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Robert Reich is writing as if nobody in the US actually gets a vocational-technical education. Is he that wonky? What about all the young people who, um, get vocational training?

What about JobCorps?

Job Corps is a no-cost … vocational training program … that helps … people ages 16 through 24 improve the quality of their lives through vocational … training.

Funded by Congress, Job Corps has been training young adults for meaningful careers since 1964.

Here are JobCorps’ performance measures (.xls files).

            	        2007 	2008 	2009 	2010 	2011 	2012
Entered Emp/Educ	73%	66%	66%	73%	73%	75%
HSD/GED or Career Tech. Training Cert.	53%	55%	61%	64%	65%	71%
Literacy or Numeracy Gains	53%	58%	64%	65%	65%	69%

Vo-tech training is not a novel idea. It is not exotic. If vo-tech and community college will solve the United States’ labour-force problems, why aren’t they already solved?

Imagine some young person acts on his blogpost: takes a nursing or HVAC diploma instead of a university degree. Finishes the course and can’t find a job, or can’t find enough work, or can’t find well-paid work. What’s Reich going to say?

  • “Not my fault”?
  • “Should have done more research”?
  • “I can’t be held responsible”?
  • “Shouldn’t have relied upon what I wrote”?

Exactly.

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17 notes

  1. marbleflakes reblogged this from isomorphismes
  2. colttaylor answered: I’ve never even heard of Job Corps
  3. voidlingg answered: there’s no short-term interest in solving it
  4. isomorphismes posted this