On the news: A report on the two-year degree tech employee.
Part of the problem with the lack of qualified employees in the tech industry, specially the renewable energy industry, is the self-defeating ideas about qualified employees and schooling.
Our renewable energy industry may go out of business waiting to convince the public of the need for tech education then waiting for the supply of educated applicants to rise to meet demands in hiring.
The energy industry, (renewables) may just have to man up and own up to the fact that the traditional pipeline of qualified employees has gone the way of the dinosaur. (Allusion to oil intended.) What the renewable energy industry has to do is to educate and or train the needed employees themselves. Get rid of the "stuck in the mud" mentality of credentialism.
The programmes and solutions floating around have the same odious flavour of the Jimmy Carter job training idea of reducing (double-digit) unemployment: Tax business, to train people for jobs that won't exist because business can't afford to hire people due to higher taxes.
Real employers, with real jobs, train their own people. Energy does not get a magical pass. Hire people with the capability to learn the job. Put them through an on-the-job training programme to handle the mechanical aspects and an educational programme to educate them to the technical aspects.
It is analogous to the Theory plus Case Method of education
Good luck.
Slim
Copyright © 2011 Slim Fairview
