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#374. Pathways to Prosperity Project – Vocational Education Follow-up II

Posted on | The Agurban
Pathways to Prosperity Project – Vocational Education Follow-up II

In another follow-up to our Vocational Education Agurbans, we want to share some interesting information we learned from the Pathways to Prosperity Project report, completed by the Harvard Graduate School of Education. The report is subtitled “Meeting the Challenge of Preparing Young Americans for the 21st Century”.

  • – 27 percent of people with post-secondary licenses or certificates – credentials short of an associate’s degree – earn more than the average bachelor’s degree recipient.
  • – Demand for middle-skilled professionals is exploding in the nations’ hottest industry, healthcare, which has added over half a million jobs during the Great Recession. Openings for registered nurses and health technologists – positions that typically require an associate’s degree – are expected to grow by more than 1 million by 2018.
  • – There will be a huge number of job openings in so-called blue-collar fields like construction, manufacturing, and natural resources, though many will simply replace retiring baby boomers. These fields will provide nearly 8 million job openings, 2.7 million of which will require a post-secondary credential.
  • – The Georgetown Center of Education and the Workforce projects there will be 47 million job openings in the decade ending in 2018, many of which will be replacements for workers who have retired or quit. While they predict that a record 63 percent of these openings will require some college education or better, they say that nearly half of these post-secondary positions will only require an A.A. degree or less. And virtually all of the sub-B.A. jobs will require the kinds of real-world skills students master in career and technical education. These include positions in nursing, health technology, commercial construction, manufacturing, and natural resources.
Not all students are college bound. While we would like to see more vocational education offered in high schools, hopefully technical schools and community colleges will adjust to fill this void. We will keep watch.