Students at Southeastern Regional Vocational Technical School in South Easton. (Courtesy photo)

NOT EVERYONE SHOULD have to complete a four-year college degree to earn a living in a meaningful career field. But in the 21st century – and particularly in our innovative Massachusetts knowledge economy, which is getting even more competitive in the age of AI — nearly all good-paying jobs today require at least some kind of education and training, like an apprenticeship, certificate, or associate degree, beyond high school.

The state has taken some steps meant to improve access to high school career and technical education (CTE), which provides pathways to solid futures for young people that don’t involve four-year universities. This includes updating facilities and equipment through additional Skills Capital Grants, and expanding Innovation Career Pathways in high-demand fields such as information technology, health care, and advanced manufacturing.

Meanwhile, recent investments in MassReconnect and MassEducate, which offer students free tuition at the state’s 15 community colleges, are driving significant enrollment increases.

Our two-year community colleges, however, were designed primarily as an entry point to higher education, with the assumption that most students would transfer to a four-year institution to complete a bachelor’s degree. Consequently, our community college system has not had the funding to offer comprehensive vocational training that is a central component of community colleges in other states.

This is a huge gap in our education system, one that we think regional collaborations, with help from the state and other partners, can and should address. Rethinking the structure and funding for career and technical education would not only open doors for more young people, but it would also help address the growing challenge the state faces in meeting the high demand for skilled workers.

We aren’t just advocating for this kind of change. As we outline here, we are part of an effort to develop a new model the state could adopt to transform our career and technical education system for the 21st century. At the heart of this vision is a robust collaboration between our K-12 and higher ed systems that we think is long overdue.

The state’s 36 career and technical high schools have developed an outstanding reputation for preparing graduates to go right into the workforce or to continue their education on a college campus. But with all their success, and despite the state’s recent efforts, they are facing considerable challenges:

  • Massachusetts CTE high schools serve around 36,000 students annually, but because of space limitations, around 40 percent of applicants each year—6,000 students—are denied seats and placed on waitlists. As a result, the state’s Board of Elementary and Secondary Education recently voted to require oversubscribed CTE programs to implement a lottery system.
  • Many CTE high schools were constructed during the 1960s and 1970s. They are now more than half a century old and in need of significant renovation or, increasingly, complete replacement.
  • Because of specialized laboratory space for highly technical programs like HVAC, metal fabrication, automotive technology, and advanced manufacturing that require features like reinforced floors, high ceilings, and specialized equipment, the cost of constructing vocational high schools is significantly higher than standard classroom buildings (and only increasing with inflation and additional tariffs on imported materials).
  • While the state provides some funding for new vocational school construction through the Massachusetts School Building Authority (MSBA), those dollars only go so far, and district member communities must come up with the rest—typically about half the project cost. That’s a big ask, particularly for smaller cities and towns already struggling to pay for rising health care costs and aging infrastructure with property tax caps and limited state aid.

A few examples of recently proposed CTE high school construction projects illustrate these challenging trends:

  • Five years later, in 2024, voters in 10 out of 11 Whittier Regional Vocational Technical Regional High School district communities in Essex County rejected a $445 million new school project, citing insufficient state reimbursement and an unmanageable cost to member communities.
  • Last year, the Boston Public Schools announced that the cost of either renovating or rebuilding the city’s only CTE high school, Madison Park, would top $700 million—the most expensive capital project in Boston’s history.

If nothing changes, then nothing changes, and one day soon, likely within the next three years, the proposed cost of building a new CTE high school in Massachusetts will top $1 billion. No community will be able to afford that, and access to the state’s desperately needed CTE programs will become even more challenging.

It is time for a new vision for career and technical education in Massachusetts, one that:

  • Combines the best features of career and technical education high schools with the best features of community colleges.
  • Shares land, buildings, staffing, and operational expenses in a way that reduces the cost to the state, local communities and, most importantly, to students and families.
  • Is future-oriented and creates flexible, responsive systems for developing and offering expanded access to education and training for in-demand, high-skill, high-wage careers.

A potential model for this new vision is emerging in the Merrimack Valley, where Northern Essex Community College is exploring a shared campus with Whittier Regional Vocational Technical High School and a special Early College Health Careers Institute with Greater Lawrence Technical School.

Soon after voters rejected Whittier’s proposed new construction project, with the encouragement of the Healey administration and support of the schools’ legislative delegation and municipal leaders, we began exploring how we might not only build a new school for Whittier students on Northern Essex Community College’s campus, but go even farther, sharing facilities, expanding access to skilled trades and other CTE programs as well as to Early College classes and degrees, all while reducing costs and better preparing our regional workforce.

We formed a planning group of visionary thinkers to help us reimagine how we prepare a career-ready workforce. It includes Nancy Hoffman from Jobs for the Future, Bob Schwartz from the Harvard Project on Workforce Development, and Ben Forman from the MassINC Policy Center.

We partnered with the UMass Donahue Institute to engage in community interviews and focus group sessions, conduct an environmental scan, and prepare an initial report and recommendations for how we might create a new shared campus. We also formed a Municipal Leaders Working Group consisting of mayors, town managers, city councilors, and select board members of all 11 member cities and towns of the Whittier school district, who spent several months developing a new common vision for the project.

What a difference a year makes.

Less than 12 months after the first Whittier project failed at the ballot box, municipal leaders came together in unanimous support and the Massachusetts School Building Authority is working with us to conduct a new feasibility study of the shared campus model and its potential to save money while expanding access to CTE education.

Meanwhile, Greater Lawrence Technical School, like nearly every CTE high school in the state, has far more applicants than space available in its classrooms, with particularly strong interest in health career fields.

The school had been looking for nearby property to purchase and convert into additional classroom spaces, and was contemplating building an addition onto its current campus, when instead, we pivoted to explore moving 150 students and all of Greater Lawrence Tech’s health care programs into the state-of-the-art Health and Technology Center on Northern Essex Community College’s Lawrence campus. That move, if all goes as planned, will free up space for additional enrollment on the high school’s existing campus.

Opportunities like these two collaborations are dependent on many local factors, including available land or classroom space and municipal and school leaders who are willing to think differently about how to offer valuable career and technical education. But there is potential for similar collaborations between CTE high schools and community colleges across the Commonwealth.

In the months and years ahead for this project, and for others that might follow, this new vision for career readiness for Massachusetts is going to need support from four places.

The State

A new model of collaboration between K-12 schools and college campuses requires flexibility in how we approach planning processes with state agencies like the Massachusetts School Building Authority and the Division of Capital Asset Management and Maintenance; how we designate and design Early College programs with the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education and the Department of Higher Education; and how we fund CTE through the Legislature.

It also requires support for creative funding initiatives like the $2.5 billion BRIGHT Act, which can allow enterprising collaborations like ours to combine K-12 and higher education funding sources and make all those dollars go even farther. This higher education bond bill is now in a legislative conference committee after versions were passed by the House and Senate. We urge negotiators to produce a final bill that allows for innovative partnerships like the one we have launched.

Communities

We know municipal leaders have to be focused on the bottom line, especially at a time when city and town budgets are stretched more than ever. If everyone else is doing their part toward this collaborative vision, municipal costs are going to go down. Beyond that, we need cities and towns to know and be clear about how we can best help prepare their community’s workforce next year, five years from now, and 10 years from now. It is why we exist.

Employers

Employers are at the heart of the state’s Reimagining High School initiative and central to community colleges’ efforts to expand career and technical education. We need them on our CTE advisory boards to guide new curriculum development; we need them to provide work-based learning opportunities for our students through apprenticeships and cooperative education experiences, and to hire them when they graduate. Employers should engage with us and help shape this for their needs.

Reworking our CTE system will not just pay off for young people pursuing technical careers. With employers’ involvement, it will help address persistent shortages of workers in skilled trades, which are an increasing drag on our housing and manufacturing production sectors, among other areas.

Philanthropy

Visionary philanthropy often leads the way where more traditional, establishment sources may fear to tread. The Richard and Susan Smith Family Foundation, for example, has helped fuel the state’s expansion of Early College programs for the past several years, and, more recently, has led the way toward developing apprenticeship degrees at a number of colleges. We need similar organizations to fund us and be a part of our work, helping inform what we are doing with research and connections to best practice leaders.

Massachusetts has long been a national leader in education, which has helped fuel our economic growth. But we need to adapt to remain competitive. Our education and workforce systems need a new vision for career and technical education that combines the best of what our CTE high schools and community colleges have to offer. It will lead to a better future for young people in Massachusetts and for our economy.

Lane Glenn is the president of Northern Essex Community College and a board member of MassINC, the nonprofit civic organization that publishes CommonWealth Beacon. Maureen Lynch is the superintendent of Whittier Regional Vocational Technical High School. John LaVoie is the superintendent of Greater Lawrence Technical School.