Report Stresses Career Training

A new report indicates that many employers in Texas can't find skilled workers. This is, of course, doubly troublesome when combined with the rising unemployment rate.

State Comptroller Susan Combs issued the 147-page study, called "Texas Works: Training and Education for All Texans." The report attributes much of the shortage to state policies that focus on preparing students for four-year colleges and universities instead of alternative career paths in skilled and technical occupations. Funding for public two-year institutions has failed to keep pace with the need for vocational and technical training, the report says.

The comptroller was interviewed by veteran journalist and commentator Dave Montgomery, in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram (registration).

From the article by Mr. Montgomery:

"Such state policies are shortsighted, both from the perspective of individual students and from that of Texas as a whole, which needs a productive, skilled work force with a variety of technical skills to compete successfully," the report said.

The report recommends a $25 million "Jobs and Education for Texans" fund for the 2010-11 biennium to create programs to train students for in-demand jobs. The fund would also expand existing programs that help low-income students attend community and technical colleges.

And: 

Dwindling enrollment in vocational training has spawned a chain reaction in the workplace, the report said. Officials in the Gulf Coast petrochemical industry complain of a chronic shortage of welders. Unions and construction companies are also losing skilled workers through retirement and can’t recruit enough young people to replace them, the report said.

In 2007, Texas had 44,000 job openings for workers with post-secondary skilled or technical training, "but the state’s public institutions produced just 36,442 students with the skills needed for those jobs." By contrast, the report said, public universities produced an oversupply of bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral graduates, awarding 104,000 degrees while the state added only 85,000 jobs requiring a college education.

Although the majority of jobs in Texas do not require a college degree, many state policies "are geared largely toward pushing all students into university programs," the report said. "These policies may inadvertently send the signal that the four-year degree is the only path to success."

Students who entered the ninth grade in 2007 are required to take four years each of language arts, social studies, math and science. Combs called for a more flexible policy that would allow an optional, noncollege career path for technical and skilled jobs. Because those options aren’t available, the report said, discouraged students drop out.

"Not everybody is going to be an English major at a four-year school," Combs said. The goal, she said, should reflect the words on the cover of the report: "a complete range of paths and choices that ensures there’s every chance for every Texan."