(Louisiana) Education Hasn't Done Its Job
by JIM BEAM - The American Press (excerpt)

If there was ever an indictment of Louisiana’s education system, from high school on up, it’s the fact the state currently has 100,000 job openings it can’t fill. What in the world have our secondary schools, community and technical colleges and universities been doing for the last 30 years?

Part of the problem can be traced to the state’s slow development of an effective community college system and a politicized vocational-technical system. That began to change during former Gov. Mike Foster’s administration, but we’re still playing catch-up.

Meanwhile, the big boys directing operations at the college and university levels, who are making humongous individual salaries, don’t seem too concerned about the job situation. They are concentrating their efforts instead on raising college tuition.

You can’t help but wonder whether there was ever any serious dialogue between people in the business and working world and the educators who are supposed to be training our young people.

Gov. Bobby Jindal shined the spotlight on our current dilemma in his speech that opened the regular session of the Legislature.

“As of today, we already have 100,000 job opportunities across our state — these are thousands and thousands of jobs, many in the growing industries of transportation, health care, manufacturing and construction,” Jindal said.

“That’s the good news,” he added. “The bad news is that our Louisiana employers are struggling to fill these positions — and year after year more sit vacant; and at the same time, tens of thousands of Louisianians leave the state every year to pursue their dreams elsewhere.”