% parents often hammer the importance of college education into their children. these days many jobs don't require four year degrees. >> the odds are terrible against getting a college degree. >> how important is a traditional scan? we'll examine the options on this edition. . >> >>: from san jose state university you are watching equal times exploring new issues each week. >> hello from san jose state university. welcome to this edition of equal time. i'm your host journalism

professor bob. with the economic down turn and the jobs forecast some people are by passing college and doing it successfully. gene walker first looks at some success stories without traditional college. >> many of us grew up believing that the pursuit of happiness without a college diploma. is a degree really the only key that opens the door? darcy green is a community relations representative for a major health care provider. >> every single day i have gone to work i can remember not being able to be there. i have had a job that has allowed me to explore my passion for service and

government and allowed me to use my mind and intelligence. >> her work place is full of awards. where did green earn her college degree? she'll let you know later. according to the bureau of labor statistics 7 out of 10 jobs that will see the most growth over the next decade will not require a college degree. berkeley based career coach says the federal government will become one of the key employments of workers without degrees. >> some will get a liberal arts education. for many people who have done poorly in high school they should be considering lots of other options. if you did poorly in high school the odds are terrible against getting a college

degree. >> reporter: the training center in san jose teaches workers to perform jobs. this continuing education means contractors don't have to carry the cost of constant training. >> the end result is they are going to get a well trained journeyman and they are expected to know what they are doing. >> reporter: the unemployment rate for construction workers is higher than average. brenda is the executive director of santa clara county construction careers association. the group supports vocational programs in high schools and community colleges amid concerns that the labor force is aging faster than young apprentices is arising. >> for students to come the big advantage is they have education and experience. >> reporter: childress oversees

the program. >> it teaches how to paint and how to sand. he taught us a lot of things last year and this year we are working on houses. . >> >>: is this what you want to do? >> i love construction. it is a hands on job. >> hands on is right on for some students. he says high school counselors are not doing all students a favor when they advise them to go to college. >> some students really want something different than an academic program. the notion that college is for all that a four year college is for all i think denies a lot of students choices. >> one popular choice is the beauty trade. here at the academy for salon professionals some already have university degrees. >> we are finding that a lot of

the people who went into four year colleges graduate and go to work and then wind up coming to cosmetology school. >> the bureau of labor statistics says over the next decade jobs in hair and skin will increase by 20%. teacher says beauty school gives students a better chance to graduate quickly into a better setting. >> the time frame you get to make your own time frame. if you wanted to work in the morning and go to school all day long there is a great advantage as far as working when you want to work. >> all of the people we spoke with said college can be beneficial but advanced education is not one sized fits all. darcy green found the right --

found the fit that is right for her. >> i found someone managing city council and i never went back after that. >> when we come back we'll see how a college can fit into some of these people's long term planss.

welcome back. earlier gene walker introduced us to some people who are successes in their industries without the benefit of college. in terms of their personal growth they have ideas about how college may fit into their plans. >> many occupations require an advanced college education. there are no apprenticeship programs for lawyers, doctors or engineers. >> i would hate for someone to think that they didn't take the traditional path that society tells them to take that they are now no good in society. field worked for joe focusing on health issues. she still hopes to finish

college someday. >> i intend on completing the degree although i have been able to succeed. >> college education can be overlooked. a liberal arts education can be produced for well rounded gradiates. >> they end up focusing so narrowly on earning credits and getting grades to get a degree and to get a job that they actually spend not enough time learning what they should be learning. >> reporter: the educational policy institute says the average college graduate has greater marriage and family stability. college also increases human capital, the value of an employee in the work place. >> get as much in the capital

training as you can afford to get because it is going to have a lifetime positive gain in your earnings. >> this point here. >> how huge is that lifetime earning gap? the us census bureau says workers with a four year college degree can earn almost twice as much as those without one. >> a benefit of getting a degree is you can go on to graduate school. that is not true of one year certificates. >> college can build on opportunities for those who took the vocational route. >> all kinds of college and post secondary study. it helps you get a breath in the field, to learn how to learn and to be an educated person. and that is what the industry partners are really looking for. >> partnerships and business connections can be easily

formed on a college campus. pauline is the coordinator of student vocations. >> students can join student organizations and it provides a lot of opportunities to network as well as meeting alumni. >> back at csu shares his personal satisfaction of having finished college. he looks forward to teaching in the town of pittsburgh where he grew up. >> my mom and dad inspired me to get my education. i figured why not get my degree and not settle for less. why not go for higher education, as well? >> now the american dream is his own. we'll be right back with a panel of experts giving equal time to the discussion of the

value of a college education.  % welcome back to the campus of san jose state university. our topic today the university degree versus trade school. agree or disagree. today i'm joined by a panel of

experts. >> i'm charlotte, director of precollege programs at san jose state university. >> i'm the director of the career center on campus. >> i'm darcy green. >> i'm garcia deputy executer. >> we thank you all for being here. as a university professor we thought the degree was the thing to get but you are saying to me maybe not always for all people. >> i don't education is a one size fits all. i have to say that it doesn't mean that we are uneducated. we have to go to trade school and beyond that. in our programs we have a pathway to college. >> does that make sense as a university representative? someone who deals with careers on campus? >> i think it is important that there is a spectrum of career opportunities out there. i think we have to look at

different skill sets. they compliment each other and group together. as we look at many careers that don't exist today. i think that there is room for lots of different skill sets and we have to keep growing the skill sets. >> what are our students missing out on by not having the other education? >> i think one of the things we have to look at is are we trying to answer the question what we need to do to get the first job or how do we prepare ourselves for our lives? some of the things that a college education can provide is a broader exposure to a wide variety of people, to having to live together with a number of people, to a number of cultures. not that you can't get that in other ways but you almost can't avoid it if you are going through college. i have a niece who went through more of a vocational program

and came out of it kind of regretting that she had not gotten a full college education. >> as a trustee we tell each and everyone of our children that they should strive to go to a university or some kind of higher education. they should strive to be able to pursue any career that they are passionate about and be successful in that. in doing so and helping to train them to be able to go from k to 5 to 8th grade and then to high school and then to whatever the higher education may be we want to make sure we are creating pathways and not limiting the pathways. we want to make sure that whatever it is we are giving them a chance to do that and be the most successful there. for some the university is the place to do that. i think ideally it is a way to include the trades in collaboration with the

university so that there is an academic structure. >> you think we have broken down the stereotypes that trade school people are not as educated as college educated students. >> we are highly educated. we have education and in fact we need to build high rises, golden gates, big dams and different infrastructure for the citizens so we have to have a knowledge to do that. we have to be able to communicate with higher level representatives, architects. if somebody gives us a blueprint we have to be able to read it and implement it. that takes some skill and knowledge. that is what we do. i have to say that because we don't have a college degree that doesn't mean that we are uneducated. >> i think one of the advantages of a college degree is that a little more spectrum

of skill sets. what we hear from employers is the need to have emotional intelligence, analytical skills to compliment that. >> i totally agree with you but we can learn that on the job. for us we run multimillion projects. to do that we have to have the collaboration of many people including architects, city officials, city employees. county and state. so we have to have all of those skills. we have to be able to move our crew to perform to be productive. we have the things that we have to learn on the job. >> what about the funding issue of it all? state government tends to think of the university and colleges. trade schools, should they be given funding? >> i would like to move past what i consider an outdated

economy. it seems to me what is needed is the kind of flexibility, the kind of broad education in addition to the focused training of the trade that you get in a trade school and we now know that in terms of education more contextualized education the application of what you are learning makes for better learning. i would like to see the two be more on par and more similar to one another. >> something you said earlier struck me as something good it is important to give students not what they need of today. they may not be the jobs ten or 15 years from now. there are many skills that people who are in the trades learn that allow them to adapt to other trades if necessary just as there are many skills you learn in the university

that you can adapt and retrain yourself. you have the skills to adapt to a new society. what we are seeing now are people who are very lost in a time that was and what they are train today do and a time that is and what they are not trained to do. i think we are all trying to figure out a way to bridge the two so that we are training people to be able to contribute to society in a way that makes them feel good about themselves. >> in our high school and elementary grades to expose students to more options i think that we are suffering from go this route for that route as opposed to perhaps some blending or timing issues here. >> we know that in education especially in the elementary school level and certainly in the high school level in order to keep a student engaged they have to understand the real life value to what they are learning. similarly we have to make sure that the real life value is

found in the academic structure that allows them the freedom to pursue other avenues if necessary. we have a great partnership in the building trades that we have. we have started to try to build clusters to try to expose career in an academic setting and try to blend the two so you are not depriving students from the academic rigor and you are not depriving students who choose to go an academic route. now you need to have both. you need to be able to say i understand what i'm learning and how it applies to every day life. >> we require our students in journalism to do an internship. i wonder how do students break out of that mentality of this is what i'm going to do with my

life and they don't look down the road? how do we get them to start looking beyond the easy of today? >> what do i do now? we have partnerships. we are having kids who dream of being a construction worker or designing the next golden gate. they are getting units for the college degree in case they say they want to get into college they have some college units they can finish up pretty fast in case they change their mind. >> the word exposure comes up to meek not justesh poseur to students but to their families. with our multicultural environment the family structure and the extended family has a lot to say about some of the choices that some of our young people make.

i think we have to do a much better job of exposing and giving experiences to multilevels of our people here. >> i with was going to say that i think there is an age at which imagining your entire life span is not going to happen. by the time they are in high school i think being honest with the kids and their families about the fact that the average person changes not just jobs but careers many times over your adult life and you don't just say i'm going to do this forever. knowing that therefore we need to have some flexibility, some mental flexibility, some career flexibility, some ability to be able to make that shift at various points in our lives. >> i think we need to stress to our students for all levels the concept of continuing education. >> absolutely. >> regardless of what you are doing. >> they are listening and

talking about good things here. this costs money. in this state it is very expensive to go to school. how do they manage these goals and expectations? >> i think i might pass that. >> the apprenticeship programs are free. they don't have to worry about it. they are working and learning at the same time, getting paid. >> let me bring in corporate america that is watching this. there are people who are looking for specialized trained individuals. they want to see them have an education or a skill development. what would we say to them about how to educate these young people? how could corporate america get more involved? >> i think we have to partner more. i think it is a responsibility of society to see both sides and to work together. we know what is happening in the state. the funds are not there. i think we have to look for

other partnerships, different types of programs, scholarships, fellowships, creative collaborations that help us develop the skill sets that we are going to need for the future. >> there has to be some kind of investment more than just one time gifts for specific programs in school districts. i know that with grant makers or corporate giving it is tempting just to give to a specific program that might fit your need. we need to start giving overall to school districts. you think of all of the different invested parties in education. if we took out the versus and said the problem is not each other, the problem is the public education system and it is really backwards. if we start going after an institutional change we would get much farther.

>> i think it is the corporate world as well as the academic world would say we have to start preparing them as citizens of the world. how do we get them to be thinking citizens of the world? >> good question. we have a construction academy at one of the local high schools. and the kids throughout the year learn construction and also build homes. and at the end of the year in the summer time they assemble the homes and send them for housing. that is our way of teaching kids to do good in the world and to be in a more of a global economy, as well. in construction you can take your skills and take them anywhere in the world. >> and language skills, surely developing those across the spectrum would not hurt anybody. what do you think will be the future for young people in

california? >> what will be the future or what should be the future? >> you get to decide that. >> we do seem to be moving more and more in the direction of accountability. and accountability is measured by taking multiple choice tests. that is not preparing our students to think, to live in the world and have the kind of cognitive flexibility we are talking about. what should be going on in education is a more contextualized education. an education where they are learning how to think, learning how to think broadly, learning how to work with many cultures, understanding how to work with other people. and my experience and the reading that i have done and the research suggests that corporate america also wants that. they are in fact not looking for narrow skills. they are looking for people that say we can train in the

skills. we need people who can think and know how to function and be professional. >> and they want that diverse workforce in the future. they want them to be prepared, well educated and go into the job on the first day and make it happen. how do we do all of this in this economic climate and in this climate that clamor is the way to go? >> i think we also have to encourage our students and our community to support more programs. at san jose state some of the service learning, alternative spring break, studying abroad. all of those experiences i think really helps to expose the future workforce to different scenarios that are going to be so helpful in this life of learning. >> and the final word encouragement. how do we encourage young people to stick with education?

>> we are putting so many obstacles. it is one thing to get to college. we have seen in our studies it is quite another thing to finish college. we need to make sure that we are providing them with all of the services that they need in order to holistically be well in college and be able to come out of that not up to here in debt, not frustrated and able to actually have a job when they are out. >> i'm afraid our time is done. your guys are wonderful. that was a wonderful discussion. we hope you continue to connect with us through facebook. look us up. don't forget to come back for another edition of equal time.