As published by Examiner.com
Propositions for pushing better strategies for climate control, the discussion of gun laws and immigration reform were just some of the topics President Obama spoke about during the State of the Union Address Tuesday night in Washington. The speech given by Obama showed a sterner president pushing for Congress to come together for the nation. One of the other major topics covered by Obama included education and its relation to technology and the competitive job market and how the nation’s students stand with the rest of the world.
“Let’s also make sure that a high school diploma puts our kids on a path to a good job,” Obama said during his State of the Union speech and transcribed by the Los Angeles Times. “ Right now, countries like Germany focus on graduating their high school students with the equivalent of a technical degree from one of our community colleges, so that they’re ready for a job. At schools like P-Tech in Brooklyn, a collaboration between New York Public Schools, the City University of New York, and IBM, students will graduate with a high school diploma and an associate degree in computers or engineering.”
Incorporating incentives for young high school students to move on into fields oriented in technology is something that the majority of the officials in Washington tries and pushes for. They rather the nation’s students have the ability to enter into a job after graduation and reduce the rate of unemployment.
“Tonight, I propose working with states to make high-quality preschool available to every child in America, said President Obama.”
A push for more high-tech education coupled with more investment into a high-quality pre-school education is, according to Obama, key to America’s worldly success.
According to “Training Tomorrow’s Workforce” fifty to seventy percent of young people in Germany, Switzerland and Austria are trained through apprentice programs. Instead of lowering tuition just for tech-based degrees, apprenticeship programs could be a profitable alternative for some students.
The Pew study “Is College Worth It?” mentioned the median gap in yearly earnings between those with only a high school diploma and those who have a college degree being nearly $20,000, according Census Bureau data from 2010, but traditional college classes may not be for everyone. Instead offering apprenticeship programs and other alternatives for educating those interested in entering into tech-based fields would be beneficial.
It absolutely makes sense that pushing for better education reform will, in return, help those graduating with degree enter into the job force better prepared. A better educated nation creates more informed and confident citizens out in the real world, and more programs for those interested in pursuing a tech-based degree can help the nation reach that point.
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