An assembly line of workers grabs parts from blue and yellow bins inside Superior Diesel’s warehouse. They’re putting together Kohler and John Deere diesel engines.
Alex Desch is one of the people on the line.
“This is station one,” he explains, as he walks down the line. “Usually Scott’s here, but instead Caleb’s doing this. They just put it on that skid.”
Like the people he works with, Desch spends nine hours a day at Superior Diesel. But unlike his coworkers, he’s not a full-time employee — he’s a high school student.
Desch is part of Rhinelander High School’s school-to-work program, so he gets high school credit for coming to work.
As a senior, he only needs a few more credits to graduate. But after he does, he’ll keep showing up to work at Superior Diesel. That’s because the company has already offered him a full-time position.
Desch’s situation is not uncommon for high school seniors right now.
With so many industries experiencing worker shortages, data from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center and the UW System show fewer high school graduates enrolling in colleges and universities.
Instead, local high school administrators say they’re noticing more students pursue certifications or enter directly into the workforce.
“The experiences over the last couple of years due to COVID has caused college not to be the positive experience that some may have been looking for, just due to lack of in-person class, not being able to socialize as much and get to know people,” says Scott Foster, the district administrator for Northland Pines.
“I think that has caused some of our graduates to look at the options in front of them, including one-year, two-year certifications, and going directly into a workforce in a market also that is paying a little more and looking for workers,” he says.
In 2020, college enrollment in the U.S. dropped between four and 10 percentage points depending on what type of high school students graduated from, according to data from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center.
Then, instead of rebounding in 2021, college enrollment at many schools continued to decline.
In Wisconsin, all but two UW Schools have seen drops in enrollment since the pandemic began.
Foster says declining enrollment has been happening gradually for the past decade, as the population of students in high schools has gotten smaller.
But the COVID pandemic made that gradual decline a bit steeper.
“The colleges knew these coming years would see less high school kids than before, so I think it’s been their perfect storm of challenges,” Foster says. “With costs going up, I think that’s also going to make it harder, and I think four-year colleges are going to have to adapt.”
At the same time, however, Foster says high school students today have ample opportunity to develop skills they can bring straight to the workforce, whether that’s through the building programs that many Northwoods schools offer or through school-to-work programs with employers like Superior Diesel.
At a time when many local industries are in serious need of workers, arrangements like this don’t only benefit students.
“Our building trades program that we have here, we have lots of builders asking for those graduates,” Foster says.
Emma Stroede, who works in Human Resources at Superior Diesel, says hiring local high school graduates is a win for the company and the community.
“The goal is keeping them in the community, keeping people around here,” she says. “It’s hard to find people right now, so if we can move them from the high school right into something that they want to stick with, hopefully we can retain them.”
As for soon-to-be graduates like Alex Desch, having a stable, well-paying job right out of high school is his dream.
“Hopefully this is my last job,” Desch says. “That’s what I’m planning on anyways.”
