A Thought for the ‘Forgotten Half’ : Clinton team weighs training for non-college graduates

Many college-bound Americans have a multitude of options. They can attend public or private colleges, two-year or four-year schools, close to home or far away. If they need financial aid, they often can get government loans and scholarships, as well as private awards and fellowships.

But the majority of high school graduates do not go on to college.

Penalized by their choices or circumstances, these equally young and eager Americans have few options to get the additional schooling or training they need to land skilled and better-paying jobs.

President-elect Bill Clinton recognizes “the forgotten half”--the 56% of high school students who do not go to college. To help them make a more productive transition from classroom to workroom, his advisers are considering a huge, new youth apprenticeship program to fill the vocational education void.

Vocational ed, as it is called, lost the budget battles in many school districts. Educators were forced to sacrifice woodworking, home economics and other practical classes to save every cent for academics.

Those budget cuts hastened a decline in industrial education that began during the civil rights movement.

In past decades, black, Latino and women students often were pigeonholed by race, ethnicity or gender. A bright young male member of a minority group aspiring to become a lawyer might have been told, for example, to stick to carpentry. A brilliant young woman who hoped to become a physician might have been tracked into dental hygiene.

As a result, many Americans equated vocational education with inferior education. When the barriers began to fall, they pushed for universal college education. Minority members and others wanted the white-collar opportunities that had been closed to them.

In the effort to achieve that equality, however, America all but forgot about vocational ed. And that unintentionally limited the future of many young Americans to minimum-wage jobs. Many have the ability to do better, but they do not have the opportunity to gain marketable skills.

Clinton’s approach would provide apprenticeships for 300,000 young men and women. These youth apprenticeships would combine work experience with the last two years of high school and two years of community college. Sounds promising, but the $1-billion cost is a big catch, given the bloated federal deficit and competing spending priorities.

Another big question is cooperation by American businesses, which in many cases do not do enough to train young workers. Commitment from employers is needed to guarantee on-the-job experience beyond the menial labor that is already available to high school graduates.

If companies and schools can make the commitment, the combination of classes and job training can succeed. It works on a large scale in Germany. It works on a much smaller scale in Pasadena, Ft. Worth, Boston and other cities. If youth apprenticeships can work nationally, America can put a generation of young people to work in jobs that promise decent wages and secure futures.

Depreciating Apprenticeship Federal spending on vocatioal and adult education in billions of dollars. 1989: 1.02 1990: 1.09 1991: 0.74