We all remember high school as a time when teachers preached about the importance of attending college. However, this is not the ideal route for all, and luckily, vocational and technical (vo-tech) training may now be getting the attention it deserves in Louisiana classrooms.
It seems this form of education is on the rise after sitting on the back burner for years. On Friday, a proposal was made to the state education board to revamp vo-tech programs and implement the “career diploma,” which promises high-paying jobs to those who graduate high school.
The graduates won’t need college to get a decent job.
President Barack Obama commended Germany at his 2013 State of the Union address on “graduating their high school students with the equivalent of a technical degree from one of our community colleges.” Germany has got the right idea, and Louisiana is poised to lead America in following.
In America, this huge push for a traditional college education has left our industries, especially in Louisiana, with a limited selection of potential employees for technical jobs. Most of our grandparents had that useful know-how that came from everyday living — something many of us Millennials passed up on our way to a four-year path to success.
Our focuses have changed with the times for the good and the bad. Sure, there are smartphones in smart cars, but they are being used by some dumb operators with useless college degrees. A number of engineers are graduating without having ever held a wrench or turned a valve with hopes of a career in the industry.
According to the State Education Department, 28 percent of Louisiana’s high school graduates earn a degree in college. However, the state’s most crucial industries have jobs they can’t fill. These jobs in power and agriculture require advanced technical training and not a college degree.
“Twenty percent of refinery employees have retired and some young applicants for those jobs are rejected because they can’t pass those aptitude tests,” said ExxonMobil’s Baton Rouge Plant Manager Mark Northcutt in January at the annual meeting of the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry.
Northcutt proceeded to emphasize the need for better job training as education at the meeting.
It’s sad that it took begging high-roller employers to convince policymakers to get this ball rolling. There are students sitting disengaged on the fringes of classrooms that would and could utilize the co-tech programs, if they were available.
There is a reason college graduates have hard times finding jobs in the state of Louisiana. It’s a book sense versus common sense predicament. Naturally, those with science, technology, engineering and mathematics degrees have an advantage. In the future, these high school graduates with a career diploma will have a strong advantage too in earning a high paying job in the industry.
If companies that see the growing number of technically educated individuals move into the state, this could become a benefit for the economy. This would create more jobs, which would begin a cycle that could repeat itself into a booming economy.
The new career diploma education path is crucial and could yield positive outcomes. High schools can begin the program this fall. If successful, all Louisiana public schools must participate after two years. Of course, students will not be able to graduate with the career diploma until 2018.
This is the opportunity that Louisiana and the country needs in order to provide the proper tools and assets to students that will make up the backbone of future blue collar America.
Justin Stafford is a 20-year-old mass communication junior from Walker, La.