Education Secretary Advocates for Early Vocational Training Amid Labor Shortage

Children should be funneled towards career paths such as plumbing or being electricians as early as elementary school, according to Education Secretary Linda McMahon, amid high demand for skilled tradespeople and a brewing labor shortage as the country looks to rapidly build AI data centers.

“Not every child needs a college education,” McMahon said in an interview on Thursday on Mornings With Maria on Fox Business. “Let’s develop the skills that children have a natural propensity for and not force them into a path of education that’s not going to serve them well.”

“We need electricians and plumbers and we need HVAC operators and data engineers, all of that,” she added. “So let’s provide the kind of education for them, get them into pathways towards that education, starting even in elementary, middle schools, high schools.”

Separating students based on potential future academic and career paths, known as “tracking,” has long been divisive. Backers argue it better prepares students for the workforce and aligns curriculum with their interests and skills, while critics contend tracking reinforces inequality and denies children opportunities to pursue certain kinds of education.

The Trump administration has made a point of emphasizing vocational education and attacking big universities it accuses of being bastions of liberal ideology and discrimination.

It has launched programs including federal Pell Grant aid for students attending short-term vocational courses, and its agreement with Brown University to end federal discrimination investigations included the Ivy League school committing to investing $50 million into workforce organizations in Rhode Island.

The Education Department this month is rolling out a role that will eventually require federally supported education programs to pass graduates who earn more money than those with only high school diplomas.

At the same time, critics have accused the administration of undermining the same kind of STEM, workforce development and manufacturing jobs it aims to uplift.

Throughout 2025, as part of its crusade to shrink federal spending and crack down on diversity programs, the Trump administration slashed hundreds of education grants across dozens of programs totaling billions of dollars.

In California, federal agencies canceled more than 1,000 research grants worth nearly $2 billion to the well-regarded University of California system, with administration officials admitting they used a keyword search for words such as diversity, gender, vaccine hesitancy and Covid to identify programs that went against the Trump agenda.

The administration has also directed parts of its immigration crackdown on university campuses, targeting green card holders for arrest based on their political speech, revoking student visas and pushing schools to cooperate with Homeland Security on immigration raids and surveillance.

On a macro level, the Trump administration has by some metrics failed to live up to the second part of its trade workforce agenda: creating manufacturing jobs for skilled tradespeople to work in once they’re done training.