In his State of the Union address last night, President Obama took another step in his effort to rebrand community colleges. He sees the nation’s two-year colleges as playing a big role in preparing those who will work in emerging high-tech manufacturing industries. Putting worries about his job-creation strategy aside for a minute (I’ll believe [...]
|
|
|||
|
August 29th, 2011 An article in Sunday’s New York Times magazine, focused on lithium-ion battery makers in Michigan, does a nice job of laying out the many factors involved in creating manufacturing jobs for Americans. In “Make or Break,” author Jon Gertner describes prevailing business models that discourage the slow-return, incremental investments needed to bring new factories into [...] August 1st, 2011 Is it safe to assume that when CNN reports on a presidential economic or educational initiative that’s been around for awhile, there’s some serious White House PR effort under way? A “CNNMoney” column today titled “Recovery at Risk: Community Colleges Step in to Fill ‘Skills Gap’” by Tami Luhby lays out the basics of [...] June 11th, 2011 “I want to have as few people touching our products as possible.” So spoke Dan Mishek, the managing director of an industrial plastic products manufacturer in Minnesota, quoted in Catherine Rampell’s NYTimes article yesterday, “Companies Spend on Equipment, Not Workers.” Why would an employer want to keep people away from its products? Germphobia? Elitism? No, [...] January 25th, 2011 If President Obama was an ordinary orator, I’d be placing bets on the number of times “innovation,” “education” and just plain “technology” will come up in the State of the Union tonight…with side-bets on “future” and “tomorrow.” But as an eloquent stylist, he’ll likely avoid the sort of redundancy that makes for good speech-based gambling fun. (Or, [...] December 8th, 2010 Be Afraid: China’s “stellar” performance on recent standardized tests, described in yesterday’s New York Times (“Top Test Scores from Shanghai Stun Educators,” by Sam Dillon), is apparently another sign that America is being “out-educated.” We are at our very own “Sputnik” moment, President Obama tells us, our nation once again threatened by the academic attainments [...] October 22nd, 2010 Just how cool is it when, as happened at the White House last week, President Obama gives a shout out to technical programs in community colleges?–after all, the guy has actually met the Mythbusters! But for sheer celebrity glamor, I’ll take Ed Begley, Jr.’s blog over a White House Summit any day. A staunch advocate [...] May 17th, 2010 I could be projecting here, but it seems to me that 2-year colleges are getting a lot more media attention these days. The coverage brings bad news or good news by the day, depending on how you see the role of higher ed in America. On the worrying side of things for me is a growing conservative enthusiasm [...] March 9th, 2010
As we start to see more daily reminders of the critical importance of junior and community colleges in American job creation and equity –as the recession slogs on without promised new jobs, as the White House actively supports 2-year education–it will be interesting to see how explicitly (or not) industries associate themselves with this type of education…long treated by [...] December 16th, 2009 Coming Soon to a Community Bulletin Board Near You; with thanks to Darin Hayton. As Obama inches toward implementing his job creation schemes, we hear a lot about the jobs that will be created through federally supported “green” initiatives, including those in retro-fitting and weatherizing buildings. Folks who can afford it can already Google their [...] |
 |
|
|
Copyright © 2012 by Amy E. Slaton - All Rights Reserved. Built and maintained by The Outside Reader |
|||