PRESIDENT Barack Obama announced Monday, March 9, an initiative to help Americans achieve well-paying technology jobs without a college degree.
The initiative, TechHire, relies on partnerships with more than 300 employers and local governments to train, recruit and hire individuals based on their actual skills rather than their resumes.
In the United States, there are about 5 million jobs available, more than any point in time since 2001, according to The White House. More than half a million of these are in tech-related fields, jobs that boast average salaries that are 50 percent higher than the average American private-sector job. Available positions in these fields include cybersecurity, network administration and software development, many of which did not exist a decade ago.
Part of the reason these tech jobs are vacant is because employers have typically sought four-year degrees, the president said.
“It turns out, it doesn’t matter where you learned to code. It just matters how well you can code. If you can do the job, you should get the job,” Obama said when he announced the program Monday at the National League of Cities Conference.
The president has called on nontraditional ways to train Americans more quickly for tech jobs, including “coding bootcamps” and quality online courses that usually take just a few months rather than years.
“Technology needs are moving a lot faster than conventional education,” said Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer, whose city has made a a short-term online programming course available to anyone with a library card, according to USA Today.
“The goal coming out of this is for people to come out with a portfolio,” Fischer said. “In the software world, particularly with cybersecurity, it’s ‘Show me your work.’”
More than 20 communities are collaborating with each other and national employers for this initiative, with more than 120,000 open technology jobs.
Obama said companies such as Capital One Bank and Mastercard have agreed to assist in recruiting, training and employing tech workers with nontraditional education.
“And these new models have the potential to reach underserved communities, to reach women, who are still underrepresented in this factor; and minorities, who are still underrepresented in this sector; and veterans, who we know can do the job; and lower-income workers, who might have the aptitude for tech jobs but they don’t know that these jobs are within reach,” he said.
Different areas in the United States have implemented varying approaches to nontraditional training, the White House said. In Delaware, for instance, community colleges are providing the training; In St Louis, a non-profit organization called Launchcode is training coders and matching them to job openings.
A total of 21 communities that have responded to Obama’s call-to-action, including Los Angeles, New York City, Salt Lake City and San Francisco.
Under TechHire, the Obama Administration also announced a $100 million commitment through the Department of Labor to support approaches to moving lower skilled workers facing hurdles in training and employment to tech jobs in industries, such as financial services and healthcare, among others. The grant will serve individuals with barriers to accessing training, including those with disabilities and limited proficiency in English, among others.
(With reports from USA Today)
(www.asianjournal.com)
(LA Midweek March 11-13, 2015 Sec. A pg.3)
