Blue-collar industries across the country are facing a massive skills shortage. There are shortages of bulldozer and crane operators, carpenters, electricians, automotive mechanics, truckers and welders, among other workers.

If you want to build or fix things, you need skilled workers, artisans — men and women who work with their hands and their heads.

While apprenticeships work, they don’t address the social consequences of not going to college. Ergo, trade schools don’t solve the social dynamic that keeps willing hands off essential tools.

Well, you can have both and a small college (so small you might not think it’s a college) is nurturing a big idea, a really big idea — an idea for our time. It’s the American College of the Building Arts (ACBA) in Charleston, S.C.

As Anthony Wade Razzi, chief academic officer, explained it in a letter to the Charleston Post and Courier, and in a telephone interview with me:

At ACBA, we teach six traditional trades: architectural carpentry, timber framing, architectural stone, masonry, plaster and architectural forged iron.

But while learning their specialties for years, the students still get a traditional liberal arts education. This includes math, science, literature, philosophy, foreign language, drawing and drafting, and business management.

Read the full article on American College of the Building Arts by Llewellyn King at InsideSources