Connecting work skills and school

It has been suggested that simply raising the 'value” of high school education is enough to fix our disconnect between education and the needs of the workplace.

I agree that at one time a high school diploma was enough for a young person to take into the workforce, get an entry level job and work up into a position which would have supported raising a family in a middle class lifestyle.

I also agree that students holding a high school diploma today do not have the quality of education that I had at that age, and certainly not the level of knowledge that my parents had.

However, the jobs a high school graduate could get with that diploma from the 30s or the 60s are no longer out there. They don't exist. Graduating today and getting a job as a maid would forever chain a person to the lower income levels that would prevent them ever reaching the middle class. The idea today that a high school diploma is a pathway to the middle class is false, unless that pathway takes one through additional training for the skills that are needed in today's workforce.

With the advent of 'No Child Left Behind,” there has developed a gap between the skills employers need and those available workers possess, as American high schools have shifted their focus to preparing students for four-year colleges rather than vocational school, despite the fact that many less academically inclined students would be better off learning a profitable trade, avoiding crushing debts and earning more over their lifetimes.

It is important to note that college tuition has risen by more than four times the rate of inflation since the mid-1980s, largely because of the availability of government-guaranteed student loans, which have enabled colleges to charge more, while saddling graduates with crippling debts many will carry with them for a lifetime. This is how the housing bubble was engineered: government made it easy to borrow large amounts of money, regardless of ability to repay, resulting in rapid appreciation of housing costs. We clearly are in an education bubble, perhaps near the bursting point. As more students voluntarily avoid college, their life successes will demonstrate that college is not necessary for well-paid and respected occupations.

Is this something the government should foot the bill for? I'm not entirely sure. However, if academically gifted high school students have the ability to earn college credit while in high school, even an associate degree in many cases, it seems to me there should be a way for high schools and community colleges to work together to provide that same opportunity for the less academically gifted students to get a jump on the higher educational levels they need to ensure a financially brighter future.

' Ginger VeDepo is retired after working for ACT in scholarship administration for more than 10 years. Comments: gvedepo2@yahoo.com