Today, President Obama announced the launch of a new initiative Skills for the America’s Future - an effort to improve the industry partnerships with the community colleges to ensure that America’s community college students are gaining the skills and knowledge they need to be successful in the workforce.
In his remarks before the start of the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board (PERAB) meeting today, President Obama laid the vision for the Skills for America's Future program:
The idea here is simple: we want to make it easier to connect the students looking for jobs with businesses looking to hire. We want to help the community colleges and employers create programs that match curricula in the classroom with the needs of the boardroom.
We’ve already seen cases where this can work. Cisco, for example, has been working directly with community colleges to prepare students and workers for jobs ranging from work in broadband to health IT. And all over the country, we know that the most successful community colleges are those that partner with the private sector. So Skills for America’s Future would help build on these success stories by connecting more employers, schools, and other job training providers, and helping them share knowledge about what practices work best. The goal is to ensure that every state in the country has at least one strong partnership between a growing industry and a community college. Already, companies from UTC to Accenture to the GAP have announced their support for this initiative, as well as business leaders like my friend Penny Pritzker and the Aspen Institute’s Walter Isaacson. I hope other business leaders will follow suit, and I’m also setting up a taskforce to work directly with the business community on this effort.
The President also emphasized the importance investing in education as a means of investing in our long-term economic growth.
No comments:
Post a Comment