CTE in the News
Check out the latest in CTE research and news!
Latest Article:

American factories are desperate for workers. It’s a $1 trillion problem
Matt Egan, CNN Business
As many as 2.1 million manufacturing jobs will be unfilled through 2030, according to a study published Tuesday by Deloitte and The Manufacturing Institute. The report warns the worker shortage will hurt revenue, production and could ultimately cost the US economy up to $1 trillion by 2030.
Amazon adds robotics apprenticeship to upskilling initiative
Dan Berthiaume
As part of its $700 million Amazon 2025 employee retraining initiative, the e-tail titan is launching the Mechatronics and Robotics Apprenticeship (MRA) Program. The program, which is registered with the U.S. Department of Labor, gives employees the opportunity to apply for an apprenticeship that will train them on the skills and technical knowledge needed to fulfill mechatronics or robotics technical maintenance role. Read MoreLatino gap in STEM workforce is not narrowing, Pew study finds
Nicole Acevedo
Latino and Black workers remain underrepresented in the science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) workforce compared with their share of all workers. But a Pew Research Center report published Thursday found that the gap in STEM workforce representation is especially large for Hispanic adults.
The Role of Education in Economic Growth: Theory, History and Current Returns
Educational Research / Theodore Breton
This paper presents evidence that education has direct and indirect effects on national output. Educated workers raise national income directly because schooling raises their marginal productivity. They raise national income indirectly by increasing the marginal productivity of physical capital and of other workers. In highly educated countries the spillover effect on other workers is minimal, but in less-educated countries the spillover effect appears to be much larger. In all countries, the positive effect of rising human capital on the productivity of physical capital is required to offset the diminishing returns to investment in physical capital and make rising investment in physical capital financially viable in the growth process
How a decline in community college students is a big problem for the economy
Jon Marcus
The number of students in community colleges in the fall declined by more than half a million, or 10 percent, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. Of those now enrolled, a fifth say they are likely to delay their graduation because of the coronavirus, a Strada Education Network and Gallup survey found.
That’s a big problem for employers who need to fill jobs made even more essential by the pandemic, and in fields where there are already shortages. These include health care, cybersecurity, information technology, construction, manufacturing, transportation, law enforcement and utilities.
Community colleges at a crossroads: Enrollment is plummeting, but political clout is growing
The Washington Post — Nick Anderson and Danielle Douglas-Gabriel
Community colleges, long the unsung foundation of higher education in America, have reached a perilous turning point. These two-year public colleges, offering associate’s degrees, workforce training and a low-price opportunity to get started on a bachelor’s degree, had roughly 10 percent fewer students at the beginning of the school year compared with 2019.
Growing community colleges matters not only for the economy, experts say, but also for the causes of racial and social justice. Huge numbers of students of color rely on them to climb the social ladder: About 13 percent of students at public two-year colleges in 2019 were Black, and 26 percent were Hispanic. Community colleges embody many American ideals.
2018 skills gap in manufacturing study
Deloitte
For more than two centuries, the manufacturing industry has adopted new technologies and provided new jobs for workers. Today, the industry is experiencing exciting and exponential change, as technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, and Internet of Things (IoT) are rapidly changing the workplace. While some predicted that these new technologies would eliminate jobs, we have found the reverse—more jobs are actually being created.
What Jeff Kondel had done for our program has truly put us on the map at Manatee Technical College. He has gone way above and beyond to help our program get where it is today. The ROOTS engineering package…can help people, our young student learners, become high-tech learners in the shortest amount of time… This package allows the maximum amount of learning in the shortest amount of time, making it one of the most efficient educational packages I’ve ever seen in my 40 years of teaching.
I believe that if we are going to be competitive in [the] United States, we need a paradigm shift in education; in that, ROOTS engineering will play a major role.
Your robotics package is an innovative breath of fresh air in this arena. Starting with the total cost of robotic ownership, it has been somewhat prohibitive for educators to get the trainer dollars to spend to get a comprehensive suite consisting of multiple robotic cells so that the students can actually spend a reasonable amount of time to learn the language and the programming sequences to allow for simple routines. The next hurdle is the time and expense that is required to send the instructor to the ‘factory’ classes and have them away for weeks at a time. This model alleviates the travel and expense of training the trainer… the curriculum and the content map are effortlessly and organically fine-tuned during the training as well. Dense educational value is very important to me. The ROOTS educational package provides the absolute best experience for the students…



