Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Green Collar Jobs

As reported by an AP reporter recently, click HERE for the article, two-year colleges are doing a good job of adjusting to job training made necessary by the growth of alternative energy and, well, a sucky economy.

While many two-year colleges are doing a good job of adapting/changing, I haven't seen as many four-year colleges making this area a priority. Universities are "greening" themselves and their images, sure, but the number of four-year colleges offering degrees related to alternative energy is pretty small.  

5 comments:

Kenson said...

Well, once Obama reaches back in to the “future tax pool” of that of my great grand children he will just throw some money at that issue in order to bring that change. Might as well subsidize the educational system - “green degrees” - since we are already subsidizing the green industry itself. Why not?

Quintilian B. Nasty said...

Good to have you back, Kenson.

The point of my post, however, was that two-year colleges seem to have their @#$% together on a burgeoning industry.

At some four-year colleges, change is glacial.

travolta said...

I would think that the traditional universities have "green industry" jobs covered under electical engineering, mechanical engineering, chemical engineering, nuclear engineering, physics, biology, chemistry, and other fields that already exist.

Learning how to install solar panels comes after the engineering is done to make them practical to install. The engineering comes after the initial scientific breakthroughs done by the physicist and/or chemist.

I'm not disagreeing with the premise of the article, but it is not that big of a deal that 4 year institutions aren't providing this type of training.

And to get in my daily dose of snark, I loved the second to last paragraph of the article: "Matthew Welch, who teaches the Solar 102 class at San Jose City College, recently lost his job as a solar installer." Emphasis added.

I imagine real professors hate the cliche "Those who can't do, teach."

Quintilian B. Nasty said...

Oh, the technologically focused four-year colleges have their stuff together on this stuff. The big name places have been ahead of the game for years.

But other places are doing some greenwashing.

Quintilian B. Nasty said...

And, yes, that second to last paragraph is darkly humorous.