Our Education Industry Needs Some Retooling
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After I graduated from that liberal re-education camp in Chapel Hill, I looked for the job to which I felt entitled. I found it at a Chapel Hill radio station that proudly paid me minimum wage. The pay was the same when I started to work for local station WEEB.
Even in the 1970s, a college degree in liberal arts was not a ticket to success. It was only when I went to "trade school" that I found a place in society and a career.
That "trade" was the practice of law. It might have been an electrical school or even a school for plumbers. The fact is that general education in the liberal arts is a wonderful thing. But it is not - and for many years has not been - the prerequisite young people need to create successful careers.
Currently, students go to 12 years of grade school, then to something called "college." They expect to find a job at the end of that 16-year road. Today, about 50 percent of new college graduates are unemployed or underemployed.
Mindlessly funding 16 years of general education with a goal of "academic literacy" is a cruel joke to a student if he finds no way to make a living based upon the skills he has studied. And mindlessly funding liberal arts at a school just because it has a great basketball team is a net loss for the taxpayer.
As much as the overpaid and underworked English professors might not like it, our state-funded higher education institutions as well as our high schools must be integrated into an overall state employment plan.
First, we must survey the jobs most likely to be required over the next 20 to 30 years. Then we must fund those institutions best equipped to give training in those areas.
It could very well be that traditionally African-American institutions like North Carolina A&T and traditionally marginalized schools like UNCG (formerly Women's College) - with their emphasis on technical education, such as their Joint School of Nanoscience and Nanoengineering - may be better equipped to train future workers than campuses like UNC-Chapel Hill with its emphasis on "well-rounded" education. If so, the more ignored campuses may need to be expanded at the expense of those which have historically experienced the greatest prestige.
Next, our schools of education must graduate more secondary-school teachers with technical backgrounds. Today, schools for teachers mostly teach liberal arts teachers how to teach. While there will always be a need to teach high school students basic English and history, there is also a need to recruit many, if not most, high school teachers with backgrounds in such diverse technical fields as commercial horticulture and machine tooling.
While there is some such vocational education now going on, it is generally reserved for those who are considered not to be "college material." In actuality, educational culture needs to be reversed.
Today, those who are not "smart enough" to understand "King Lear" are told they need to learn plumbing. The new culture should tell those who are not "smart enough" to program a manufacturing robot that they are consigned to a secondary tract of English literature.
But regardless of tract, given the fact that the college dropout rate remains at about 50 percent, every student who graduates from high school must be qualified to do a job which an employer needs done. Even standardized tests need to be modified in similar fashion to those used by the armed forces to evaluate mechanical literacy as well as reading comprehension.
It is often stated that education is an "investment" in our prosperity. But we continue to educate in the same nonspecific way we taught in the 19th century. The result is a work force with an analog education in a digital world. Over the next few years, our secondary schools, our universities and our employers must partner to create a nimble educational system that will retool education to meet the needs of a modern work force.
Where education complements the needs of employers, then the result is a good-paying job for the graduate and a higher tax base for the state. And that improved intellectual tax base can become the basis of the lower unemployment and long-term prosperity we all seek.
Robert M. Levy is chairman of the Moore County Republican Party. Contact him at Law52@prodigy.net.
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Comments
The_AnonymusProfit 1 year ago
Nice letter bob....But leave Dean, MJ, and Roy out of the mix.
PBinNC 1 year ago
Many years ago I worked with a young lady and we became very good friends with her and her husband. Her husband never made it past 8th grade, but he was a very good plumber and worked on large construction projects. He used to envy my husband and my college educations. We kept telling him that he didn't need what we did, but we needed what he did. Within a few years he had his own plumbing company that expanded to a fleet of 13 vehicles. He could buy and sell us a hundred times and have plenty left over. Yet he is the same person he was years ago. The emphasis on liberal arts for those with no interest in it is a waste of time and money, particularly if it puts undue strain on a family's finances.
nothingspecial 1 year ago
So well said and timely, Mr. Levy, thank you
MattWilson 1 year ago
Well said Mr. Levy and considering the Prez said something quite similar in the state of the union, hopefully we can get bi-partisan agreement/cooperation.
Toyboy52 1 year ago
I truly believe that this is something on which both McCrory and Dalton could agree. Perhaps it should be forwarded it to both.
RodHarter 1 year ago
Mr. Levy,
How short is your memory? You seem to have forgotten that law school required you to have a four year degree. The same is true for numerous other vocations that require advanced study. Your dismissal of liberal arts with snarky comments is ill-served, especially by the Chair of major political party. Educational reform is far more complicated than slanderous attacks on professors and ill-advised students. You have an issue, suggest a solution. That's called leadership. Anybody can throw stones with little regard for where they fall.
nothingspecial 1 year ago
Mr. Levy pens the one political commentary this week that actually thoughtfully discusses an important issue and look where everyone gravitates instead. My first degree was in liberal arts and I completely agree with Mr. Levy. Why is it the Republicans are the only folks thinking strategically about solving problems such as education? Our Democratic friends can be plenty strategic when it comes to solidifying their power but otherwise they only seem to throw money at problems, such as education.
JimHeim 1 year ago
There was a time when colleges and universities were more than trade schools. I guess we're going to have to get used to diminished expectations in a lot of areas.
With luck China and India will step up and graduate people with more than job skills.
And work at WEEB hasn't changed much!
Toyboy52 1 year ago
@Jim: colleges need to be "more than studies in liberal arts" The problem is that China and India, our competitors, graduate people with job skills as a first tier and then secondarily people with liberal arts degrees. Question: Is knowledge of radio engineering now just as important to you as a liberal arts degree? Your superior knowledge of radio is probably more valuable to our economy than your ability to discuss the essence of a dialectic.
JimHeim 1 year ago
My liberal arts education helped me with my technical work. Being able to communicate and understand a wide range of topics has made me a much more rounded individual.
While I wear the badges of geek and techie with pride, I was a liberal arts major. I'm glad that my world extends far beyond electronics, however much I fooling around with high-tech stuff.
nothingspecial 1 year ago
You're talking about post high school education having at least a dual purpose of broadening a person and training them for a career - that is so true and important.
I told my daughters that a great part of the advantage of having earned their under graduate degrees, regardless of major, was that employers value someone who stuck with something/a goal for 4 years. That is not so true anymore.
Nezumi 1 year ago
Like Jim, I was also liberal arts with the addition of Asian studies. I'm in high tech as well and it is a huge challenge - but the work I did as an undergrad has had a huge positive impact in my in my career thus far.
DoubleHeroides 1 year ago
Mr. Levy, I understand that you placed “trade” in quotations when you compared law school to a trade school and I feel as though you did that because even you understand that comparing law school to a trade school or trade education as it is commonly understood is a ludicrous exercise. Law school requires you to write, read, interpret, speak and above all else argue clearly all of which point to a predominately liberal arts education and background as you admittedly stated you have. To disregard the benefits that you gained from such a background to serve your own ends is a bit of a disgrace to the institution that you received the degree from. One wonders if your partisan ideology and noted dislike of the general term “liberal” has led you to this point of disparaging a liberal arts education because it produces those that practice the liberal arts, or is it a dislike of Orange County and the Town of Chapel Hill for their predominately Democratic base? Understanding and digesting King Lear is a noble effort no less or more than fixing faulty plumbing or programming robots, it is just that they are different. The issue is how to find the balance, not to tip the scale from one “extreme” as you seem to be indicating, to another. The question now becomes how do you support your argument? You have made several grand statements about the needs of our future employers, that they need more technically proficient employees with trade educations. What are the numbers looking like that you have that tell you that employers are in need of those types of skills? Further, it was not long ago, I believe the Fall or Winter of 2011 that the news came out that Moore County was one of the fastest growing counties in the nation in terms of poverty and it was due in large part because of the excessive number of tradesmen and tradeswomen that we have. I do not have trouble finding a reasonably priced plumber, electrician or building contractor. Most of the time I can throw a dinner roll in a restaurant in Southern Pines or Aberdeen and hit at least two trades people. The issue is not a lack of people with professional trade educations the issue in my mind is twofold: The first is that everyone wants the American Dream which is to make a good amount of money, to become successful and to have a good quality of life. For many this means obtaining a strong financial foothold in life and this is gained the fastest and more regularly from higher paying jobs which come from having a higher degree. You yourself have a law degree and I presume do very well for yourself. What were the motivating factors for your higher education?
DoubleHeroides 1 year ago
The second issue is that we have not and are not incentivizing those very teachers that you claim should be providing these educations to our children. In business as in life there is an expression: You get what you pay for. The more that we underpay, take advantage of, abuse and neglect our teachers the more we are going to pay for it in the long term. You are correct that we should concentrate on the educators but where we disagree slightly is that I would like us to reform education to the point that becoming a teacher isn’t the fall back of a hippie with an English degree as you so imply but is the refuge of the academic, the intellectual, the intelligent, thinking person that has a drive to make the future a brighter place through the kids they are teaching. Now that would be an education reform I can believe in.
nothingspecial 1 year ago
I disagree. I think we need more competition among schools, we need to reduce the stranglehold unions and increasing administrations have on sucking pay away from teachers and make parents more responsible for their kids.