by Chuck Gillespie
AI Agents can be very helpful in connecting relevant information that may not be connected prior. Here is an example of an AI Agent developing a series of graphs and summaries using the following 5 points:
This analysis is a thoughtful framework because it shifts the conversation away from a single variable—such as salary, college requirements, or licensing hours—and toward a more complete analysis of public risk, professional accountability, and community benefit. A few observations stand out.
The AI's central conclusion is broadly consistent with how many regulatory systems are designed. Professions that can directly affect:
typically face the highest barriers to entry. For example:
| Profession | Potential Harm if Incompetent | Licensing Intensity |
|---|---|---|
| Surgeon | Death, disability | Extremely high |
| Attorney | Loss of liberty, assets, rights | Very high |
| CPA | Financial fraud, insolvency, public trust failures | High |
| Professional Engineer | Structural collapse, public safety failures | High |
| LCSW | Harm to vulnerable individuals and families | High |
| Electrician | Fire, electrocution | Moderate to high |
| Plumber | Water contamination, disease, property damage | Moderate to high |
Viewed this way, licensing is not merely about restricting entry—it is a public safety mechanism.
One of the strongest points in the AI agent's infographic is that skilled trades are often underestimated when discussing community impact. Many policymakers tend to think of "high-risk professions" as doctors, lawyers, and engineers. Yet:
The consequences are often dispersed and therefore less visible than a courtroom mistake or medical malpractice claim. The public frequently notices the engineer who designed a bridge but rarely notices the electrician who prevented a fire or the plumber who protected a drinking water system.
An important insight from the analysis is the distinction between:
Cost barrier
versus
Training barrier
The trades often have:
while many professional careers have:
This distinction matters because policymakers often focus only on affordability. The more important question may be, "What is the most effective method for producing competent professionals?" For some professions, the answer may be formal education. For others, it may be thousands of hours of supervised work.
One surprising observation is that attorneys often have:
A newly licensed attorney may immediately represent clients in matters involving:
The legal profession largely relies on:
rather than extensive mandatory post-licensure apprenticeship. Whether that is the optimal model is a legitimate policy question.
The statistic from the Indiana Department of Educational that nearly half of Indiana seniors are pursuing employment directly after high school rather than attending college is significant. The challenge is that many high-demand occupations cannot easily accommodate minors due to:
As a result, schools may want students to participate in work-based learning, but employers may face legal barriers that make participation difficult. This creates a policy gap:
Indiana and other states will likely need to develop more structured apprenticeship pathways that bridge the period between ages 16–18 and full workforce entry. The Indiana General Assembly is trying, but there is still a lot of work to be done.
Public debates often become polarized:
The more useful question is, "Which occupations create enough potential harm to justify public oversight?"
A risk-based framework might evaluate:
For example:
The harder it is for the public to independently evaluate competence, the stronger the argument for some form of credentialing, inspection, continuing education, or oversight.
The analysis raises an important distinction. The policy toolbox is larger than simply "license" or "don't license."
Alternatives include:
Some occupations may not require a full professional license but could benefit from stronger quality-control mechanisms.
What may be most compelling about this analysis is that it reframes licensing as a discussion about risk, trust, and accountability, not simply educational attainment. The public generally accepts extensive training requirements for surgeons, pilots, attorneys, engineers, and CPAs because the consequences of failure can be catastrophic.
The same logic often applies to skilled trades, even though the risks are less visible. The challenge for Indiana—and every state—is finding the balance between:
That balance, rather than a blanket preference for either more regulation or less regulation, is probably the most useful lens through which to evaluate occupational licensing policy.
DATE: SEPTEMBER 25, 2026 TIME: 8AM - 3:30PM COST: $199.00
INDIANAPOLIS - Adam Harmon and Raj Jain were designing rockets.
The two juniors in Brent Schulz’s aerospace engineering class at Center Grove High School worked on computer-aided design software that Schulz’s students begin learning as freshmen. For them, this lesson during a school day last month wasn’t just academic: After school, they put their knowledge to the test at a paid internship with Speedway Composites, where they manufacture parts for the C8 Corvette.
“Racing is aerospace engineering upside down,” said Schulz, who connected the students to the company when the latter was looking for interns.
While their goal of studying engineering in college is still more than a year away, the juniors in Indiana’s Center Grove school district see the value of starting internships now.
“In engineering, it can help a lot, because every internship you have builds on itself, and that helps you get a job way easier once you get done,” Harmon said.
Harmon and Jain are not alone. More high schoolers are preparing for work, and more schools and employers are helping them find work opportunities, as Indiana shifts to a high school model that emphasizes career experience.
In a makerspace in a South Bend charter school, students operate Bend Manufacturing, taking machining and 3D printing orders from local businesses. And on a farm at Indian Creek High School, students care for a cattle herd as part of Creek Cattle Company.
The ultimate test of whether every Indiana student can access some kind of work-based learning if they want it is coming up. Thousands of students beginning with the Class of 2029 will need the hours of career experience required for the top-tier enrollment and employment diplomas. Under the diploma seals adopted by the state in late 2024, many will also need career and technical education courses, and paths toward earning technical certificates.
That means that over the next year, they’ll need programs and employers able and willing to train and hire them. In preparation, schools, businesses, and other organizations have been expanding career education capacity at a rapid pace by growing existing programs and adding new internship opportunities. They’re also offering support for student-run businesses.
They hope to provide a greater variety of opportunities that students can use to meet the new graduation requirements — not just the hours of work experience, but also skills like communication and collaboration that they can take into any field.
“It’s not about going into farming as a career,” Indian Creek High School Principal Luke Skobel said of Creek Cattle Company. “It prepares them for life, for whatever it is they’re going to do.”
The efforts so far have earned Indiana national recognition as a leader in bridging high school and the workforce — something other states are pursuing too. At a March State Board of Education meeting, Indiana received high marks from XQ Institute, a nonprofit organization advocating for high school transformation.
“High school is not the end of childhood, it is the bridge to adulthood,” XQ CEO Russlynn Ali told the board. “If we get it right, it is a launchpad. If we get it wrong, it becomes a sorting mechanism.”
Where students are finding career education opportunities
Indiana students begin making postsecondary plans in eighth grade with the help of their counselors, insight from tools like the Indiana Career Explorer Assessment, and input from their families.
Schulz, the Center Grove engineering teacher, said that in his experience, most students already have an idea by freshman year of whether they’ll be pursuing college, a career, or a mix of both after graduation.
Center Grove offers different paths to these goals. A sequence from Project Lead The Way, a national organization that provides curriculum in career and technical education, usually leads to college. A manufacturing pathway at Central 9, the career education center serving Johnson County, puts students on track to careers. And a new advanced manufacturing track allows students to earn an associate degree from Ivy Tech while interning with local businesses.
Around half of the nearly 3,000 students at the school take Project Lead The Way classes in engineering, computer science, or biomedical science. By senior year, some will have taken five engineering courses, and will spend their final year working on their own ideas for capstone projects, like AI-enabled sensors that help sort recycling, Schulz said.
Enrollment in the program is increasing as a result of the new diploma requirements, said Project Lead The Way President and CEO David Dimmett. That’s in part because the courses are developed with industry input, and help prepare students to jump into a career.
“Students build a lot of technical knowledge in those pathways,” Dimmett said. “Probably more importantly, the skills they’re building transcend those pathways. They’re learning how to solve problems and identify problems. … They understand design principles and how to work together as a team.”
Where to find work experience
Cold calling and cattle wrangling at student-led businesses
There’s growing interest in student-led businesses as a way to help students meet the new diploma requirements, said Nioka Clark, senior director of workforce strategies at Ascend Indiana, which has launched a coalition of these businesses.
Indiana already has several examples of student-led businesses embedded in schools, like Bend Manufacturing at the Career Academy Network of Public Schools, a charter school in South Bend, and Creek Cattle Company at Indian Creek High School.
At Bend Manufacturing, students use the school’s makerspace to machine and 3D print parts for the many manufacturers in northwest Indiana.The business began in 2024 as both a response to the state’s push for work experience and a natural offshoot of the school’s entrepreneurial philosophy, said Jeremy Lugbill, the network’s CEO.
One niche they’ve found: They can deliver prototype parts faster than larger labs.
“They’re learning the value and importance of living up to commitments and timeliness,” he said.
Students typically spend 60 to 90 minutes of the schools’ extended school day at Bend Manufacturing. The school is considering how what they do as part of the business could be used to satisfy some of their academic course requirements, Lugbill said.
At Indian Creek High School,juniors directly build career experience by acting as CEO, CFO,and head of grounds at Creek Cattle Company, which began in 2017 and doubles as a source of fresh beef for the school cafeteria. Agriculture is important to both the school and the community, Skobel said, and students are building agricultural science knowledge while caring for the herd of five.
But they’re also developing business and communication skills they can apply to other jobs by ordering feed, calling contractors, and selling beef to the local community, Skobel said.
The success of the student-run enterprises has both schools considering what other businesses their students could run. Clark said the first step for a student interested in starting a business of their own would be to talk to a teacher, who can help guide them to the right courses or to an employer who’s willing to sponsor them.
The Career Academy Network is considering how students could lease the school’s facilities to local organizations for events. Indian Creek students also operate the Creek Design Lab, a printing business, and are considering growing lettuce for the cafeteria.
“It has opened our eyes to the things we can do here on campus to provide students these authentic experiences that help students grow in the way that sitting in a classroom doesn’t,” Skobel said.
Career training opportunities outside of school
Some students are finding work-based learning opportunities beyond what’s offered in their schools.
Indiana in 2023 established Career Scholarship Accounts, giving students a stipend to help with the costs of career training outside of schools.
And employers and other organizations are increasingly offering alternative models of work-based learning, like projects that students can complete to solve a problem for a business, or summer programs that expose students to a variety of careers and job skills.
These options help students as well as employers who may not have the capacity to hire or train students, said Sally Saydshoev of the Indiana Chamber of Commerce.
During the Edna Martin Christian Center’s Summer Works program, Indianapolis students spend three weeks learning job skills and touring colleges, and another three weeks at an externship in a field of their choice, like early education or medical assisting.
The center also follows up with support — like gas cards — to ensure they can continue in the tracks they started over the summer, said Jamie Scott-Massie, the center’s senior director of community family initiatives.
The paid program is complementary to the career pathways that already exist at Arsenal Tech and KIPP Indy High School, where most Summer Works students attend school.
“There are more students than all of us can individually support,” Scott-Massie said.
It was Edna Martin Center staff who told Brooklyn Lawrence about the Summer Works program in 2024. Lawrence chose the Certified Nursing Assistant track, inspired by her grandmother, a nurse.
Now a psychology student at Ivy Tech, Lawrence said the support and structure in the program helped her define her path after high school.
“If I didn’t do it, I don’t know if I would have gone to college,” Lawrence said. “I wouldn’t have felt so motivated.”
How students can graduate into the workforce
One of the goals of the new diplomas is to give high school students a path directly into the workforce. Saydshoev of the Indiana Chamber said the organization helps show employers how they might invest in training high school students and graduates to meet their future employment needs.
“When you put a help wanted sign on your door, you’re expecting the right talent to show up at your door,” said Saydshoev. “It can work and it has worked, but we’re trying to help employers think about (hiring) as talent development.”
Building a talent pipeline is one of the reasons that Ardagh, a glass and metal packaging manufacturer with plants and offices in Indiana, decided to sponsor Tt Lead the Way programs at Indiana high schools in 2020.
In 2024, the company also started a high school internship program, said Sean Cosgrove, global head of education programs at Ardagh, alongside its existing college internship program.
The company has also recently started to hire high school students with significant manufacturing experience into full-time production roles after graduation, he said.
For employers to do this on a larger scale, it may take a policy shift from requiring a certain degree to recognizing the skills that students have developed in high school.
“A lot of high schools have those industry certifications or skilled trade programs,” he said. “We’ve seen a lot of great students come out of there that I think are quality employees from day one.”
Chalkbeat is a not-for-profit news site covering educational change in public schools.
Indiana PHCC received a small grant from the Hamilton County opioid settlement to conduct PHCC pre apprentice training in HVAC and Plumbing for one year, as a pilot to determine if this could be a good avenue to provide skills to inmates seeking a second chance upon their release.
Indiana PHCC is using the PHCC Academy courses to facilitate the classes. We are also seeing lots of interest in the program and will determine how we can expand it to other Sheriff's departments throughout the state.
Read Article Here: https://www.facilitiesnet.com/facilitiesmanagement/tip/New-Reentry-Program-Targets-the-Facilities-Workforce-Shortage--56558
