Americans are burdened with about $1.4 trillion in student loan debt. One in four has a low wage job, which is by far the highest proportion of any advanced economy. Meanwhile, there are hundreds of thousands of open positions in the U.S. in fields like cybersecurity, cloud computing, computer programming, data science, tech support and skilled manufacturing. In many of these fields, the “skills gap” between available candidates and open positions is only projected to grow. In the U.S. there are already half a million core technical workers in the high tech industry who do not have a bachelor’s degree.
Borrowing a page from the construction and manufacturing industries, the tech giants are setting up apprenticeships, new certifications and even degrees. These are exactly the sort of programs encouraged by President Trump’s June 2017 executive order that sought to make it easier for companies to set up Germany-style apprenticeship programs, though their genesis for the most part predates his presidency.
Tuition costs at community colleges are typically less than half those of an in-state four year institution. As a result they tend to attract low-income students and members of racial minorities, another reason tech giants—which are lately being held accountable for their poor diversity numbers—are interested in them.
View Article