By CATHERINE RAMPELL, The New York Times, March 1, 2012. As state funding has dwindled, public colleges have raised tuition and are now resorting to even more desperate measures — cutting training for jobs the economy needs most. Technical, engineering and health care expertise are among the few skills in huge demand even in today’s lackluster job market. They are also, unfortunately, some of the most expensive subjects to teach. As a result, state colleges in Nebraska, Nevada, South Dakota, Colorado, Michigan, Florida and Texas have eliminated entire engineering and computer science departments. At one community college in North Carolina — a state with a severe nursing shortage — nursing program applicants so outnumber available slots that there is a waiting list just to get on the waiting list. This squeeze is one result of the states’ 25-year withdrawal from higher education. During and immediately after the last few recessions, states slashed financing for colleges. Then when the economy recovered, most states never fully restored the money that had been cut. The recent recession has amplified the problem. Learn more...
Schools Try to Match the Jobless With 3.4 Million Jobs
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE, The New York Times, February 29, 2012. Ever since the deep recession hit four years ago, many colleges have been rethinking their continuing education programs, straining to figure out how best to help the many unemployed Americans who have looked to them as a lifeline. With the unemployment rate still stubbornly high, this rethinking has led to a powerful trend in which many schools, whether prestigious state universities or workhorse community colleges, are trying harder than ever to tailor their continuing-education offerings to where the job openings are — and where the jobs of tomorrow will be. Learn more...
Job retraining for the unemployed: A popular fix that might not work
By Amy Goldstein, The Washington Post, Published: February 17 | Updated: Saturday, February 18. For the rollout of its 2013 federal budget, the White House could have chosen a medical lab, an electric-car factory or a symbol of any other key item in its spending plan. As it turned out, President Obama jogged into the gym of Northern Virginia Community College to deliver his budget message this past week. “I’ve been here so many times,” he deadpanned, “I’m about three credits short of graduation.” The final budget proposal of Obama’s term would devote $8 billion to help community colleges collaborate with local businesses to try to equip 2 million Americans with, as the president put it, “skills they need to get a job right now.” And the bit of stagecraft on the Annandale campus attests to the administration’s love affair with the nation’s nearly 1,200 two-year colleges — as a steppingstone, in an era of unparalleled long-term unemployment, to improve prospects for U.S. workers and, in turn, the president’s electoral fortunes. Learn more...
