Ricardo Thomas / The Detroit News Fifteen-year-old Drew Waldrup, of Waterford, and his parents, Debbie and Russ, attended Oakland Techincal Center’s recent 2001 Career Odyssey to learn about job opportunities in electronics from physics instructor Jeff Fagan.

State polishes vo-tech’s image

Kids are encouraged to decide if 4-year college is necessary

John T. Greilick / The Detroit News Teacher Richard Deskovitz works with senior Adam Sinkus in the Northville high-tech manufacturing lab.

By Jodi Upton / The Detroit News

    While two-thirds of Metro Detroit’s graduating seniors plan to attend a four-year college, nearly half won’t make it to their junior year.

    That’s creating a job crisis in Michigan, and state officials hope to solve it by convincing teens and their reluctant parents that vocational education is cool and will prepare them for satisfying careers that pay better than many jobs requiring a college degree.

    The state’s new Department of Career Development is launching an advertising campaign this month that will use billboards, brochures and other media to coax kids to choose a career first — and then decide if a four-year college is the best route to get there. And guidance counselors are getting more training in hot jobs, such as engine design and computer-aided drawing, that may not require a university degree.

    Many educators welcome the changes, but acknowledge that even well-placed advertising won’t easily change an entrenched mind-set: Good students go to a four-year college, and only low achievers — destined for menial, low-paying jobs — don’t.

    “There are a lot of parents who would be embarrassed if their kid didn’t get a four-year college degree,” said Lake Orion High School guidance counselor Alicia Conner. She sees greater pressure on Michigan teens to attend college than in Pennsylvania, where she worked previously.

    “I run into that “keeping up with the Jones’ a lot.”

    As a result, high school seniors are rejecting technical careers in droves, leaving plentiful, high-paying jobs unfilled.

    Educators bear their share of the responsibility for the second-class image of voc-tech education.

    For years, districts have focused on assessment scores, drop out rates and class size in assessing how well they’re serving their students. Few do follow up studies to determine where their graduates ended up, or whether college was the best route for the jobs those students wanted.

    “If I could have districts do one thing, it would be to find out what kids are really doing a few years after they graduate,” said John Williams, director of Michigan’s Career and Technical Preparation, a department created last year to bridge the gap between where kids go after high school and the demands of the job market.

    “These are the kids that did what society told them to do: Go to a four-year college. But a lot drop out of college because they don’t know why they’re there.”

    Wayne County’s Regional Education Service Agency, the intermediate school district serving all 34 community districts in the county, is among the handful that follow graduates to determine where they landed. Wayne County 1998 graduates tracked down for the RESA study, said their high schools gave them better information about college than about noncollege training.

Pam Jackson, left, discusses careers in the construction industry with Debra and Ronald Jackson, right, and their son Ronald, of Waterford, at Oakland Technical Center.

Not an easy sell

    It’s not going to be an easy sell to convince parents and students that there are more options than a four-year degree.

    “We call it the Lake Wobegon effect,” said Jim Thorp, who worked on a Ferris State University survey that probed why kids don’t opt for technical degrees in spite of the high salaries and abundant jobs.

    In Lake Wobegon, the make-believe home of humorist Garrison Keillor, all the women are strong, the men good-looking, and the children above average. That’s how Michigan parents see their children when it comes to the college track.

    “Parents and students all rated themselves and their kids above average,” Thorp said. “But the teachers said no, there were a lot more students who are more average than they think.”

    Three-fourths of parents surveyed statewide say a technical career is a great option, but a whopping 91 percent added: “But not for my kid.”

    “I guess I would consider myself one of those parents,“ said Vicki Schweitzer of Clarkston. “I got a four-year degree and I expect mine to do the same.”

    Still, Schweitzer and her husband, David, were open to other options. They recently took their son Peter, a high school freshman, to explore programs at the Oakland Technical Center in Clarkston.

    But some parents and students cling to unrealistic expectations. Add to that guidance counselors, pressured by a front office that equates college prep with success, and many students are set up to fail.

    And a traditional four-year degree may not even be necessary — or even adviseable.

    By 2008, according to Oakland Community College, two-thirds of all jobs will require a two-year technical degree; only 20 percent will require a traditional four-year degree.

    Eventually, many kids make their way to technical jobs anyway. But it may take a few years for them to sort out. At OCC, for example, the average student is 28 years old.

    “That’s about the time between going to college for a few years, dropping out, getting a job, not liking it and finally coming back to get technical certification in a job they really want to do,” said Robert Powell, a technology teacher at OCC. “There’s no question that’s ... a waste of time.”

OCC culinary instructor Kevin Enright, left, talks about food with education counselor JoAnn Burk and Brenda Mitchell.

No grease in tech jobs

    Some schools are getting better at blurring the lines between voc tech kids and the college-bound.

    In Oakland County, teens can take college prep requirements as well as classes at the several technical centers. There, they can take a college-acceptable physics class and build model cars to learn about gear ratios, batteries or hydraulics.

    Some students are getting the message that a technical certification can really pay off.

    Derek Ruma and Anthony St. Dennis, for example, plan to go to college — likely as engineering students. But they wouldn’t mind getting a technical certification to help out.

    “A buddy of mine graduated from high school and is making $75,000 doing diesel engine design — and they’re sending him to college,” said St. Dennis, a sophomore at Waterford Lakes High School. “I like working with my hands and I definitely want to make some money when I get out.”

    But the real selling point to get kids into technical jobs is convincing them the jobs are interesting, not greasy, said Ferris’ Thorp. And many will involve working with robots and computers. But teachers such as Jeff Fagan say it needs constant reinforcement.

    “You show this stuff to elementary kids and they think it’s the coolest thing,” said Fagan, a science and technology teacher at the Oakland Technical Center.

    “But somehow, they lose their way and don’t want to come out here. We still hear it: The word vocational’ has a bad meaning in Oakland County.”

    The Ferris research echoes that impression.

    “Educators, in spite of their best efforts, really have a bias towards four-year degrees,” Thorp said. “And they’re the ones who should be most aware of all the options.”

    Clarkston senior Mike Pasco, for example, was accepted to Michigan State University with plans to be an engineer. But when he mentioned to his guidance counselor he wanted to spend his senior year at the technical center, he was advised against it — warned that he may risk his college acceptance.

    “The counselor said stay at the high school for physics and calculus,” said Pasco, who carries a grade point average of 3.4. “But when I talked to MSU, they said definitely get the hands on experience at the tech center. They said ‘that’s perfect.’”

    Lake Orion guidance counselor Alicia Conner said some guidance counselors can make things worse by not being aware of opportunities in tech fields. And some have the same ‘not my kid’ attitude with their own children.

    “In some schools, you can’t even get (tech) career guidance,” Conner said. “Parents just don’t want it — don’t even want to hear about it.”

    But Williams says you can’t blame it all on teachers and counselors. Williams, the state’s new job training czar, said guidance counselors are finding they need to be retrained because of the rapidly changing job market.

    “In the past, we asked them to get kids into college. Now we’re asking them to do something completely different,” he said.

    Actively choosing a career — whether or not it requires a college degree — is central to his department’s goal. His motto: Career by choice, not by chance.

    That may mean giving all students — including the college bound — a chance to try out technical careers with more job shadowing, mentorship and other programs that give them a chance to try on careers before they have to commit to an educational path.

    “Technology is changing the world of work. You don’t always need a four-year degree and there is more than one pathway to the job you want,” he said.

    “All we ask is that kids really pursue what they want to do, not what they think they should do.”

You can reach Jodi Upton at (313) 561-8768 or jupton@detnews.com.