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California needs your highly educated child The last thing you want your children to hang their future on is a high school degree. Unless they are unusually focused on a niche profession, or have a skill that virtually no one else possesses, they will need to be highly educated to meet the demands of the future workforce. That’s the word from a survey this year by the California Business Roundtable, which joins a chorus of diverse experts worrying about, and trumpeting the need for, higher education. In a technological world that requires specific skills over brawn, the workers of the future simply need to have the educational aptitude for the jobs that will await them. The study, “Keeping California’s Edge,” focuses on the needs of 2022, when job growth and the retirement of an incredible number of Baby Boomers will challenge the state’s ability to remain the world’s sixth-largest economy. A child who turns 6 this year will likely be graduating with a bachelor’s degree in 2022. A child of 8 today would likely be graduating with a master’s degree that year, or in law school. A child of 12 today likely would be wrapping up one of many medical residencies in that year. In 2022, the YOUNGEST Baby Boomers will be turning 58. Some 1.4 million highly educated Baby Boomers will need to be replaced by then. The future number The demand for a highly educated workforce will grow by 1.8 million by 2022. The number is broken down to the need for bachelor’s degree holders (1.2 million), master’s degree holders (212,000), 35,000 additional PhDs, nearly 300,000 more associate degrees from community colleges, and nearly 200,000 more vocational education students. “The three top industries in terms of the number of highly educated workers needed for 2022 are professional, scientific and technical services,” notes the report. “In three additional industries, a highly educated workforce will (be needed) in finance, manufacturing and information.” Professional, scientific and technical services include engineering, architecture, legal, accounting, advertising and management services. In terms of raw numbers, the greatest need will be in education, where some 830,000 new teachers will be needed by 2022 (see last month’s Cover Story at ocfamily.com). Another 446,000 will be needed in the healthcare industry. Of those in healthcare, about 317,000 registered nurses will be needed. High school degrees languish Bill Habermehl, superintendent of schools for Orange County, is bullish on getting as many K-12 students as possible through college and into the possession of a degree. He says the steady shrinking of jobs available for high school-only graduates makes college an even bigger requirement in the future. “Automation and technology will have a pervasive impact on a lot of areas. We need to train for jobs that haven’t even been created today,” he says. “By 2020, we’ll be living in a different world.” An evident challenge is that the state’s population is growing in areas where lower educational attainment has been the norm. Sister publication OC METRO Magazine wrote about this in its Dec. 22, 2005 Cover Story – “2025 and California’s Future: Why Latinos need to fuel the economy.” Former UC Irvine professor Mark Baldassare, who published the California 2025 survey for the Public Policy Institute of California, noted: “Latinos have had good (educational) progress, but not good enough progress for the speed at which our economy is changing…The message for Latino youth is very clear: Go to college and vote. Those two big things could make a huge difference in terms of the society we will have.” The “Keeping California’s Edge” study noted that state leaders for this next generation need to have “a sustained focus on higher education…If California fails to provide this workforce, the state’s technical, educational, healthcare, financial, manufacturing and information sectors will have the most to lose.” Says county schools chief Habermehl: “We need a workforce for tomorrow who have the skills and abilities for creative thinking; problem-solving; analysis; to be able to work together. These are what businesses are looking for.” These are skills, by the way, that shouldn’t first be nurtured in college; they should be invested in a young student’s life. “No question the need for higher education has grown drastically, and will continue to grow in the future,” says Esmael Adibi, a noted economist who is director, A. Gary Anderson Center for Economic Research, at Chapman University in Orange. “Part of the reason, clearly, is technology. And it will change rapidly. But I would put more emphasis on the need for K-12 education, in learning the basics. To have prepared students coming out of the high school system is even more important than ever. If not fully equipped with basic skills, they may go to college but not pursue the fields that are in high demand.” What Adibi sees at risk in California is not that an excellent higher-education system won’t be able to produce the workers of tomorrow, but that a significant number of those young minds may not be up for the task. “Some of the jobs are going overseas today, mainly because of wages,” he says. “But over time, if we don’t have enough engineers and scientists, the jobs will go where those people are available. “Then it won’t be a question of wages, but a question of who can do the job. “ |
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