Harvard trade school? It's not as far-fetched as it might seem

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President Donald Trump said this fall that his administration is close to an agreement with Harvard University to pay $500 million to operate trade schools. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said in a CNBC interview in September that a "Harvard vocational school" is what America needs.

As the administration puts pressure on the school with numerous investigations, the White House has been pushing for Harvard to become the second Ivy League school, after Brown University, to commit millions to workforce development.

It might seem a little mind-bending given Harvard's history and reputation, but the university is already actively engaged in the workforce development space, funding efforts that include a multi-school initiative, widely-cited studies, continuing-education classes and co-founding a national nonprofit seeking to improve pathways from school to work.

Harvard professors and researchers have been studying increasingly urgent questions, turbocharged by artificial intelligence, about how technology is changing the workforce. People will need to repeatedly learn new skills as jobs and fields transform rapidly, they say, but as it stands now, employers can't find enough skilled workers, and millions of applicants are unable to land jobs. Their research indicates that more than 40 million workers are stuck in low-wage jobs that don't provide economic security - even if they're working multiple jobs.

"We better start getting serious about this because we've got a major productivity problem in the United States," said Joseph B. Fuller, a professor who founded and coleads the Harvard Business School Managing the Future of Work Project as well as the multi-school Harvard Project on Workforce. "And we have major budget problems in the United States. If we don't get more people on the path to success … the lines are going to cross. And it looks like they're already crossing."

The Trump administration has been aggressively trying to force colleges to change on many fronts, describing elite schools as leftist hotbeds that indoctrinate students and allow antisemitism and discrimination to flourish. It has focused particular ire on Harvard, including freezing more than $2 billion in funding this spring. Harvard refused in April to comply with sweeping demands, filed two lawsuits, and notched a big court win in September that the administration has said it would appeal.

Trump has been saying for months that the two sides are close to an agreement, including this month, and earlier this fall when he said $500 million would be a big investment in trade schools from Harvard.

Harvard is the country's most iconic university, and it's famously tough for students to get into Harvard College, which in recent years has admitted less than 5 percent of applicants. Less well known: For more than 100 of its nearly 400 years, Harvard has offered widely accessible continuing education classes and instruction. Through the university's Division of Continuing Education, retirees, executives, mid-career workers, high school students and others can earn credits and other credentials.

The Harvard Extension School, one part of that Division of Continuing Education, offers hundreds of classes, online or in-person, to earn anything from a microcertificate in AI in business to a graduate degree in biology. The Harvard Summer School allows adults and high-schoolers to register for classes - no application for admission required - to learn new skills for work or explore a different career.

Harvard also offers workforce development programs for people in the neighborhoods near its Allston-Brighton campus, such as career counseling and job fairs and skills training for work in construction trades.

The United States has historically underinvested in workforce training, said Jeff Strohl, director of Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, and now spends just a quarter of what was spent before 1980 - despite the growth in the workforce since then.

Now, with declining perceptions of the importance of a college education, some people are calling for more trade schools and short-term certificates for people learning a new skill. "The tone in the public is more that college isn't worth it," Strohl said. "And as a response, we're hearing, not just from the administration, but from many different circles, ‘We need to reinvest in trade schools.'"

The Trump administration recently announced a talent strategy that seeks to meet the needs of employers, help workers advance and expand the labor force. The "college-for-all approach" has failed, leaving workers struggling, officials from the departments of Labor, Education and Commerce wrote in announcing the initiative.

Strohl said a benefit of the renewed emphasis on technical training could be that educators at all levels - including elite universities - think more about workforce readiness. "Traditional postsecondary education needs to recognize that change is in front of it, right?" he said. "It needs to change."

Currently, research drives much of Harvard's work on job skills.

When Joseph Fuller joined Harvard Business School, he saw data on U.S. competitiveness that jumped off the page at him: The workforce, historically a major source of competitive advantage to the country, was declining rapidly.

He can tick off potential reasons: Many job-seekers don't have a good handle on what employers need, or know how to get training for in-demand jobs. Many employers haven't invested in on-the-job training for workers. Some community colleges, especially in blue states, are more focused on educating students to transfer into a four-year degree than on ensuring they're learning valuable job skills.

Harvard's Project on Workforce is trying to solve some of these conundrums. A joint effort by the Harvard Kennedy School, its business schools and its graduate school of education, the project aims to help people understand ways to create paths for people after high school that lead to better paying jobs.

Researchers at the Project on Workforce mapped the more than 20,000 workforce training providers across the country, centralizing information about a fragmented system including apprenticeships, higher education and nonprofits so that employers, researchers and workers can see what's available.

The business school also has an initiative, Managing the Future of Work, which researches issues such as how generative AI will reshape the workplace.

"It's kind of Ivory Tower-ish sometimes," Fuller said, "but if we can take what we know and make it comprehensible and user-friendly to decision-makers, I think we can make a lot of progress."

On a recent Friday in Ohio, more than a hundred high school students gathered at a community college for the launch of a program that pairs students with training for high-demand fields.

Through "Bridges to Success," hundreds of students will take classes at Lorain County Community College to earn a credential in high-need areas identified and supported by dozens of regional businesses: microelectronics, education, health care and technology.

The experience gives them a path toward a job that pays well, some workplace skills such as collaborating on managing a project, and a glimpse into what it might be like to work in that field, said Stephanie Khurana, the chief executive of Axim Collaborative, who was there for the launch along with principals and guidance counselors from more than 14 schools in the region. If the students keep up their grades, they are guaranteed admission to the community college and a scholarship.

"Instead of making a choice of, ‘Do I go to school or do I get a job?' you can actually do both with these programs," Khurana said. "It helps these students overcome some of the barriers that they otherwise would be facing."

Harvard and MIT co-founded the independent nonprofit Axim Collaborative in 2023, after selling their joint learning platform edX and hiring Khurana. (EdX was created in 2012 to expand access to education by offering free online classes.)

The two schools used the $800 million from the sale to create Axim, which focuses on student success through partnerships across the country.

The organization aims to scale its efforts as partners share what they learn.

"We might be starting with hundreds or thousands of students," Khurana said, "but all of these are on a track to then help tens of thousands and eventually even millions of students."