Pennsylvania is paying schools to train the people its highway program keeps running short of, and a good share of the money is going to jobs outside the craft trades. PennDOT and the state Department of Education said Oct. 20 they’ll split $11.8 million among 27 schools and colleges in 21 counties, the first round of the new PennDOT Career and Technical Education grant program.
The money comes from federal highway construction dollars that can be spent on workforce development under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, according to the state’s announcement. Awards top out at $500,000, and 14 of the 27 recipients got the maximum.
Where Pennsylvania’s highway workforce grants are going
The list reads like a highway contractor’s hiring plan. Six awards fund construction inspection training, several built around PennDOT’s own Transportation Construction Inspection Certification. Parkway West Career and Technology Center near Pittsburgh got $500,000 for an inspector program. Carlow University got $500,000 for an inspector certificate plus a post-baccalaureate certificate in heavy highway project management.
Five grants build or expand commercial driver’s license training, including $483,100 at Pennsylvania College of Technology and $280,850 at the Community College of Allegheny County. Eight of the 27 involve welding.
Others start younger. Farrell Area School District in Mercer County got $490,000 for a middle school summer trades program. Bucks County Technical High School is building a four-year heavy highway welding and infrastructure pathway, and Steelton-Highspire School District near Harrisburg will start a heavy highway career track, each with $500,000.
Why inspectors and CDL drivers matter to highway contractors
Inspectors and truck drivers rarely show up in craft shortage counts, but a paving job doesn’t move without them. State DOTs either staff inspection themselves or pay consultants to do it, and a thin inspector bench slows acceptance of work that contractors have already put in place. Heavy equipment programs got a share too, with Franklin County Career and Technology Center starting an operator and maintenance program and Lehigh Career and Technical Institute expanding its own.
“These grants will help schools start or expand programs to expose students to the trades that will continue building Pennsylvania,” PennDOT Secretary Mike Carroll said.
The program grew out of Gov. Josh Shapiro’s July 2023 executive order creating the Commonwealth Workforce Transformation Program, which funds training for the workforce building the state’s infrastructure.
A small bet against a big CTE pipeline
The average award works out to about $438,000. That buys equipment and instructors for a program, not a workforce. Nationally, NCCER counts 269,500 high schoolers concentrating in construction CTE, and the hard part has always been converting those students into hires.
The announcement doesn’t say whether PennDOT will track how many of these students end up on a highway crew or an inspection team. That number is the one worth asking for when round two opens.