Living here in Happy Valley we’re lucky to be among a very educated populace. According to the United States Census Bureau, almost 71% of the State College Borough’s population aged 25 or older has a bachelor’s degree or higher. Which is double that of the rest of the state of Pennsylvania, where just above 35% of the population has a four-year or better degree.
The townships are very similarly educated – 70% of Patton Township adults have a bachelor’s degree or higher, 67% of Harris Township, 66% of Ferguson Township and almost 61% of College Township.
Of course, being home to the largest – by student population – institute of higher learning in the entire state has something to do with that. And Penn State produces a lot of new college graduates every year to keep those percentages up. PSU granted over 18,000 baccalaureate or higher degrees between the fall 2023 and spring 2024 commencements.
In other words, we could easily claim Happy Valley as the Pennsylvania capital and poster-child for getting a college degree.
It’s also easy to suggest that this education focus has been a boon to Happy Valley as far as population growth itself is concerned. The population of Centre County has grown almost 40% since 1980 – from 113,000 to close to 160,000. That blows away the entire state of Pennsylvania, which has only grown 9.3% since 1980.
Granted, the United States population has grown over 46% during that time, so even with our local growth we’re not keeping pace with the rest of the country, but at least we’re not essentially stagnating like most of the rest of the state. And for that we can likely thank our local higher-education focus.
That focus means we are home to all sorts of people with all sorts of titles: engineers, astrophysicists, geologists, hydrologists, accountants, mathematicians, sociologists, kinesiologists, architects, and on and on.
And many of those titled people, as well as many of us other not-so-titled people, live here in single-family homes. Some were bought from Sears years ago, shipped here and assembled. Some were individually designed and built. Some were cookie-cutter designs with cool names and built in one of the many subdivisions. Homes that come in price ranges from a couple hundred thousand dollars to a million dollars and more.
These homes all generally provide a nice, safe, comfortable space for their inhabitants. Warm in the winter, cool in the summer, with clean running water and properly flushing toilets. Rooms large enough to sleep in, lounge in, eat in and, in many cases, spaces to park our cars out of the elements.
Except… sometimes things in our homes go wrong. Water pipes spring a leak. The air-conditioning or heating breaks down. The outside gets damaged by wind or hail.
Now, sometimes these things that go wrong are small enough that we can fix them ourselves. Home Depot, Lowes, Ace, Lezzer, YBC and others are happy to sell us the tools, parts and equipment to make these minor repairs.
But sometimes these things require professional help. And usually not the kind an engineer, astrophysicist, geologist, hydrologist, accountant, mathematician, sociologist, kinesiologist, architect, etc. can provide.
Nothing against those professionals, mind you, as it’s certainly possible some of them have large-scale home-repair skills, but I’m sure even most of them would still prefer the professional help of a plumber, carpenter, electrician, painter, mason, roofer, general contractor or others when these large issues crop up.
And that’s a problem in these post-pandemic times.
Over a decade ago during the great Happy Valley hailstorm of 2013, our house was damaged and required a new roof, some new gutters, new siding on one side and five new windows. The work was completed within a month or two after the storm.
Then, right at the beginning of the pandemic, our A/C went out (I wrote about that HERE). Again, the repair work was completed within a short time after the problem cropped up.
But, a little further into the pandemic, a windstorm caused some damage to the siding on the rear of our house. Now things got a little interesting. It took months just to find someone who would do the work – the contractor our insurance suggested wouldn’t even return our calls and emails. When we did find one who would do the work, it had to be scheduled four months later.
And this was a common refrain we heard from other friends and neighbors. Getting large-scale home repairs done was not happening as quickly as it had in the pre-pandemic days.
Fast forward to a few months ago. One day we noticed the light fixture over our sink was full of water. Well, that can’t be good can it?!
Luckily for us, after the A/C issue I mentioned above – which as you probably can guess cost thousands to fix – I had purchased a home warranty from American Home Shield. Our house was built in 2004, and we had already replaced the water-heater soon after we moved in. Given the life-span of some of the other items in the home – and the potential for the heat to go out as the A/C did – it seemed like a reasonable idea. We had used them before in other homes and had generally positive experiences (new toilet, new range, etc.).
Except, now, it took a little time – several weeks – to get the leak fixed. Granted, part of that was determining what was causing the leak in the first place since it was a very slow leak. It ended up being a very small drip from an inflow pipe going to the tub and shower in our master bath that required cutting a hole in the kitchen ceiling to access the pipe.
With the leak fixed we are back to normal, right? Not quite. The plumber doesn’t fix drywall, and American Home Shield had no luck finding someone to fix the hole in the kitchen ceiling. Consequently, they offered us a small amount of money to find someone ourselves to fix it – which, of course, we’ve been unsuccessful in doing (maybe the issue is American Home Shield can find someone, but the someone won’t do it for the small amount of money American Home Shield will pay!).
In the meantime, we’ve got a hole in our kitchen ceiling.
But, as I said, this is a story similar to several I’ve heard from family, friends and neighbors since the pandemic – we need more professional tradespeople.
According to the nonprofit organization Ivory Innovations, an applied academic institution at the University of Utah’s David Eccles School of Business, due to an aging demographic and difficulty attracting young workers and women, there are currently shortages of professional tradespeople.
Data they gathered shows that one-third of all builders report at least some labor shortages in every trade category. And 60% of builders report shortages of carpenters, 55% report shortages of plumbers, and 51% report shortages of electricians.
The obvious solution that is posed to fix these labor shortages is to attract more young workers to these trades. Traditionally these young workers have entered the trades through vo-tech schools and apprenticing, but tech-enabled solutions — virtual reality simulations and mobile app-based training, for example – are starting to be used.
Here’s where our education-focused Happy Valley might be helpful.
Maybe Penn State can take a bigger role in technical education. Penn College – The Pennsylvania College of Technology – is a Penn State affiliate in Williamsport that is the state’s premier technical college and a national leader in applied technology education. They have a graduation placement rate of 97.7%, which indicates there is definitely a market for their graduates.
Maybe Penn State can expand Penn College’s and its own technical education programs, and bring more here to the University Park campus as well as enlarging and enhancing what is happening at Penn College. Perhaps getting a technical education in Happy Valley might entice more young people to choose a professional trade as a career choice and reduce these trade shortages.
Which would also result in our educated local populace being home to not only these professionals – engineers, astrophysicists, etc. – but the technical professionals we clearly need as well.
And maybe the hole in my kitchen ceiling might get fixed!
