Prep according to skills

Tue, May 13 2008

— At one time, not too many years ago, some education experts predicted that all workers in the future would have to have some college, probably two years, for employment.
It hasn’t turned out that way.
According to Gary Bivin, Muskogee High School principal, in today’s Sunday Extra, seven out of 10 jobs don’t require a college degree, but a technical degree. Many of those jobs pay very well, just as well as some jobs that require college degrees.
The issue is important because in Oklahoma high schools, students are automatically directed into a college preparatory curriculum unless they and their parents decide otherwise and opt out.
If schools make the option very clear to parents and students, the policy probably isn’t a bad one. College offers a unique and advantageous educational and growing experience.
But college isn’t for everyone. And colleges today are not dealing well with the influx of students who aren’t prepared for college and who spend their first year or two in remedial classes. Many don’t survive the rigors of academic life, which is expensive for students and colleges.
If that continues at the rate it’s happening now, perhaps, it would be better for students and parents, with the help of counselors, to be confronted with the decision in ninth grade rather than have a decision made for them.
Many young people will find the challenges in plumbing, construction and car repair just as interesting as those in political science or the social and biological sciences.
Practical reasons also come into play.
Again, according to an expert in today’s Sunday Extra, Gilbert Hall with OG&E and chairman of the Eastern Workforce Investment Board, “We are facing a severe shortage of people trained in trades across the spectrum. The utility business in 2000 estimated that by 2010, 70 percent of its workers would either be eligible for retirement or will retire.”
Hall’s deadline, 2010, is not far away — something for many ninth-graders and high-schoolers to think about.