Obama’s call to colleges
December 8, 2009 by Geneva ReidPosted in: Admissions & Financial Aid, In this week's e-newsletter, Latest News & Views
President Obama is looking to educators to help turn around the nation’s economy. Colleges — particularly two-year institutions — should focus on better preparing people for work, Obama said at a recent White House forum on jobs and the economy.
Community colleges can play a major role in reducing the unemployment rate and helping retrain workers, he said.
One example that was looked at was a pilot project at Ivy Tech Community College in Indiana.
With funding from the Lumina Foundation for Education and Indiana’s Higher Education Commission, the school offers a 10-month associate degree program where students receive a stipend while they take classes.
So not only are students able to receive their degree in half the usual amount of time (two years), but they don’t have to struggle with juggling work and school.
What do you think of the idea? Let us know in the comments section below.
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Tags: Indiana Commission for Higher Education, Ivy Tech Community College, Lumina Foundation for Education
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December 10th, 2009 at 10:03 am
And they will get out of college and get a job where?
December 10th, 2009 at 12:01 pm
Kathleen, Amen to your skepticism! Don’t you know, that these 10-month Associate degree graduates will get their jobs with the unused TARP monies that will fund new economic opportunities? The government’s view on steering education’s response to the current economic crisis is yet another short-sighted bureaucratic compromise: INSTEAD of raising the bar to focus on academic excellence, by encouraging and providing education tax credits for academically qualified college applicants to start meeting for instance, the growing shortage of health care professionals, they will naively put their rubber stamp of mediocrity (at taxpayer expense!) producing pseudo-graduates who will be trained for what used to be called “entry level jobs” (using a glorified Vocational/Technical School Certificate model and calling it an ‘Associates Degree’). However, they will still struggle to critically think, and lack the skill set/training needed to truly advance in a highly competitive, volatile, global job-environment now present in America. When will common sense, not ideology, govern America?
December 10th, 2009 at 4:19 pm
Well, college basketball programs are the minor leagues for the NBA, the football teams are the minor leagues for MLB, etc., so I suppose that the rest of the school should be the minor leagues for business. When does any student get a chance to learn something that might be useful to his/her moral/social/intellectual/artistic well-being in the future?
March 26th, 2010 at 2:21 pm
These “schools” (just like elementary- and high-schools) are holding pens for clueless youngsters for which there can be no hope but jail-holding later in life. Will a shorter “school” holding period be more educational? Probably not: faster into jail, and more frequent court work. So we need more lawyers, more judges, more police, maybe even more private security forces, more gated communities to keep them out, more armed government agencies …. Brave new Obamination America …
April 1st, 2010 at 11:54 am
Technical and community colleges offer advanced technical training that is often competitive with four year schools. In fact many technical training programs such as machine tool and electromechanical exceed four year schools both in job placement and salaries.