Editorial: Embracing and supporting career and tech education is critical

Commencement season is upon us.

It is the time of year when the many universities throughout Southwestern Pennsylvania are suiting up their students in robes and mortarboards. The strains of “Pomp and Circumstance” are heard in the air.

Thousands of college students will receive degrees and embark on their careers. About a month later, thousands of high school students will cross the stages at hundreds of high schools across the region and prepare to start the whole cycle over again.

The whole process comes along with a mortgage on each of those students’ futures — the crippling weight of loan debt that can prevent a host of other opportunities for decades. The long-term demands of those loans can interfere with buying a home, having kids, starting a business or changing jobs.

What to do about the average $30,000 in student loan debt tethered to graduates when they leave their alma maters is a puzzle that is being pondered by universities. It’s being teed up by legislators. Gov. Josh Shapiro and President Joe Biden are taking swings at it.

But for the kids just starting their high school careers, there is another option that can’t be underestimated.

Don’t go to college. Or at least, don’t go right away.

On Friday, Pennsylvania education officials were touring the Central Westmoreland Career and Technology Center in New Stanton. They were looking at the reality of today’s career education, something people are eager to talk about for its differences from the “vo-tech” of the past.

But why shy away from that history? The only stigma attached has come from an overemphasis on college, something that isn’t a good fit for all students. Career and technical schools have been the basis of so many of Southwestern Pennsylvania’s families, putting roofs over their heads and food on the table for generations.

There needs to be an acknowledgment that education can come in many different forms. It needs to not just be an option on the table, like an elective buried in a course catalog. It needs to be something believed and supported by educators and politicians at every level. It needs to be advocated wholeheartedly to students and their families.

Career education is not less than college education. It is merely different, the same way a university has a diverse array of schools to focus on medicine, engineering, the arts and more.

If it was viewed — and promoted — as a comparable path, fewer high school graduates would be looking at a future paying for their education instead of saving for a home.