Students are paid for their work while training for skilled labor jobs
A new Catholic trade school called The College of Saint Joseph the Worker recently opened in Steubenville, Ohio, to train students “in skilled and dignified labor.”
At the college, students will earn a Bachelor of Arts in Catholic Studies, master a trade like carpentry, plumbing, or electrical work, and “graduate without crippling debt,” the school website states.
Michael Gugala, vice president of enrollment, told The College Fix during an in-person interview the school aims to maintain the original model of the university system, which integrates faith and reason, set up by the Catholic Church.
“If the Catholic Church is going to create something like that, it is valuable and should be maintained,” Gugala told The Fix.
Gugala also said the school is different from others because “it brings together the truth, goodness and beauty of the Catholic intellectual tradition with the practicality of learning a skilled trade.” It combines those two elements in a meaningful way, helping to restore balance to higher education, he said.
“We hope it will make students feel very comfortable, very capable so that they can go out and start living truly meaningful lives very early and start reclaiming this culture for Christ,” he said.
He said Jacob Imam, the school’s founder, recognized that universities often fail to deliver on their promises of quality education and future opportunities for students. Imam set out to create a school that would truly set students up for success.
In addition, he considered that studying theology is not associated with landing a high-paying job, which also motivated Imam to create the school, Gugala told The Fix.
Imam chose a trade school as it appeared to have few problems and boasted students who secured jobs with minimal debt. He also considered the nature of the work itself and whether it offered dignified employment, Gugala told The Fix.
“Naturally, they look to the example of Jesus Christ,” he said, “who comes down into a Greco-Roman world that disdained work, and yet he spends the majority of his life at the carpenter’s bench and a workshop.”
He said they also look to the example of Saint Joseph, a key biblical figure also known for being a carpenter.
“We feel confident in the dignity of work. We dignify the work by how we approach it and what we do,” he said.
Further, students are paid for the work they do while they’re training for skilled labor jobs, he said. “That is a huge part of our financial model,” Gugala said.
“When you pull those things together, you have got this great education, you are learning a dignified skill that is going to lead to a good paying job, and then because of the paid training portion it eludes that crippling debt problem,” he said.
When asked about the goals of the school, Gugala said they aim for students to understand their faith and put it into action, and they believe learning trades will help students do this.
“They will have the skills to make things happen tangibly in their towns,” Gugala said. The students will form a healthy view of giving back and taking care of their families, he told The Fix.
“You combine skill with the will, with the financial aspects, and now all of a sudden, you have the pillars of the community that can really make things happen and be real culture changers,” he said.
An expert in education and workforce development told The Fix there is a significant shortage of young people training for high-demand trades offered at the school.
Plumbers, electricians, and carpenters “are in very high demand in in our economy” and learning these trades “often times provides pathways to good jobs,” Zack Mabel, the director of research at the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, said.
However, cultural biases have long discouraged youth from pursuing them, raising the challenge of whether expanding training programs will attract enough students without major efforts to shift perceptions about the economic opportunities in skilled trades, he said.
Although it has only been open for less than a year, the school has students from 21 states, Gugala said. For the inaugural class, 31 students were chosen out of 130 applicants. The school aims to gradually increase enrollment to 80 to 100 students and level off there for a while.
The college is located near another Catholic school, Franciscan University. “The two organizations have pledged to work together in a natural partnership that complements students at both institutions,” the school website states.
St. Joseph students can access Franciscan University’s library, while Franciscan’s carpentry club has access to the workshop.
MORE: New housing at Franciscan U. offers place for pregnant and parenting students
IMAGE CAPTION AND CREDIT: Student reads book in class; The College of St. Joseph the Worker
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