White House Considers Taking Billions from Harvard; Giving to Trade Schools Instead

by Glenn T. Stanton | May 28, 2025 | Culture

The White House has declared it is considering taking $3 billion in federal funds away from Harvard University, which rests on a fat $53.2 billion endowment – the largest in the world – and giving the money to trade schools in order to educate working class Americans in meaningful, highly productive trades.

On Sunday morning, the White House posted:

Focus on the Family and Daily Citizen strongly applaud this policy proposal. The reason is simple. Getting young men good paying jobs is fundamental for good family formation. Many young women will tell you that they are having a hard time finding marriageable men. Men will tell you they are disinclined to seek a wife when they do not have the means to support her and children.

Recent research conducted jointly at Yale, Cornell and Harvard notes that “economic outcomes for other non-college men have sharply declined, accompanied by a drop in marriage rates for non-college women.” These women are not likely to marry men who have no or very little real career prospects.

It has long been documented how workforce participation among men has been declining in our nation. You can see the declining trend line for male employment in the United States here. It is not an encouraging picture.

In a 2022 update to his very important book, Men Without Work, American Enterprise scholar Nicholas Eberstadt explains,

Job openings so exceed the ranks of America’s un-working prime-age men (those twenty-five to fifty-four neither working nor looking for work) that every member of this idle army could be placed in a job, and there would still be more than 3.9 million jobs awaiting candidates

He adds, “The average monthly work rate for prime-age men is lower that it was in March 1940.” We are currently doing worse than Depression-era employment for able-bodied men. That is a national tragedy.

The power of trade schools are a secret weapon in helping young men gain the confidence, skills and income they need to make them a more attractive mates to young women. While serving as a U.S. senator from Florida, Marco Rubio released an important 2023 report entitled “The State of the Working (and Non-Working) Man.” In that report, he warned that in order to prepare the next generation of American men to engage in civic and employment life, we must “change teaching practices, encourage marriage, and connect young men with vocational training and jobs.”

He added, “The federal government spends about $175 billion each year supporting postsecondary education and a tiny fraction of that amount on vocational education and training.” Our nation should be pumping a large portion of the billions it contributes to college education into helping young men learn powerful vocational and technical skills that could rebuild their confidence, launch new and meaningful trade careers and help establish new marriages and families, thus giving rebirth to our nation.

Marco Rubio contends, “The results could be transformational.” We think he is right, and we strongly support the president’s new announcement to put more national support behind vocational and technical training for men and women.

Image from Shutterstock.