Hi Grace, RE: "The problem with government sponsored jobs programs is that it is impossible for a bureaucracy to know where the new jobs will come from"
I don't think they need to know.
What they need to know, is stop assuming community college is going to educate an extremely intelligent IT Dept Admin worker into a new field, which was Bush's proposal, of all things. Some of these folks need to be retrained into completely different fields, that retraining at a college or a new grad-level degree could do, not community college. Some of these govt officials are living in the 80s, when community college was the ticket for retraining.
The govt needs to think retraining at a college, not community college. This downturn has impacted people higher up the educational ladder than what community college could do for them. Mr. Snow is truly out of touch.
Check this out:
"Mr. Fusco is one of the plaintiffs in a class-action suit against the Department of Labor that seeks to extend the government's trade adjustment assistance program, dating to the 1960's and most recently revised in 2002, to software programmers. The plaintiffs have been told by the Labor Department that, because software is not a tangible "article," they do not qualify for financial assistance and retraining for jobs lost to foreign competition, as manufacturing workers do. Efforts are under way in Congress to change the law."
This guy ought to win and the high-tech industry is completely behind him and supports this, I believe.
nytimes.com
Regards,
Amy J |
