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Schools

Skilled Labor A Better Option than College? Two Niles West Students Say Yes

Class project shows most students plan to avoid skilled labor, even though the economy will need workers.

 

For all the high school students out there wondering whether they will ever find jobs, two students have a word of advice: Forget getting a four-year university degree. Think skilled labor.

Ayush Shrestha and Matt Micelli studied the need for skilled workers as part of a project for their DECA marketing class and found that few students express interest in jobs in fields from electronics and HVAC to tailoring.

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The class required them to research a topic and then publicize it.

Students are missing the opportunities that will become available as the economy improves and the Baby Boomers that hold skilled labor jobs retire in the 2010s, Shrestha said.

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A survey of 115 Niles West students showed that more than half had no interest in any of 11 skilled labor jobs that were listed. Those jobs ran the gamut from construction worker to zookeeper. Students who were not interested in any of those jobs were asked to write down a job they planned to pursue; more than 40 percent chose jobs in the medical field, the students found.

Earlier:

“The simple fact is that these students will not all take part in the medical field,” Micelli and Shrestha wrote in their project paper. “Our school encourages this false hope.”

Niles District 219 is pursuing policies aimed at preparing all of its students for college for the past several years, trimming classes in the vocational education area and pushing all freshmen and sophomores into math classes that will lead to college readiness if they succeed.

When asked whether all students should be aiming for college, District 219 Superintendent Nanciann Gatta has said that is what the students themselves want.

“More than 90 percent of our incoming students say they plan to go to college,” Gatta said at a November school board meeting. “That’s what they want.”

Shrestha said the project made him think about his future plans, but he is not ready to forego college yet.

What’s more, according to Micelli and Shrestha’s paper and Niles West Principal Kaine Osburn, even the skilled labor positions that will be available in coming years will require solid math and English skills, so the school really does serve all students by requiring them to get a good grounding in those skills.

Most skilled labor jobs require further education after graduation at a community college or trade school or through apprenticeship program, Shrestha said.

The students found that the number of people who want to do skilled labor has decreased at a time when the wages for skilled labor jobs have stagnated and membership in the unions that represent skilled workers has dropped.

That’s not a good thing, in the perspective of the paper’s authors.

“Skilled laborers are a major driving force in the economy,” they wrote. “Many people discriminate against skilled laborers based on their work; however, without skilled laborers, the nation’s economy would fall apart. America was built on the shoulders of these men and women, but without them the American economy and way of life will fall apart in a matter of days.”

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