Dan Kleban is the co-founder of Maine Beer Company in Freeport and a former candidate for U.S. Senate.

In a brewery, if you use bad ingredients, you get bad beer. If the inputs are wrong, the result is wrong. Politics is no different. Right now, Maine lawmakers are debating whether to make free community college permanent. Gov. Janet Mills is right to push for it. That shouldn’t be a debate, but a starting point.

For decades, we’ve been told there’s only one recipe for the American Dream, a four-year degree, regardless of cost. We pushed nearly every kid toward a lecture hall and mountains of debt, while quietly neglecting the very careers that keep Maine running.

The truth is, traditional four-year degrees simply don’t deliver the bang for the buck they once did. The unemployment gap between college graduates and high school graduates is the smallest it’s been since the late 1970s. Meanwhile, Maine faces severe shortages of electricians, welders, mechanics and HVAC technicians. 

These aren’t alternative careers, they’re essential and AI-proof. You can’t outsource fixing a burst pipe in January, nor can you automate a heat pump installation in a century-old farmhouse. You can’t power a clean energy transition without thousands of skilled hands building the infrastructure.

If we’re serious about national security, domestic manufacturing and leading in clean energy, we must be serious about the skilled trades. The backbone of our defense and energy independence is built in workshops, shipyards and job sites.

At Maine Beer Company, we’re undergoing an expansion to boost production. Projects like this require dozens of welders, electricians and other tradespeople. When those workers are in short supply, projects slow, costs rise and growth halts.  

Most importantly, these are jobs that stay in our rural communities. These careers allow young people to remain in their hometowns, raise families and build lasting financial security. 

I hear constantly from folks about friends or children who wouldn’t have pursued higher education without this program. That’s exactly why free community college should be permanent. It’s a fast, affordable pathway into high-demand careers, without burying students under decades of debt.

I understand that burden firsthand. I paid my way through school and finished nearly $200,000 in the hole. While I sympathize with students graduating under a mountain of debt, student loan forgiveness is a Band-Aid, not a cure. The underlying problem is tuition has skyrocketed because government-subsidized loans incentivize colleges to raise prices, while they sit on multibillion- dollar endowments. We need reform that ensures education is a path to opportunity, not a lifelong debt sentence.

Making community college free is targeted, practical and aligned with workforce needs. But to fix the recipe, we must go further.

We should strengthen skilled trades education in high schools by modernizing shop class, investing in vocational programs and ensuring students graduate with real-world skills. That reform must include a return to civic responsibility, starting with civics as a required subject in high school, which complements national service. Not every kid is ready to jump straight from high school to college — I know I wasn’t.

We should incentivize young people to live and work in different communities through domestic civil service — whether in conservation, infrastructure or community development — treating it as a high-value opportunity alongside military service. Complete a term of service, and earn tuition for trade school or a degree. That’s how we invest in both country and career while bridging societal divides.

None of this works without strong public schools and respected educators. Maine is falling behind, especially for rural and low-income students. Teachers deserve professional dignity, starting with pay. A federal matching program helping states raise salaries, paired with loan forgiveness for long-term classroom commitment, would address shortages while maintaining local control.

This debate in Augusta isn’t really about a program, but we must stop debating whether the system needs fixing and start acknowledging that it does. We have to stop pretending the old recipe still works. If we use better ingredients, we’ll finally get better results.