Thursday, April 10, 2008

Tech Schools Answering the Call of the Workforce…

Horizontal integration of our postsecondary education systems provides a much needed component to the growth of the private sector. Identifying the need, and more importantly, responding positively, creates success the whole way through.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

We have tech schools and vocational academies in Indiana, all state-run and taxpayer financed. Yet, the high-schools graduate only about 50% of students in the larger cities and have quit teaching shop (along with English, math, and history). Why do we have to finance two or three more years of training for something that should have been taught in high-school? If public schools did their job we wouldn't have to remediate graduates and drop-outs so they can get a job.

Scott Munsterman said...

You are asking the right question. We clearly need to match the opportunities existing in the economy with the knowledge and skills to carry them out. Our postsecondary educational system must horizontally integrate with the job market. The second piece to the equation is vertically integrating our postsecondary education system with our K-12 public school system. There is no reason why we shouldn't be able to better organize educational activities to equip our kids with the skills and knowledge they need to be successful in the future, in a shorter time frame than what we are doing today.

Our educational system was designed to meet the needs of the industrial economy of the last 50 years, and now we need to redesign our educational system to meet the needs of the knowledge based economy (super-powered by technology and globalization) of the next 50 years.

I appreciate your comments and dialogue.