Inside a workshop at Esperanza High School, seniors Chris Norton and Wyatt Hood have learned how to weld, run a lathe and machine components — all before graduation.
“Nobody else has a facility of this stature,” said Hood, 18, who lives in Anaheim. “We have so many machines to operate here and so many opportunities to build your career here.”
Hood and Norton are part of a growing cohort of students in Orange County enrolling in career technical education, or CTE, programs providing courses designed to prepare students for well-paying jobs in manufacturing, auto repair, healthcare and other in-demand industries.
As fewer high school graduates in California chose paths heading straight to four-year colleges, enrollment in CTE programs has surged locally.
This year, more than 91,000 students across Orange County enrolled in CTE programs, a 6.5% increase over last year, according to the Orange County Department of Education. Industry certifications are also up, with nearly 4,640 students earning credentials that can help them land jobs immediately after high school.
Department officials said the jump reflects a more focused countywide effort to expand hands-on learning through the state’s K-16 Collaborative, an initiative aimed at improving pathways from high school to postsecondary education and into the workforce by fostering regional partnerships between schools and employers. While they said they don’t have reliable data going back several years, officials say the recent tracking shows a 78% increase in students earning industry certifications.
“When we talk about career education, we’re not just talking about job skills — we’re talking about creating opportunity,” Orange County Superintendent Dr. Stefan Bean said. “Our goal is to ensure that every student, regardless of background or circumstance, can access meaningful pathways that lead to independence, purpose and success. That’s not just good for students — it’s smart for our workforce and our economy.”
At Esperanza, demand for the school’s combined engineering and manufacturing program has doubled over the past five years. Class sizes have grown from about 20 students to nearly 40 in some sections, said teacher Jeff Wallace, who has taught the program for eight years. The school recently added a second instructor to keep up.
“We are the only engineering and manufacturing program in the county,” Wallace said. “If students want to learn manufacturing or engineering, they come here.”
Norton transferred from El Dorado High specifically to join the program. Norton and Hood also work part-time with a local off-road company.
“I’ve always been interested in working with my hands, pretty much my whole life,” said Norton, 18. “This one just stood out to me.”
While many students graduating this month and next still plan to pursue a college degree, plenty of others see trade work as a more direct and more affordable path to success.
“I always thought that you had to go to college if you wanted to make six figures a year,” Norton said. “I started talking to more people in the trades. Some didn’t even graduate high school and they’re making really good money.”
Wallace said the skills students learn in the program make them marketable and ready to “go make money.”
“There’s a lot of people that are not possessing these skills anymore,” he said, “so those jobs are getting very sought after and they’re paying very well. It’s not uncommon for welders and machinists to be well into six-figure salaries.”
Hood said his father, who attended Esperanza in the 1990s and went straight into construction, was also a factor in his decision to skip the traditional college route.
“He told me about the program, so I just wanted to see if it lived up to its name,” Hood said. “He also influenced me about how not everything is about the four-year college.”
Across the county, students and families are increasingly open to that message, according to Kathy Boyd, executive director of career education and postsecondary advancement at the Orange County Department of Education.
“What we’re witnessing in Orange County is not simply an increase in CTE enrollment, but a fundamental shift in how students and families view career preparation,” Boyd said. “This isn’t about choosing between college and career. It’s about providing students with multiple entry points to meaningful careers that meet both their aspirations and our regional economic needs.”
Boyd said more students are blending work-based learning, certifications and college credit into what she calls a “hybrid pathway” that allows them to build skills while keeping future options open.
Nationwide, students and families are questioning the long-held assumption that college is the default path. For decades, high schools moved away from industrial arts classes like autoshop and woodworking, partly in favor of a “college-for-all” approach, but that’s starting to shift back, said Kathleen deLaski, founder of the Education Design Lab, which develops alternative education-to-workforce models.
“There’s been an organic movement among families to say, ‘Well, we’re doing a cost-benefit analysis of the return on investment,’” she said. “‘And we’re not sure that we want to take on that debt.’”
This reevaluation has been underway for years, but the coronavirus pandemic accelerated it, deLaski said. During the pandemic, college enrollment saw a dip.
Relevance is another key driver of the shift, deLaski said. Many students feel uncertain whether a four-year degree still prepares them for jobs that won’t be outdated in a few years, she said. “People are seeing the unemployment rate actually for new college grads is higher than the overall unemployment rate.”
At Edison High School in Huntington Beach, students in its Center for International Business and Communication Studies take a four-year sequence of classes that blends social studies, English and hands-on business experience. They develop marketing plans, pitch product ideas and even earn revenue from the products they create.
The success stories aren’t hard to find.
A student who interned with a pool cleaning service started his own and then sold it back to his mentor for $10,000. Another made thousands selling wood-bottom purses meant to be used at the beach. A student who wanted to be a music producer has now played renditions of “The Star Spangled Banner” at Lakers, Clippers and Ducks games.
“The emphasis is we’re getting them prepared for a future, whether it is college or going into the business or even going into a trade,” said Josh Bammer, a social studies teacher in the center. “Maybe they get into a trade, but if they have to open up their own business in that trade, they know how to do it.”
What was begun 30 years ago by just two teachers now enrolls more than 100 students annually. By senior year, students complete a capstone project tied to a career interest or community service. Along the way, they might intern with local companies or pitch to businesses.
Jeremiah Villamar, a graduate of the center, said he used to be shy, but the program helped him build confidence. He interned with an athletic trainer and worked with businesses such as Slater’s 50/50. Today, he promotes his family’s business in Anaheim using the skills he learned.
Jeff Hyder, COO at cleaning product company Simple Green, has judged student pitches for more than 20 years and sent both his kids through the program.
“I’ve just been taken aback by the professionalism of the group presentations, the invention, the mock-up of the invention, the media advertising that they build, the social media aspect of the invention,” Hyder said. “It’s very heartwarming to see that some of them at a very young age just get it.”
Each year, about 20 students visit Simple Green HQ for a product branding challenge. They develop mock pitches with advertising and social media plans.
Programs like these are expanding across Orange County to help students explore career paths that fit their interests, not necessarily to replace college, but to broaden their choices.
At Laguna Beach Unified, about two-thirds of students go to four-year universities. Another 29% head to community college. But the district also promotes certification and technical programs that lead directly to high-paying jobs, often without college debt.
“We believe it’s not just the traditional college career that is the right fit for every student,” said Lynn Gregory, college and career specialist at Laguna Beach High.
She recalled one student who became an underwater welder and now makes six figures, and another who trained as a surgical technician, earning around $70,000.
The district offers career pathway programs in fire science, dental assisting, auto mechanics and engineering. In Scott Wittkop’s multimedia classes, students use industry-standard design tools and learn how to run a creative business.
Wittkop started working in printing at 18 without a college degree, bought a house at 19 and later became a teacher. Now he connects students with internships at design firms.
One student landed a job designing cleats for the professional sports teams representing football, golf and baseball players. Others have launched their own brands before graduating.
For Ashley Yee, who has her goals set on being a dentist, the chance to work with actual patients as a dental technician has been a game-changer.
As a sophomore at Capistrano Valley High, she was introduced to the dental career field by signing up for an afterschool class through the Capistrano Unified School District’s College Career Advantage program.
Despite being extra work, along with her already hefty class schedule and water sports training, Yee said she embraced the opportunity. Now a graduating senior, she turned an internship into the two-day-a-week job as a technician at a Laguna Niguel dentist’s office.
Dental school will be expensive, so getting a job in the field to experience the work while earning money has been a win-win.
The pressure to be accepted to a four-year college can weigh heavily on students, experts say.
Kim Turner said it was only after her son, Patrick, a sophomore at Corona del Mar High School, died by suicide in 2018 that she learned how deeply the 16-year-old had internalized the pressure to succeed.
“He didn’t show any signs of struggle, and he did well in school, and he was an athlete and all that stuff,” she said. “I didn’t realize that it upset him so much to drive him to do what he did.”
Turner now runs Patrick’s Purpose Foundation, which offers scholarships to students who plan to attend trade schools, community colleges or other alternatives to four-year universities.
“It’s so rewarding to see these kids doing what they want to do, and how it’s not the traditional path that we kind of assume that everybody’s going to take,” she said. “So it’s great to see the creativity and the different paths and their different interests. To me, it’s really rewarding.”
Since launching the foundation, she said she’s seen more students choose nontraditional options.
“We had, I think two years ago, somebody that went to clown school, which I thought was really cool. Patrick would love that,” Turner said. “And a lot of them do plan to go to a community college with the intent of transferring. I’m trying to track them and kind of follow them, and I would say about half of them reply to me, but they’ve all pretty much done what they set out to do.”
For Norton and Hood, their current goal is clear: gain real-world experience and eventually run their own businesses.
“In five or 10 years, I’d like to own my own company somewhere in this trade, whether in fabrication or something automotive,” Norton said. “A full-service shop, or maybe even something like NASCAR. Probably takes a little more than 10 years, though.”
“A shop would definitely be the goal,” Hood added. “Maybe a race team in the future.”