Students participating in Pacific Gas and Electric's (PG&E) PowerPathway Pole Climbing Capstone course climb utility poles at the PG&E pole climbing training facility on June 8, 2012 in Oakland, California. The free three-week course teaches skills to better prepare individuals to compete for jobs such as pre-apprentice lineworker within the utility industry.
May 15, 2014, 7:20 a.m.
More than 3 mil­lion teen­agers are ex­pec­ted to gradu­ate from high school over the next six weeks. For most of them, their choices are stark: Either find a job or enter col­lege.
But there’s no reas­on for stu­dents to view their ca­reer paths in such ex­tremes as work­ing at Mc­Don­ald’s or at­tend­ing Har­vard, says An­thony Carne­vale, dir­ect­or and re­search pro­fess­or at the Geor­getown Uni­versity Cen­ter on Edu­ca­tion and the Work­force. Every year, the U.S. eco­nomy of­fers roughly 29 mil­lion “middle jobs,” as Carne­vale calls them: po­s­i­tions that de­mand some ad­di­tion­al school­ing or cer­ti­fic­a­tion bey­ond the 12th grade, but not the time or fin­an­cial com­mit­ment of a bach­el­or’s de­gree.
More ap­pren­tice­ships. Cur­rently just 0.3 per­cent of em­ploy­ment in the U.S. comes from ap­pren­tice­ships. Yet pro­grams in states such as Wis­con­sin have demon­strated the be­ne­fits of this type of learn­ing, par­tic­u­larly for stu­dents in­ter­ested in high-skilled jobs in man­u­fac­tur­ing, trans­port­a­tion, or con­struc­tion.
Em­ploy­er-based train­ing. This es­sen­tially means that work­ers learn skills on the job, with train­ing that lasts any­where from three months to a year. It does not cost the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment any ex­tra money, be­cause the fin­an­cial bur­den falls on em­ploy­ers. One-third of all blue-col­lar jobs and one-quarter of sci­ence, tech­no­logy, en­gin­eer­ing, and math jobs re­quire more than one year of this type of train­ing.
In­dustry-based cer­ti­fic­a­tions. Want to be­come an EMT, li­censed nurse prac­ti­tion­er, or cer­ti­fied nurs­ing as­sist­ant? All of these jobs in the grow­ing field of health care re­quire in­dustry-based cer­ti­fic­ates. And de­mand for these cer­ti­fic­a­tions comes from the private sec­tor and the labor mar­ket in­stead of law­makers; this means that em­ploy­ers see the need in the com­ing years for work­ers with these skills.
Post-high school cer­ti­fic­a­tions. These cer­ti­fic­ates pre­pare stu­dents for a spe­cif­ic ca­reer niche without tak­ing as much time to com­plete as a col­lege de­gree. Jobs that re­quire this cer­ti­fic­a­tion in­clude auto mech­an­ics, com­puter and in­form­a­tion ser­vices, cer­tain health care po­s­i­tions, or cos­met­o­logy. The best-case scen­ario is that men with these cer­ti­fic­ates can earn as much as $72,000 an­nu­ally, provided they work in com­puter or in­form­a­tion ser­vices.
As­so­ci­ate’s de­grees. These de­grees of­fer a nice boost in earn­ings for high-school dip­loma hold­ers and usu­ally take half the time of a bach­el­or’s de­gree. Men with as­so­ci­ate de­grees, who spe­cial­ize in a spe­cif­ic oc­cu­pa­tion earn $49,000 an­nu­ally, com­pared with male high school grads (who earn $41,000), ac­cord­ing to the Geor­getown re­search­ers’ ana­lys­is of census data. Re­gistered nurses, po­lice of­ficers, and man­agers get the biggest salary boosts from these as­so­ci­ate’s de­grees.
The big takeaway: The main mes­sage from U.S. poli­cy­makers and lead­ers con­tin­ues to be that col­lege edu­ca­tion is the key to a middle-class life­style. Yet many work­ers could find de­cent jobs that can sup­port a fam­ily, with less school­ing and less stu­dent debt. They could be­ne­fit from these oth­er means of train­ing after high school — and from in­creased at­ten­tion to and pro­mo­tion of this al­tern­ate ca­reer track.