Rethinking the American Dream: College and University Degrees.
High school students and their parents are weighing the benefits of colleges and universities.
On a bitterly cold November afternoon in Baltimore, the small brick rowhouse at 2212 Prestman Street was buzzing with activity.
This home at 2212 is a classic Baltimore property. Although it’s nearly 100 years old, it had sat empty for decades and was in dire need of repairs when it was purchased in 2023 for a few thousand dollars.
But the buyer, a small nonprofit called Requity, is atypical. Requity’s blend of sweat equity, youth development, and community revitalization is uniquely suited to Baltimore’s edgy energy. Students from various vocational schools were working as workers on this day, as were many students. They were hanging drywall, inspecting eco-friendly door frames on the back wall, and doing other home repairs.
Requity was founded by 54-year-old Michael Rosenband. He left a career on Wall Street and moved to Baltimore in 2012, where he coached sports at Carver High School, a technical school directly across the street from his tenement house. Carver was so strapped for money that Rosenband had to figure out a way to reuse football cleats for use during the spring baseball season. As time passed and he got to know the students and their daily lives, he began to feel that something was not right.
The students at the school, who were ostensibly training them to do something, were “not involved,” Rosenband said. When construction workers came to work at the school, students didn’t even come to watch the professionals work.
One day, one of Rosenband’s players suggested that Carver’s students use Baltimore’s many vacant and abandoned houses as a curriculum to learn real-world skills and work processes. Student Sterling Hardy thought it would be a big improvement for everyone to take turns attending shop classes. And the neighborhood needed all the help it could get.
That vision became Requity, and the first home purchased for that purpose was located directly across the street from Carver High School and was named the Carver House. Five years later, it is nearly complete and ready to be sold to members of the community.
Rosenband, who had a college-track career that culminated in business school, “didn’t really have an appreciation for that kind of meaningful work,” he says. But he found himself energized by the young people, and his experience in reclamation work really took off.
“Where others were disgusted” by the hardships in Baltimore, Rosenband said, “it inspired me. I wanted to see what I could do.”
the economy needs more skilled workers
Requity addresses a unique challenge in the 21st century economy: the shortage of skilled labor. Although specific estimates vary depending on who is counting and whether they focus solely on construction or broader trade in general, there is near universal agreement that the United States probably needs millions more manual workers.
Mr. Rosenband is evangelical about the deal. University isn’t for everyone, he argues. And in a city that is 60% black., The reality is that only 42% of black undergraduate students graduate from college within five years, and those who do graduate with an average of $25,000 more in student loan debt than white college graduates.
More importantly, he says, being interested in carpentry, for example, doesn’t have to mean swinging a hammer all day every day. Rather, it could be a gateway to a construction manager, developer, or other job.
Being at Requity is “an eye-opener, being able to actually see all the components come together and see a project from start to finish,” said Keyry (pronounced “kee-ty”) Pichinte, a fourth-year student who has already been accepted to several colleges. She wants to become a landscape architect.
Rosenband likes to point to statistics showing that recent graduates of Baltimore’s trade and technical schools earn as little as $13,000 a year in the years after high school. This number is now somewhat outdated, but more recent analysis shows that it is not that high. But of the 67 students Requity has placed so far, the real-world experience they’ve gained has earned them an average salary of $49,000.
Fellow fourth-year student Nick Johnson loved his time at Recuity and is considering going straight to work after graduation.
“It’s a great feeling, because I could be needed for anything,” he said in an interview in February. “Someone might ask me, ‘Can you do this?’ and I’d say, ‘Yes, of course. I can do anything.'”
Equity exists so that young people like Pichinte and Johnson “can realize their potential, begin to grow and change the trajectory of their families,” Rosenband said.
baltimore comeback
In a place like Baltimore, changing the trajectory of your life can mean not just a path to a better job, but a chance to rebuild an entire community. Locally known as “Charm City,” the city is in the midst of a renaissance, led by Brandon Scott, an idealistic young mayor who probably grew up in sandy West Baltimore just a few miles from Carver House.
After years of deindustrialization and disinvestment, Baltimore’s population is now about 40 percent smaller than it was in 1970. Additionally, 20% of the city’s residents live in poverty, according to census data. Meanwhile, an estimated 13,000 homes remain vacant.
Justin Bellamy, a recent graduate of Carver, attended Recuity as a junior and senior and learned carpentry skills. He is currently attending community college and studying construction management.
“I wanted to actually work on-site because it’s an innovative and creative job. That’s why I went into construction,” Bellamy told USA TODAY. “The more I got into it, the more I started to realize that I wasn’t just doing what I loved, but that there was a bigger purpose.”
As Bellamy became more familiar with the ongoing redevelopment around Baltimore, he also learned about redlining, the historical practice of denying access to financial services and real estate to people of color, especially Black Americans. It is sometimes said to have originated in Baltimore.
Now, he said, “I want to be a part of changing the history of Baltimore.”
Perhaps more fundamentally, Bellamy says his experience at Requity and his relationship with Rosenband, whom he calls “a really big, great inspiration,” helped mold the once shy boy into a confident young man. “They really gave me a lot of encouragement where I wanted to go out and try more challenges that I wouldn’t have done before entering the workforce,” he said.
Need for more practical skills
Beyond Baltimore’s borders, there’s a lot of interest in helping young people like Bellamy embrace a future that involves manual labor.
“Baltimore’s stock market and similar organizations across the country are taking innovative steps to address both the projected 4.1 million skilled construction worker shortage over the next decade and rising home prices,” Erin Eisen, Home Depot’s senior director of community investments and executive director of the Home Depot Foundation, said in an email exchange with USA TODAY.
“The tradesman shortage is more than just an economic statistic; it is a bottleneck for community resilience and impacts the entire housing and remodeling market. A shortage of plumbers, carpenters, electricians, and HVAC professionals slows construction schedules and increases costs,” Eisen said.
To support these goals, Home Depot has spent tens of millions of dollars to train skilled tradesmen across the country, Eisen said.
But regardless of the logic behind the career paths of young people like Bellamy and Johnson, there may be some discomfort in encouraging young people of color from disadvantaged backgrounds to take jobs that are more physically demanding or even dangerous than desk jobs.
“Frankly, when I hear a white businessman say, ‘I don’t need a college degree,’ I look at that and say, uh, are you talking about your kids?” said Marc Morial, president of the National Urban League. “You’re not the right messenger. People are going to think, oh, you’re just trying to lead us on.”
Despite such warnings, Morial praises programs like Recuity and preaches “postsecondary success” of all kinds, whether in four-year colleges, two-year colleges, the military, trades, or other fields.
Before taking the helm of the Urban League, Morial served as the mayor of his native New Orleans, a career path very similar to that of the mayor of Baltimore.
But even before that, Morial started working as a construction worker at the age of 19. I remember looking around at men in their 40s and 50s who were still doing manual labor with no opportunities for advancement. That’s important for a program like Requiti, Morial said. “It’s about making sure our kids don’t just work as workers, but have long-term careers in construction, plumbing, electrical and technology.”
More importantly, he told USA TODAY, all young people should be able to make informed decisions about what’s best for their personal circumstances. “I think it’s all about choice,” Morial said. “I don’t think we should keep telling people, ‘You don’t need a college degree.’ We should say they need a career path that fits their interests and skills.”
Pride: “I see him starting to come into his own little by little.”
Carl Bellamy is the founder and CEO of NU Level Entertainment (Never Underestimated), a hip-hop record label focused on community development work. He is also Justin’s father.
Justin “always had a lot of talent,” his father told USA TODAY, but he was introverted and shy and struggled a bit in the shadow of his older brother, who had special needs. With Requity’s help, he blossomed.
“It’s been great to see him come out of his shell, express himself vocally, do interviews, be on camera, and especially work in construction,” said Carl Bellamy. “Now he’s doing things to his own talents and at his own pace, so as he grows into an adult we connect more… It’s a humbling experience for me, but at the same time it’s exciting, to see him kind of starting to come into his own.”
Building on this success, Rosenband hopes to expand the Requity model to other cities in the future.
“I think people just need a sense of purpose and an affirmation like, you matter,” he said. “I don’t know where these kids could go if they had the right resources around them.”
