RE: Integration into academics is inadequate

Hi, I just want to weigh in on the Education to Work transition.  I am an director for Economic and Workforce Development for the community colleges with statewide responsibilities.  And I came to this field after a more then twenty years as a successful engineer and business manager.  Now after more then ten years of hearing about School-to-Career I recommend that we stop trying to get students jobs and start preparing them for the world and society they will enter.

School must prepare a person to be a useful participating value adding individual in the society they enter.  Even with a Masters Degree in Business a modern American could not survive economically in many of the third world countries - the skills he or she learned would not fit that society.

So too must our high schools and college graduates be supplied not with work skills nor with academic skills bit with a combination, and a lot of practical life skills for the society they will enter.  If we measure our society - United States of America- it is clear from many reports and analysis that not more then 20-25% of the adult population needs a professional 4-year degree, 60-70% need to be able to perform at an integrated level using practical skills and modern communications, less then 15% can still function with only minor skills.  But to be a successful society ALL citizens must have life skills - those categories of knowledge that allow a individual to function appropriately in society: the ability to read write and communicate, the ability to handle finances (banking, loans, credit etc.), the ability to work in groups (teams, organizations, and communities), the ability to reason and problem solve, and the freedom to be creative and allow others their creative space.

We need to stop the argument between teaching academics or workforce preparation and begin the dialogue on "Preparation for Life" and what that will mean in the next 10-20 years.  We need to tear down the structures of Academic and Career.  We need to eliminate the different tracks or categories of student.  What we should have are schools and colleges that align learning with Life Skills - so that students see the relevance of what they learn in school to what they do or have to do, outside of formal education.