The mismatch between job openings and skilled applicants is a hot topic these days. Every few days there’s another interview with a CEO who says he has a lot of job openings he can’t fill; then there’s a panel discussion calling for the country to do a better job of workforce preparation.
Let me tell you why an attempt at this failed some 20 years ago. A blue-ribbon committee in a major North Carolina county got behind something called a “tech-prep” program.” High schools would team with industry councils to offer apprenticeship programs in such fields as automotive repair and computer programming. There were jobs waiting out there that paid more than $50,000.
The program was promoted widely as a successful approach to workforce preparation.
And just what could be wrong with that? Just one thing. Parents who had been conditioned by years of “a college education for everyone” believed that their children had the right to end up in white-collar positions. They had absolutely no interest in seeing them join the “workforce.”
Posted on January 27, 2012
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