Archives for October 2012

While the United States unemployment rate is above 8 percent there are 5 percent of manufacturing jobs that go unfilled because business people cannot find a sufficient number of qualified workers.  At any given time, according to the the National Association of Manufacturers, there are 600,000 open jobs.

To cut down on the number of unfilled positions, the Manufacturing Institute created a portable skills certificate – the Manufacturing Skills Certification System.  In 2011, there were 85,000 of these portable certificates permitting a worker trained in California could find a job in Missouri or Illinois.  Right now, 113 colleges across the country have partnered with the Manufacturing Institute.  And the number continues to grow as additional community colleges join the partnership.

I know of a number of alternative schools which prepare their students to be “job ready”.  It would appear that this certification program would be an additional resource.

 

Student-loan debt, at $25,000 per graduating senior, now exceeds our nation’s credit card  debt. At the same time, the percentage of young people ages 16-24 who are working (around 49 percent) is the lowest since the government has been collecting data.  Today the cost of a college can range between $100,000 and $200,000 depending on whether the college is public or private.  Only 53 percent of today’s college graduate withing six years.  Annual college tuition is rising at close to twice the rate of inflation.

Why has the pace of increased college costs been rising so quickly?  Several factors should be considered:  Colleges continue to invest on improved infrastructure by  building classrooms, dorms and stadium.  Many tenured professors are paid not to teach in order to do research. Freshmen and sophomore classes are frequently taught by part-time lecturers in large lecture halls.  These lecturers are generally on one year contracts without health care, pensions or other benefits.

How long will students (and/or their parents) continue to borrow more for a less valuable education that takes longer, with less of an ability to pay off the increased student debt?

A new report from the Institute of Medicine states, “schools should become a major focal point for preventing the spread of obesity in the United States”.  With one-third of children now considered overweight or obese, the institute predicts that the health care costs associated with obesity could become “catastrophic” in future years.  Since children spend a great deal of their waking hours in school, the report suggests that this “puts schools in a unique position to support students in getting optimum physical activity, eating healthily, and achieving and maintaining a healthy weight.”

Schools do bear a responsibility for helping children who are either overweight or obese.  However, the Institute of Medicine is ignoring the extraordinary cutbacks in education across the country.  Haven’t they seen that the cuts are being made in physical education, as well as the unimportant areas of physical exercise because these subjects are not being tested by states or the federal government’s Race to The Top?

When did parents abrogate their responsibility of insuring proper feeding of their children in the home or at restaurants?  When did the restaurant industry become absolved of their responsibility to cut back on sugar and salt in the foods they prepare?  Why isn’t the Institute of Medicine calling upon them to be the “focal point for preventing the spread of obesity?“

Those of us who use Apple Computer products (the IPhone, IPad, IBook, or IMac) know about ITunes University.  This free application (app) is available at the ITunes store.  It gives the learner (either a student or a teacher) access to complete courses from leading universities and other schools as well as the world’s largest digital catalog of free education content. The catalog includes more than 500,000 free lectures, videos, books and other resources on thousands of subjects from Algebra to Zoology.  Learners can browse collections from education and cultural institutions in 26 countries – including Stanford, Yale, MIT, Oxford, US Berkeley, MoMa, the New York Public Library and the Library of Congress.