CTE: A Timely Training Solution in a Changing World

As with the bursting of the housing bubble in 2007, the misguided investment in socially preferred categories of education threatens to burst future economic expectations because of creating more white collar workers and fewer well trained blue collar workers than are projected to be needed.

By doing so, even though 40% of the nation’s population between 25 and 64 are college graduates and they expect to get “guaranteed” high payoff jobs, investment money is chasing after categories of production that will not need the extra “career-ready” workers; there will not be enough high paying jobs for college grads. Instead, because they are never going to get such jobs, 17% of those graduates will have an unsustainable high debt obligation that is 8% or more of their pretax income. They will be in a position that is just like what happened to the buyers of derivatives in the 2007 crisis.

They are borrowing student loans, entering mortgages, and collateralizing consumer purchases based on unrealistic estimations of their future capacity to pay. When these unpayable debt obligations come due, their aggregate effect on the economy will burst short and mid-term, if not also long term hopes of an upward mobility for the nation’s citizens.

CAREER AND TECHNICAL EDUCATION provides a timely solution to this problem by training students in service oriented as well as high-tech skills for which continuing demand will command livable incomes regardless of the state of the economy.