Obama Administration: These job-training programs are the most effective

White House lists the postsecondary skills training programs that are the best in the U.S.

dataThere’s a growing trend, as the economy still lingers in recovery and traditional four-year tuition remains barely affordable, of students and parents coming to understand that if you want relatively stable paying job after postsecondary education, skills training is a great bet. But what programs are currently the most successful?

According to Vice President Joe Biden, after several meetings with business leaders, community college presidents, governors and mayors, and “most importantly, hard-working Americans who were hit hard by the Great Recession, but who are doing everything they can to learn new skills to find a decent, good-paying middle-class job,” the Vice President noted that there was a clear consensus: “We must rethink how we train today’s workers so that our programs are job-driven, teaching real skills that employers need.”

Biden also noted that businesses are clamoring for highly-trained workers for highly-specialized work, since many of these jobs are currently going unfulfilled.…Read More

Santorum competes with Romney for support from for-profit colleges

Santorum said “the corruption of culture” in America could be traced to the country’s most prestigious campuses.

Surging Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum, a longtime critic of public education, said at a recent campaign stop that President Obama has “waged war” against for-profit colleges that could serve as job-training centers in the recovering economy.

Santorum, a former Pennsylvania senator who has vaulted to the top of the Republican primary polls in recent weeks, outlined a plan for for-profit schools – many with vast online programs for nontraditional students – if he were to win the presidency.

Santorum’s advocacy for companies that operate for-profit schools comes just weeks after former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney presented Orlando-based for-profit campus Full Sail University as a model for how higher education should operate.…Read More

Speed puts community colleges front and center

Obama hopes the agility of community colleges will accelerate a manufacturing rebound.

Fitzpatrick Manufacturing Co. is a high-tech job shop, crafting super-precise parts for machines used in everything from robotics to aerospace to oil exploration. Macomb Community College lies a few miles down the road in this Detroit suburb.

Sometimes it’s hard to tell where one ends and the other begins.

Fitzpatrick’s 93 employees are constantly in and out of Macomb, taking classes with a tuition reimbursement from the company. And so frequently are Macomb instructors at Fitzpatrick’s plant to offer lessons on the esoteric technology used there that the company built a classroom, now lined with about 250 diplomas and certificates employees have earned.…Read More