Jacob Martinez completed a 12-week HVAC course at WorkTexas in 2022. Today he works as an HVAC technician for the Houston Astros at Daikin Park, earning $60,000 a year with full benefits. He was 25 when he landed the job, and he did it without a college degree.
“WorkTexas gave me the skills and confidence to go out on my own path,” Martinez says. “I’m building for my future and starting to think about applying for a house one day.”
His story illustrates the type of outcome Mike Feinberg has been working to make more common. Feinberg, the co-founder of WorkTexas, argues that the education system spent decades promoting a single definition of success after high school. College became the default answer, even when other paths might have served students better.
“Kids and parents were told if you want to be successful in this world, you have to go to college,” Feinberg says. “In the 1990s it was like taking on a car loan. Now it is closer to a home mortgage.”
What Mike Feinberg Learned From the College Pipeline
Feinberg spent more than two decades helping build KIPP, which grew from a single Houston classroom in 1994 into a national network of more than 270 charter schools. The organization’s mission centered on preparing students for college, and by the mid-2010s KIPP Houston had reached a milestone.
More than half of its alumni were graduating from four-year colleges. Feinberg says the moment felt historic.
Then another number caught his attention.
“That is half,” he recalls thinking. “What about the other half?”
When Feinberg studied the data more closely, the results complicated the college-only narrative. Many alumni without degrees were thriving in careers that did not require one. Some had entered the trades. Others joined the military or launched their own businesses.
At the same time, some college graduates carried six-figure student debt while struggling to find stable work. The contrast pushed Feinberg to rethink a framework he had championed for years.
“College prep does not need to mean college for all,” he says. “Our college counselors could have, and should have, been career counselors. College is an important pathway, but it is not the only pathway.”
That realization led him to co-found WorkTexas in 2020 alongside Houston businessman Jim “Mattress Mack” McIngvale and Vanessa Ramirez, a former KIPP student who now leads WorkTexas programs serving justice-involved youth.
The New Math of Wages and Credentials
Economic trends have reinforced Feinberg’s shift in perspective. Wages across the skilled trades have risen sharply in recent years. According to research from McKinsey & Company, pay in the U.S. skilled labor market increased more than 20 percent between early 2020 and 2024.
Demand is rising just as quickly. The same research suggests that jobs for welders, electricians, and construction workers could grow at a pace more than 20 times faster than overall job creation through 2032.
Meanwhile, the cost of a four-year college education continues to climb. Tuition, fees, and living expenses increased 169 percent between 1980 and 2020, according to the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. Surveys from the nonprofit American Student Assistance also show a shift in employer attitudes, with more than 80 percent of companies saying hiring decisions should prioritize skills rather than degrees.
WorkTexas aims to meet that demand with programs designed around employer needs. Courses run about 11 weeks and require roughly 170 hours of participation. Most students attend at no cost through federal workforce development funding such as the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act.
Among adults who remain employed for at least a year after completing training, average wages reach about $27 per hour.
Measuring What Happens After Graduation
Feinberg says the program’s philosophy also differs in how it defines success.
Across Houston, he has seen training programs advertise certificate completion rates on billboards. The statistic sounds impressive, but it does not answer the question employers care about most.
“You go to community colleges and trade schools and ask how they know they are successful,” Feinberg says. “They say 97.8 percent of our students earn a certificate. But how many of those people got jobs? They do not know.”
WorkTexas tracks its graduates for at least five years after training ends. Career coaches check in regularly to ask about employment status, wage progression, and job satisfaction.
For Feinberg, the distinction is crucial. A certificate may open a door, but the real measure of success is whether someone builds a stable career on the other side of it.
Martinez’s story reflects the outcome Feinberg hopes to replicate. A short training program led to a skilled trade, a steady salary, and a path toward long-term financial stability.
For Feinberg, that trajectory represents a broader lesson for the education system.
Preparing students for the future, he argues, should mean expanding opportunity rather than narrowing it to a single path.
