Giving students the opportunity to enter the workforce – and blurring boundaries between academic education and technical training – can not only help shepherd more workers to technical fields, but also make sure they have the science, technology, engineering and math skills companies say are sorely needed, experts said Tuesday at the U.S. News & World Report STEM Solutions Conference in San Diego.
“One of the main things I see lacking is real career exploration early on for students – maybe as early as middle school so they can get a taste of what’s out there, what jobs pay, what skill sets are needed and also maybe exploration of where their gifts and talents lie,” said Colleen Molko, interim associate dean for career and technical education at Norco College, a community college outside Los Angeles. “That would go a long way in helping students identify some areas of interest.”
And doing so wouldn’t be just a favor to students, she and others said. Companies stand to benefit from learning more about the skill sets of their future job applicants.
“It’s the place not just to help the student, but to message back to the employer, employment, education space whether we’re doing what we need to do for the workforce,” said J.D. Hoye, president of the National Academy Foundation, a nonprofit support college and career preparedness.
Students hoping to explore different career paths, however, face the same inequities that challenge regular job-seekers: The old adage that it’s not what you know, but who you know. And it can help or hinder a student’s career job-growth through the rest of his or her career.
“It’s a game-changer in terms of pathways, access, relationships, mentors, people who are going to help you in your next round,” Hoye said. Yet, “children of privilege get it. The system doesn’t provide it – families provide it or the community they have provide it.”
Hence, she continued, the question becomes, “Are we as an educational system ready to say, ‘Every child ought to have that?’”
A critical first step could be changing the perception and culture of technical education overall. Technical skills, for example, are generally not required for graduation or tested by states or schools, said Russell Weikle, director of the career and college transition division in the California Department of Education. Still, he added, they’re lifelong skills not just for students pursuing technical careers, but those exploring virtually any career.
“We tend to devalue it if we’re not [testing],” he said. “I’d like to walk into a classroom someday and not be able to tell if it’s a technical course or an academic course.”
The companies that rely on technical schools and community colleges for their workforce can help make that difference, he added.
“We need to get business and industry more involved with our schools. I don’t mean just a sitting advisory committee that happens once a year or twice a year,” Weikle said. “I mean intimately involved with the design of our curriculum to make that meaningful for the students and, certainly, engaging for the students.”