When military members leave the service, many struggle to find a job — often having to study for a new degree or certification in order to qualify for a position, all the while not being able to rely on consistent income.
To help solve this problem before it even arises, Microsoft is working with Marines at Camp Pendleton in California (and two other U.S. military bases), offering a 16-week certification program in Information Technology to soldiers planning to leave the service in the near future.
Sergeant Taylor Harris, one of the participants in the Microsoft Systems and Software Academy, told Bob Lawrence of ABC 10 News, “It’s great to be able to do this while we are transitioning because we still get a stable paycheck because we’re on active duty.”
Although none of the veterans are guaranteed a job with Microsoft, part of the academy is an interview training session that helps many of them secure an IT position. And at the end of the course, each of them is flown to Redmond, Washington to interview with the tech giant. Navy veteran Sean Kelley, Microsoft’s Senior Staffing Director of Cloud and Enterprise Group, told Lawrence, “70 percent of those who go through the program are working in the tech industry.”
In January, Kelley testified before Congress about what Microsoft has learned from its veteran recruiting efforts, and how the company believes that training veterans in IT can help solve the industry’s problem with finding enough people with technical skills to hire.
“Economic projections point to a need for approximately one million more STEM professionals than the United States will produce at the current rate over the next decade,” he told the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs. “The United States graduates about 300,000 bachelor and associate degrees in STEM fields annually. Fewer than 40 percent who enter college intending a major in a STEM field complete a STEM degree. It is clear that many people, including veterans, lack the technology skills and industry certifications employers look for to fill the tens of thousands of available IT jobs across a broad range of industries. Eight years ago when we started exploring how Microsoft could be helpful to our transitioning veterans, we were surprised to learn there were very few opportunities for veterans to acquire these in-demand skills.”
Classes like this one are helping many veterans find not only a job, but a high-paying and satisfying career. Tuition for the class costs about $3,000 on Camp Pendleton, compared to $10,000 to $20,000 for a similar certification course off base. Corporal Joseph Priest told Lawrence, “As soon as I heard about this opportunity, I jumped on it…you put a little bit aside for tuition costs, and might get a job that lands you between 60 to 80k. I think it’s worth it.”
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Tag: job training
Introducing the Newest Innovation in Higher Ed: The NanoDegree
Pick up any newspaper today and you’ll read the doom-and-gloom statistics about out of control student debt.
But despite its problems, higher education still offers the best chance at climbing the economic ladder and helping our country remain competitive. It’s a vital industry, but certainly one ripe for disruption.
Thankfully, ex-Googler Sebastian Thrun and his company, Udacity, are taking a bold step in the right direction with “NanoDegrees,” a new kind of degree that teaches a narrow set of skills online in fields like front- and back-end coding, mobile development and data analysis.
It’s knowledge presented in small, digestible chunks by an expert (you aren’t left to fend for yourself) and, unlike most online options, it offers skills that can be clearly applied to a job for immediate motivation and tangible results. The best part? It takes less time (six to 12 months) and less money ($200 per month) to complete than almost any other type of learning out there.
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For the many young Americans for whom college has become a distant, unaffordable dream, a NanoDegree lets them harness the web to provide effective training and to begin a career. Intended to teach anyone with a mastery of basic math skills for entry-level job at a company like AT&T, it’s a plausible path for those who may not have the time, money or ability to make it through a four- or even two-year program.
NanoDegrees also have implications for the wider workforce. Today’s industries, especially digital ones, change significantly year to year; skills learned in 2009 might be irrelevant by 2014. But even well-educated adults who can afford to update their knowledge might not have the time. With the NanoDegree you can do so through a “stackable” curriculum that allows you to continually learn new, relevant skills as your career progresses.
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What really sets the NanoDegree apart, though, is the corporate partnerships. Engaging with companies in need of high-demand skills sends a strong signal that if you do the work there’s an actual payoff (a light at the end of the tunnel, so to say). Udacity’s first partner in this initiative, AT&T, said it will accept the NanoDegree as a credential for entry-level jobs and has reserved 100 internship slots for its graduates. Udacity promises further programs with corporate partners and AT&T is already encouraging more companies to get in the game to help.
Such an explicit arrangement might make purists cringe, but this isn’t traditional education. And while it may not offer all the advantages of a liberal arts degree, for example, for people seeking a realistic, viable alternative, the NanoDegree has some serious appeal. NanoDegree graduates can always read Shakespeare while on vacation from their new job, right?
A Hands-On Guide to Preserving Our Nation’s Historic Treasures
The problem facing historic buildings nationwide?
A huge backlog of overdue maintenance that’s in dire need of completion, with an estimated cost of $4.5 billion just for Park Service structures alone, according to the PBS NewsHour.
Adding to the problem is that the workers who perform skilled restoration work are aging. So is there any solution?
The National Trust for Historic Preservation has partnered with the National Park Service and other groups to launch a pilot project, Hands-On Preservation Experience, or HOPE, that provides young people with jobs as it trains them to restore aging structures.
One such project already underway is at Skyland Stables in Virginia’s Shenandoah Mountains, where experienced craftsman David Logan guides students in restoring the structure that was built as a WPA project during the 1930’s. Logan, who owns the restoration company Vintage, Inc., told Jeffrey Brown of PBS NewsHour, “What I have done is guided the team just on some approaches for replacing siding, ways of cutting out the old, and then how to handle the oak to let it move, and just little tips and advice.”
The students earn $10 an hour, compared to $40-$60 an hour a contractor might charge, but also gain valuable skills in the process. Logan said to Brown that he sees fewer tradespeople learning about historic preservation these days.
One of the students is Elijah Smith of Washington, D.C. “I think it’s important to save old buildings, because when you go back, you can see what you did right, what you did wrong, how you want to add ideas to it. And the older something is, the more value it is to it. It brings more people to it,” he said.
Not only does this program shore up some of our nation’s treasures, but it provides youth with a new career path, too.
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The Most Vulnerable Citizens in Rhode Island Finally Have Some Good News
For years Rhode Island residents with intellectual and developmental disabilities spent their time in “sheltered workshops,” where they were supposed to perform menial tasks like unwrapping bars of soap or putting caps on bottles of lotion. They only made about $2.21 an hour, the AP reports.
Fortunately, the Justice Department and the state of Rhode Island put an end to that last Tuesday.
The two parties agreed to a settlement that requires Rhode Island to give disabled citizens a chance at regular employment that pays at least the minimum wage. The agreement will affect about 3,250 people statewide.
If you’re surprised that disabled residents were spending time in sheltered workshops in the first place, perhaps you shouldn’t be. About 450,000 people with disabilities nationwide work in segregated centers, where they have little contact with the outside world, according to the AP.
“It’s a serious problem across the country, and Rhode Island is hardly unique,” Assistant Attorney General Jocelyn Samuels said at a press conference.
Segregated workshops like the ones in Rhode Island used to be viewed as the model for people with mental or developmental disabilities. But in the 1990s, the Supreme Court ruled that people with disabilities should be served in the most integrated settings possible. Rhode Island was accused of violating the Americans with Disabilities Act for years.
Now that the settlement has been reached, Rhode Island will provide minimum-wage job opportunities to about 2,000 people over the next 10 years. The state also agreed to provide transitional services, like trial work experience and job site visits, for disabled residents who are ages 14-21.
Some of the money that will fund the new program will come from the money already being spent on sheltered workshops.
This is a hopeful sign that disabled citizens in Rhode Island (and around the country) will finally have a shot at fair and meaningful employment.
Introducing the Nonprofit Whose Mission Is to Help High School Dropouts and the Homeless
Back in the 1990s, Dorothy Stoneman had big dreams. Not only did she want to help high-school dropouts and unemployed young people, but she also wanted to reach out to poor people in need of housing. So what did she do? She started YouthBuild U.S.A. in 1998, a non-profit that works to solve all of these problems simultaneously.
Today, YouthBuild U.S.A. has grown far beyond its humble beginnings: Now, it has 264 programs in 46 states and 120,000 young people have signed on with the non-profit to build 22,000 units of affordable housing since 1994.
YouthBuild works like this: Its programs across the country recruit unemployed young people ages 16 to 24 (many of whom don’t have high school diplomas). As they learn to build houses and apartment buildings for the homeless and low-income families, participants must also attend an alternative school to earn their diplomas or a G.E.D. They alternate one week working construction with one week in the classroom until they achieve these goals. Meanwhile, the young people learn leadership skills and can obtain counseling and mentoring. When they complete the program, they’re matched with job opportunities.
In an article for Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship Stoneman wrote about Xavier Jennings, a program participant who’d turned his life around and shared his story at the Aspen Ideas Festival in 2012. As a teenager, Jennings was living in Denver with his grandmother, who lost her food stamps because she was too ill to travel to the office to renew them. To make ends meet, he started dealing drugs. Then at age 18 he heard about Mile High Youth Corps’ YouthBuild program, and for the first time experienced the people in his community treating him with respect rather than as a threat.
“I used to be a hoodlum,” Stoneman writes that many participants say, “Now I am a hero.” She continues, “We need to invest in the education, well-being, inspiration, and character development of every young person born, including those who were born into poverty through no fault of their own. They will grow up to be responsible, productive, caring citizens if society recognizes their value and invests in opportunities for them to realize their full potential.”
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This Professor Proved That Everyone Deserves a Fair Shot at a Good Job. Then He Made It Happen
When Columbia University’s Arthur Langer studied 47 low-income young adults to understand why they struggled to find career opportunities, he found that it wasn’t because they lacked talent. What they needed was a way to develop professional skills. The four year study suggested that anyone would succeed if given a fair opportunity.
So instead of stopping there, Langer took it upon himself to provide that opportunity: He founded Workforce Opportunity Services in 2005 to provide disadvantaged young adults and veterans with educational opportunities that lead immediately to long-term careers. WOS has flipped the traditional job-placement model. First, it finds employers who have or create job openings, then it finds disadvantaged youth and veterans to fill those jobs. The students then undergo a rigorous training program where they attend night classes on social skills, read The New York Times and read books on office politics. They also write weekly journal entries and take classes on interpersonal communications. Their weekly assignments can ask questions like “Describe your level of self-esteem.” In Langer’s mission statement, he said the program is designed not only to create good workers — it also wants to create better people and citizens. When the training ends, the employees are guaranteed a well-paid job in information technology. WOS has gained a large and well-recognized client base that includes Prudential Financial, Johnson & Johnson and Hewlett Packard.
Students have to apply for their positions, but once they’re in everything is covered. Though the students have to work very hard once accepted to a program, the long-term job security and free tech training is definitely worth it. “Our approach is simple: skills first. We want to teach our students valuable skills and launch them into careers,” Langer said on WOS’ website. “They work on their degrees part time and graduate from college, debt free.”
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