One early educational leader, Theodore D. Weld, was concerned with how much time was spent in classical education that “affords no pecuniary advantage” and “no addition to the means of human substance.”
Women’s colleges in the 1840′s began to adopt more hands-on learning approaches, as did educational institutions during the post-Civil War reconstruction, with Booker T. Washington the most famous graduate of a newly founded Hampton Institute that offered training in blacksmithing, bricklaying, plastering, carpentry, machine work, painting, shoemaking, plumbing and tailoring.
With the Morrill Act of 1862, lands were donated to establish colleges within each state as a way to expand access to practical education in agriculture and mechanical arts. This prompted the 1888 establishment of the Utah Agricultural College in Logan — while contributing more broadly to what vocational historians have called “the Vocational Education Age” between 1876 and 1926, with early training and trade schools established in St. Louis, Missouri, and New York between 1879 and 1881.
The priority of education in Utah history
It was during this same period that Ensign College first opened its doors in 1886, originally known as Salt Lake Stake Academy, and later as LDS University, LDS College and LDS Business College, before the adoption of it current name in 2020 — in reference to the hill overlooking the Salt Lake Valley where early settlers planted a flag symbolizing their desire to be an “ensign to the nations.”
Throughout its history, the institution has sought to prioritize helping students “learn an employable skill,” while simultaneously “imbu[ing]” them with a “high code of morality, ethics, and social purpose.” This close pairing of spiritual and secular learning is a distinctive feature of all six institutions involved in the Church Education System — following Brigham Young’s charge to early educators to not “teach even the alphabet or the multiplication tables without the Spirit of God.”
Education has been a strong priority for the faith throughout its history. Soon after settlers from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints began arriving in the Salt Lake Valley, Brigham Young organized a board of regents to create a university. The University of Deseret, founded in 1850, later became the University of Utah, the oldest state university west of the Missouri River.
History professor Paul Reeve calls this early Utah focus on higher education “an indication of the value the Latter-day Saints placed on education in what was at the time a remote, western community.” In 1874, Timpanogos University in Provo was established as a branch of this same University of Deseret — soon renamed Brigham Young Academy and later Brigham Young University.
In 1875, the Presbyterian Church also opened Westminster College in Salt Lake City. Leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ later created Ephraim’s Sanpete Stake Academy in 1888 (now Snow College), Ogden’s Weber Academy in 1890 (now Weber State University) and St. George Academy in 1911 (now Utah Tech University).
Geoffrey Landward, commissioner of the Utah System of Higher Education, emphasized how “higher education is an important aspect of Utah culturally,” with the state having one of the highest “attainment rates, in terms of how many people have achieved some kind of credential.”
Technical, occupational education as second-tier?
One ironic consequence of the state’s strong historic emphasis on higher education, Landward went on to note, is that many parents have taken for granted that a traditional liberal-arts university was the one, exclusive path for a college education.
Inadvertently, he said, a perception has been created that “technical education is this second tier.” As a law school graduate himself, Landward confessed his own shock after learning the true scope of Utah’s technical colleges. “I was blown away by what we were offering — how inexpensive it was, and how expansive it was.”
Landward also admitted feeling “disheartened” — “If I don’t know about this stuff, and I was working in higher education for a few years, we have a real perception problem, and a real lack of knowledge.”
Pushing back on the perception of technical education as somehow “less than,” the commissioner said it was important to change this mentality. “It’s all higher education,” he said, emphasizing the range of viable options for a college education, and how critical technical graduates were for Utah’s economy and prosperity. “There are really good careers and work force options for anyone going into these schools.”
This expanded view is reflected in the state’s decision to merge the former Utah System of Technical Colleges with the Utah System of Higher Education. “We’re all in for expanding technical college opportunities,” Landward said — expressing appreciation for the state’s legislative support for technical colleges which “clearly demonstrates it’s a priority in Utah.”
The evolution of vocational education
It didn’t used to be this way here in Utah or anywhere. One major accelerant for hands-on, skills-based education was how it piggy-backed on the expansion of American public high schools, which were first developed after the Civil War with the idea of “fitting” young people for “commercial life.” It took another 45 years for vocational education to become more integrated with these secondary schools, following the 1917 National Vocational Education Act (“Smith-Hughes Act”).
This federal funding was sparked by a congressional commission that declared national vocational education an “urgent necessity” and something that would “vitalize” the country’s education by “adapting it to the real needs of children” while taking steps to “promote a higher standard of living for workers.”
“Who should receive vocational education?” asked an educational text in 1943. “Everyone who can work.” Stephen Voorhees, who chaired the Advisory Board on Industrial Education in New York City during this time stated, “everybody must work, so everybody must learn to work.”
Both world wars catalyzed the further expansion of career and technical education, thanks to adults needing technical skills for military purposes and then later needing to be retrained to reenter the domestic workforce. It was the later post-war era in which what used to be called “applied technology colleges” were established in Utah, starting with Roosevelt’s Uintah Basin Technical College (1968), followed by northern Utah’s Bridgerland Technical College (1971), Ogden-Weber Technical College (1971), Kaysville’s Davis Technical College (1978), Lehi’s Mountainland Technical College (1989), Cedar City’s Southwest Technical College (1994), St. George’s Dixie Technical College (2001) and Tooele Technical College (2011).
The specific skills taught in these institutions have naturally changed over time, keeping pace with rapidly shifting developments in automotive technology, computers and medical professions, along with continued instruction in foundational skills in construction (masonry, painting, plumbing, wood-working, electronics, welding). Most of these are still taught on Utah campuses, with the exception of agricultural skills, which have become housed primarily at land-grant institutions like Utah State and their various Extension offerings to the community.
Business offerings have likewise evolved, with Ensign College offering shorthand and bookkeeping the second year it opened. Typewriting classes began soon after its invention in 1900, with the first computer class offered in 1956 called IBM Punch Cards, followed in 1968 with Operating Systems, COBOL, FORTRAN and Assembler Languages.
Now, schools like Ensign College teach an array of business-related skills including cybersecurity, data science, system administration, software development and digital marketing — along with accounting, finance, business analytics, business management, supply chain management, small business management and entrepreneurship, communication, human resource and public relations.
Alex Wylie, student at Ensign College, said he enrolled at the school because it was more affordable, and so he could “finish sooner and get into the cybersecurity field.” In addition to appreciating more “personalized help” from professors in smaller classes, he remarked on how many of them have “a lot of work experience, some even still working in their designated fields.” Prior to graduating, Wylie was able to land an internship as an Information Security Analyst.
There are other schools like Western Governors University and Salt Lake Community College that offer an array of business-specific offerings, with some Utah colleges dedicated to computer science training exclusively (Neumont College of Computer Science). Medical assisting certificates also began to be offered many places, including Ensign College, with a wide variety of health training programs available at state schools like Davis Technical College, with others now dedicated specifically to health care training (Provo College, Joyce University of Nursing and Health Sciences).
In recent years, schools like Davis Technical College have applied their reach beyond high school students and adults seeking additional training, receiving awards for their work teaching incarcerated juveniles at the Millcreek Youth Center, and inmates at the Utah Department of Corrections.
Growing interest in technical education
Landward points to four overlapping trends behind the increasing interest in technical colleges both nationally and in the state. First, the word is starting to get out that “technical colleges are more than traditional plumbing, HVAC, automotive” — all of which he emphasizes are critical. But as evident above, its also cybersecurity, IT, health care and learning to “start a business, learn how to develop apps, graphic design, film editing.”
“So many industries,” he says. And “lot of options.”
Landward next highlights the acute demand for more skilled workers in the traditional trades, with premium wages being paid to those possessing the qualifications — a fact well-known to anyone who’s tried to call a plumber or handyman lately.
The commissioner notes that people have also become more concerned at AI and its impact on white-collar jobs in finance and law, as people see “the possibility that artificial intelligence can do these things, and do them better” — all of which has prompted a resurgence in appreciation for advanced training in hands-on skills.
“This is AI-proof,” Landward says. “You know, AI isn’t going to come and fix your plumbing.”
None of this is to deny the significant value to be found in traditional liberal-arts education for many other college students, or the need to uphold timeless ideals of seeking truth through grappling with conflicting ideas. But Landward agrees that the national conversation around traditional higher education has also “elevated some concerns” about affordability and the mounting socio-political unrest on college campuses. He suggests that prospective students may be relieved to realize, “well, none of that really happens on our technical college campuses.”
Staying focused on a vocational mission
Some institutions that began with more of an applied, skills-based focus have followed institutional inertia in trying to become more of a conventional university. The schools described here have resisted this inevitable expansion, instead remaining focused on their original mission.
Kirk Rawlins, communications director at Ensign College, describes how the school has “doubled down” on what he calls its “birthright” — involving “lower cost, skills-based” education that aims to help students “get quickly to work and change their circ*mstances.”
“Everyone thinks they need to be a Harvard,” Rawlins adds. “We found a niche we think is unique.”
Kusch emphasizes the value of what he calls “subject matter immersion” — with students absorbing a specific discipline “from the very first minute of the very first day, of the very first class,” while also taking more responsibility for what and how they learn. “In this class, I’m an actor and not an object,” said another student, David, about his experience in an Ensign College leadership course.
“When you get a job, you don’t walk in on the first day and get handed a syllabus” for the next 14 weeks, Rawlins says. “No, they tell you what needs to be done, and expect you to take accountability.”
To illustrate this “learn by doing” approach, Rawlins notes that an accounting teacher at Ensign College might “bring in a box full of financials, receipts, dump it on the table,” then ask: “How are we going to figure out how to make sense of all this, learn about this, what are we going to do with this?”
“We don’t want to drag you through years of schooling,” he adds, “where you come out and say, ‘Wow, I don’t know that I’m any better off spending that time and money.’”
‘Not college people?’
“There’s a whole population who are not ‘college people,’” Rawlins adds — drawing attention to those who are intimidated by the complexities of higher education and aren’t sure of its value. “This giant machine of college education is very difficult to navigate” he says, which can be “off-putting” to many.
“We are happy to have you come and be a first generation college student,” he said, noting that the Ensign student body hails from from all 50 U.S. states and 87 countries, with international students comprising approximately 35% of the student body.
“Many of you have made, and continue to make, great sacrifices to come to a new country, learn a new language and work long hours to obtain an education that will allow you to provide temporally for yourselves and your families,” said Bishop W. Christopher Waddell of the Presiding Bishopric of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to students in a January devotional. “I congratulate you for your determination.”
But does that investment really pay off? According to the school, 84% of Ensign College students seeking employment after recently graduating with associates and bachelor’s degrees had jobs at graduation. That number jumps to 92% when measuring students one year out, and including students with certificates.
To reach more people who can’t attend in person, the school is developing curricula for online dissemination, in partnership with BYU Pathway Worldwide, with its nearly 70,000 students across 180 countries. As Deseret News reporter Tad Walch has previously reported, about 90% of those who complete degrees through BYU-Pathway also report improved employment.
In recent years, the results of this innovative approach have been apparent in the way Ensign student seem to be “punching above their weight” at various state and national business competitions. For instance, students at Ensign College placed third nationally in the DECA Sales Challenge with Enterprise Rental. There were nine first-place finishes in the state FBLA Collegiate Competition, a second place at the Utah Entrepreneur Challenge and one student Ensign team taking first place at the State SHRM Collegiate Case Study Competition.
Ensign professors believe these wins demonstrate the effectiveness of this unique pedagogical approach. “Because of the applied nature of the curriculum,” professor Jerry Sandorf says, “students go to competitions confident they can analyze and synthesize on the fly if handed a case study with only a few hours to read, evaluate and create a well-reasoned presentation.”
“Because the world of work is so dynamic and ever changing, my firm belief is that higher education must change too, dramatically,” Kusch concluded.
