Yahoo Finance

Are college degrees necessary for all professions today? Uh, and I don't think so. I think there are some, clearly, you want to be a doctor, a lawyer, an engineer, you you've got to go and you've got to put in the time. But I do believe more now in skill-based learning. Uh, I think that students in middle schools and high schools, who go to college because maybe their parents said, well, you really need to go to college in order to make a good living, whatever, and and yet they don't have to. They can do other kind of schooling, get right into the workforce, and I think that's an important cultural rethink that we should have relative to education.

That was US Education Secretary Linda McMahon talking to Yahoo Finance executive editor Brian Sozzi at the global the global Milken conference. Our next guest is in agreement with McMahon about pushing for alternatives to a college education for some young adults. Here with more is Randy Weingarten, who was the president of the American Federation of Teachers. Randy, you wrote an essay for the New York Times titled, Stop trying to make everyone go to college. And even though you don't agree with Secretary McMahon on a number of other issues, you seem to have found some common ground here. Explain what you're advocating for.

So, you know, so part of what we're advocating for is based upon, you know, being in schools all the time and seeing what works and doesn't work with young people. And what we're seeing, let me let me do it from the education side first, not from the workforce development side. On the education side, what really works for young people is if we create welcoming and safe environments that are engaging and relevant to kids. And career tech ed, the modern day career tech ed, which we have really fought for since, you know, basically the the middle of the last decade. What we're seeing in statistics is that when kids graduate and pre-apprenticeship programs or industry stackable credentials from high school with, um, uh, credential in cyber security or in advanced manufacturing, or in nursing, or in culinary, or in some of the trades, there's a 95% graduation rate and 70% of those kids go on to college. And as the Wall Street Journal just saw this week as well, kids can get pre-apprenticeship or direct jobs for $70, $80,000 right after high school. And then meanwhile, 40% of kids who graduate from high school don't go to college anyway, and 60% of kids, and only 60% of kids that do go to college actually graduate from college within eight years. So what we're saying is let's open up the aperture. Let's have a high school be a gateway to both college and career. And and we now know we can do dual credentialing for, you know, to have AP courses for kids in 11th and 12th grade. Let's do the same thing for the kind of careers, um, that that you can get credentials for as well. And that's what we're saying. And and we are seeing it working, and it's working for kids. Now, at the same time, what also is happening is the workforce really needs it. So for example, we are working with Micron in New York in 10 different school districts to create a pathway to advanced manufacturing and microchips. We're doing the same thing with Bloomberg Industries in healthcare. So why not not make these, excuse my language, pilots around the country, but why don't we actually do this for all kids so that all kids and their can make these decisions themselves and and create that kind of real robust choice within public high schools.

Okay. A couple of things that I want to break down. Certainly. A couple of things I want to break down further here because, uh, at the root of it, it comes back to how much families are paying for the cost of college and what the return on that investment is later on, especially if we're seeing a skyrocketing in the costs, but the wages are not keeping pace with those costs as well. What is your assessment there?

So So, look, at the same time, and and this is where, you know, I mean, Linda McMahon knows that we have cared about this. Look, I I started my teaching as in a Career Tech Ed school in the 1990s. We fought to keep it open, and I taught AP Gov in a Career Tech Ed school. So that kind of busts through every stereotype you can bust through. I think that the issue is the affordability of college is an issue, but it's more than the affordability. It's that some kids actually have, you have to meet kids where they are, and you have to meet their want and aspirations and and create a whole bunch of different career paths for them. So the cost of college is one issue, but it's I think it's rooted even more deeply than that. You know, some kids, like we there's a kid in New Lexington, um, Ohio, who we who I mentioned in the op-ed chase. You know, he really wants to open an electrical business, and he's on his way from high school on to become a journeyman apprentice and electrician. And and those are really good jobs, and they require really important skills. So why not expose that from a young, um, from a, you know, when a youngster is really thinking about their pathways. So yes, affordability is an issue, but I think it's more than affordability. It's about really thinking about choices for kids.

Certainly.

Randy, and and kind of clicking further into that, you know, as we're thinking about what, uh, the Secretary of Education, Linda McMahon has also been talking about in shutting down the Department of Education, likely so that there could probably be some type of privatization that takes place. Would that also then facilitate what we're talking about in having companies also have more of a line of sight into where there are in education systems, the ability to then equip the next generation of future generations for specific industry, for specific sectors, and how we can identify those talents earlier on? What's your sense?

No.

First off, it would be the opposite. I mean, we've had these, you know, in the past year in in past, not only administrations, but eras. Like if you take the New York City subways, you see all these ads for trade schools. Many of them have closed down. They were terrible. The Obama administration actually started, um, making holding them accountable. They would say to kids here, you know, give us tuition money, and we will train you to be a welder, and they and and and more times than not they didn't. So the issue really is not the privatization. We need industry to be aligned with us and to work with us more. The issue is, how do we use a public school system to help all kids be prepared for their lives and careers? So what Linda McMahon is actually doing is making it harder, and the Career Tech Ed Association High School Association, ACTE, basically said, don't make these cuts to, you know, Perkins. I'm sorry, that's the name of the grant. The Perkins and the Career Tech Ed grants, we actually need that, and we need more alignment. We need to actually have in states the economic development people, the workforce people, and the schools people all work together. So there's one-stop shopping for business and industry, particularly small businesses. They shouldn't have to go to three or four separate places. And frankly, Gina Raimondo, when she was secretary in the Commerce Department, she saw this. And we worked more closely in the Biden administration with a Commerce Secretary than we did with anybody else on these issues.

Randy, good to have you here with us today. Thanks so much for taking the time. I know we had to reschedule a couple of times. Appreciate you joining us.

Thanks.

Thank you.