career and technical education
Business, marketing, tourism and manufacturing make up more than half of U.S. jobs -- but students in high school probably don’t know that. Only one-quarter of the career and technical education classes students take are focused on these industries, according to a new report from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a conservative-leaning think tank in Washington, D.C.
How Aligned is Career and Technical Education to Local Labor Markets?, co-authored by Pepperdine University associate professor Cameron Sublett and Fordham Institute senior research and policy associate David Griffith, examines whether students in high school CTE programs are more likely to take courses in high-demand and/or high-wage industries, both nationally and locally.
In this high-tech era where a college degree is positioned as a necessity for success, vocational education is often overlooked. But experts say that a vocational education provides the right experience for many jobs that are currently vacant. Indeed, there are 30 million jobs nationwide that don’t require a Bachelor’s Degree that pay an average of $55,000 annually, according to the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce.
Now it is finally occurring to some folks that A) college is not necessarily the best choice for all students and B) the world needs people who do what Mike Rowe always called the jobs "that make civilized life possible for the rest of us." Done well, new studies show, it can boost both academics and wages for students. It might even help solve the mystery of the missing non-college educated male workers. And so Career and Technical Education (CTE) is coming back into its own.
College funding, school safety and school choice are items addressed in the U.S. Department of Education’s proposed fiscal year 2020 budget, which department officials shared with media in a conference call Monday morning. The Trump administration’s proposal provides $131 billion in new post-secondary grants, loans and work-study and includes $64 billion in discretionary spending, a 10-percent reduction from the prior year. It includes recommended decreases, increases and unchanged or “level funding” throughout.
The Bay Area based metal band announced Tuesday that its All Within My Hands Foundation (AWMH) is launching a “workforce education initiative” intended to help community colleges to “enhance their career and technical education programs,” according to a news release.
The White House announced Monday evening a five-year strategic plan for science, technology, engineering and math education, setting forth what it calls a "North Star" that "charts a course for the Nation's success." "It represents an urgent call to action for a nationwide collaboration with learners, families, educators, communities, and employers," the White House plan reads.
The American economy added 134,000 jobs in September, according to the US Department of Commerce. The unemployment rate sits at 3.7% - the lowest since 1969. On the other hand, earlier this week Verizon announced 44,000 layoffs to its global workforce, including a significant portion in the United States, and the outsourcing of 2,500-5,000 jobs to external contractors.
TechForce Foundation, a non-profit organization focused on championing students to and through their technical education and into careers as professional transportation technicians, has launched its Because I'm a Tech campaign (hashtag #becauseimatech) to coincide with Labor Day. The campaign is designed to educate teens and parents that there's more than one road to success...
Nationally, the number of high-school students concentrating in career education has risen 22 percent over the past decade, to 3.6 million, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal. Locally, student enrollment at the Cabell County Career Technology Center now stands at 300, which may not seem like a lot but is double what it was just five years ago.