By David K. Shipler
The second in an occasional series
A great
American paradox is playing out dramatically on the Texas stage following the
destructive winter storm: millions are unemployed, and millions of skilled jobs
are vacant. Texans cannot
find enough plumbers, electricians, and other hands-on specialists to
restore life to decent levels of comfort and safety. The state—and the country
at large—simply does not have enough men and women trained in the panoply of
manual professions needed to keep an advanced society running.
There is a solution to this, and
it’s recognized by labor unions, employers, and economists. It fits the general
proposition, which I heard some twenty years ago from a leading economist,
Robert Lerman: If a good idea exists, he said, you can be sure that it is being
tried by somebody somewhere in the United States.
And for more than those twenty
years, Lerman has been on a campaign to expand an idea already proven in the
United Kingdom, Switzerland, Germany, and elsewhere. It is the ancient
institution of apprenticeship—not in the medieval form but in a modern
combination of in-class study and on-the-job learning that enhance practical
skills for Americans who do not finish four years of college.
The hard fact is that if you don’t
go to college or, once there, don’t get a degree, you’re in danger of falling
through a hole in the economy. Unless you’re a whiz kid like Bill Gates or
Steve Jobs, you’re likely to be lacking the skills necessary to sell your labor
competitively in a free economy. You could end up in dead-end, underpaid jobs
that can consign you to a life near or below the poverty line.
And you will not be alone. Although 90 percent of Americans over age 24 have completed high school, only about two-thirds go immediately to college, and 40 percent of them drop out. Especially vulnerable are the first in their families to attend college. Their drop-out rate is 89 percent. Lerman reports that just 28 percent of all students and 17 percent of black students who began community college in 2016 graduated within three years, a slight increase over earlier years.
