Mar 6, 2008
Corporate support for high school curriculums
Through free lesson plans and glossy handouts, Deloitte LLP urges classrooms full of high school students to “consider a career you may never have imagined: working as a professional auditor.”
They’re right about the imagination part.
A story in today’s Wall Street Journal highlights how Deloitte, Lockheed Martin and other corporations are lending a helping hand to high schools, providing materials, computers and training for teachers – and “hoping to create a pipeline of workers far into the future.”
At first glance, it seems like a win-win; companies are fearful of a future labor shortage, and state education funding isn’t cutting it.
But critics say the line between academics and commercialism is being crossed.
What do you think?
JACKIE SAUTER, Web Editor
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I would be more concerned about companies trying to use the high schools as a way to market their products and attract young customers. I don’t see as much danger in corporations trying to raise student’s awareness of various career options even if they have their own agenda behind it. Regardless, I question how much influence this all can have as many students career options are shaped in College and even after that.
You’re right when you say many student career options are shaped in college. Lockheed Martin has found that you have to interest students in engineering while in the K-12 years so students take the math and science courses necessary to make them successful once they get to college engineering programs. If they don’t take those courses while in high school, it is a virtual certainty they will not make it through engineering degree programs. And given that enrollment rates in engineering degree programs are down, while birth data suggests they should be up, the need to develop the next generation of engineers by engaging at the K-12 level is even greater.
Wonderful idea. As long as the teaching is of subject matter related to the fields necessary to replenish the positions/professions lost due to the depletion of our aging society, and not so much the hype of Lockheed Martin and the like (commercialism), this can be a win-win relationship. This is the time to train our youths, to get them interested in occupations that made America great! We have to encourage our corporations to get more involved and invest in America’s future………………….our young.