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Employer Quotes

The quotes below are from employers in this industry: Manufacturing

They are talking about this topic: Current Continuing Education

 

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The quotes below are about this issue:
Several employers offer advancement training programs in which entry-level or incumbent employees may continue to complete a certificate or degree program, either on-site or through tuition reimbursement agreements.

Employer Quote Region
"They enter the work field as a C operator—which means they can't set up—they're reliant on their lead person for on-the-job training. Hopefully, within four to six months, they'll graduate to a B operator and eventually to an A operator. An A operator can set up and run—pretty much do anything—they inspect their own work. The class B operators start inspecting their own work, but a C operator, again, is an entry-level guy who is very dependent on one-to-one training with our lead people. Each lead person probably has six or seven employees under them." Northwest
"I think one thing that we've found very valuable is for those beginner-level assemblies. When they come in, our requirements are nothing more than a high school diploma or GED, but one thing that we found helpful was having on-site courses where you teach some of those things. We've worked with [professor] and [MnSCU college #1] and [MnSCU college #2] to bring those on-site for the people that don't have the time, money, opportunity or ability to pursue that full-time. We offer classes right on-site so that they can pursue a class at a time—or do it on their off shift—without having to travel to Thief River. We do a lot of internal promoting, and a lot of those people have come out of those programs that we offer on-site. They earn their degrees that way. Yes, they get a certificate." Northwest
"We've had on-site college programs for 12 years now—associate degrees and bachelor degrees. But, over the last few years, we've really looked at more of the certificate pieces. Those programs that you can bring in. Last year, we worked with [MnSCU college] and brought in a program that we developed with them. A diploma program they did in a year. They did credits to really target those areas.

A little bit around the electrical things that we need, some of the maintenance that we need, we're seeing that in an associate's degree, which—when you're doing that on-site—even accelerated it is going to take you five years to get through the degree when you're going part-time while working. We did that with our drafting as well, a drafting program, because we need drafters. And we need drafters that can get on the phone with architects, talk through a window plan, and then draw it themselves—so it's a combination of skills. So, having those programs offered on-site is really helpful. But it is also very, very costly. So, it is good if you can find somebody who comes out of the college to do some of that. But we know we're going to have to do additional training."		 Northwest
"We hired probably a dozen electronic technicians from the outside, and we have six to twelve going through an internal full-scholarship program at [MnSCU college]. They get paid to go to class, and then they become electronic technicians and earn about six more dollars an hour. So, that's really our bread and butter—the electronics and maintenance. Automated systems would be our number one need though." Northwest