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HIRE EDUCATION –– Carving out a decent career doesn’t require spending four years and a king’s ransom in pursuit of a bachelor’s degree by Ed McKinley
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associated with it,” said Steve Klein, center director at Education Northeast, a nonprofit that provides schools with research, evaluation and technical assistance. “In the past, it typically was a place where you put kids who didn’t function in a traditional academic, ‘sit tsom eht era dnetta ot egelloc tahw dna rojam a gnisoohC and get’ kind of classroom.” .ekamthe reve lpast, liw elpoe[vocational p tsom snoisiced laeducation] icnanfi tnatropmi “In CTE continues the vo-tech tradition of helping typically was a place where you to prepare young people for put kids who didn’t function in a honorable and often wellpaid manual work as plumbtraditional academic, ‘sit and get’ ers or electricians, while also kind of classroom.” becoming broad enough to give students a taste of what –Steve Klein, center director at Education Northeast might lie ahead for them in prestigious fields like engineering and healthcare. world of work, teaches high schoolers how “More and more educators view CTE as abstract academics apply to real jobs, helps this huge umbrella,” noted James Greenan, college students understand where their chair and professor of CTE at Purdue majors may take them in life, and refurUniversity. “CTE encompasses all careers.” bishes older workers for new careers. Besides prepping a student for a job, “They’ve moved away from using the word firsthand experience in the workplace can ‘vocational’ because there’s a lot of baggage also have a fortuitous side effect, Klein said.
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It can show high school or college students that they’re not cut out for a particular line of work. “Learning what you don’t want is better than learning what you do because it saves you a lifetime of misery,” he maintained. In one unfortunate example, his old roommate didn’t admit to himself that he really had no interest in legal technicalities until after he’d wasted two years in law school and run up $80,000 in debt.
A coherent system
At first glance, CTE can seem like a patchwork of uncoordinated classes and training sessions offered by schools of every description—not to mention the apprenticeships operated by trade unions. But some schools are working to introduce coherence. Once students settle on their career path, Utah State University Eastern provides a clear, logical avenue toward higher levels of study in job-oriented fields, said Gary Straquadine, the institution’s associate vice president for CTE. It’s an unusually well-
PHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK
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areer training has expanded so much lately that it’s creating alternatives to expensive four-year college degrees. Fifty years ago, vocational-technical education primed high school students for jobs like meat cutting or auto mechanics— almost anything that took some skill but didn’t require a college degree. Students took practical classes like home economics or shop. They spent part of the school day on the job, getting real-world work experience at local businesses. But now, career-oriented schooling has grown into something nearly unimaginable half a century ago. Today, it’s called career and technical education, or CTE, and it introduces middle school students to the
Luckbox | August 2022
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