Trump’s Proposed Cuts Threaten Colleges’ Key Job-Training Programs

A Valencia College instructor wearing a helmet fitted with virtual-reality goggles demonstrated his welding techniques as the nation’s education secretary, Betsy DeVos, looked on. The simulator emitted a sizzling sound of metal joining metal before posting his results — 91 percent accurate — on a computer screen.

Clearly impressed, Ms. DeVos tweeted that the Orlando, Fla., college’s advanced-manufacturing training programs, which feed graduates to employers as diverse as Lockheed Martin and Walt Disney World, “prepare students for high-demand careers.”

Given her boss’s focus during the presidential campaign on putting Americans back to work, it might seem natural that the secretary’s first college visit would be to a job-training site.

But it came just a week after Mr. Trump released a “skinny budget” for the 2018 fiscal year that some fear could put job-training programs on a starvation diet.

The proposal, just the starting point for negotiations that are bound to be contentious, would slash the Department of Labor’s budget by $2.5 billion, or 21 percent. It would cut federal support for job-training and employment services, shifting more responsibility to states, cities, and employers.

In order to beef up military spending without increasing the deficit, “this budget focuses the Department of Labor on its highest priority functions and disinvests in activities that are duplicative, unnecessary, unproven, or ineffective,” the document states.

Helping Job Seekers

One area of federal spending that could take a big hit, community-college educators fear, is the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, or WIOA, a collection of programs that help job seekers find work, education, and training. The measure, which President Barack Obama signed into law in 2014, also matches employers with skilled workers.

Federal funds typically flow from the Department of Labor to states, and then to regional work-force boards. If someone comes to a career center in Orlando and expresses an interest in manufacturing, an adviser might suggest he check out Valencia College. Once the person is determined to be eligible for the program, he can receive money in a training voucher.

That support is crucial for many students, says Joseph N. Battista, vice president for global, professional and continuing education at Valencia, because students in training programs that deliver industry-recognized certificates, rather than college degrees, are not currently eligible to receive Pell grants.

“Ten thousand baby boomers a day will be retiring for the next 14 years. That’s a lot of skill that’s walking out the door,” says Mr. Battista. “Our industry partners are worried. I think we should be investing in more training, not less.”

The other federal program that community colleges rely heavily on is the Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training grant program.

The program, jointly run by the Labor and Education departments, awarded nearly $2 billion in four-year grants to hundreds of community colleges that agreed to work with employers to train displaced workers for high-skill, high-wage jobs.

The Valencia facility that Ms. DeVos toured, a 17,000-square-foot advanced-manufacturing training center in Osceola County, has benefited from both programs.

Serving National Goals

Mr. Trump has suggested that there are too many overlapping and inefficient training programs. But their supporters say that because such programs often offer industry-recognized credentials, they have to be narrowly focused on, say, welding or air conditioning and heating repair.

Monroe Community College, in Rochester, N.Y., uses labor-market data to shape its training programs so that students are preparing for careers that will be available when they graduate, says the college’s president, Anne M. Kress.

She points out that the large-scale infrastructure program Mr. Trump has talked about could create 11 million jobs, according to a study by Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce.

Another 5.5 million jobs go unfilled because employers can’t find workers with needed skills, Ms. Kress says. That’s more than 16 million jobs that need to be filled, and workers who have to be trained.

“If we’re to achieve the broad goals the president has set forward about American competitiveness and restoring it to the status that some perceive it has lost — you can’t do that by cutting the very programs that provide the skills students need,” says Ms. Kress.

Leaders of two left-leaning think tanks also decried the proposed cuts.

“The Trump budget would gut the very job-training programs workers need to develop the skills required to compete in emerging fields,” Christine Owens, executive director of the National Employment Law Project, said in a statement.

Angela Hanks, associate director for work-force development policy at the Center for American Progress, accused the president of breaking the promise he made to laid-off workers. Based on figures the center received from the House Appropriations Committee, the center estimates the Trump budget would cut the job-training money administered through the WIOA program by more than a third.

That’s on top of sharp declines in funding for job-training programs since 2001.

In fact, money for job training has been steadily dropping since 1979 as the responsibility for such training has shifted from the Labor Department to the Education Department, says Anthony P. Carnevale, professor and director of Georgetown’s workforce and education center.

Jobs that used to be available straight out of high school now require a college degree, or at least a certificate.

Although the $6 billion a year the Labor Department spends on job training is “small potatoes” in the overall budget, losing a big chunk of that could hurt community colleges that operate on tight margins, Mr. Carnevale says. But like the rest of the Trump budget, he thinks the job-training cuts are “dead on arrival,” because the programs enjoy bipartisan support in the communities they serve.

“A lot of people criticize short-term training programs for lack of effective results, but we hear from campuses that these programs put people into jobs quickly,” says David Baime, senior vice president for government relations and policy analysis for the American Association of Community Colleges.

Like other community colleges, Macomb Community College in Warren, Mich., is heavily dependent on Labor Department grants for its job-training programs. The college’s president, James Jacobs, isn’t quite sure what to make of Mr. Trump’s budget proposal.

“The devil’s in the details and there are no details,” he says. “Hopefully, some of these things he’s proposing won’t happen.”

Alex Condevillamar is a 38-year-old Army veteran who’s enrolled in Valencia’s mechatronics program, a field that combines electronics with mechanical systems. Graduates of that program repair assembly lines, theme-park rides, and other systems that require precise tuning.

Mr. Condevillamar is looking forward to advancing his career beyond waiting tables and already has a couple of job offers waiting for him in manufacturing, he says. “I feel confident that I’m not only embarking on a stable career, but one that will open up lots of possibilities,” he says.

Katherine Mangan writes about community colleges, completion efforts, and job training, as well as other topics in daily news. Follow her on Twitter @KatherineMangan, or email her at katherine.mangan@chronicle.com.