Indiana’s Job Corps centers are being closed as part of a directive shutting down the nation’s largest education and workforce training program. Photo from Google Maps.
INDIANAPOLIS — The U.S. Department of Labor announced
it will shutter all Job Corps centers nationwide
by the end of June, following the release of a critical report on the nation’s largest education and job training program.
The closure will bring an end to nearly 60 years of workforce development for disadvantaged youth in Indiana, where Job Corps has provided thousands of low-income Hoosiers ages 16 to 24 with career training and certifications.
“To have that eventually leave will definitely be heartbreaking,” said Reginald Porter, site director of Indypendence Job Corps in Indianapolis, who has worked at the location for nearly two decades. Unless the federal government reverses course, Porter said the center will close next week.
“The specific training that they’re doing here, that’s not going to transfer over anywhere else, so they will have to go somewhere else and start over,” he said.
Renee Wolf, campus director of the state’s other Job Corps site in Edinburgh, said the center was forced to dismiss about 200 students on Monday, June 2.
“We’re still working with local resources to find homeless places that we can try and find these young people a place to sleep,” Wolf said. “Their hopes and dreams have been pulled out from underneath them.”
The decision follows a Department of Labor report that cited poor outcomes and safety concerns within the program. In a statement, Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer said the Job Corps initiative, though created to offer a pathway to better lives, is no longer meeting expectations.
“A startling number of serious incident reports and our in-depth fiscal analysis reveal the program is no longer achieving the intended outcomes that students deserve,” Chavez-DeRemer said. “We remain committed to ensuring all participants are supported through this transition.”
The report noted a graduation rate of roughly 30% in 2023 for Indiana’s Job Corps centers and documented 434 reported infractions between the two sites. Additionally, the number of students earning credentials of value dropped from nearly 90% in 2017 to 30% last year.
Porter pushed back on the data, saying it fails to reflect the program’s long-term impact or account for pandemic-era disruptions. He noted that many infractions were minor, such as missing Chromebooks, and said graduation rates were poised to rebound.
“If we would see program year ’24, ’25, you would see those particular students graduating, those rates exceeding well over 80%,” he said.
Porter added that the closures will rob students of critical personal milestones.
“There’s the ‘aha’ moment that each student gets when they’re in the program,” he said. “Not having that and not being able to see that … it’s going to be hurtful. Very hurtful.”
