Trade programs, unlike other areas of higher education, are in hot demand

By Olivia Sanchez for The Hechinger Report Most of the guys come straight to the shop each afternoon. After long shifts at supermarkets and home improvement stores, they make their way to southwest Nashville just before 4 p.m., sometimes still in uniform, and pull into a massive parking lot shared by the local community college and the Nashville branch of the Tennessee College of Applied Technology, or TCAT. Some might rev their engines and do a few laps around the mostly clear lot first, but they all eventually take a right toward the garage. There, as the sun begins to set on a 70-degree February day, the students in the auto collision repair night class are preparing to spend the next five hours studying. One is sanding the seal off the bed of his 1989 Ford F-350, preparing to repaint. Another, in his first trimester, is patiently hammering out a banged-up fender, an assignment that may take him weeks. Another, who has strayed in from the welding shop, is trying to distract the guys in the program he graduated from months before. Some others linger around a metal picnic table in the parking lot, sipping cool sugary drinks and poking...