As another school year gets underway, I'm reminded that education remains one of the best pathways young people have toward a prosperous future - even in tough economic times.
Studying seriously, opting for courses in math and science, getting into college and pursuing advanced degrees are not easy tasks, but they are not any more difficult than spending a lifetime in lower-skilled, lower-wage jobs.
Students today may be skeptical about what will help them get a good paying job. But from my perspective, people with the skills that the marketplace wants and needs are in demand and continue to get hired in good times or bad.
What are the skills in demand? Creative thinking, the ability to think analytically, entrepreneurial and leadership skills are what most corporate executives point to as essential in today's work force.
Staying in school increases the odds of getting those skills. But despite all evidence of the importance of a diploma, the dropout rate remains a major issue for our schools. A report released last year by Northeastern University estimated that nearly 6.2 million U.S. students between ages 16 and 24 dropped out of school.
In my work as chair of the non-profit Philadelphia Education Fund, which aims to improve the quality of public education, I see first-hand, the pressing need to keep students in school.
Research conducted in 2005 by the Education Fund and John Hopkins University identified four early warning signs that correlated with middle school students dropping out: poor attendance, poor behaviors, failing math and literacy.
As a result, the education fund developed, Diplomas Now, an intervention program, which tackles these warning signs. The results are encouraging. Of 250 students who were "off-track" to graduation, 54 percent have shown improvement in their original areas of risk and two-thirds have improved English and math grades. Today the program is being replicated in Chicago, Los Angeles, San Antonio and New Orleans.
Increasing the number of college graduates also has a direct, positive impact on our economy over the long term. Most studies show that college graduates have higher lifetime earnings than those without a diploma. The American Enterprise Institute, however, estimates that only 53 percent of college students graduated in six years with a bachelor's degree from schools they enrolled in as freshmen.
Helping students stay in school, graduate and develop the skills they need for employment helps to assure a prosperous future for them and their community.
For young people with advanced skills, a wide range of new opportunities are opening up. The need to conserve resources for a more sustainable future - to create modern systems for transportation, food distribution and law information, and to apply "intelligent" technologies to more efficiently manage water and power resources - are emerging areas of our economy that will need to employ workers in the decades ahead.
Preparing our young people for the jobs of the future is the first and most important step in our economic development. A workforce educated for the 21st century will go a long way toward increasing employment levels, lowering poverty rates and maintaining a high quality of life for all our citizens.
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Both legal and illegal immigration needs to be reduced. For too long
big business has wanted cheap labor and has ignored the persons
status to be in this country. Cheap labor is sometimes paid cash and therefore
does not add to the tax base and also the employer is breaking the law.
H1b visa's that employers use to bring workers into this country need to
be questioned. What do we need to do to fill those jobs with Americans?
Why are we importing workers when so many Americans are unemployed.
I DO NOT BELIEVE THAT THERE ARE NOT ANY AMERICANS THAT WANT THOSE JOBS
American business need to look to partner with education programs to train
the American workers that they need
It is time for American corporations to look at all those jobs they have OUTSOURCED
and bring some of those jobs back home.
It is time for American agriculture to look at innovative ways to bus in workers.
PEOPLE WANT JOBS ! Try putting a bus at a local high school
or at a Home Depot parking lot and see how many fill it up to work
Big corporations whine that they can't find anyone who wants to work for the wages we want to pay. If this was truly a free market, then the wages would be going up to meet the demand, but they are not. Then they get so picky that no one will meet their requirements. All corporations want to do is hire someone cheap, which is why they want to outsource or use HB-1 visas.
If our employment market was really a free market, then wages would have gone up when we supposedly had 4% unemployment during this decade. But that didn't happen, wages actually went down. That tells me that the employer complaints of too few skilled employees is one of cheapness on the part of employers or that they are not really short of qualified employees in the first place.
If you're really serious about jobs, then its time to do something about unequal trade treaties and trade partners, plus an effective anti-trust enforcement to eliminate all of the oligopolies that have zero incentive to hire Americans.
"Less well established is what role concentration plays in suppressing new business formation and the expansion of existing businesses, along with the jobs and innovation that go with such growth. Evidence is growing, however, that the radical, wide-ranging consolidation of recent years has reduced job creation at both big and small firms simultaneously."
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com//features/2010/1003.lynn-longman.html
Outsourcing comes, when the skills you need are not there. many IBM workers and workers in other american firms in Europe get paid more than their american counterpart, so the answer lies elsewhere.
I see from my place outside the USA 3 main problems.
-You need free and universal education, or else you will lose a lot of talent, that can't afford an education.
-you need a higher level on handicrafts. Many skilled workers in Europe has a 4 year training and theoretical education in trades like building, machine operating and so on, and not some on-the-job training plus a short course.
That makes the workforce much more flexible and usefull.
-You need a education system for life. The posibillity to constant upgrade your skills for free f.x. when unemployed, will make you much more usefull afterwards.
It could make it much more attractive for firms to invest in the USA.
We need a range of opportunity and support systems for a range of people. I agree we need to focus on core skills.
That said, if you want the best and brightest to focus on education, there needs to be the well paying jobs out there for them to aim for.
Employers promised work security and a steady progress up the hierarchy in return for employees fitting in, accepting lower wages, performing in prescribed ways and sticking around. Longevity was a sign of employer-employee relations; turnover was a sign of dysfunction. None of these assumptions apply today. Organizations can no longer guarantee work and careers, even if they want to. Senior managements to break the implied contract with their employees – a contract nurtured by management that the future can be controlled.
Jettisoned employees are finding that their hard won knowledge, skills and capabilities earned while being loyal are no longer valuable in the employment market place.
What kind of a contract can employers and employees make with each other?
Employers and employees face market and financial conditions together, and the longevity of the partnership depends on how well the for-profit or not-for-profit continues to meet the needs of customers and constituencies. Neither employer nor employee has a future obligation to the other. Organizations train people. Employees develop the kind of security they really need – skills, knowledge and capabilities that enhance future employability. The partnership can be dissolved without either party considering the other a traitor.
Far and few between, I'd imagine, want ads around that say "will train."
From what I'm hearing, more often they ask for skills or degrees not even needed to do a certain job.
You mean to tell us there are no 30 - 65 year olds with these skills?????
I do IT work for a company in Irvine, Ca. Wages are low, no benefits. We employ recent college grads, with degrees in Computer Science from UCI, for a few bucks over minimum wage. We're calling the opportunities internships because there's no other way to justify paying these well educated kids such poor wages.
IBM is at the forefront of the offshore movement. That's what they do for their clients now instead of building computers and servers. They consult with companies that want to hire foreign workers, here and abroad.
News of the layoffs comes after IBM released its 2009 earnings of $13.4 billion dollars, with IBM shares trading at $127.16. Last year, IBM announced record profits and then released 5,000 employees the very next day.
It's been reported that IBM has cut more than 30,000 U.S.-based employees in the last four years.
* Record revenue of $103.6 billion;
* Record pre-tax profit of $16.7 billion;
* Record earnings per share of $8.93;
* Record free cash flow of $14.3 billion, up $1.9 billion, excluding Global Financing receivables.
Full-Year 2009:
Earnings-per-share expectation of at least $9.20.
What the article describes is a need for "skilled" employees. 30,000 US based employees were cut in the last 4 years.
Now, did they hire 30,000 unskilled workers in the first place?
HELL NO.
The website Alliance@IBM, which first broke the news of a "RA," or "resource action," that could affect IBM employees in the company's Raleigh, North Carolina office. IBM's employs 10,000 workers in its Raleigh offices.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/01/ibm-layoffs-2010-rumors-s_n_481396.html