Manufacturing jobs go wanting as unemployment perseveres : Stltoday

Manufacturing jobs go wanting as unemployment perseveres : Stltoday

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Ranken, with 2,100 students, has seen enrollment jump by 30 percent over the past three years. It is nonetheless operating 400 students short of capacity on its North St. Louis campus.

The school currently places 98 percent of its graduates in full-time jobs.

And local manufacturers, while also snapping up vocational grads from Southwestern Illinois College, St. Louis Community College and other local institutions are clamoring for more.

Shoun and other industry officials pin the shortage of capable skilled workers on the good intentions of the Greatest Generation who, in the interest of wanting a better life for their children, steered baby boomers away from careers that required punching a factory time clock.

Their children, the baby boomers, consequently earned undergraduate and graduate degrees, moved into white collar jobs and raised their own children with the full expectation that they would attend college as well.
The continuum ignored a basic tenet. “Not everyone is college material,” said Hammond, who himself left higher education after six months to join the company founded by his father in 1986.

In the K-12 system, baby boomer parents had a willing ally in emphasizing college over trades.

Shop class, once mandatory, is now an option at most middle and high schools — if it's offered at all because of budget constraints.
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if schools do not train folks, what do you expect
 if you do not pay well, like union jobs with benefits what do you expect