Students, and parents, need to be better educated of what the possible post-secondary pathways are. Alabama is starting to pour a lot more into career technical education now that they've begun bringing in large corporations for STEM and manufacturing jobs. A lot of those agreements hinged on the companies hiring locally, and those companies are agreeing to that stipulation but also asking for a better prepared workforce for the jobs that they're going to offer. In my electronics and robotics classes, I have students that will benefit from going to a community college, gaining industry-related credentials, and entering the workforce. I also have students that will benefit from going to a four-year university majoring in engineering or a STEM-related major. My school is a career technical center, meaning we only have the CTE programs, and the other high schools send their students for those program to our building. We are currently fighting the long-standing reputation that "trade school" is only for "those kids", and we're fighting the perception that the programs only benefit students who will not go to a university. I've also taught government and economics in Alabama in the last seven years, and I do know that any personal finance-related is not required according to the Alabama Course of Study. I always tried to mix in personal finance where it needed to be mentioned, even having a tax attorney come into the classroom to have students learn how to fill out a W-2 properly.
CTE is changing for the better in Alabama, but tremendous more resources are needed, particularly for the rural school systems, or school systems where there are no major industries or strong business communities for them to invest in. I've encouraged some of my students to look at the Alabama FAME program at Calhoun, which is a five-semester work-study program in advanced manufacturing. They work for a sponsoring company 40 hours/week making at least $13.55/hour, and go to Calhoun for their coursework. Once they complete the program, they'll walk into a job with their sponsoring company, or they'll take a job elsewhere in manufacturing. They essentially learn all of the technical skills to be in industrial maintenance, and some of those companies will even encourage talented workers to return to the university for a four-year degree and they'll pay for their education as well. I think Americans need to take a serious look at doing a gap year for students that are unsure of what they want to do. I try to give my students all of the possible information, and ideas on how to do life beyond high school. Do you want to commute from Moulton to Huntsville so you can buy a home and land? Or would you rather live in a city-environment like Huntsville or Birmingham? Do you want to move all the way across the country to go to school (like I did) for the experience, or do you want to stay close to home, or maybe you have to stay close to home? Finally, we're trying to teach students soft skills so that they can not only get a job, but stay gainfully employed as well.
Two impressive stories from the school I work at:
1) There are two girls that are in their senior years, and they're in the cosmetology program. By the end of the year, they'll have satisfied the requirements to sit for their cosmetology license. However, they want to go into nursing as a career. They chose cosmetology because they knew as sophomores in high school that they were not going to have any family help on paying for college. They also had heard the horror stories about student loans, so they are planning on working as cosmetologists, and going to community college to earn their nursing credentials so that they can ultimately get into nursing. For all of the benefits and easy life I had with my parents making all the money they did, I never had the mature planning out performed in my mind to see that plan for paying for college. It is incredibly mature IMO of them to create that plan for themselves, and if nursing falls through, they're already working in a field where they can charge their own rate and build their own name.
2) I had a promising student in electronics that was only planning on going in as an electrician after community college. But how he would approach problems and fix items in the classroom made me think that he should at least consider electrical engineering. So, as a class, we took a tour of a government contractor in Huntsville called Torch Technologies. Due to how the company arranged the groups in the tour, I wasn't with my student during the tour. At the end of the tour, the company's education liaison asked me about my student because one of the head engineers was impressed with him and the questions he was asking about the work they were doing. The head engineer wanted my student to apply for a paid internship and they were going to give him first dibs on the interview if he applied. So, my student applied, interviewed, and got the internship. He's starting his second year at UAH in electrical engineering, and absolutely loves Torch, and loves living the "big city" in Huntsville. Torch believes that if he stays on through their internship program, they plan on hiring him straight out of UAH when he completes his degree.
These kinds of opportunities exist for a lot of students, but we have to prepare them for those jobs. Like I said, it's slowly changing in Alabama, and hopefully it'll only get better.
