Page 8 - Georgia Forestry - Spring 2020

By Brady Hummel
GAP
Filling the
Technical College Programs Training Forestry’s Future
The 21st-century workplace is innovating quickly and contin- uously, demanding employers and employees be prepared for a future that we cannot yet predict.
Two things will always hold true, regardless of how that future unfolds: we will continue to need a diverse workforce, and we will continue to need to train that workforce to fill the demand for labor.
Since the G.I. Bill was passed in 1944, pro- viding returning World War II veterans, among other things, tuition support to help them secure higher education, getting a bachelor’s degree has been lauded as a stepping stone on the path to the American Dream and its promise of prosperity. “As a society, we continue to push ever larger numbers of students into ever higher levels of education,”1 wrote Bryan Caplan, an econom- ics professor at George Mason University, in an article for The Atlantic.
That college-for-all philosophy, though, has shown cracks in recent years. As the cost of a four- year degree continues to increase, the potential return on that investment is becoming more dif- ficult for many to justify. According to the Federal Reserve’s most recent available data from 2019,
U.S. consumers owe a collective $1.6 trillion in outstanding student debt.2 And an estimated 40 percent of recent college graduates are under- employed, working in jobs that are misaligned to their skillset.3
Yet, the majority of jobs in many industries — including forestry — do not require a bachelor’s degree. A joint report by Deloitte and The Man- ufacturing Institute states that “while the job gains are positive indications that industry con- tinues to recover from the Great Recession and reflect strong production levels, it also means that finding talent with the right skills to fill the open
40%
of recent college graduates are underemployed
6 | GEORGIA FORESTRY