Have you sensed the transition that appears to be taking place across the country regarding how people view industrial jobs? For years, the path to life and career success has been firmly routed through four-year colleges. Recently, however, many have started to realize that a college degree is not only costly, but also not a guarantee of either career or life success.
At the same time, people have begun to understand that the factories of today are not the dark, dirty places of previous generations. Instead, they’re clean, comfortable workplaces that are filled with a wide variety of advanced technologies that require workers with significant skills that rival those acquired in traditional colleges and universities.
This reshaping of the popular opinion of the industrial workplace has been ongoing for many years now. However, it has been given a boost recently by “the work President Joe Biden steered through Congress in his first two years, including the CHIPS and Science Act, the Inflation Reduction Act, and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. These historic investments in semiconductor manufacturing, construction, energy, and health care jobs will reshape our economy,” according to a recent opinion piece in Newsweek by authors Ro Khanna and Randi Weingarten.
Khanna and Weingarten believe “[t]here is a transformative economic and educational opportunity potentially taking shape in America right now that will help our students find joy and engagement in their schooling, and provide tens of thousands of good, family sustaining jobs. It will reinvigorate the middle class—coast to coast—if we are strategic enough to take advantage of it quickly.”
So what is the educational opportunity the authors speak of? According to them, “[o]ur country has not yet made matching investments in education to create the workforce these opportunities require. But if we leverage this federal funding to also invest in career and technical education (CTE) programs through the Perkins Act, the Every Student Succeeds Act, and the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, we can make significantly more impact by starting earlier, preparing the next generation with professional, practical skills, and offering them opportunities to learn-by-doing, and prepare for jobs in these growing fields.”
The authors’ concerns highlight a fact that industrial employers have known for many years: investment in advanced automation technologies requires a highly skilled workforce that, to date, simply hasn’t kept up with the pace of change in America’s industrial facilities. And the authors are absolutely correct that the answer is greater investment in America’s career and technical education programs.
As the authors point out, “students in CTE programs graduate at phenomenal rates, and are more engaged in and challenged by their schooling in ways every parent, educator, and administrator want to see.” For example, “[n]inety-four percent of students who concentrate in CTE graduate from high school, and 72 percent of them go on to college. And career education can be particularly life-changing for the 62 percent of high school students who do not go to college.”
The authors conclude that we must be “intentional about educational and career development, starting in high school, identifying school-to-career pathways, partnering with employers, creating paid internships, and offering industry-approved credentials or college credit…[to] set young people on a path to a career or higher education, or both, and create a stronger workforce in the process. We just have to invest in our students as much as we invest in the jobs we want them to fill. To us, that’s an investment worth making.”
Here at Amatrol, we could not agree more wholeheartedly. As experts in CTE training, we’ve been working hard for years to change the perception of skilled trades. Yet, we understand that more must be done. There is work still to do.
This effort must include all interested parties, including parents, educators, and industry representatives. The historical stigma associated with the skilled trades will eventually fade away if students learn how challenging, satisfying, and lucrative positions in the skilled trades can be.
For years, Amatrol has been helping with this effort by working together with industry and educational institutions to design training programs featuring eLearning curriculum and hands-on experience with trainers equipped with industrial components workers will encounter on the job.
The experts at Amatrol know how rewarding careers in manufacturing and other skilled trades can be, and they’ve been dedicated for years to helping learners gain the knowledge and hands-on skills they need to secure satisfying jobs.
Amatrol’s training programs include cutting-edge technologies in a wide variety of areas, including electrical, electronics, automation, HVACR, process control, pneumatics, hydraulics, and more. Visit Amatrol online to learn more about its many different types of industrial training programs. For more information about how Amatrol can help you inspire and train the next generation of workers, contact an expert at Amatrol today!
