After serving time in a Virginia prison following convictions on gun and drug-possession charges, Sean Collins-Harris decided he would fight the odds against his ever returning to white-collar work with the only tool he had: education.
“I refused to believe that I was going to be confined to a blue-collar world,” Collins-Harris, 28, says. “If they didn’t open the door for me, I would open my own. If I had a proper education, and learned how to be an organizational leader, I could start my own company; I could do my own thing.”
Today, Collins-Harris has a master’s degree and works for a property-management company in Virginia Beach. It took a personal crash that landed him inside St. Brides Correctional Center in Chesapeake, Virginia, where he says he buffed floors for 27 cents an hour, for Collins-Harris to understand what so many young American men don’t.
The U.S. workplace is polarizing between the education haves and have-nots, says David Autor, professor of economics atMassachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. So-called middle-skill jobs, typically well-paying work that doesn’t require extensive higher education, are vanishing, dividing the labor force into high- and low-skill positions. While women are moving up the knowledge ladder, male educational attainment is growing at a slower rate.
“It is terrific that women are getting higher levels of education,” Autor says. “The problem is that males are not.”
Skills Mismatch
Men lagging behind on education raises problems for how fast the U.S. economy can grow because there aren’t enough highly skilled Americans, creating a mismatch between company demand and labor-market supply. (Read more.)
CTE State Directors- Why CTE?
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Unemployment Falls Fast in U.S. If Men Get College Degree
April 25, 2012 — Veronica Van RyCommunity Colleges Not Up to 21st-Century Mission, Their Own Report Says
April 25, 2012 — Veronica Van RyCalling the American dream imperiled, the American Association of Community Colleges issued a report on Saturday intended to galvanize college leaders to transform their institutions for the 21st-century needs of students and the economy.
Released here on the opening night of the group’s annual conference, the report acknowledges the sector’s historic growth and success but also argues that even so, far too many community-college students do not graduate. The study also found employment preparation inadequately connected to the needs of the job market, and a need for two-year colleges to work more closely with high schools and baccalaureate institutions.
“As they currently function, community colleges are not up to the task before them,” it says.
The report, “Reclaiming the American Dream: Community Colleges and the Nation’s Future,” is blunt: The colleges must “redesign their institutions, their mission and their students’ educational experiences” to ensure that they meet the needs of a changing society.
Labor experts predict that the job market will demand that more Americans hold postsecondary degrees or certificates.
To help college leaders “recast” their institutions, the report lays out seven recommendations. They include halving by 2020 “the numbers of students entering college unprepared for rigorous college-level work,” and establishing “policies and practices that promote rigor, transparency, and accountability for results in community colleges.”
The document also suggests tactics for carrying out each recommendation. The association plans to create a 21st Century Center that will help two-year colleges achieve their goals by providing them with “strategic planning, leadership development, and research.” (Read more.)
