Uptime: Boost STEM, Develop Skilled Workers

The resurgence of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) courses of study in the national education community is not new. STEM education dates to the 1950s, but gained national attention with the 1983 report from President Reagan’s National Commission on Excellence in Education, “A Nation at Risk.” But I’m convinced that the renewed enthusiasm for STEM is due to the gaps in education, training, and career preparation our schools and local/state governments have allowed for the past two generations. As a result, “Go to college and get a degree!” became the plan for everyone.

Career awareness and education for global competitiveness for the college-bound students and those who would benefit from a community-college technical education, have been largely ignored. This has hurt our industry, our infrastructure, and our economy. (See The Forgotten Half, by Samuel Halperin, 1988.)

STEM courses of study, starting at elementary levels and continuing through post-secondary educational levels, need a boost—a boost that would open doors to increasing opportunities for large numbers of students who would otherwise fall through the cracks. Specifically, this boost would align the STEM content with business and industry careers and emphasize applied learning.

An applied-STEM learning approach would fuel the curiosity that enables a student’s real-world troubleshooting/problem-solving ability and be of tremendous benefit to business and industry.

More workers, more skills gaps

The Millennial generation, which involves more than 80 million people born between 1982 and 2000, has exceeded the Baby Boomer generation of 76 million in the U.S. In 2015, this 15- to 33-year-old labor group now represents the largest generation in the U.S. workforce, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Many Millennial students, who did not pursue a college degree, left high school with a diploma, but few marketable skills. Many of the non-college-prep classes that prepared their parents and grandparents for entry into life-long careers in various trades had long since been removed from the curriculum. These include the “shop” classes of the 1960s and 1970s. The table saws, arc welders, cutting torches, and other equipment once found in these classrooms have gone the way of certain playground rides, all in the interest of safety and insurance-cost reduction. Moves such as this suggest that competent supervision, safety-hazard consciousness, and a professional standard of leadership have also moved along. As we know, these traits are requirements in business and industry.

Not surprisingly, the U.S. Department of Education deleted “Technology Education/Industrial Arts” from its official Classification of Instructional Programs (CIP) in 2010. Not a big deal? The CIP is foundational to the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), the primary source for data on colleges, universities, and technical and vocational post-secondary institutions in the U.S.

Good jobs go begging

Today, business and industry are experiencing a growing skills deficit among job hunters and new hires. While members of this group may be college educated, they often lack practical hands-on job skills. These skills (and knowledge) are rapidly walking out the door with the aging Baby Boomers. This is especially true among retiring mechanic, repair, and engineering technicians.

The increasingly sophisticated equipment, machinery, and facilities found in most of our existing businesses and industries require people who are excited about working with their hands and minds, solving problems, and developing innovative solutions. There are more of these exciting and rewarding opportunities now than there likely will be in the so-called advanced-manufacturing plants of the future.

Practice makes perfect

STEM can be an academic pursuit of science, technology, engineering, and math, or it can be a meaningful skill-building experience. I choose the latter because about half of all students (and adults) learn by doing something outside of, but related to, academic content. It’s called applied learning.

Aligning STEM studies with career awareness and career-specific education will make the learning process more meaningful. Students in this setting would master STEM’s practical applications and be quick learners on the job. This applied-STEM learning approach would also fuel the curiosity that enables a student’s real-world troubleshooting/problem-solving ability and be of tremendous benefit to business and industry.

Think about it this way: The principles of music, art, medicine, and sports can be an enlightening academic pursuit. But that is not enough for a meaningful and rewarding career in these disciplines. What makes a person become a musician, artist, doctor, athlete—or maintenance technician—is when academic excellence meets performance.

What also separates academic knowledge from competent performance is repeated practice, conditioning, trial and error, and skills-building. In sports conditioning, this process is called reps. Serious career-oriented STEM students must be able to make mistakes, learn from their errors, and hone their abilities. Qualified teachers, coaches, mentors, and masters provide the framework for this applied learning.

STEM for maintenance

Most of the aging and retiring Baby Boomers working in the huge occupational fields related to installation, maintenance, and repair are products of high-school shop classes that were also known as Technology Education/Industrial Arts programs. A precipitous decline of these educational programs started in the 1980s. These should be brought back to middle schools and high schools. These classes would excite the curiosity of students, expose them to how things are made, and teach them to work with their hands and minds to actually make things under the mentoring of skilled instructors. Some of these students are then likely to either pursue careers in technology and industry or continue their post-secondary technical education, or related college degrees (the path I chose).

Is it possible to align our STEM programs with maintenance-technician career opportunities that cut across many different business and industry sectors? Is it possible to get students excited about jobs with base wages ranging from $30,000 to more than $70,000, and where employment growth is projected to be above average through 2022? Is it possible to educate students for entry-level jobs that most often require high-school career preparation along with one to two years of post-secondary technical education?

I believe there is a clear and present mandate to answer “yes” to all of the above. So let’s get on with it. Start by working with your local schools and technical/community colleges. Next month I’ll explore how we can do just that.