Rep. Steve Mentzer (R-Lititz) recently called on Pennsylvania to fully fund Thaddeus Stevens College of Technology, a leading technical school located in Lancaster County.
The school currently receives capital funding of $5 million annually and requested an addition $4 million in this year’s state budget to accommodate an additional 1,450 students.
“While I applaud Gov. Tom Wolf for adding funding to his proposed budget for career and technical training, my question is simply this: Why not fully fund Stevens, an educational system that is already an excellent training ground for skill and technology trades?” Mentzer said.
Mentzer noted that, in 2018, the school had 2,800 applicants but only had capacity for 700 first-year students. In 2018, Stevens worked with 1,400 employers to place graduates. There were 3,000 jobs available for the 400 students that graduated from the the college that year.
He also highlighted the school’s 98 percent overall job placement rate and the fact that 97 percent of its graduates find jobs in Pennsylvania. He noted that Forbes Magazine ranked the school as the ninth best two-year college in America and that the Aspen Institute ranked it in the top 10 percent of two-year colleges in the United States.
“If we are going to get serious about prioritizing our technical and skills training, it is time to provide Stevens with the funding necessary to accomplish this,” Mentzer said. “Increasing the number of students able to attend Thaddeus Stevens is a great start.”