One of the largest labor unions in North America recently announced its partnership with two Missouri schools to offer associate and bachelor’s degrees for apprenticeship instructors.

The United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America has 250 training centers across North America, and this partnership creates a pathway to higher education for the union’s trainers.

Fully funded by the union’s training arm, the Carpenters International Training Fund, this program will allow current instructors to work toward an associate degree at North Central Missouri College and then complete a bachelor’s degree at the University of Central Missouri, all while remaining in the workforce.

“This is going to have a very huge impact on our instructors,” said Brian Connearney, the technical coordinator for the Carpenters International Training Fund. “A lot of people, when they get into the trade, when they decide to become a carpenter or any other tradesperson, they do it because, you know, they don’t like going to school. Maybe they struggled, you know, they had a bad experience in high school. Maybe they went, did some college, same thing — had a bad experience in college.”

The union partnered with UCM first, and a pilot course began in November 2025. They found that a 120-credit degree can be overwhelming for students coming out of the industry, who may not have seen college as part of their path, said Michelle Conrad, chair of UCM’s Department of Leadership and Career Preparation.

“For adult learners and for students of any type, but particularly for adult learners who are working full time, it’s nice to have milestones in their educational journey,” said Mitch Holder, NCMC’s dean of instruction. “So they can get those short wins, and so they can kind of again get that feeling of success as they’re completing coursework.”

Conrad reached out to Holder at NCMC to add an associate degree to the program’s offerings in December. And 53 days later, its first course began Jan. 26.

“For higher education, that’s working at lightning speed,” Holder said.
Connearney said he anticipates this partnership will support 500 instructors annually by 2027.

“We are the smallest community college in the state of Missouri, and so it will have an impact for us,” Holder said. “Just being able to increase the number of students we’re serving, again, that means extra tuition generation, which does impact our bottom line and enables us to further invest into faculty and student support positions to enable more efforts being invested in student success.”

A 2024 report from the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education projected the number of high school graduates nationwide would peak in 2025 and then see a 13% decline through 2041, falling by half a million students. This decline would shrink the number of students enrolling in college, which is being referred to as an “enrollment cliff.”

“I do think that right now there’s an enrollment cliff,” Conrad said. “With the number of high school graduates that there are for the next 10, 15 years, there’ll be fewer numbers of high school graduates. So, I think partnerships like this are certainly offsetting some of the lower enrollment numbers in our traditional age college students, for sure.”

The program participants are coming from a background as working professionals and instructors, and they already have industry recognized credentials. To acknowledge this background, NCMC is awarding 30 credits to participants who have achieved journeyman carpenter status, leaving them only 32 credits left to complete their Associate of Applied Science degree.

“When we come out of the field, this is like a whole new apprenticeship for them, so, you know, they actually have the hands-on skills,” Connearney said. “They know how to build the wall. They know how to build the house. They know how to do the concrete forms. What this is doing for them now is we’re giving them the skills to understand the why, ... We’re actually giving them that knowledge now, on the academic side of it, and that really, when you put those two things together, you know, we actually will have really, really, really talented instructors.”

Along with an associate degree that leads into a Bachelor of Science in Educational Studies and Training, the classes offered at both institutions are being used as part of the union certification levels for instructors as well. Participants are able to stack both higher education credentials and industry credentials.

“What this really has done is given a second chance to a lot of people with really opening the door for them,” Connearney said. “I actually had an instructor reach out to me and say, ‘Thank you, you’re actually giving me a second chance. I failed out of college, and now here I am with the second chance to actually get my degree.’”

The courses are taught in a hybrid format, with instructors from both universities flying out to the Carpenters International Training Center in Las Vegas for a few days at the beginning of each course. The rest of the instruction is delivered online to accommodate instructors across the country.