Michael Cole​​​​, Regional Campus President, Tulsa Welding School

When it comes to return of investment from education the Tulsa Welding School has an advantage. “We expect that a student can get about 1.5 times return on that investment. You have a shorter length of time; seven months versus four years. You’re out of here and you’re able to start working right away,” says Michael Cole, regional campus president.

What have been the main highlights and key milestones for the Tulsa Welding School in the last 12 months?

In April, we celebrated Tulsa Welding School’s 75th Anniversary at our Tulsa, Oklahoma campus. That was a huge milestone for us to be able to do this and provide welders to the economy and to the states that we operate in for that long. It’s been 23 years now in Jacksonville. We’ve been around for a long time and are pretty proud of the fact that we get to send about a thousand workers into the workforce every single year. It’s been a nice run. We also graduate over 1,200 students a year. We’re proud of what we’re able to do for the skilled trades as a whole on an annual basis here in Jacksonville.

What trade programs do you expect to be the main drivers of growth moving forward?

Right now it’s all about skilled trades. The programs we are teaching now are ahead of the class. We know there are going to be about 60,000 openings in welding over the next two or three years. Being in Florida, HVAC is a necessity, as is electrical; everything that we do relies on electricity. Those programs lead the way. We also recently introduced the electrical line worker program, which is advantageous especially during hurricane season. We know the importance of that program and how it will allow our students to make an impact on their local community. 

Outside of what we do, anything that’s working around cyber technology is huge. Also, nursing is always a huge when you’re talking about need and all those things from a skilled labor force.

Have you seen an increase in the demand for education in the trades lately? 

With some of the initiatives that have come out federally and statewide, you can see that there’s a need for the skilled trades to increase. You’ve got a retiring, aging out workforce. For many years, a popular thing was to send everyone’s children to school to be doctors, or lawyers, or go for liberal arts, and make sure you go to a four-year university. It left a huge gap in the skilled trades. What we’re seeing is the advent of people who need to find work, both from the employers and from the students. What’s interesting to me is I have quite a few students who may have a bachelor’s degree and have decided that they want to do something with their hands and come and do skills trade. 

What is the value proposition of the trade school as a career choice? 

It’s about time, value, and money. At the end of the day, a student can come here for seven months and pay the tuition. We expect that a student can get about 1.5 times the return on that investment. You have a shorter length of time; seven months versus four years. You’re out of here and you’re able to start working right away. We’re proud that our welders make a pretty good salary. If you take a look at Bureau Labor Statistics, you’ll see the salaries are well compensated, and our students can leave here with a lot less debt. The speed of our program is key. When you’re coming here, the investment of seven months is less significant than four years.

How does the Tulsa Welding School leverage technology and innovation to provide the best trade education programs to its students?

That’s something that we’ve gotten good at, particularly since COVID. The pandemic taught us that you had to have alternative ways to teach. One of the things that is pretty innovative for us at Tulsa Welding School is a program we call OcuWeld. We partnered with Meta and we we’re able to launch a platform where students can virtually practice their welding skills. Any of the programs that they’re learning, any of the techniques they’re learning, whether it’s MIG, flux, or even if it’s horizontal or vertical beads, we can do that online as a support to what they are learning in the labs. The student doesn’t necessarily need internet access anymore because we can load it. The students can then get that hand muscle memory while they’re at home. It doesn’t replace being in the welding lab and playing with sparks, but it does allow the students to practice when they’re not able to come into the classroom and do those things. We’ve seen that it improves overall performance in the lab as well as performance when students graduate. We also were able to do something similar through interplay with our HVAC and electrical. Any of the techniques that students are using, they can do online in a virtual environment and supplement the education they’re going to get from hands-on experience. 

On our Houston campus, we’ve piloted robotic welding. We’re now able to introduce that to students and see how robots and technology can help with the process. While that’s a great process, we’re also aware that it doesn’t replace human hands. There are only so many things that a robot can do. Even if the robot is working, a human has to work the robot. We’re able to see how technology is now shaping and refacing the things that we’re doing from an organizational standpoint, and we’re implementing and adding to our curriculum all the time.

What would you say are the primary challenges for the education sector, especially in the trades at the moment? 

One of the biggest challenges for us is still the stigma that people believe when their child comes out of high, school four-year schools are better than trade schools. I don’t see one as better than the other. When I first started in the industry, I used to talk to high school guidance counselors and tell them I wanted the students they knew were not cut out for, or did not want to go to, four-year universities. There are students who are not going to be successful or not going to be challenged by a four-year institution, those students who like to work with their hands. We all know the ones that are out there doing in the auto shop that prefer to go in and work on something than to read something. Those students are the ones that we’re trying to capture. We’re trying to promote awareness and we do that through our high school program. We have a team of high school reps that visit schools both locally in Jacksonville, outside of Jacksonville in Florida, and in other states.

The more we can talk about skilled trades being a viable option for somebody, it heightens awareness for parents more so than the students. It’s about being able to talk through those things and make people realize that at the end of the day, there are other alternatives. 

Another problem for us is that politically, it becomes challenging. When you’re a school that is not a nonprofit, different tools make it harder. But we find the ways to navigate. 

What do you expect to be the outlook for the Tulsa Welding School in the next 2-3 years?

For us, it’s going to be organic growth for the next year where we’re trying to make sure that we’re maximizing the ability to train more welders, HVAC technicians, and electricians. The electrical line worker program is new for us, so we’re looking forward to seeing that growth. Eventually, we’re going to look at some other programs along the way. We received approval for an AOS program, which is going to be an associate’s degree program that ties welding into a bit more of the management side. 

I see us going further down in the skilled trades and tying it all together. We’ve talked about trying to put that in and making it a superintendent type of role where we could tie all of our services into one. The idea is to get somebody molded into managing multiple skilled trades and having a lot of things under their belt so that they can do more than just the handyman thing, but manage the programs and know a little bit about all of those trades.

We’re going to stay in and work toward those skilled trades and try to find where growth matters. For us, it’s not necessarily about the growth; it’s about where the students can get jobs. We’re not interested in offering programs where students can’t get a return on the investment. 

If the students can’t get a job from it or a career from it, we’re simply not interested. We’re looking at all of those things. Where are the needs? Where can we better help people get into careers? Where can we help the community and employers find the skilled laborers they need? That all goes into our decision-making.