HARLINGEN, Texas - There was a paradigm shift away from technical and vocational education in the United States in the 1970s and 1980s and its negative impact is still being felt.
This is the view of Pat Hobbs, executive director of Workforce Solutions Cameron.
Speaking at a news conference that was held to celebrate the awarding of a $2 million Building Pathways to Infrastructure Jobs grant by the Department of Labor, Hobbs said technical and vocational education have to be supported for the good of both the Rio Grande Valley economy and its workforce. The event was held at Texas State Technical College in Harlingen.
"Here's the situation. Many of you have heard me preach about this for several years. And I watched it, you know. I’ve been doing this for 50 years. In the 70s and 80s there was a paradigm shift away from technical education, away from vocational education. That was a nasty word at some point. To the point where every child was counseled to get a four-year degree or they were going to be a failure in life,” Hobbs said.
“That's a little harsh, but that's the way it came across. A lot of the schools, unfortunately, closed their CTE (career and technical education) programs. They did away with their vocational counselors. And we're paying the price now. We've damaged our workforce pipeline for the last 40 years and now all of a sudden, we're attracting companies like the LNGs and SpaceX and we can't supply them with the workers that they need.”
Continuing with this theme, Hobbs said: “We need to change the paradigm. Get back to training in the skilled trades and the higher level technologies. That's what we're working towards. Because what happened was… not only were children not career-aware about the technologies and skilled trades areas, but the Boomers were retiring, except for me.”
Hobbs said 60 percent of the workers in every occupation is going to retire over the next ten years. “And there's nobody in the pipeline. We did that. Now we’ve got to fix it.”
Hobbs asked Dr. Juan Chavez, vice president of leadership development at Noble Texas Builders to speak. Chavez said his company is having to train its workers to get them up to par.
“And that's what a lot of companies are doing because the educational system is broken and we're not producing what we need for them,” Hobbs said. “If the contractors can't find workers, they can't bid on contracts. If they can't bid on contracts the contract doesn't get fulfilled, and the work doesn't get done in our economy. I mean, I'm no professional economist but I've watched it happen.”
Hobbs said a lack of skilled technicians in the emerging occupations is a big concern.
“We’ve got SpaceX here. We've got AI now, on the horizon. I don't even know what that is, but it's scary. But we should have a pipeline developed to be supplying all of these emerging industries, as well as take care of the employers that we've got in our system right now,” Hobbs said.
“And what's happened is what JJ (Chavez) mentioned. A lot of employers are now building their own. You see a lot of companies engaged in apprenticeships and internships, in anything they can do to help develop the workers that they need because the system is not doing it for them.”
Hobbs said the “fun part” of the event was that it afforded him the opportunity to tie two grants together that will positively impact the Valley.
Hobbs said he agreed with another speaker at the presentation, Cledia R. Hernandez, vice chancellor and chief external relations officer for Texas State Technical College, when she spoke about the importance of regional cooperation.
“That's been really important to me for several years. We've all watched the silos being built. You know, each educational provider does their own thing. Each EDC (economic development corporation) does their own thing. Nobody talks to each other. And that hasn't worked very well for us.”
Hobbs said WSC has worked well over the years with its counterpart in the upper Valley, Workforce Solutions Lower Rio.
“They, too, realize that anything that happens in the Valley, it’s good for the whole region. As Cledia said, no matter who gets the credit, there's going to be some activity, everybody's going to get a piece of the pie whether they were in the mix to bring the product here or not,” Hobbs said.
Hobbs said that in his opinion the Texas Legislature did not get meaningfully involved in addressing the failure to focus on technical and vocational training until 2014.
“Finally, people started to realize that employers are screaming for employees. Finally, it gets to the legislative level. By the way, by the time anything gets to the legislative level for a fix, there's probably been ten years of tragedy leading up to that. It took ten years to get the legislature involved enough to fix it.”
Hobbs said the legislative fix included a requirement that high school students select an endorsement in one of the 16 areas, with five general areas for their high school time period, grades nine to 12.
“What we saw as a problem is, if you ask a 13 or 14 year-old eighth grader to select an endorsement that he's going to live with, as far as a career for the next 40 years (is concerned) and he (or she) can’t even pronounce those words, we’ve got a problem. They're asked to select an endorsement and then spend the next four years taking a course in that endorsement area. And they had no idea what those were about.”
Hobbs said one “great thing” the Texas Workforce Commission did to address the problem was fund several local boards, including Workforce Solutions Lower Rio.
“They actually funded what's called a career outreach specialist to go into the high schools, orient the counselors and the students and the principals about careers and about those 16 endorsements. Which ones are valid in this area? Which ones pay what? Where do you get that certificate or AAS degree if you select a certain endorsement? How much does that job pay? Those are the things that people need to hear.”
Hobbs said it is not only students and school counselors that need to hear from the career outreach specialists, but also the parents. “I think parents have a lot of influence over their kids at that age.”
Another good thing that happened, Hobbs said, was the Texas governor got involved and formed a Tri-Agency commission that included the heads of the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, the Texas Education Agency and the Texas Workforce Commission.
“The governor got those three people get together and said, you guys start working together, fix this situation.”
And just recently the Tri-Agency commission funded the Convener Grant that Workforce Solutions Cameron received.
“We were awarded a Convener grant for $600,000. So was Region One (Education Service Center) for the upper three counties (in the Valley). And that (grant) deals with pathways. You'll hear that word a lot if you're in the education business or even workforce now. Building the pathways so that workers are developed in the pipeline for the employers as they need them.”
Hobbs said the grant for Cameron County covers manufacturing, construction, and healthcare. “Those are the three targeted industries for our county,” he said. For Region One, the grant covers government, healthcare, and education.
“So we've covered six of the endorsement areas. And our new grant, the one that we're here today to learn about covers another three targeted industry areas. So, by the time we're through, we will have no excuse. We've got nine targeted industries. We've got the funding to pay for developing those pathways and getting students enrolled in those areas of study. And we're definitely hoping it makes a difference.”
The DOL grant that was being celebrated in Harlingen requires collaboration between the two workforce boards in the Valley.
“It's $2 million over five years. And if we're successful, we can be eligible for a $10 million grant to expand even further. So it's really important that we're successful with this grant,” Hobbs said. “The target industries here are renewable energy, transportation and broadband.”
Hobbs said the Workforce Solutions Cameron and Workforce Solutions Lower Rio have two years to make it work. “I don't have any fears that Lower Rio won’t take the ball and run with it. We’ve assigned him (Lower Rio’s executive director Francisco ‘Frank’ Almaraz) 200 out of the 250 participants. I know he's excited about that.”
