Posted on 02/07/2018 9:38:55 AM PST by markomalley
Expanding apprenticeship and vocational education are a priority of the Trump administration, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos said Tuesday in a meeting of the Department of Labor's specially chartered Task Force on Apprenticeship Expansion.
"Apprenticeship expansion is a priority for President Trump, as he demonstrated by establishing the task force last summer," DeVos said. "In the State of the Union address, he called on everyone, not just the Department of Education, or Labor, or Congress, or Washington, everyone to invest in workforce development, and job training, and great vocational schools so our students and future workers can learn a craft and realize their full potential."
The task force was chartered in accordance with a June executive order, and is now jointly chaired by DeVos, Secretary of Labor Alexander Acosta, and Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross. Other members represent a diverse group of educational, labor and industry interests, focused around the question of how to diversify skills education in the U.S. economy.
Acosta cited the growing "skills gap," the disparity between the demand for labor with certain skills and the supply of that labor, as the reason for the task force's creation.
"The skills gap is real. It's nearly 6 million individuals, and moving quickly is deeply appreciated by all," Acosta said.
A recent analysis from the Manpower Group, a staffing firm which every year conducts a "talent shortage survey," found that 46 percent of U.S. employers reported having difficulty filling jobs in 2016. "Skilled trade workers," a category defined by Manpower, represented the hardest jobs to fill in the U.S. from 2009 through 2016.
The Department of Labor points to a number of factors driving this "skills gap." Those include: An aging skilled workforce, trouble attracting new talent pools, a mismatch between workers' skills and their credentials, insufficient advancement in talent to keep up with industry's fast pace of development, and a lack of workforce training.
These problems, Secretary DeVos emphasized in her opening statement, must be addressed in order to encourage more successful American workers.
"America must do better to prepare our students for success in the 21st-century economy. We must answer the call to invest in individual students and expand access to more education pathways," she said.
This concept of expanding "pathways" is a notable component of President Donald Trump's original executive order constituting the task force, calling as it does for the federal government to "provide more affordable pathways to secure, high-paying jobs by promoting apprenticeships and effective workforce development programs, while easing the regulatory burden on such programs and reducing or eliminating taxpayer support for ineffective workforce development programs."
Tuesday's task force meeting focused on how to make vocational education and apprenticeships a more appealing and successful model for both would-be students and would-be employers. Subcommittees reports focused on both groups emphasized the need to better match employers' needs with students' skills, making sure that educators know what employers will pay for.
The task force also discussed the value of mentorship programs and paid-work experience, which would allow future employees to make a living while learning valuable workforce skills. DeVos, in her opening remarks, mentioned the need to make current educational credentials, which do not necessarily signal an employee's real skills, more informative to employers.
"Credentials send important signals to employers. We need to reconsider whether they match what employers need and what employers think those signals mean," DeVos said.
Marc Morial, President of the National Urban League, offered a comment early in the meeting about how important he saw apprenticeships as being to the young, predominantly African American people his organization advocates for.
"What excites me about this and what I believe the opportunity is in the apprenticeship arena, is that we have many, many young Americans who have in some cases marginally connected to the workforce," Morial said. "Being marginally connected to the workforce, the way to get them into the workforce is not only by connecting them to a job, but connecting them to an opportunity in which they can enhance their skills. So they have a chance to move into sustainable employment on a long-term basis."
Wasn’t Obunghole’s priority the further expansion of college education?
Also known as Making America Great Again!
The “college for all” crowd destroyed what we used to call vo-tech programs, dating back to Bill Clinton and fueled the unsustainable student loan debacle and spiraling college costs.
My peers in my office are an average age of 58. Every new hire has been dismissed after repeated attempts to unwittingly kill themselves.
Industrial Electrical controls and systems are where the rubber meets the road. At nights and on weekends it is just you. When machines become silent, you must perform tasks that require speed and safe practice to regain production. Machines so large they require their own sub station in the city to supply power to.
Our only new hires have been those over 50 who could pass the tests and perform safely under their six month observation period.
I went to a high school that pushed college prep almost exclusively.
At least half of my class had no interest in going. That included me.
Some kind of split between academia and learning a useful skill set would have been wonderful.
Betsy DeVos has quiet support among minority education advocates. Shh! I know this from several people here I am acquainted with in L.A. — who, while NOT Trump supporters, at the very least voiced optimism about DeVos even during her confirmation process. A lot of her policies resonate — as its kids in underprivilegeed circumstances who’ve lost out the most from the business-as-usual public school monopoly model.
There is a massive need for skilled workers.
Not some dum-dums, that managed to stay awake in a few classes.
For an electrician working on my house, I want skilled and knowledgeable.
I worked with an engineer that often said, it was shop class that ‘saved him’.
I knew two attorneys, passed the bar exam...working as tradesmen.
Both Irish and had fathers in the trade.
Was common for the sons to work with the father in the summer if school didn’t work out they had a backup.
Yes I can remember auto shops and vocational Ed programs in high school. I remember some students who were on the “work program” who took some classes in the morning, then were out working the rest of the day.
Sometimes we reinvent the wheel don’t we? Years ago we had the types of programs being touted as great new ideas.
the smarter than thou useless overeducated academia convinced all parents that their children need to be teachers lawyers and doctors, the parents believed them hence we have student debt thru the roof and life long students who couldn’t make the grade and are still enrolled in college, we all know some of them. Vocational trade has gotten the “no not my child” stigma yet many children are geared toward this and would do well there’s just a refusal by educators to include this in their curriculum choices. koodos to president Trump on this. Its all about learning a trade and making a good livin
these are laudable goals, but unless and until we rid the public schools of Common Core and the anti American indoctrination, we will never move forward as a nation.
Not the way we should anyway.
Those are the problems that need to be dealt with. It’s disappointing that DeVos ran away from it.
The government needs to get out of the education business once and for all.
PERIOD.
We had an electrician out several weeks back. He had a young female apprentice with him. She was keen to learn.
And then those who went straight to a good job after HS got 4-6 years of an earnings head start compared to their college-bound peers, which is nothing to sneeze at. And probably matured faster, dealing with real life.
And nobody talks too much about money, but some plumbers and electricians make more than some MBA or lawyers.
I wonder where the idea came from, that everyone should go to college. So many college degrees don’t really prepare you for a job or career path. Somehow people got the idea that any college education is better than none.
I think Coding Boot Camps should be a priority! $2,000 for a 12-16 week course! And yes give qualified Kids the Camp for Free! Now compare that to traditional college education costs! This would be a great ROI! Where I work there are 20 of US and 80 Indians here on HB visas!
No wonder the elite and over educated liberals controlling our colleges and universities hate President Trump.
Excellent summary of what President Trump is doing re education in America.
Americans working with their hands again, getting them ready to replaced all the Illegals who are leaving, being forced to leave or won’t be coming anymore.
Also known as Making America Great Again!
“Where I work there are 20 of US and 80 Indians here on HB visas”
Is that because there are no American coders, or because the Indians work cheap?
That is, is your company just trying to survive, or are they selling out their countrymen to improve the bottom line?
I’m not entirely convinced that there is a real coder shortage, because I taught myself C, C++, Basic, and some assembly language back in the early 1990s.
If I can do that, I think you could turn a high school graduate into an entry-level coder in a year. Maybe less.
This is sooooo long overdue. Not every kid needs to go to college. Most kids probably don’t need to go to college. A marketable skill is worth so much more than a four year degree.
The whole liberal arts crap is such a fraud. College should be prep for professional degrees, eg medicine, law, etc.
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