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Employer Quotes

The quotes below are from employers in this industry: Manufacturing

They are talking about this topic: Educational Partnerships

 

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The quotes below are about this issue:
Employers comment on various other existing and potential partnerships between education and the industry.

Employer Quote Region
"We actually provided some certified college courses to our community members and our registers because of some of these numbers that you're talking about." Metro
"Non-Profit Participant: We provide a lot of those basic skills that people are talking about. In order to move into the technical training programs, clients in our programs need to complete an attitude course, a job-seeking course, and a course on how to understand the business world. They're completing about 90 hours of work. They have to show up every single day. You can't miss a day. And if they're not making the grade, they don't get into the customized and tuition-supported programs that we're providing in partnership with the college. The problem with that is that MnSCU doesn't pay for those services. They don't include that as an eligible expense in job skills partnership grants or in other kinds of training programs. So, as a non-profit, we're leveraging 25 different funding sources, cobbling together the resources to provide the skill sets that industry says it needs. When the government or the school system contracts to provide those skills, it doesn't cover the soft skills piece that we're doing. Somehow, it's seen as not quite as important as the skills directly related to getting the welding certificate. The attitude is, 'We'll pay for that piece, but we won't pay for the screening and the grooming of the people.'

Back in 2008, most of our clients were unemployed, low-income, under-educated, under-prepared, hard-to-serve individuals who weren't making it into the funded programs because they had too many barriers. That was our sort of niche. But, since the recession, we're seeing people who weren't the cream of the crop at the job they did have, and they lost their job. They were the folks who were let go. So, now, they're having to re-tool. And not only are they needing those skills, they're needing to figure out that if they had showed up on time every day and if they had been an exceptional employee, then maybe they would wouldn't have lost their job."		 Northeast
"We now go to southern Minnesota to find our mechanical drafting programs, so we can hire right out of college or two-year programs. A CNC program is no longer available anywhere near us. It's in those areas that we're reaching out to try to partner with both businesses and educators to see if we can't get some of those programs back up and running. What's happened is—when business will talk to education to try to put programs in and education has to see what is the demand—if their programs are showing enrollment declines, they're forced to try to kind of thin it out. They make as many of the programs feed in and take advantage as they can. So, they become more of an elective than the core. And, as they become electives, the need is less. So, they can't support a full program and, over time, they die out. It takes an investment by educators to put the programs in. We're willing, as business partners, to make those investments and we still can't get partners to do it with us. That's what's sad.

Question: Are there kids that want to take these classes? Is there a demand?

Employer: Yes."		 Northeast
"The Right Skills Now program does a lot of stuff. They have a whole session on problem-solving, critical thinking, and different things like that. They're hitting on the major stuff that would make that person employable for me when they walk in the door. Not hitting all the topics in-depth, but introducing them to all those things—which they really should have already had at the high school level." Southeast
"Employer 1: One more example that I wanted to share. [Out-of-state college] is actually willing to reach out to talk to [MnSCU college] because they identified this gap for welders. And they've got this nimble program—it's a 56 credit hour program—and they pull from high schools, from people that are unemployed or laid off, or whatever the case may be. But it's something that's going to give us people right away.

Employer 2: So, they're producing welders.

Employer 1: Yeah, and we're helping them on the front-end and the back-end. We're screening the applications because they're getting a scholarship. So, we're making an investment as well. And then, on the back-end, we commit to bringing them in the door. Like I said, it's short-term, and they've had success in a couple of other labor markets. We'd love to replicate it here since it's been working."		 Southeast