Understand vocational training importance
Central Massachusetts high school students are becoming more specialized in their interests at an earlier age, and there is an upside to that trend. Young people are becoming more invested in the kind of careers they want to pursue and are looking to cater their education appropriately. Those that have developed an interest in engineering and research-and-development jobs are pursuing the STEM curriculum. Those who think they might want to be veterinarians are seeking out more hands-on experience with their science learning.
More students who aspire to attend schools like MIT and WPI are reaching out to vocational technical schools to get their secondary education before moving onto college. As a result of this trend, and the desire of students in general to get more post-secondary education, 57 percent of voke/tech graduates are now seeking some degree of college education – creeping closer to the 78 percent going to college out of traditional high schools. This represents qåuite a shift from less than a generation ago when voke/tech schools were seen as the training ground for professions that didn't require a college degree, such as electricians, auto repair technicians, construction workers, etc.
Unfortunately, in the race to get the best and brightest into the voke/tech schools – and because of the increasing pressure for school systems to have strong scores on statewide tests – the young people feeling the squeeze the most are those who would traditionally be pursuing a voke/tech education. MIT, WPI or some other top shelf school isn't for everybody, yet those students who want the good-paying specialized jobs like electrician and auto repair technician, find themselves being squeezed out of the increasingly competitive seats at the voke/tech high schools. While the voke/tech schools are filling up with more college-ready students, the statewide waitlist for children wanting a voke/tech education has grown to 3,200. While they wait, those students who want alternative educations are stuck in the general curriculum high schools, where their need for more hands-on education languishes.
Central Massachusetts needs a well-rounded workforce, especially the more technical workers who have traditionally graduated from the technical high schools. Specialized programs in video design and gaming at Becker and WPI add smart young minds to a cutting-edge industry. Yet the region has lots of job openings for people who know how to wire houses, fix cars and perform the other valuable technical skills that are key to a vibrant economy. Manufacturers – who comprise one of the region's long-lasting and foundational industries – have cried for years over the lack of workers with the mechanical aptitude to run and maintain their machines properly. Chronic difficulty in staffing key positions can keep a company from scaling up their operations and hiring even more staff to meet demand.
Massachusetts community colleges and universities are working to develop more educational programming to match the needs of local industry, especially manufacturing. While these programs are critical, finding a home for that backlog of high school students seeking a vocational education is also critical. A voke/tech graduate armed with an education and ready to enter to the workforce at age 18 can have quite the head start in career-earning potential. Sure, they can go back for more specialized education as their career path becomes more clear or specialized, but they can also do so at a fraction of the cost of a four-year degree.
Every school wants the best and the brightest, but at the technical high school level, where students' career aspirations can run the gamut of technical and vocational tracts, administrators must achieve a better balance in their admissions. There is clearly a need for more seats, but until those can be created, a diversity of students, and not just the highest scoring ones, need to have access to those classes.
While the larger issue is creating more seats to meet the demand, another constant pressure at the technical high schools is keeping up-to-date with modern equipment and instruction. To that end we applaud Gov. Charlie Baker and his Skills Capital Grant Program, which is providing funding for such purposes. Clearly, investments are being made – and it will be up to the educators, state leaders and local industries to be sure that the students that are being turned out are meeting the needs of the marketplace. Well-paying vocational careers can happen without a four-year college degree, but we've got to do a better job getting those that aspire to those careers the right training and direction.
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