Hi Friends,

We are so excited to usher in our 2024 Summer Semester which begins on May 6th. As many of you know, we have Welding, Pipefitting, Instrumentation, Mobile Crane Operations/Rigging, Construction Site Safety, NCCER Assessments, and Electrical, and Plumbing Apprenticeships. In this blog entry, we thought we would take a moment to ensure that you know exactly who we are and what we do.

What many may not know is that Craft Training Center offers very affordable education. Did you know that you can finish most of our programs for under $2,000? As opposed to other trade schools in the area where a student could easily end up in $20,000 of debt if not more.

Did you know that most students graduate from CTC with little to no debt? If a prospective student is unable to come up with the funds for that semester, there is hope! We not only have a scholarship program, but we also partner with an organization known as Workforce Solutions. They are a wonderful resource if you’re in need of tuition assistance. Give us a call, and we would be happy to help you navigate that option. Another fun fact is that students do not need a prerequisite of a GED or High School Diploma for our Welding, Pipefitting, Instrumentation, Mobile Crane Operations/Rigging, and Construction Site Safety Programs.

Over the last few decades, the skilled trades industry has been suffering its own prolonged recession. There have been several contributing factors that lead to what we can now categorize as a crisis. Many believe that this began with the negative impacts from the pandemic, but it goes much deeper than that.

The 2008 economic downturn was the catalyst to the skilled labor shortage. During this time, many shop classes were being eliminated entirely from Jr and Senior High Schools. The No Child Left Behind Act expedited this transition. It forced schools to focus much more time on Reading and Mathematics with a huge emphasis on college readiness.

This implementation had an inevitable ripple effect throughout the nation. Skilled work was becoming demonized as “dirty and unintelligent work.” It was a known belief that you were not considered an intellectual individual if you were not planning on obtaining a 4-Year college degree. Educators were pushing trades as a second option and not holding this path in as high of esteem as university.

What was already a struggle, became an even bigger one during the pandemic. Not only were qualified candidates already hard to find, but many of them were unwilling to return to work. As we saw in 2008, many folks either retired, or began to work in different industries as layoffs began to spread throughout the world.

Welcome to Craft Training Center's Blog! Today's entry will be short and sweet, but we wanted to make sure that we formally introduce ourselves.

The Associated Builders and Contractors Merit Shop Training Program, Inc., DBA Craft Training Center of the Coastal Bend strives to meet the shared manpower needs of the Community, Business, and Industry by providing education for the construction industry. Our goal is to develop craft professionals who are trained and capable under the highest professional standards.

We offer Welding, Pipefitting, Mobile Crane Operations/Rigging, Instrumentation, Field Safety Technology, and 4-Year Apprenticeships in Electrical and Plumbing. We also offer NCCER Assessments.

Here at CTC, we pride ourselves on being what is known as a Merit Shop Training Program. Think of a Merit Shop in the same way you would recall what a college scout is. A scout will watch an athlete throughout his career in high school and decide whether or not the individual deserves a spot on their college team. That is essentially how a Merit Shop functions as well. Industry leaders will observe a student's progress and determine whether or not they examine the skill and attitude to be offered employment at their company.

When you think of women in industrial services, what first comes to mind? Some may think back to World War II with Rosie the Riveter, others may find it hard to ponder a woman’s place in a male-dominated industry.

Most may not know that women have occupied this space for centuries. It is not generally a subject taught within a school system, and most definitely not coined as common knowledge. So today, we would love to bring this history to light.

Women in Construction and Skilled Trades can be traced back as far as the 13th-17th centuries in England, France, Germany, and Spain. The earliest written record dates to 13th-century Spain in the Kingdom of Navarre.

Within this community, women in Skilled Trades were often middle-class citizens. They primarily focused on masonry and carpentry, which was taught to them by their fathers and grandfathers. Lower-class women were more than likely working as day laborers on stone and wood structures.

This history is presumably overlooked by the fact that it was socially unacceptable to keep a record of women as wage-earning workers. In most cases, they were left off the record entirely or listed only by gender with no role specified.