The federal government has been cracking down on for-profit trade schools that leave students with heavy debt loads but no marketable trade or job skill.
Singling out the so-called career colleges for their failures may be politically popular, and justified in many cases, but it’s not entirely fair, any more than it would be fair to condemn all public secondary schools because U.S. students lag behind students in other countries – including virtually all of those that are our main economic competitors – in science, math and reading.
The current system is failing both students and taxpayers. But you don’t fix systemic problems simply by squeezing out the worst offenders. America’s factories, design shops, logistics centers and home builders don’t need fewer trade school graduates; they need job candidates – all comers welcome – who are ready to step into the boots of retiring Baby Boomers and have the training, skills and mental agility to adapt to rapid technological change.
Today there is a “skills gap” in America, noticeable, but manageable. Five years from now – if U.S. corporations and educators don’t put their heads together and fix the problem, we could have disruptive shortages in critical job categories. Given the political climate, increased immigration is likely not the answer. Jobs-focused education is the answer.
Vocational high schools and certification programs, community colleges, career colleges, trade schools and four-year colleges can all play an important role, so long as they see job preparation as a significant part of their mission.
Unfortunately, “vocational ed” became the poor stepchild of public education several decades ago. So there’s a lot of catching up to do in that regard. But there are also a lot of resources available, including 1,000 or so community colleges. That should be good news for employers.
Two good examples of schools that are doing it right, which I found through the Association for Career and Technical Education, are the Academy of Information Technology (AOIT) at Hoover High School in San Diego, which describes itself as a "school within a school," and Ivy Tech Community College, a state-supported institution with more than 30 campuses throughout Indiana. The focus of both is IT.
AOIT combines traditional high school with high-tech high: offering elective courses in Web Architecture, Social Media Marketing, Technical Support Services, GIS (geographic information systems) and similar subjects alongside courses in English, history and the like. Ivy Tech offers certificates and degrees in cyber security, information assurance and other IT specialties, where employment options continue to grow.
The reinvention of vocational education can’t happen quickly enough for U.S. employers who can’t find workers with the skills they require.
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As Gardner Carrick, vice president of the Manufacturing Institute, explained to reporter Anne Kim of the Washington Monthly’s Republic 3.0 project, the shortage of skilled workers is the result of both cultural factors – parents discouraging their children from pursuing “blue-collar” factory jobs, for example – and an education system that decades ago deemphasized preparing students for the world of work.
I’ve been writing about these topics for several years now, here, for example, here and here.
Some of Carrick’s observations are worth repeating.
On the nature of today’s manufacturing jobs: Today’s manufacturing jobs, he stressed, “are really focused on operating, maintaining or programming the machines that are doing a lot of the actual manual labor and hard work that used to be done by human beings.”
On the skills workers need: He said they “need a better understanding of the technology that’s running these machines; and they need to be able to interact with these machines on the fly, which requires a degree of problem-solving skill.”
With more than 26,000 public high schools in the United States and about 1,000 public community colleges there is no acceptable reason for a shortage of skilled workers. What it demonstrates is a lack of commitment to vocational training, driven by the delusion that success and self-fulfillment require a four-year college degree.
Parents in particular need to challenge this line of thinking. It’s wrong and destructive. A college degree doesn’t guarantee a job – or job satisfaction. America needs skilled workers who can design, build, operate and repair things. If this is what interests their kids, parents should encourage them, not push them toward the Halls of Ivy.
Business can’t be a bystander in all this. Its need for highly skilled technical workers – especially those who understand how computers and manufacturing equipment work together – is increasing, while the talent pool seems to be shrinking. So business leaders need to push the education establishment to drop its cookie-cutter approach to secondary and post-secondary education.
Business also needs to look back to the time when apprenticeship programs were the norm, not the exception. If you can’t buy the talent you need, create it.
Today’s next generation workplaces – especially our factories – require employees with both knowledge and skills. Some school systems have recognized this and are reinventing themselves to meet that need, especially at the community-college level. Others are still struggling with the challenge.
Businesses and educators must do more and do it in cooperation – not in a vacuum – in order to be successful.
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