Most colleges and universities offer a wide variety of degree programs in both the Arts and Sciences.
The University of Kentucky, for example, offers numerous majors, ranging from Education, Business, Management, Health Professions, to Communication, Engineering, Journalism, and Biomedical Engineering, just to mention a few.
While students may benefit from having so many degree options from which to choose, they may be setting themselves up for disappointment if they select a major that does not lead to employment.
Degrees in Arts and Humanities may, for instance, allow students to develop their interests and talents, but in a weakening economy such as ours with the pandemic going on, they will not provide a foundation for lucrative employment.
To become successful in those fields, however, students are often required to earn a doctoral degree, and even then, many of those students manage to secure employment only as lecturers at colleges and universities. Finding a suitable job with merely a bachelor’s degree in a humanities or arts field is next to impossible.
Kentucky Skills U will help you earn your secondary education degree so you can pursue a college degree or continue your education at a vocational or technical school.
Rather than pursuing a degree in humanities or the arts, students should better choose to work toward a degree that leads directly to a specific job or certification.
A nursing degree, for instance, will allow a student to become certified for employment as a registered nurse.
A degree in education will also directly lead to licensure and a job as a teacher. In a weakening economy, students could perhaps even better consider obtaining, for example, an associate’s degree from a community college.
It’s not just that an associate’s degree requires far less money and time, but it will additionally teach the students specific skills that frequently lead to certification and qualification for specific professional fields.
There are quite a few community colleges that offer degree-granting programs in, for example, respiratory care, surgical technology, or dental hygiene. Upon completion of such a program, the students can take a licensure exam and find a rewarding job in these fields.
Preparing for success during college
Not every student may be interested in earning a healthcare or education degree. If a student is, for example, interested in pursuing a career in a professional field such as business, communications, or political science, obtaining experience before graduating will be required.
To become successful students in these fields, they will have to take advantage of volunteering or internship opportunities.
But even then remains that after they have completed their education, these students will need to compete with so many other applicants for just a very limited number of available positions.
Sure, having a great volunteer experience or completing an interesting internship will help these graduates to have an edge over the competition, but the likelihood that they’ll succeed in finding a suitable job in their specialization remains slim.
These students should not just rely on internships or volunteer opportunities. They should also try to connect with their professors and other faculty members.
These respected professionals will have some interesting connections and can write letters of recommendation to help students with their efforts to find a suitable position. But not all students are looking to earn a college degree and vocational careers are popular and well-rewarding as well. So let;s take a closer look:
Technical Vocational Education and Training
A vocational school is also known as a trade school or career school. It provides vocational training so that students will learn the skills that they will need in order to do a particular job fairly well.
This also includes knowledge about which techniques will work better to do one type of job over another, the safety procedures that need to be followed when doing a particular job, how to operate equipment and machinery in an efficient manner that will both provide support to the capabilities of its human operator and at the same time produce its optimum performance befitting of a machine, which unlike a human can consistently produce work without complaining or getting tired.
Job-specific skills
Vocational education differs from traditional education in the sense that it only teaches students practical job-specific skills, unlike traditional education which also incorporates courses or programs with a theoretical side and which are designed to expand a student’s knowledge about the world. Thus, we can say that trade school programs are designed for training and not for education, like training to become a graphic designer.
In the United States, vocational courses are seen as post-secondary schools, which is why many trade school courses and vocational training programs require a high school diploma or its equivalent before they can take in students. In some cases, students who have established technical jobs as their career path can just opt to finish high school with technical education rather than waste their time with more years of theoretical study in preparation for a college that they do not wish to undertake.
Most vocational schools only offer two-year training programs. These schools could be public schools that are operated by a federal government, school district, or another group that is officially sanctioned.
Affordable education
Thus, there is a possibility that such institutions could charge a minimum or even no tuition. Most of those schools which offer purely vocational, trade, or technical training are private schools, which can be further subdivided into non-profit schools and also proprietary schools.
There are also community colleges that provide technical classes that offer associate degrees and core courses that students can use in preparation for transferring to four-year institutions, as well as vocational classes depending on what the local community where it is located needs.
The responsibility of a vocational school is to offer postsecondary education that will provide students with professional and technical, career-specific educational programs. See also this post about what online colleges can offer you.
This kind of training will focus on students receiving job-specific training instead of a broad education in the liberal arts. Generally, completing a career college program can range from doctoral or master’s degrees for postgraduate study to bachelor’s degrees, associate degrees, and down to short-term courses and diplomas.
A student who wants to take advantage of the technical and skills-related jobs available in many states and throughout the world will need to undergo training in a vocational school and also in technical schools, depending on the skill that they want to learn.
Rewarding careers
This is necessary in order for him to be able to make do at his chosen profession. Technical skills are a viable career option nowadays because these jobs pay even more in some cases than white-collar jobs. And vocational schools generally offer excellent continuing education programs for adults wishing to improve their skills and go back to school.
Take the case of welders, for example. There is a high premium being placed on quality welders because there are relatively few experienced welders available at present, and many of these welders are already aging and wound need to pass the torch, figuratively and literally speaking, to new welders who will continue the tradition of making quality welds.
This is because society, especially western society, and culture has traditionally placed blue-collar jobs in low esteem and placed more prestige on white-collar jobs. This is because the typical degrees that are required for white-collar jobs cost more and require a longer time to finish than the vocational programs, technical programs, or trade school programs that a technical skill will cover.