Brothers, The Trades Aren’t The Only Answer
Something peculiar is brewing in higher education. Enrollment trends are shifting as four-year colleges are declining. In fact, high school grads are skipping tertiary education altogether.
What caused these changes?
Ultimately, the flaws in traditional higher education are plentiful, even at Christian colleges. Substance abuse. Sexual licentiousness. Ideological indoctrination. Antisemitism and other forms of racism. The list is too long to recount. No school is perfect, but a value proposition must be high enough for parents to invest time and energy into any given institution.
A growing number of conservative Christians are abandoning higher education altogether because the cost, content, and outcomes for graduates of four-year institutions are unappealing. This reaction, in addition a myriad of other factors, contributes to the likelihood that four-year colleges will continue to close at record rates – one per week, on average.
As an alternative to the four-year degree, many students are flocking to another type of institution: the trade school. Let’s look at the reason that trade schools are popular and then examine how abandoning the liberal arts will affect the Church long-term.
The 2020 Pandemic’s Affect on Higher Education
The 2020 pandemic accelerated the inevitable market adjustments in higher education. Colleges quarantined or sent their students home, and professors delivered their courses online. Parents then saw a glimpse into the educational systems: Assignments were paltry. Loneliness, depression, and addictions became pervasive. Suicide rates increased. Many conscientious parents realized that the course material students learn is garbage at worst, unhelpful at best, and rarely stimulating enough to merit large investments of time or money.
An unlikely type of institution benefited. COVID-19 was a gift to trade schools. According to a report from October 2024, “The percentage of both teens and adults interested in enrolling in trade school almost doubled during the pandemic.” That trend has not slowed in the past few years. In fact, the Wall Street Journal recently reported, “Trade schools that used to accept virtually everyone now have hundreds of teens on wait lists. Demand is so high that several mainstream public high schools in the state are reviving or expanding shop classes, part of a nationwide trend.”
The trades, what the ancients called mechanical arts, became the most reasonable route of escape because they tend to avoid certain cultural pitfalls in higher education. Graduates can often earn a living upon graduation, without much debt, while avoiding cultural brainwashing. The apprenticeship model often facilitates better learning. Income is generally steady; someone is always in need of electrical work, plumbing, a kitchen remodel, or other construction.
This shift toward the trades represents a long-overdue market correction. The economy needs additional skilled laborers in the trades particularly as baby boomers approach retirement. But, as with many societal shifts, the direction toward trades may be excessive.
The Tension between Liberal and Mechanical Arts
Historically, the trades were known as mechanical arts. Philosophers have long understood the importance of these mechanical, once referred to as common, arts. The seventh century theologian and scholar, Isidore of Seville, praised the value of mechanical arts in his Etymologiae. Hugh of Saint Victor offered a favorable discussion of their nature and divisions in his twelfth-century treatise, Didascalion. Kevin Clark and Ravi Scott Jain confirm in their book, The Liberal Arts Tradition, “Christians have always had a high view of the common arts.”[1]
As I noted, conservatives have recently embraced these mechanical arts with unusual fervor. My conversations with parents (usually fathers) suggest that they believe that trade school students (usually sons) might begin earning money quickly and more steadily than liberal arts graduates.
At first blush, this argument seems airtight. Skilled trades jobs are indeed needed and valued. Abandoning them is detrimental to society.
But herein lies a tension: Christians cannot neglect the liberal arts and four-year education without serious ramifications. Trade schools emphasize the material needs of our culture, with little attention to the immaterial needs. Training in the mechanical arts focuses on the physical.
[When I refer to the liberal arts, I am speaking of those arts that initially focus on language (the trivium) and creation (the quadrivium). I would extend this discussion to include the humanities, as well.]
Abandoning the liberal arts has significant long-term consequences for the Church. Today’s cultural battles are primarily ideological and spiritual. And except for a few instances, instructors in the trades are not typically equipped to teach students how to engage with ethical dilemmas, avoid and identify fallacious arguments, or even become equipped to make aesthetic decisions. Students pursuing these careers often do not develop the analytical and critical reasoning skills needed for theological and psychological battles.
For many, trade schools seem to be the only place where objective knowledge remains intact. However, a handful of small, faithful colleges across the country is restoring confessional Christianity as the core of their liberal arts and humanities courses. Their institutions realize that timeless works by theologians such as Augustine continue to speak into today’s challenges more than most published in our lifetime.
Even the biblical saints of old demonstrated the high value of liberal arts and humanities. The prophet Daniel and his Jewish peers famously demonstrated mastery of literature, wisdom, and rhetoric in his service to Nebuchadnezzar (Dan. 1). Their profound courage is most certainly related. The Apostle Paul’s speech in Acts 17 is a brilliant rhetorical work–even apart from its extraordinary theological value–that illustrates robust intellectual engagement with contemporary culture. Paul’s trade, tent-making, enabled him to commit his life to ministry in the intellectual and mission fields. For this, the Church will perpetually benefit.
If the Church abandons the Academy altogether, we will accelerate a philistine evangelicalism over the next generation. An anti-intellectual disposition among evangelicals, especially if not countered with rigorous thoughtfulness, is perilous to a society for a simple reason: a fully fleshed-out Christian worldview offers the only compelling answers to modern cultural dilemmas.
Seminary professors regularly bemoan to me the writing and reading inadequacies of an increased number of students who are entering the pastorate. Those who enter ministry training crippled often limp into the pulpit, creating long-term spiritual ramifications in the pew. There is no better intellectual preparation for ministry than the liberal arts from a confessionally Christian institution.
Mark Noll passionately appealed to Christian intellectualism thirty years ago in his book, The Scandal of the American Mind, an argument that is more pertinent today than ever:
“…the point is not simply whether evangelicals can learn how to succeed in the modern academy. The much more important matter is what it means to think like a Christian about the nature and workings of the physical world, the character of human social structures like government and the economy, the meaning of the past, the nature of artistic creation, and the circumstances attending our perception of the world outside ourselves. Failure to exercise the mind for Christ in these areas has become acute in the twentieth century.”[2]
How much more acute in the twenty-first century!
Reclaiming a Liberal Arts Education
Cultivating students of the liberal arts remains essential to the church’s work. Churches desperately need well-trained pastors who can communicate clearly from the pulpit, engage with thorny pastoral needs graciously and biblically, and navigate interpersonal conflicts by seeing multiple points of view. The Church needs educators who can train parents how to parent and teach their children and who can provide a foundational education that inspires life-long faithfulness and functionality in society. The need for scholars who can rightly handle the word of God and train pastors is also sorely needed.
But the Church also thrives when its membership is thoughtful in all spheres and aspects of human activity. When her members possess a robust, liberal-arts-based education, one whose purpose is the cultivation of Christ-centered virtue, wisdom, and piety, the Church will benefit.
While society does need more skilled tradesmen, we desperately need sophisticated thinkers. Do not pit the trades against the liberal arts; rather, consider how the Church might offer thoughtful engagement in both arts in the public square.
[1] Kevin Clark and Ravi Scott Jain, The Liberal Arts Tradition, revised ed. Camp Hill, PA (Classical Academic Press, 2019); 115.
[2] Mark Noll, The Scandal of the American Mind. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1994; 7. A new edition is now available. This book was recently updated and republished (2022).
