Training Workers for the Real World : * Professions, Service Industries Both Need Their Share of Educated Employees

One of the paradoxes of education today is a continued emphasis on preparing students for college when, in reality, most will never graduate from a four-year institution. Nor will they need to in order to qualify for most of the jobs available.

Degrees are still needed for the “professions,” such as medicine and law. And, of course, students should have solid academic backgrounds no matter what careers they ultimately pursue. But in addition to college prep, strong emphasis must be directed in the lower grades toward students who know they’re not going on to college. They need to be helped--and motivated--to develop salable skills for the bulk of the jobs in the manufacturing, retail and service industries that do not require college degrees.

The chief executive officers for many of the nation’s leading business firms are realists, who not only recognize that need but want to do something about it. So they have, with the support and cooperation of many educators, launched a nationwide pilot project aimed at helping high school students realize the opportunities that await them, and to help them prepare for the labor market.

One of the three pilot programs is in Orange County where the Huntington Beach Union, Irvine Unified and Laguna Beach Unified school districts will work with the American Business Conference (composed of CEOs of mid-size companies) in a project called VitaLink. It is not the first of its kind in the nation or the county. Nor, we hope, will it be the last.

Business leaders like Roger W. Johnson, president and CEO of Western Digital Corp. and leader of the local pilot project, bemoan the fact that some companies have believed it necessary to offer remedial programs to teach basic academic and work skills in math and English to new employees coming out of high school. By working together, educators and business firms hope to overcome that shortcoming.

What they also seek to correct is any social stigma that might be attached to career programs geared to high school rather than college graduation. There should be none.

It makes neither academic nor business sense to push college-prep courses when roughly eight out of every 10 students will never go on to earn a college degree.

It makes more sense to develop skilled workers able to secure jobs and advance in them than to produce poor students, dropouts and graduates ill-equipped to survive on anything but an unemployment line.