The Rise of the Toolbelt Generation

A new kind of student is thriving right now, and it’s not the one buried in textbooks and rushing to the lecture hall; it’s the student with a welding torch, a socket wrench, or a set of HVAC gauges in hand.

White-collar layoffs dominated the news in 2025. AI is coming for entry-level jobs. College debt continues to climb. And young workers are looking elsewhere for stability.

Across the country, members of Generation Z – and even Millennials – are trading the traditional four-year college campus for the workshop floor. Spurred by higher pay, the destigmatization of blue-collar work, and social media's influence, they are consciously rejecting the notion that success comes only in a suit and tie. They are the “Toolbelt Generation,” as dubbed by the Wall Street Journal—a wave of young people finding purpose, pride, and prosperity in skilled trades.

Leading this movement in Indiana is Ivy Tech Community College. Within classrooms that hum with the sounds of future welders, mechanics, and technicians, hands-on learning is building more than a workforce—it's building a generation of entrepreneurs and innovators poised to solve the critical shortage of skilled tradespeople.

FACES OF A
HANDS-ON FUTURE

For 20-year-old automotive technology student Wallace Thornton, the first spark came from the roar of an engine. Success to him is grease on his hands and a future he can see taking shape.

“I’ve always liked tinkering,” he said. “I originally came here for automotive because I’ve loved cars since I was a kid, helping my neighbor work on his old show car.”

Thornton, who was homeschooled, enrolled right out of high school at 18. He was drawn by Ivy Tech’s reputation for quick job placement and its debt-free pathway. Since his two older sisters also began their higher education at Ivy Tech, he was intimately familiar with the perks of attending a community college.

“I chose Ivy Tech because they really liked it ... I hung out at the campus with them then and did some of my homeschool homework at the [Indy] campus, and I just really liked it. It’s a great college,” Thornton said.

“My dream is restoring old cars, working with metal, doing something real. Ivy Tech is helping me build the foundation for that.”

WALLACE THORNTON

At Ivy Tech Indianapolis, Thornton found more than just a clean, modern, and state-of-the-art auto lab in the Automotive Technology Center; he found a pathway that made sense for who he is.

“I was raised in a pretty white-collar family,” he admits. “But I knew if I had to sit at a desk my whole life, I’d drive myself nuts. I’ve got to do something hands-on.”

That hands-on mindset — combined with Ivy Tech’s employer partnerships — quickly paid off. Through the college’s Hire Ivy job network, Thornton connected with a local Ford dealership, where he now works as a lube technician while finishing his associate degree.

“It’s comforting,” he says. “I already have a job lined up before I finish school, thanks to Ivy Tech. I’m not going to be scrambling afterward.”

Thornton is also pursuing a welding certificate—a choice driven by curiosity that quickly became a second passion.

“One of the guys in class called it a ‘double-edged sword,’” Thornton laughed. “If the auto industry slows down, I can always go do welding. Welders are always needed … I don’t see AI scaling a building or welding any time soon.”

Thornton plans to take his skills even further after graduation, eyeing McPherson College in Kansas for a four-year degree in automotive restoration.

His story is far from unique. As skepticism grows around the traditional college price tag, Gen Z students, in particular, are finding that skilled trades offer not only good pay and seamless job placement but a sense of autonomy and tangible accomplishment.

For Kaylee Harris, 24, that discovery came through art — and fire.

“I started at Ivy Tech thinking I’d go into fine arts,” Harris recalls with a laugh. “Then I wandered past a poster for welding classes and thought, ‘That looks fun.’ I had no idea it would end up becoming such a big part of my life.”

Harris, who always preferred 3D sculptural art to sketching or painting, quickly found welding to be an unexpected fusion of art and science.

Harris earned her technical certificate in welding in 2022 and landed her first job within weeks at a local art fabrication studio that specialized in creative metalwork. There, she helped weld and assemble massive metal sculptures, including a piece near Lucas Oil Stadium and another installed in a city park and the library. Many of the pieces went to other major metropolises as well, including Detroit, Washington D.C., and several in California.

Today, she works at Major Tool and Machine, a company contracted on aerospace and defense projects.

“Now I’m working on parts that go into space,” she says, grinning. “It’s wild to think I went from sculptures to spacecraft.”

What motivates Harris most, though, is representation. Becoming one of a growing number of women entering a field long dominated by men.

“It’s definitely a male-dominated field,” she says. “But I like being able to show people that women can do it too. I get looks sometimes when I show up on a jobsite, like, ‘You’re the welder?’ But that’s what makes it cool — I like being able to surprise people.”

She grins. “I like being a jack of all trades. I can weld, I can paint, I can do art, and I can fix things. That’s what makes me valuable. I can kind of do a little bit of everything.”

“I wish I would have started welding sooner. It’s so satisfying — there’s a rhythm to it. It’s like sculpture meets engineering. You can build something that lasts.”

KAYLEE HARRIS

That diversity — in age, gender, and background — is part of what makes this new Toolbelt Generation distinct. It’s not just Gen Z entering the trades; it’s women and older generations looking to pivot. Many are adults seeking a new career, like 33-year-old HVAC graduate Steven Bagienski.

After years in the restaurant service industry, Bagienski craved a path with more stability and purpose.

“I was making OK money,” he says, “but I wasn’t building anything, not a career, not a future.”

When he learned that Ivy Tech’s Workforce Ready Grant could help cover tuition for high-demand fields like HVAC, the choice became clear.

His timing couldn’t have been better. The Lowe’s Foundation Gable Grant had recently provided a major investment in Ivy Tech’s HVAC and skilled trades programs, funding new equipment, lab upgrades, and curriculum support across Indiana. For students like Bagienski, it signaled that national industry leaders saw real value in what Ivy Tech was building.

“It’s amazing to see how many companies are stepping up to support us,” he says. “You can tell they believe in what Ivy Tech is doing.”

Bagienski’s story also underscores how closely Ivy Tech connects students to employers. After refining his résumé with the help of career coach Jenny Trusler, he attended the Ivy Tech Indianapolis Career Fair, where he met a recruiter from Siemens.

“That event changed my life,” he says. “I went just hoping to network, and it turned into an internship, and eventually then a full-time offer.”

During his internship, Bagienski gained hands-on experience in building automation systems, the technology that keeps hospitals, universities, and pharmaceutical facilities running.

“It was wild,” he says. “I got to work inside massive pharmaceutical labs and learn how to control entire building environments.”

Today, Bagienski is a full-time Siemens employee, supporting some of Indiana’s most advanced infrastructure projects.

“I know I’m doing something that matters,” he says. “And I can provide for my son while showing him that there’s dignity and success in skilled work.”

“I realized I could go to school, learn a skill I’d actually enjoy, and not go into debt doing it,” Bagienski says. “That changed everything.”

STEVEN BAGIENSKI

TOP DEGREE PATH (2023–24)

Associate of Applied Science in Building Trades Apprenticeship

2ND HIGHEST DEGREE PATH (2024–25)

Associate of Applied Science in Building Trades Apprenticeship

SAMEAS ENROLLMENT GROWTH (LAST DECADE):

+139% GROWTH

CURRENT MOMENTUM (2025–26, MIDYEAR)

3,299 Students Enrolled Halfway Through the Academic Year

91% Students Enrolled of the previous year’s total enrollment already reached

THE EDUCATOR'S PERSPECTIVE

If Ivy Tech students are the heartbeat of this movement, instructors like Derek Crocker are its steady pulse.

“We’ve seen a huge uptick in enrollment over the last few years,” says Crocker, assistant program chair of Welding Technology. “When I started, we offered maybe one or two classes per semester. Now we’re running three or four of each, and still can’t keep up with demand.”

The Associate of Applied Science in Building Trades Apprenticeship was Ivy Tech Indianapolis’ top degree path in 2023–24 and the second highest in 2024–25, but it is only one indicator of the explosive growth happening across the School of Advanced Manufacturing, Engineering, and Applied Science. Over the past decade, SAMEAS enrollment has surged by an extraordinary 139% — climbing from 1,514 students in 2015–16 to 3,617 in 2024–25.

That local demand reflects a much larger statewide trend. Across Indiana, Ivy Tech’s School of Advanced Manufacturing, Engineering, and Applied Sciences has experienced consistent double-digit fall-to-fall enrollment growth—rising 11.2% from Fall 2022 to Fall 2023, 14.8% the following year, and another 11.8% from Fall 2024 to Fall 2025.

Growth has been even more pronounced in trade-specific programs. Statewide enrollment in Building Trades Apprenticeship programs increased 17.1% from Fall 2022 to Fall 2023, followed by a 19.6% jump the next year and a further 14.1% increase from Fall 2024 to Fall 2025. Automotive Technology programs followed a similar trajectory, growing 11.8%, 15.5%, and 8.7% across the same periods.

Perhaps most striking is HVAC Technology, where statewide enrollment surged from modest growth of 0.7% between Fall 2022 and Fall 2023 to 17.7% the following year—and then climbed another 24.0% from Fall 2024 to Fall 2025.

And the momentum is accelerating. Just halfway through the 2025–26 academic year, enrollment already sits at 3,299 students, an astonishing 91% of last year’s full-year total. The demand for hands-on, career-ready programs has never been clearer.

Crocker attributes the surge to both cultural and economic shifts.

“When I was in high school, shop classes were disappearing,” he recalls. “People saw trades as a fallback, something for kids who weren’t ‘college material.’ That stigma is fading. Parents see now that their kids can graduate from Ivy Tech, debt-free, and make $50,000–$70,000 a year right out of the gate.”

Crocker also sees a new kind of student entering the lab.

“Some of them are artists, like Kaylee,” he says. “They see welding as a creative expression. Others are future engineers or entrepreneurs. The industry’s so broad, there’s room for all of them.”

Instructors like Crocker and his colleague Charles House have transformed Ivy Tech’s welding space from a “dark, dirty dungeon” into a bright, modern hub filled with state-of-the-art machines, stalls, and even student art pieces.

“We want students to feel proud walking in here,” he says. “This is where their future begins.”

As Charles House, program chair of welding technology, explained in his Welding Journal essay “The World of Welding Education,” the transformation of Ivy Tech’s welding program runs much deeper than upgraded equipment.

“As much as I would love to brag about my students, the fantastic equipment, and the program’s growth,” House wrote, “I think it is important to share a side of welding education that doesn’t often get enough attention: the amazing things happening behind the scenes in most programs and the different tools we use to conduct these feats.”

He credits a statewide network of welding professionals and advisory boards, comprised of industry experts who help align curriculum, secure grants, and guide program investments, with ensuring that Ivy Tech’s instruction meets the highest industry standards.

“If you give employers a voice and show them they matter,” House noted, “they will fight to help improve things for prospective employees.”

THE INSTITUTIONAL VISION:

MEETING GEN Z WHERE THEY ARE

That same sense of pride and validation brought about the Toolbelt Generation Reception hosted on October 29, 2025, at Ivy Tech Indianapolis. Co-hosted by TikTok, SkillsUSA, Skilled Careers Coalition, and CareerWise, the event drew educators, employers, policymakers, Ivy Tech alums, and creators to discuss one question: How do we meet Gen Z where they are?

JJ Owen, executive director of the Skilled Careers Coalition, said that what once only happened in classrooms or career fairs now also happens on social media platforms, like TikTok and YouTube.

“For this generation, those aren’t just entertainment outlets; they’ve become places to learn skills, discover career pathways, and even find mentors,” Owen said of social media.

To his point, there are more than 11 million videos on “skilled trades” on TikTok, with 6.3 billion likes. A topic that has grown by an exponential 4,621% in the last five years, with the top skilled trade communities being construction, electricians, plumbers, HVAC, and welders.

For Ivy Tech President Dr. Martin Pollio, the answer lies in reimagining not just programs, but communication.

“Gen Z wants to know their return on investment,” he told the audience. “They’re asking, ‘How quickly can I start doing what I love? How soon can I get paid for it?’”

Dr. Polio noted that 87% of Ivy Tech graduates finish with zero debt, a figure he called “the antidote to the failed system of disconnected, overpriced general education.”

Dr. Pollio spoke candidly about the need to connect passion to purpose: “We can’t expect students to spend years taking courses that feel irrelevant,” he said. “They want coursework that leads directly to a career — that’s their ROI.”

Dr. Pollio also emphasized that recruitment must evolve.

“How are we communicating with young people? Billboards and brochures have their place, but platforms like TikTok are where this generation lives. If we want to close the labor gap, we have to close the connection gap.”

A medium the College will explore in sharing how Ivy Tech Indianapolis is already doing the work of connecting students directly to employers through some of the most robust hands-on training and career events in the state.

Across Indiana, Ivy Tech offers a wide range of applied and technical programs designed to meet the growing demand for skilled professionals. Students can train for in-demand careers through programs such as:

Advanced Manufacturing, Industrial Technology, and Smart Manufacturing & Digital Integration (SMDI) – covering automation, robotics, machining, and fluid power systems
Construction and Building Trades Apprenticeships – from electrical, plumbing, and HVAC to carpentry, sheet metal, and masonry
Welding Technology – featuring state-of-the-art labs and industry-aligned certifications
Automotive Technology and Diesel Equipment Technology – preparing students for dealership, fleet, and heavy-equipment maintenance careers
Energy and Industrial Electrical Technology
Supply Chain, Logistics, and Commercial Driver Training (CDL)
Environmental Design, Facilities Maintenance, and Industrial Maintenance

Each program offers stackable credentials—from short-term certificates and technical certificates to associate degrees—allowing students to enter the workforce quickly, earn competitive wages, and continue advancing their skills over time.

To connect learning with opportunity, Ivy Tech hosts a robust lineup of career fairs and employer engagement events throughout the year:

The Indianapolis Job & Resource Fair, where hundreds of students network with major employers like Siemens, Cummins, and Allison Transmission;
Career Link Industry Showcases, spotlighting partnerships in advanced manufacturing, logistics, and skilled trades;
Apprenticeship and Building Trades Open Houses, which connect students with union and non-union training programs; and
Job Connection Events through the statewide Hire Ivy platform, giving students real-time access to openings across Indiana.

Through these programs and partnerships, Ivy Tech continues to live out what Dr. Pollio calls “the new ROI of education”—a direct investment in people, purpose, and practical skills that lead to real careers.

At the event’s closing, SkillsUSA moderator JJ Owen summed it up:

“The infrastructure for skilled career pathways already exists. The challenge isn’t interest — young people want purpose-driven, well-paying work. The challenge is awareness.”

A NATIONAL MOVEMENT, A LOCAL SOLUTION

That awareness is spreading fast. According to the WSJ, enrollment in community college trade programs — from construction to HVAC — has surged by double digits since 2022.

At the same time, the U.S. faces an acute shortage of skilled labor. By 2030, millions of blue-collar skilled trades jobs could go unfilled without a pipeline to trained, career-ready talent. Plus, hundreds of thousands of welders, electricians, and HVAC technicians will be needed beginning as soon as 2028 to replace retiring workers, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Indiana’s shift away from traditional college enrollment is even sharper than the national average. Fewer than 52% of Indiana high school graduates now go directly to college, down from 66% a decade ago. Yet more than 80% take at least one career-tech course, and nearly 40% complete a concentration in a career field before graduation. Programs like EmployIndy’s Modern Apprenticeship and the state’s $6.25 million apprenticeship grant are helping build bridges from high school to high-wage careers.

Ivy Tech is already meeting students where they are, long before graduation. The College is the nation’s largest provider of College in High School credit, enrolling nearly four times as many students as the next largest institution in the country. Through partnerships with high schools across Indiana, Ivy Tech ensures thousands of teens begin earning college-level technical and transfer credits early, setting them on a fast track to high-demand careers.

“The old idea that the trades are ‘Plan B’ is disappearing,” says Crocker. “Our students are proving that this is Plan A. A smart, strategic, fulfilling Plan A.”

DEREK CROCKER

The numbers back him up. Many graduates, like Thornton, Harris, and Bagienski, are moving directly from the classroom to a career — or even to ownership. Nationally, skilled-trade entrepreneurs are now selling their small businesses for millions, redefining what success looks like in America’s essential industries.

Ivy Tech – with its network of 19 campuses and over 200,000 students – is excited to be right in the middle of the skilled trades cultural renaissance.

“What’s exciting,” says Dr. Pollio, “is that Indiana isn’t just adapting to this change — we’re leading it. Our programs are the bridge between high school curiosity and lifelong careers.”

THE SYNTHESIS:

BUILDING THE FUTURE, ONE SKILLED HAND AT A TIME

If the “Knowledge Economy” defined the last century, the “Toolbelt Economy” may define this one. And Ivy Tech Indianapolis — with its modern labs, visionary leadership, and industry partnerships — is showing what that future looks like: a workforce that is both highly skilled and deeply human.

As Dr. Pollio reminded attendees at the Toolbelt Generation event:

“Education isn’t just about filling classrooms. It’s about filling the needs of our communities, our industries, and our future.”

Across Indiana, the next generation is answering that call — one weld, one compressor, and one rebuilt engine at a time.

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