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The recent federal transition that shifted day-to-day administration of career-oriented pathways and career and technical education into the U.S. Department of Labor reflects a growing recognition that workforce preparation fails when it is governed as schooling alone rather than as a pipeline into jobs, wages and advancement.
There is no shortage of credentials in the U.S. labor market. There is a shortage of matched skills and reliable pathways. Job openings remain historically elevated despite cooling in some places. Even so, a persistent share of young adults are neither enrolled nor working, signaling weak attachment to both employment and further training.
This gap is not a 2025 phenomenon. For decades, policymakers have invested in education while assuming that labor market integration would follow. The evidence suggests otherwise. The impacts of education vary sharply by field, institution and completion status; and many credentials deliver little labor market value relative to their cost. Treating enrollment and completion as success metrics has obscured whether programs actually improve employment and earnings.
CTE was intended to create clearer routes into work. The evidence shows positive effects on several high school outcomes, limited and uneven evidence on postsecondary and earnings outcomes, and large gaps in what has been rigorously evaluated.
Many CTE programs are well intentioned and well funded, yet weakly connected to labor demand. Program offerings frequently lag local employer needs. Credentials are not always portable across firms or regions. Accountability focuses on compliance and participation rather than job placement and earnings. Students complete programs without clear signals about whether those credentials will translate into work. Employers remain skeptical of what certificates represent.
These outcomes are not accidental. They reflect governance. The Department of Education was designed to administer grants, regulate institutions and ensure access. These are necessary functions, but they are not sufficient for building labor market pathways. Education agencies are not structured to continuously track employer demand, validate occupational skill standards or adjust programs based on employment outcomes.
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By contrast, the Department of Labor already operates systems that define success in labor market terms, including placement, earnings and retention under the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act.
Shifting CTE administration toward Labor aligns authority with objective. To ensure that this move is not just symbolic, policy should be governed by institutions that measure and manage those outcomes. The lesson for CTE is not ideological. It is operational. Here are three design choices.
First, employer leadership must be real, not advisory in name only. Employers should hold decision-making authority over occupational standards, credential validation and program relevance, with transparent governance and conflict of interest rules. Without employer control and input into the curriculum, pathways drift toward provider convenience.
Second, funding must be tied to outcomes that matter. Completion alone is insufficient. Programs should be evaluated on job placement, earnings, retention and progression, adjusted for local labor markets. Chronic underperformance should lead to canceling or revising programs.
Third, the system must allow for competition among multiple providers. Community colleges, employer consortia, nonprofits, high-schools and high quality private providers should operate on equal footing — even if they pursue the goals differently.
Of course, pathway rules should be periodically reviewed and reauthorized, and the Labor Department is well-suited to provide review. Labor markets change faster than education systems. Sunset provisions force adaptation and prevent regulatory accumulation that freezes outdated models in place.
Critics often argue that tighter alignment with labor markets narrows education and reduces flexibility. The evidence suggests the opposite. The current system narrows options by steering students toward debt-financed pathways with uncertain payoffs while offering limited transparency about outcomes. Clear labor market signals expand choice by allowing students to compare pathways based on real consequences rather than marketing or tradition.
A well-designed pathway system does not lock individuals into a single occupation. It creates stackable credentials, portable skills and bridges to further education. It treats employment not as the endpoint of learning but as a core component of it.
The research on education governance offers a cautionary lesson: Incentives matter. Systems respond to what is measured and rewarded. When accountability emphasizes inputs and compliance, organizations optimize for those metrics, even when outcomes suffer.
The federal transition to Labor creates a rare policy opening. It acknowledges that education policy cannot substitute for labor market policy when the objective is work. Whether that acknowledgment leads to better outcomes depends on follow through. Structure matters. Incentives matter. Governance matters.
If CTE continues to be governed as education with different labels, results will not change. If it is governed as labor market infrastructure, it can finally function as intended.
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