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Writer's pictureJoanne Jacobs

What do you want to do when you grow up?

Working-class Americans voted to send Donald Trump back into the White House: He ran strongly with people without college degrees, especially men, while Kamala Harris did best with the college degreed, especially women.


Big Picture Learning introduces students to a variety of possible careers.

It's unlikely the Trump-Vance administration will be writing off college loans for low-earning Puppetry and Social Justice majors. But what will they do to expand opportunity for their voters' kids? Will they shift funding from higher education to workplace or community college-based job training?


Americans are losing confidence in college as the path to the middle class, write Michael B. Horn, co-author of Job Moves, and Daniel Curtis of the Connecticut Office of Workplace Strategy, in Education Next. They worry about "spiraling college costs and $1.6 trillion in student loan debt."


Career and Technical Education (CTE) for All could offer more opportunity to more young people than "college for all," Horn and Curtis argue. The new CTE "should help students learn what energizes them, how different kinds of work are valued, and how they can contribute so they can carve out a pathway after high school that fits their unique goals," whether that means college or job training.


Career exploration and discovery should start in middle school, they write. The purpose "isn’t so that students can pick a job and follow a narrow pathway to it," but to help them start making informed choices.


I wonder if students would work harder in high school if they knew that just barely passing the easiest classes is not the path to a high-paying career.


There are programs that introduce students to the world of work, write Horn and Curtis. They recommend Big Picture Learning, the World of Work and the Center for Advanced Professional Studies (CAPS) network.


Both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump favor eliminating degree requirements for federal jobs, writes David Deming, a Harvard professor, in The Atlantic. But non-degreed job hunters need "ways t prove their qualifications."


Apprenticeships are great, but costly, he writes. A more scalable model is Virginia's FastForward Program, which lets people earn career credentials at community colleges. "Students who received an industry-recognized credential saw increased earnings of about $4,000 a year," Deming writes.


Congress could create and fund "a federal certification program for career pathways in fields with high job demand and good prospects for upward mobility, such as advanced manufacturing and cardiovascular technology."


Employers -- not taxpayers -- should pay to train new workers, writes New America's Mary Alice McCarthy. That would make expanding apprenticeships affordable.


Short-term programs like FastForward rarely lead to middle-class careers, she writes. "High-quality CTE puts students into structured, sequenced courses and multi-year “programs of study” that lead to rewarding careers." Connecting CTE to apprenticeships is even better.

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