Scenario: What If Every Student Went Directly to College, What Then?
The rhetoric is that education is important, but is our economy really prepared for the scenario in which every student does choose to attend a four-year college? First responses are “Sure, no problem.” But if you take up a strong cup of coffee and sit down with some friends to jaw over it, it’s likely you’ll dig up some pretty big reasons why this scenario could backfire, economically.
If everyone suddenly chose to go to a four-year college and earn a degree—Utopian at best, but a mind-bending what-if….
* Would we lose employees in the McDonald’s down the street?
* Would Ford and Chrysler be forced to move operations to countries where there was still a manufacturing work force?
* Would there be builders to make houses with hammers and nails?
* Would asphalt be laid for new super highways?
* Would there be someone to tow your car when it breaks down?
Let’s ease up just a bit on this farfetched concept and try this one: What if every graduating high school student next year entered college right out of high school; just one class of graduating seniors? (Again, Utopian because as rumpled as secondary schools are, too many seniors fail to graduate or be adequately prepared to enroll in college). Right now there is a population that does, in fact, graduate and go directly to school, but there is also a population that divides work with school, and a population that enters the work force. Without the population of high school students that foregoes college to enter the work force, how many jobs would go unfilled?
Get a Technical or Trade Education–Millions of Skilled Jobs to Fill
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, by 2012 there will be an upsetting shortage of laborers in a number of key sectors: healthcare, IT, and manufacturing and production, are among them. The reasons are multi-pronged. Since education has re-routed students to college, as opposed to trades, there are fewer and fewer skilled laborers entering the work force. By 2012 more workers in these sectors will retire, leaving jobs unfilled.
Doesn’t sound so competitive, does it?
Since jobs will be unfilled because students are heading to college or dropping out of high school—leaving them totally unprepared for anything but unskilled jobs—then it’s necessary to see the numbers associated. The BLS reports that, between new job creations and retiring workers, over 56 million new and existing jobs will possibly sit vacant! Some of these will require two or four-year degrees, but plenty of them only require career or “on-the-job” training. Are we encouraging well qualified technical students? Is anyone in education brave enough to counsel students, perhaps underachieving in academics, to consider a skilled and well-paying trade as opposed to the alternative—dropping out?
Scholarships Available for Trade/Professional Programs
There has been some recent excitement in some types of career programs: cosmetology (notice increasing number of Aveda Institutes, for example), massage therapy (a high-demand skill), and HVAC, which goes hand in hand with the construction industry. All of these professional trades require a term of specialized schooling and increasing numbers of sources are funding scholarships and grants for interested students.
Lack of Vocational Choices
Once upon a time vocational schools were innately partnered with many public high schools. Students with a drive for auto mechanics, agriculture, and carpentry and construction could spend part of their high school careers learning a trade—a well-paying one, at that. In the 90s, though, in Education’s zeal to see every student remade into a robotic scholar, vocational schools were severed from the public systems and most are defunct, non-existent.
Political Waffling
In 2006, President Bush signed back into action the Carl D. Perkins Vocational and Technical Education Act. The act is designed to allow for increased support for technical and vocational education programs. Currently there is some buzz on the Presidential campaign trail that favors cutting budget spending on technical education. So what’s it going to be?
Education’s One-Track Mind
But as much as one might try to force a square peg into a round hole, there are some students failing out of school simply because they are not the next great academicians. Twenty years ago, he or she had the option to pursue farming or auto repair or welding or computer repair and networking versus so called college prep, but most have no such choice. A growing chorus of career counselors and educators is brave enough at least to suggest we explore steering some students into trade schools versus four-year liberal arts colleges, inspire them to success as opposed to failure. In fact, in surveys, some high school drop-outs cite “boredom” and lack of challenge as significant factors in their decisions to part ways with academia.
Maybe if some of these students had had options for careers, they might have felt less pressure to vacate a one-track system.
In some cases students may have options for scholarship funds to vocational schools—like the state of Kansas Vocational Scholarship—but without the proper guidance in high school many will not likely find these sources on their own.
The New Innovators—Trade and Technical Students Will Drive Economic Growth
If innovation and entrepreneurship will be key to worker success in the future, as many predict, then students with the hutzpah to step off the beaten path and machete a pathway to a vocational or technical career will be the most successful among the innovators and entrepreneurs. God knows they will have to be their own best advocates—no one else is at the helm.
::link source: http://www.collegescholarships.org/blog/
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