Making a case for a Vo-Tech Revival
Via: OnlineEducation.net
What does it take to grow our way out of crippling debt? Jobs.Â
While the formula for increasing jobs is a little complicated, it's actually not very hard. In order for the U.S. economy (or any, really; the principles hold true for all countries) to recover, there are four policy areas that must be addressed:
Infrastructure Businesses have to trust that they can plug into a system (communications, transportation, electric grid, etc) that is reliable and up-to-date.Â
A business environment that has little bureaucracy and attractive incentives. Both are important to getting new businesses off the ground and growing fast.
Transparency in government. Except for those who curry favor with people in power, corruption kills economic growth like nobody's business. Unfortunately, that means nobody has a business.Â
Education Simply put, you've got to have the workers to match the needs of industry. Other than creating a path for an elite few to go from Wharton to Wall Street, the U.S. ability to connect education and jobs is abysmal.
Which is why we need Vocational schools to come back.Â
We've spent the last generation saying that all students should be college-bound. While the intention of creating a more egalitarian system, that believes in every person's potential to do great things, is attractive, the result of putting all students on the college track has been a failure of great consequence to our whole society (Wall St. execs execepted). During this time our society has become more stratified, not less. Overall achievement in education has gone down and the drop-out rate has skyrocketed upwards. We've been distracted by hype about a creative class and a knowledge economy that idealizes a "new economy" that is open to everyone's contribution, that spurs entrepreneurship, and that is equally open to all people. It's sheer bunk, and we bought it.
All of this fed a delusion that America was to become the creative engine of the world, that we'd "own" innovation and creativity, while outsourcing all the technical, vocational jobs. The result: a growing number of chronically underemployed, unskilled workers, and an economy that sold itself out by creating favorable conditions for Wall St. and very few others.
It's painful to hear the debate over how to create job growth get stuck in a shouting match over taxes. It's even more painful that so many people believe it and cling to ideologies, on both sides, that got us into this mess in the first place. Incentivizing the private sector to invest in vocational training could be a smart and easy start to getting back on track.
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