Just what DeVos wants, presumably!!! More money into her pockets from unsuspecting students and their families.
Welcome to the Trump kleptocracy!!!
So let’s all speak up and tell Congress and this panel to rewrite the darned thing, already. No short certificate coverage. For-profits can step up their came to offer more conventional, longer programs that can be of true benefit. I’m also sure there are other odd little jiggles in the bill that need to be excised in order to really work for the students and not the schools, for profit or not-for-profit. Get to work on those.
Bring back vo-tech in high school!
6
I would like it if States supported more apprenticeship programs. Because one, they're connected to a real job and potential employer at the end of the apprenticeship. Also, two, they confer actual work experience which can be valued across labor markets. Unlike some certificate programs, like state specific paralegal certificates, which constrain job training to one jurisdiction.
7
This is so frustrating. In NYC there are for profit as well as non profit trade schools and as school counselors we always work to get students to the non profits, but the for profit schools are really good at marketing and make everything look easy and glamorous. This is so hard to combat and this bill will do nothing to help.
6
@Tai L It's kind of common sense that for profit school are bad
@William Smith we are talking about high school kids for the most part here. Common sense is often not their strongest suit.
"The Jobs Act would drop the minimum to eight weeks for any “job training program” offered by an accredited college...."
There it is, in the fourth paragraph. If the accreditation process only accredited programs where the graduates were likely to get gainful employment at decent wages, the problem would be solved.
As long as the rules can't separate the sheep from the goats, the students and the government will continue to get fleeced.
2
Short term job training is like airport security, providing nothing more than the illusion of addressing the problem while shovelling money to private entities. Which may come back as campaign donations or corporate sinecures for politicians, the 21st Century definition of a win-win.
8
@Steve Bruns Great Comment. Tim Kaine is a shill for the financial elite. This is a classic corporatist democrat illusion. Appear to be helping the masses while helping the financial elite more.
A key requirement for any such training program is the provision of independent career guidance advice and information to potential learners including real information about labour market opportunities and outcomes. Without such information, US citizens make blind training choices and it becomes a waste of their time and of taxpayers money. The legislation requires some tweaking to protect potential learners from exploitation by both private and public providers.
2
The headline is wrong-headed. These are not well-meaning programs. Rather, they are thoughtless at best.
Jobs training programs must be tailored to the regions they are offered in, in coordination with local and state employment authorities who would not only match the education programs on offer to available jobs, but also pursue bringing industries to the area as would be workers receive their training.
This wasn't done in the aftermath of the Great Recession and there are many examples of attempts to retrain workers whose factories closed or left an area, without any regard to what was left in those communities or the fact that those newly retrained workers did not have the ability to relocate without assistance.
It takes a lot of coordination. Either jobs come to an area or workers go to where those jobs are. Either way, there are expenses involved that must be accounted for that fall well outside the education plan. Offering funds for training deals with only a small part of the problem
---
Things Trump Did While You Weren't Looking
https://www.rimaregas.com/2019/01/01/things-trump-did-while-you-werent-looking-2019/
2
If the government is going to pay for high quality education it has a duty to the taxpayers to verify that high quality education has been delivered. The government should surely pay for nothing less. And, as Ronald Reagan famously said, "trust but verify".
5
Betsy DeVos laughing all the way to the bank, as she continues to try to destroy public education. About all can hope is that those students and younger folks have the time and energy to examine the fine print and run away from anything “for profit “ in these schools, or go look up the fraud that was the Trump University.
7
Why are we exploiting the poor and not the wealthy?
2
@S Baldwin: First, who is we? Second, the poor are politically weak and the wealthy speak louder with their money. De Vos is dismantling all of the protection afforded the poor trainees during the Obama administration.
3
@S Baldwin Because 'We' don't yet control the democratic party. The financial elite control it. Like Bloomberg. Sounds liberal-ish except for who is in charge when push comes to shove, like who gets tax cuts, and medicare for all.
Once the party is run by justice democrats and our revolution democrats it will actually have integrity. It will not be the slave of big money or financial elite donations. It will win and win and win when that happens.
There has to be some kind of oversight for these programs and "for profit" schools should be barred from participation. What's clear is that most of these students don't have the knowledge to make appropriate decisions. I work in recruiting and I see too many people with these worthless degrees that cost far more than they are worth even amortized over years. No need to get a degree to learn how to paint nails, cut hair, do make-up. $10 an hour jobs won't repay the tuition.
If students are going to get loans they need to meet the following criteria:
1) No for-profit schools allowed (these are vultures who will sign up anyone with a pulse for an overpriced "certificate" that means nothing and helps no one and pays only a little more than minimum wage.
2) Students need skills that will enable them to have a profession - carpenter, car mechanic, welder, nurse, plumber, electrician, appliance repair, etc.
3) Apprencticeships should be mandatory.
And remember, there is an underground illegal immigrant population that is working in landscape, nail salons, hair salons, painters, roofers, etc. You cannot compete with these people on price.
4
Why might "The benefits of longer-term credentials, by contrast, persist." compared with programs conferring short-term credentials? After all, few college programs actually train people to perform specific jobs. I suspect it has a lot to do with the correlation between successful completion of a long-term program and a stable life-style as well as an attitude of persistence. How often does the failure to obtain or hold a job come down to issues like pregnancy, child care, divorce/break-up, transportation, frequent moves, substance abuse? Government can't eliminate all of these challenges but it could help with some if a more comprehensive approach was undertaken.
1
I am familiar with cosmetology in NCY as a relation is practicing it in NY City
The reported salaries (" typical earnings of $12,272" ) are low because this is a profession that is dominated by immigrants from low wage countries, eager to get into the US and willing to work for little.
In response to the fact that this is an immigration dominated profession NYS's license application can be filled out in English , Spanish/Español, Haitian-Creole/Kreyòl Ayisyen, Italian/Italiano, Korean/한국어, Russian/Pусский, , Chinese/中文 .
Second, the reported salaries are likely underestimates. They way it works for my relation, in a nail saloon in NYC, is that she works for a low nominal salary, reported to the IRS. Her real income are tips (typically $ 20 for a nail job).
The system, well understood by her customers, minimizes her Federal, State and NYC taxes
US citizens entering this profession need to be aware that this it is dominated by immigrants- that, not the schools set their salaries
13
If you want to know how this will work out look to Australia. A program taken straight from that 'playbook' cost us billions, left students with crippling debts ( that in many cases they did not know they would incur) and put nobody into a job (except the con men running the "training schools".
It is better to subsidise apprenticeships; with actual businesses employing trainees that then combine 'book' and practical learning.
16
Same old worthless solutions. Let's train the poor and uneducated. Government has been doing this for decades and while some percentage of people going through these programs have wound up with jobs, many more have failed out.
And how about all the people who are 45 or older and can't get a decent job, even if they are fully technology trained (or capable of being trained)?
How about the millions of available workers who have been eliminated from the unemployment count that could fill the approximately 7 million open positions?
How about doing something different since we know that repeating the same strategies that have cost bucket loads of $$$ but have ultimately failed when weighted against the money and resources spent on them?
15
At the very least, there should be a preferential option for community college courses and a requirement for all programs, public or private, to disclose data on placement prospects and average incomes of their graduates.
7
@Pdxtran
Community colleges and for profit schools have identical default rates on federal subsidized student loans.
This is probably related to the fact that the defaulting students are drawn from the same pool of high school graduates who are unqualified for admission to four year schools.
The Obama administration made a big show of attacking for profit schools. During a Christmas holiday weekend, the reported that their analysis of student loan defaults was initially in error, and that community colleges and for profit schools had identical statistics.
1
I agree that there are for profit schools that do not provide sufficient vocational value to their students, but the same is true of many accredited Universities, so I think the baseline for this legislation should be "better than what people currently get".
The fact than an institution is not for profit does not by itself make it good.
The fact that an institution is accredited does not mean that it helps its students get jobs (admittedly only one of the goals of college).
Lets have a consistent baseline. No funding from the government for educational programs with less than (say) audited outcomes report of 80%+ of students getting job in field of study within 6 months of graduation with a minimum wage for each field. Lets apply that to all traditional colleges as well and improve the focus on outcomes across the sector.
2
@Peter
The you need to take regional wages into account. The after-college wages of graduates are highly correlated with the average wages of the market the school is in. Thus, graduates of a mediocre college in Boston are going to earn significantly more than graduates of an excellent college in, say, rural Maine.
3
@SAO
There is nothing preventing the statistics being based on location of the job. If an accountant in Manhattan gets paid more than one in rural Arkansas, there is more than enough big data to demonstrate that $35,000 in rural Arkansas for an entry level accountant is more than the equivalent of $60,000 in Manhattan.
What the author fails to understand is that many of these short term certificate programs qualify students for certifications and provide hands on training hours — without which these students could not work in the job they are training for. The problem is less about the colleges, more about the fact that these and so many other jobs don’t offer living wages. And working as a medical assistant with the possibility of benefits and a stable work schedule is more attractive than food service and retail for many.
7
@Tammy
Another deficiency is that hairdressers, the profession most often cited as being poorly paid, has a lot of underground income, from underreported tips from hourly paid workers to "rent a chair" arrangements where little of the income is reported. Frequently, hairdressers and manicurists report only enough income to qualify for the earned income credit while maintaining eligibilir=ty for food stamps.
In fact, there is a government agency which specializes in short-term job training programs and whose graduates seem for the most part to put their skills to effective use afterwards. That agency, is, of course, the U.S. military, which starts off recruits with an intense boot camp followed by several weeks or months of intense training in a specialty. Seems to work quite well. Perhaps some attention could be directed towards how they accomplish this feat.
7
@Cloudy An obvious difference. In the military, the basic training graduates then spend a number of years under close supervision continuing and developing their skills.
Basic training would be far less effective if the graduates went back onto the street with minimal follow-up.
6
The leading cause of personal bankruptcy in the United States is medical debt. The fifth-leading cause is student debt.
Now, with the help of ignorant (or corrupt) legislators, student debt can start racing up the ladder to compete with medical debt.
If you're fearful that for-profit medicine will eventually impoverish anybody who isn't rich, wait till you see the damage for-profit-education can do.
26
@camorris As someone who has dealt with both of these types of debt, I spent the majority of my post-collegiate life paying off my student debt (and foregoing many of the simple life experiences of my peers). I live in fear, as many people do, of a medical episode for the very reason that it could wipe out any savings and render me homeless. Life is tread very cautiously.
In the series of evolution, the current time may be referred to as pre- Upper Echelon. The poor and middle classes will soon become extinct, leaving behind only the top 1+%, and possibly some aliens (though I’m sure someone is already working to design a wall around the planet).
You have to keep your knowledge and skills up-to-date. Professionals require continuing education.
2
Most people, rich or poor, remember Job Classes. They remember them are significant. So why are current students not taking a well remembered series of classes. Maybe they should be figured into the cost of a good education? Probably save lots of useless expenses to the entire education system.
2
@Richardthe Engineer
No "job classes" were ever offered in schools I attended; nor are they offered in schools where I teach today.
Are you referring to vocational schools? Or shop classes which were offered in some larger high schools?
5
Perhaps a better way to effectively train potential employees is a form of internship, with the government helping to pay for the company’s cost in administering and training such internships. Ideally the intern would also receive some payment, but even without pay, there would be no student loans to repay: the goal being a win-win-win for all participants: intern, if successful enough, lands a job; employer, with a potential hire, and govt assistance for the risk of taking on and training; the govt, for getting better returns on its money than the current for-profit schools that only benefit the schools.
Here where I work, we take on interns, summer students, and part-time employees with little or no experience, with the hope that they will succeed and can be retained full-time. All without any government assistance. Some hires move on to better jobs as a result of both education and job experiencr, for which we heartily congratulate them. Others stay on, or move within our organization for decades.
Other employers may not have means to do so without assistance, as it is costly to hire, train and manage.
This requires more administrative investment and oversight from government, and industries willing to participate with real employment potential - not just taking advantage of taxpayer money and low-cost labor.
15
You can't blame schools for cosmetology while most areas require special licenses for it.
2
Some people do not have the interest, outlook, aptitude or disposition needed to learn any job in demand in the modern economy. Instead of worsening their plight by enriching job training scammers at public expense, a guaranteed national subsistence income would go far to ameliorate many social problems.
3
@Robert M That's true, though I'd suggest that many do have the interest, just not the aptitude.
People who design training programs forget that millions of Americans, through no fault of their own, have cognitive skills between the low average and impaired range.
They don't meet criteria for SSI, as they're not technically intellectually disabled, but they can't process and learn new information or skills well enough to qualify for most of today's jobs. They may have physical limitations that preclude jobs requiring physical strength and stamina. And if they've grown up in impoverished neighborhoods they might well have trauma histories and depression.
A guaranteed national subsistence income would spare them a lifetime of suffering; and instead of winding up homeless or going to jail for petty theft, they'd be spending that income near home, helping Maine Street businesses thrive.
6
@Robert M
Basically guaranteed income sounds too much like giving up on, and permanently entrenching, an official underclass. Not a liberal or progressive approach. More like despair.
@John Mcfadden Oh yeas, it would be much more "liberal or progressive" to let them starve, eh?
This is an excellent article about a subject not
on my radar screen. However, one notable subject that it did
not investigate sufficiently was the level of campaign contributions to and other forms of lobbying from for profit entities directed at the senators who worked on the legislation.
In addition, it did not detail sufficiently
why some evident control mechanisms, based upon the research that is reported upon and designed
to contain the ample opportunities for fraud,
were gutted, if not entirely removed from the bill. Are we
really that incapable of learning from bad experiences?
Not presenting this type of background information to
the reader makes it difficult to evaluate whether this
bill has incorporated in any serious way, any of the lessons learned (presumably) from the many previous experiences with blatant fraud, and, as
a result, why this was allowed to occur.
It is insufficient just to call this a well meaning bipartisan bill
and then hoorah it because of that. If the bill guts needed quality control mechanisms to prevent repeats of the scams of the past, then it does not serve the public good, and exposes students of modest means to big wastes of their own very limited resources.
It thereby adds one more brick to the foundation of cynicism and distrust in a congress that is incapable of doing anything in the general interest before it genuflects to private industry lobbyists and rewards its campaign donors.
2
Thinking that a few weeks of training will result in a career of anything other than minimum wage is a fairy tale.
14
Good article. I would have liked to also hear the senators' response
3
The New York Times should amend its headline. The reality is that most of these so called job training programs will not help anyone except the people who own and run these “training programs”. I cannot understand why our government supports this. They are a waste of both time and money.
12
The statement that "the existing Pell Grant system largely lets colleges police themselves. There is no accountability for whether students get jobs after they graduate or how much they earn" is absolutely incorrect.
In order for colleges and vocational schools to receive Federal funds (Pell Grants, Stafford Loans, etc), they must be accredited. To remain accredited, benchmarks must be met for things like employment rates, graduation rates, certification/license rates, etc (generally 70% or higher). Income has bounced back and forth between being a benchmark for Federal funds, but it is reported in various reports and the Dept of Education keeps (kept) track of that. In the recent-past, the non-profit community colleges were not held accountable for employment assistance, rates, etc so they had no accountability at all. Their graduates were on their own once they completed an AA degree (which is almost useless nowadays).
Not all for-profit vocational schools are bad and community colleges are certainly far from ideal in many aspects. Some short term programs are great and others are a waste. With a little research, a potential student should be able to figure that out.
2
@Cooper Good point about programs receiving Pell must be accredited. Although there was some issues with the accreditation agencies that let Private for-profit schools continue to be accredited with little accountability. I know Obama-era rules were trying to change that and ignoring accreditations from certain groups, but they've been fought for awhile by the for-profits.
The most powerful part of the piece, in my opinion, is that even if students are getting jobs, they are not jobs that are paying anything near a living wage. The median wage for cosmetologists is less than $20,000, but students are paying that and more to get certified in that profession. So a school may be accredited, because the graduation and employment rates are good, but students are still getting the raw end of the deal because they are not getting an education that will allow them to earn a living wage.
7
@Cooper But once government pays and removes the customer-provider relationship, pricing is no longer free market based, and generally results in higher tuition for all, higher debt for those who cannot rely solely on such grants, and of course it's all virtue signaling.
1
@Rose If so, what sort of education have these "students" received after 12+ years of government run "education" camps? Who pays more than it's worth? Only those who are using other people's money of course. They would never make this choice using their own funds.
And cosmetics is something many do for themselves, yet it's licensed by most jurisdictions, which just ups the costs to do what doesn't really need more than basic training.
1
People have been aware of the problems identified in this article for decades, but it seems almost impossible to build awareness of policy makers -- perhaps because for-profit job training is such an enormous industry and lobby. Also throwing money at job training programs sounds like a good idea, even though people familiar with the programs know that most of them are a waste. There is no god solution, but channeling most funds to highly accredited non-profit institutions such as community colleges and union training funds as well as earmarking far more for career and academic counseling and placement seem to be the best feasible way to go.
8
An 8 week program is not sufficient training for any job. In order to learn a skill it takes time but time is the one thing that employers do not want to invest in when it comes to potential or current employees. Online courses do not offer enough experience either. However, in America it seems that certifications and diplomas have replaced solid experience. People are hired and expected to know all aspects of a job before they ever set foot on company grounds. If one cuts hair and has had enough experience that's great. The same goes for being an auto mechanic. But even they had to learn their trade somewhere.
Why do we refuse to acknowledge that the best short term solution is not a quickie course with a certificate at the end of it but a course that requires studying and provides the basis for going further? Job training programs, and I took part in one to get into IT, do not, by and large, offer useful career paths. They are done on the cheap and hurt people when they cannot find jobs. It's demoralizing. There are two things we can do in America: start have apprenticeships and offer real retraining for people who need it. Otherwise all we're doing is wasting money and people.
15
@hen3ry How much schooling do you think is needed to cut hair? If you can't learn to do that with entry level skills after 8 weeks, making them spend more money and time isn't going to solve anything.
@David Did you read what I wrote? Obviously not. Here it is again: If one cuts hair and has had enough experience that's great. The same goes for being an auto mechanic. But even they had to learn their trade somewhere.
2
You don't just "cut hair". I am not a hairstylist but I have friends who are. Styling and coloring hair require many skills if you're going to do more than trim somebody's ends. In a high-end salon, you can literally pay hundreds of dollars just for the hair styling and then we go into color and highlights and conditioning treatments and extensions and who knows what else. There are many services and treatments that people get in a salon. Even a good neighborhood salon that does not charge hundreds of dollars offers more than just a haircut; good stylists have a following of clients that will go where they go. Any job that is not an academic or Tech job is assumed by many to be so simple that anyone could learn it in a short time and be good at it. If we had more respect for the real life jobs that are required to keep Society going, we would train people properly and pay them what they deserve for the hard and necessary work they do. This is from a person who has worked in White Collar jobs, couldn't stand it, and proudly works in Blue Collar jobs where only people who can cut it last. You'd better hope your house wasn't built by someone who just had a few weeks training. When you go to get your car fixed, I bet you've already had the experience of someone who calls themselves a mechanic and cannot do anything with your car. When you find the one who knows what they're doing it's like finding gold and you stay with them. You can bet they trained for more than eight weeks.
9
Almost any time a public service is handed over to private, for-profit operators, the function is inevitably soiled and does not produce the desired results. You can find overwhelming evidence of this in our broken healthcare system.
Pell grants should be limited to non-profit colleges and universities. Better yet, limit them to public institutions only.
The solution would be that simple if only legislators could forgo bribes from the for-profit education lobby and actually serve the people they were elected to represent.
23
@LIChef Central planning doesn't work. Legislators already follow the money. Hoping that it could be better is a misunderstanding that power corrupts.
How to get big money from people who have nothing.
10
There is a cosmetology "school" a few miles from my home. I decided to stop one day to see if I could save a few dollars having a student lower my ears. The 2" band of hair running from one ear around the back of my scalp to the opposite ear hardly seems to warrant the going rate of $15.00 for putting a 1/4" spacer on an electric clipper, making a couple of quick passes back and forth, followed by a few licks with trim clipper to square the bottom edge. My wife won't let me shave my head and be done with it, nor will she cut it for me with a hair trimmer I've had around for 25 years.
So, back to the school experience/experiment. Two women I took to be instructors chatted in the front waiting area. One took my money and said a student would be ready for me in a few minutes. There were only 3 or 4 women in the training area, half-heartedly working over manikin skulls with disheveled wigs. The room had the lighting and atmosphere of a mortuary more than that of a place of learning and potential. The instructor at the front had told me most of the students were already gone for the day (it was about 2 or 3 pm). What students remained made up in ennui what they lacked in enthusiasm. After about 10 minutes (about twice as long as I generally spend in a barber's chair), the young lady was finished and I tipped her $5, thanked her and left. With what I had already paid the instructor, my haircut cost exactly what it would have in a commercial shop.
I felt sorry for her.
11
I suspect both Democrats and Republicans have among their sponsors owners of for profit schools. And they believe, like Milton Friedman "There is one and only one social responsibility of business – to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud." Apparently advertising is not deception of fraud. So if the "education" does not increase the chances of most students to earn more money, its not a problem. And strangely most schools don't track things like the success of their students.
Since if these schools for some reason fail to make enough money they can close or even declare bankruptcy, any student loan should be erased if a student goes bankrupt or if the school goes out of business within a period a student could reasonably pay back the loan. This should be true for all currently existing loans as well.
7
@duncan
If a school declares bankruptcy before its students can repay their loans, are you suggesting the country's taxpayers should repay the loans?
Maybe insurance companies would be willing to offer plans that would pay back student loans, if a school declared bankruptcy. The government could require a school to have such an insurance plan before its students could get government loans.
1
Match students up with company based training and forget the private schools. That way students can enter the job market with a skill needed by employers.
4
What company is going to train cosmetologists? To my knowledge, no Amazon of cosmetology exists. Even the big names are owner owned franchises. The workers easily move from one shop to another.
The government should fund company-based training programs so businesses that complain about not being able to find enough skilled workers have incentive to hire and train workers.
The workers would have to pay the subsidy back to the government if they leave within two years so the company doesn't lose their "investment" in the worker. The company would receive a tax credit for a worker that leaves so they are made whole.
That way the job training matches the need of the market. The risks is shared between the employee, the employer and the government.
8
There are some things that should never be for profit: 1. Health Care 2. Prison 3. Education
68
Walk into any Sally Beauty Supply or similar store and you will find most if not all of the employees went to cosmetology school who were then unable to find a job afterwards.
Most of these schools have a large open to the public salon where all students are required to work post graduation for 3 - 6 months at minimum wage in order to receive their graduation certificate. No indentured service, no certificate.
7
Invest in vocational training programs in high school....like they used to. And start investing money again in community colleges. Community college used to be very low cost, almost free, when I was attending 40 years ago. It was cheap even 20 years ago. Now community college tuition is 2/3 of state college tuition. You don't have housing costs, but still it's not even close to what it used to be.
Besides this is all about loan guarantees not grant money. It's a big win for the loan industry. High interest rates on guaranteed money, protected by laws that prohibit bankruptcy.
45
@Sharon
Invest in vocational training programs in high school....like they used to.
This is what they do in England. Kids finish "grade 13" and it's the equivalent of a year of junior college here. They do it with hospitality, cooking, hairstyling, industrial tech, and health care related fields as well. We could do that here, but that would make way too much sense.
18
I'm surprised this article doesn't mention the State Board exam required by many states to get your license to practice cosmetology and other vocations/trades. In cosmetology school there's so much focus on passing the State Board exam that there is very little practical training on cutting, coloring, etc. - the skills you need to get and keep clients to make money. There needs to be a better balance of State Board test prep and focus on the artistry of hair styling.
9
Let's solve the problem by not allowing GOVERNMENT money to be used at for-profit schools. Community colleges are abundant and affordable and will offer the same degrees and certifications that for-profit schools do but at considerable savings. And shame on states for siding with for-profit schools by prohibiting community colleges from offering certain programs.
23
Do we really need community schools to train people how to cut hair? Is that really the best use of the facilities?
It seems to me that the larger part of the problem is found in the "short-term" training programs. The reason they fail is that you can't possibly train someone to do a technical or skilled job in 15 weeks, let alone 8!
9
I think it's time we stop coming up with all sorts of convoluted schemes that wind up hurting the people they are supposed to help. To me, it would make far more sense to go back to providing useful vocational training in high school. Instead, we have embraced this notion that everyone should be prepared to go to college, casting too many people adrift after high school with no marketable skills. Has our greed become so great that we are willing to turn our kids into prey for hucksters who will rob them blind instead of enabling the public schools to teach them a trade?
65
Sounds like Trump University would have qualified except for the fraud lawsuits
18
I agree with much of this article and the problem of allowing educational institutions to self-regulate. It is so Trumpian that a President who had a terrible, fake University would deregulate Obama era restrictions on training colleges.
Anyway, I worked for the non-profit branch of City University of NY, a public higher education entity. We found that professors at public colleges are already busy with their own matriculated students and consider external job training programs supported by the government - even for such growth areas as nursing - as taking away from their main job. It was found, it was better to work with small commercial training school that have had a long history in their field. But these were useful simply as a step ladder toward getting the medical prep for a degree at a higher ed institution that required a few years of study.
1
Let's see - we're going to leave it up to the for-profit education companies to police themselves to ensure their programs offer good value to students? How did that work out the last time?
47
And:
1. People often seek out training for fields that are "hot" today, but will be flooded with workers in a year or so. We learned that lesson during the Clinton administration. Recall all those cosmetologists who couldn't find work that would pay the bills?
2. Most of these programs do not address the problems low-income students have when trying to earn a credential--many have to work full time, are rearing children or assisting others in child-rearing, do not have reliable access to transportation...Until these problems are addressed, drop out rates will be high.
3. Too many people leave these training programs because they do not have the knowledge base they need to acquire new information and skills. This problem is well documented and must be addressed at the K-12 levels.
19
People, people, people
Put the money into Community Colleges. Not only do they give Associate degrees in traditions college courses and do college prep for transfer to a 4 year college, they have many, many workforce degrees and certificates. At this school (HCC in Bridgeport, CT) we have Advance Manufacturing (one of the top three money makers in the state), Surgical Tech, Aviation Maintenance, and many business options. The other communities colleges in the state have other programs. The same is true for most of the states in the country. Put the money into an organization that will benefit the taxpayer.
78
@sjs
and I should add - community colleges go through a real accreditation and are held accountable.
32
@sjs
More people need to be aware of how much money they can save going to a community college. A huge chunk of the tuition people pay in college is not even specifically toward any particular degree, it's just churning through all the "mandatory" credits at the Freshman and Sophomore level they have to complete, adding many thousands of dollars to their tuition as a result.
Those credits will cost a fraction of the full cost if done at a community college, and they are almost always transferable to a 4 year university. That's what I did, I transferred to a 4 year university as a junior after doing all my mandatory courses at community college. I paid about a third for my degree what most of my peers did.
12
@Joel
So did I. Started out at a community college and now have two Masters degrees
7
We need to recognize that a college degree is not appropriate for, nor within reach of, many high school graduates.
It is therefore appropriate for government to support programs for high school graduates (and dropouts) that will provide non-college training leading to improved job prospects and careers.
The author reveals a social engineering bias: "But short training programs of wildly uneven quality are already contributing to a growing wealth gap along race and gender lines. Making them even shorter could make that disparity even worse."
Is the purpose of these programs to reduce race and gender wealth disparities, or to provide effective job training for all?
If there are any racial/gender disparities in training outcomes, then the issue is not so much the length of the training programs as what steps need to be taken to reduce such disparities.
It is also necessary to look at high school and earlier levels, where so many minorities do not perform well. If h.s. grads and dropouts can't read and write and do basic math, what kinds of jobs can they possibly qualify for besides flipping burgers and swabbing floors?
If job-training programs are failing, or if some students do not perform well in or benefit from them, then let's turn the microscope on what the causes and possible solutions are.
Let's get minorities and women into paying jobs and then worry about solving problems of racial and gender disparities in wealth; the former is hard enough to accomplish.
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@Mal T
Every time I hear somebody say that college is not for everyone, I always ask them where they are sending their children. They either won't answer me ("that's not the point") or they admit THEIR kids will be going to college.
Just saying
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@sjs. My high school graduating class had about 700 students. About a third of them went to college, and not all of those completed college.
There is ample research showing that many high school students graduate unable to read, write and do math at the most basic levels, yet are somehow expected to go to college, where inevitably most fail and drop out.
At the policy level, which is what this article is about, the government needs to provide job training and academic opportunities for students of all capabilities.
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Most of the people who can't get ahead lack a basic education. Their level of reading, writing, arithmetic, and simple reasoning is low. They need a lot more than an 8-week course to get them up to speed.
Many 'college graduates' have similar problems. A study by the US Dept of Education in 2008 showed that 5% of recent college graduates were functionally illiterate, and another 20% read at the 5th-grade level. It is not surprising that employers are reluctant to hire them.
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Many people with Bachelor's degrees are working in Home Depot, so getting an academic degree with a Pell grant may not be the answer.
Nursing skills no longer teach how to take vital signs manually because schools use digital pressure cuffs which frequently provide incorrect numbers for blood pressure readings, so Pell grants may be used to provide insufficient skills to students.
If a school is receiving government money via educational grants they should be required to submit an education plan of classes and an exit job plan with verifiable jobs.Better yet, make these certificate programs part of high school so that people get job skills without going into debt.
College is not for everyone but no one should go into debt in order to learn a skill.
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Deb, I graduated nursing school in 2016. We learned how to take blood pressure readings manually, with a sphygmomanometer and a stethoscope, and everyone had to be proficient at it, or they did not graduate. CNA's learned the same.
'Thought you should know.
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@krw
Glad to hear that because when NY nurses told me this information I was horrified. I am a health practitioner in another field but I heard this in a large outpatient facility.
This is a valuable article which points out a pitfall for expanding government funding into short term certificate programs. But what's the solution? Is it job training as suggested? We've done that before.
Seems to me the basic problem is that students are making bad choices for themselves by choosing to "invest" in these certificate programs. And when the government encourages the bad choice with seemingly free money, it exasperates the issue. I'm not so sure it's Government's job to help people make better choices for themselves. We bemoan that the rich keep getting richer, but in some cases it's our own bad choices that keep us poor. Government can't teach personal accountability.
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@deedubs There are few more certain signs of the corrosive effect of wealth inequality than blaming the victims of that skew for their "poor choices."
Job skill and training is not a morality play!
When you're done with your tantrum can we please get back to getting people into empty jobs?
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@deedubs
How competent is a kid just coming out of high school in choosing a career path? Can schools begin at the junior high level to build an aptitude profile to help find an interest and talent that could be channeled? Nothing succeeds like success. It is self reinforcing, find something you are interested in and you have a talent for, with some effort you'll get good at it and do well. Schools need to start early to help students find an interest if not a "passion".
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