November 11, 2010
Students Aim for Success With a New View of Vocational School. By MERIBAH KNIGHT, New York Times, Published: October 14, 2010. Buzzing with excitement, 72 11th graders sat in the auditorium of Austin Polytechnical Academy recently, waiting to board buses that would take them to the International Manufacturing Technology Show at McCormick Place, the largest show of its kind in the United States.
Carrying clipboards and dressed sharply in khakis and red polo shirts, they listened to Bill Vogal, a school administrator and former factory owner, as he read the questions they were assigned to ask exhibitors about their products and services: “What kind of lubricant do Index machines use?” “How many inserts does it take to make an airplane?” Mr. Vogal hollered over the chatter. For some of the students, the show would be the first encounter with a globalized industry that many of them hope to enter after graduation.
The academy, which is located in the struggling Austin neighborhood, is the city’s first and only career academy dedicated to occupations in high-skill manufacturing. Dan Swinney, chairman of the Chicago Manufacturing Renaissance Council, founded it in 2007 as a Chicago Public Schools “performance school.” Austin Polytech’s mission is to redefine vocational education and revive the city’s manufacturing industry by educating the next generation of advanced manufacturers – in effect, students who enter the workforce as hybrids of machinist and engineer.
Austin Polytech’s diverse curriculum is designed to prepare its 381 students for college, but school leaders also encourage them to pursue manufacturing careers that do not require four-year degrees – an approach that not all educators agree with. ”We’re proposing the revitalization of this nation’s economy, and places like Austin should be at the forefront of that, not left behind,” said Mr. Swinney, who worked as a machinist in a factory in the neighborhood early in his career. Learn more…
Some say bypassing a higher education is smarter than paying for a degree. By Sarah Kaufman. Published: Friday, Washington Post, September 10, 2010. You’ve been fooled into thinking there’s no other way for my kid to get a job . . . or learn critical thinking or make social connections,” hedge fund manager James Altucher says. Altucher, president of Formula Capital, says he sees people making bad investment decisions all the time — and one of them is paying for college. College is overrated, he says: In most cases, what you get out of it is not worth the money, and there are cheaper and better ways to get an education.
The hefty price tag of a college degree has some experts worried that its benefits are fading. “I think it makes less sense for more families than it did five years ago,” says Richard Vedder, an economics professor at Ohio University who has been studying education issues. “It’s become more and more problematic about whether people should be going to college.”
Now, take a key argument in favor of getting a four-year degree, the one that says on average, those with one earn more than those without it. Education Department numbers support this: In 2008, the median annual earnings of young adults with bachelor’s degrees was $46,000; it was $30,000 for those with high school diplomas or equivalencies. This means that, for those with a bachelor’s degree, the middle range of earnings was about 53 percent more than for those holding only a high school diploma.
Before hackles are raised about boiling the salutary effects of higher education down to its cost, there are obvious disclaimers: Education is a priceless thing. Many high-school graduates are not ready for independence and adult responsibilities, and college provides a safe place for them to grow up — for a fee. Learn more…
At Harvard, the Kitchen as Lab. By KENNETH CHANG, New York Times. Published: October 19, 2010In a basement laboratory at Harvard, Ashley Prince read from the instructions as her lab partner, Allan Jean-Baptiste, poured fruit nectar into a pot. ”Heat it to 113,” Ms. Prince said. Then Mr. Jean-Baptiste added a mix of sugar and pectin, and Ms. Prince whisked. “So far, so good,” Ms. Prince said.
These Harvard students were making chewy fruit gelées for From Haute Cuisine to Soft Matter Science, an undergraduate course that uses the kitchen to convey the basics of physics and chemistry, a most unusual Ivy League approach to science. Learn more…
More high school students choose vocational study. November 2. National Centre for Vocational Education Research. The number of Australian high schools students following a ‘VET [Vocational Education and Training] in Schools’ programme in 2009 was up by 4% from the previous year according to research by the National Centre for Vocational Educational and Research (NCVER). The research published in: The Australian vocational education and training statistics: VET in Schools 2009 shows that in 2009 nearly 230,000 high school students enrolled in various VET in School programmes including school-based apprenticeships and traineeships. Sandra Pattison, General Manager of Statistics at the NCVER, said ‘VET in Schools programs provide a valuable opportunity to mix curriculum-based subjects with those that have a vocational focus …giving students a good head start if they continue with vocational studies after finishing school’. Learn more…
