Comments about ‘Giving higher education a tune-up: Utah takes steps to ensure students have right skills for workforce’

This idea makes no sense at all and this kind of thinking is what creates dissatisfied workers and problem workers for business. The education system is trying to force students in to jobs they are not suited to be in and making everyone's life miserable by doing it.

Students should get a total package education, leave the specialized training for business to pay for and implement for its workers. It's not the responsibility of tax payers to pay OJT costs for business specialized training. Instead of forcing tax payers and students to use college lases and costs for specialized business requests stop the carnage this irresponsible education is doing.

Business can better pay for and train its employees for specialization of socialized business. This is why education and business must part ways, they are damaging education and limiting students range of education.

One major component missing in all this specialization and busienss fraud, none of the students are tested to see what their abilities are versus what they think they want and steer them in careers towards their abilities instead of wants or business demands. Abilities creates jobs, not business demands.

I recently listened to an hour long program on National Public Radio discussing the fact that more and more jobs require LESS in terms of 4-6 year degrees. They discussed how many jobs there are now with the increase in technologies that need employees with only a 2 year technical degree and then employers as stated above want to give more specialized training to workers.

The statistics the specialists on this program gave where the opposite of this article. There are plenty of good paying jobs that don't require so many years of college and we need to stop looking down on those who 'just go to a tech school'.

I have to agree that employers can send their employees for more specialized training focusing on what the company needs them to know, rather than changing the general curriculum for all students at universities.

Regardless of your training for a specific job, learning itself can go on your whole life. I have learned more reading and studying on my own than I think I ever learned in most of my college classes.

It is confusing to hear such divergent opinions on what jobs will require.

MyChildrensKeeper and Maryquilter, did either of you actually read this article? This tuning is not about specialized training such as given in a technical school or a training course often required for certification in a specific industry. This is all about getting students to think and problem solve better than has been the case within their chosen major. It's about making people more employable instead of just papered.

Just like housing, higher education is a bubble. It was made so (again, just like housing) by easy access to money... in the form of student loans.

Just like housing all the lending agencies (including the federal govt.) took for granted that a college education would *always* lead the recipient to a better job, and they used that faulty logic to justify lending billions to people who now have little chance of paying it back.

All this easy money made college costs skyrocket. Tuition and fees at many institutions of higher learning have doubled over the past 10 years.

To top that off we're now in a situation where there are tons of college grads but very few jobs requiring a degree. That makes an overpriced degree worth even less.

Instead of bursting this particular bubble is going to slowly deflate. Enrollment rates are falling nationwide as high school grads enter the recession economy and discover that they'll be working at McD's whether they spent $50,000+ getting a 4-year degree or not.

I read an article fromt he New York Times that seem really made me think. It was talking about the Jobs Stimulous Obama has proposed, and weather it would work or not. They interviewed some of the major companies in different areas of buisness. They all had the same thing to say. We have job opening but we can't find people qualified to fill them. That tells me that we DO need more focus on higher education. There can only be so many labor positions.

To Whoa Nellie: Yes, I did read the article. Sorry if my comments weren't targeted at exactly what you thought they should be. Todays articles from DN focusing on many education-related topics. Didn't know commenters were not allowed to speak on anything except the exact points the writers wanted us to agree with. Maybe you should just skip the comment sections .

This program is a good one and I suport it.

However, they need to step back one step and ask how many of the skills really should be acquired in High School, not college?

Public schools have been so "dumbed down" that much valuable college time is wasted on remedial subjects. And, and another poster pointed out, many people are oing to college who really do not belong there at all, except for easy access to loans and grants.

The one thing most often missing from college graduates today is a solid foundation in liberal arts which provides context and critical thinking skills and merges their majors with the broader world around them.