SOTU: Community Colleges, Employers To Train Workers For High-Paying Coding Jobs

theodp writes: Coding got a couple of shout-outs from the White House in Tuesday's State of the Union Address. "Thanks to Vice President Biden's great work to update our job training system," said President Obama (YouTube), "we're connecting community colleges with local employers to train workers to fill high-paying jobs like coding, and nursing, and robotics." And among the so-called "boats" in the new "River of Content" that the White House social media folks came up with to enhance the State of the Union is a card intended to be shared on Twitter & Facebook which reads, "Let's teach more Americans to code. (Even the President is learning!)." President Obama briefly addressed human spaceflight, saying, "I want Americans to win the race for the kinds of discoveries that unleash new jobs – converting sunlight into liquid fuel; creating revolutionary prosthetics, so that a veteran who gave his arms for his country can play catch with his kid; pushing out into the Solar System not just to visit, but to stay." He also called once more for action on climate change. Politifact has an annotated version of the transcript for more background information on Obama's statements, and FiveThirtyEight has a similar cheat sheet.

Comments

Paradox

[BarbaraHudson]

"we're connecting community colleges with local employers to train workers to fill high-paying jobs like coding

... while industry imports even more H1Bs to drive wages down, and offshores more and more of their development work offshore and parks the additional profits in tax havens? How is that going to work>

Re:Paradox

[LaurenCates]

Community colleges are not equipped to train people for high-paying coding jobs. They can teach you the basics, sure, but any kind of advanced programming skill comes from interning, mentorship and/or *gasp* actually sitting home and coding, coding, coding. All night, non-stop, my-brain-is-a-compiler-now coding. Most people aren't fit for that, and it's not a crime to point that out.

The real experts are well aware that a few non-elite college classes aren't going to fill the advanced skill level, high-paying, rock-star-coding-ninja slots, and the President is doing a vast disservice in painting a rosy picture that communicates to people that all you need is a couple of entry-level courses and you too can be a professional coder, when the real problem here is access to the jobs that will get you the experience and the status.

And where are those slots advertised? Hint: not in the community college placement offices.

(Apologies if I sound glib to the parent poster; I mean only to be glib towards the original quote.)

Re:Paradox

[pastafazou]

You're making the mistake of believing this is an actual plan, not just a bunch of feel good speechmaking and propaganda.

Re:Paradox

[Enry]

Community college gives a few things:

1) a stepping stone to a college they might not have been able to get in before
2) a way of getting two low-cost years, then move to a better school and only pay for two more expensive years
3) two more years of education

We have an awesome tech school near my house. Nobody thinks that the graduates are going to become astronauts and doctors, but not everyone has to be a doctor or astronaut. We still need plumbers/electricians/carpenters/mechanics/welders in this country and those kinds of jobs should pay well enough to put a family in the middle class.

Re:Paradox

[NotDrWho]

He's just parroting the nonsense that tech industry bullshit artists like Mark Zuckerberg have been shoveling for years now--namely, that the tech industry needs more H1B's because we just don't have enough entry-level programmers coming out of U.S. tech schools and colleges. Of course, that's total bullshit. There are plenty of grads coming out of these programs. But they can't get hired because they can't be enslaved as indentured servants like the H1B's.

The only thing that's going to result from more Americans getting tech degrees from community colleges (and colleges in general, for that matter) is more unemployed people with student debt.

Where's the jobs?

[Anonymous Coward]

We'll be training kids with a two year degree to fill in jobs that don't exist. If you thought that another kid with a BA in communications was having a hard time just wait until we have thousands of kids who can do Hello World in Java and VB flooding a market that doesn't really exist... At least we can still count on everyone crying that we need more H1Bs.

2-yr code, no devel edu == hacks, healthcare.gov

[raymorris]

Coding isn't a high paying job, and isn't what the country needs. A community college course that teaches how to code in a particular language, rather than teaching systems development, pays about the same as flipping burgers and produces systems like TJ Maxx, Target, Home Depot, and healthcare.gov.

Teaching millions of people computer code is like teaching everyone medical codes - it doesn't do them any good, and it doesn't do the country any good.

Bull pucky

[bradley13]

..."we're connecting community colleges with local employers to train workers to fill high-paying jobs..."

This is what community colleges do. Just exactly how is intervention by the federal government supposed to help? The only change is going to be an increase in the number of administrators the colleges hire to deal with the federal bureaucrats. The next step will be to offer the schools money. Then they'll hire even more administrators in order to suck properly at the federal teat. Finally, the federal government will use their dependence on federal money to impose ridiculous rules and regulations, that require even more administrators.

We've already seen how federal "help" has screwed up the American university system. Tuitions have increased by 200% to 300% in the past 20 years (that being the first example I pulled out of Google).

You know the line: "I'm from the government, and I'm here to help you". Time to run screaming in the opposite direction.

Train the trainer.

[geekmux]

..."Let's teach more Americans to code. (Even the President is learning!)."

Wow.

Never thought I'd see a day where POTUS would have a technical leg up on every judge presiding over the fate of coders.

When is National Train the Trainer day going to hit the calendar? Might as well, since training is being pushed this hard.

Re:2-yr code, no devel edu == hacks, healthcare.go

[SecurityGuy]

Those who end up on the far end of the bell curve won't be those who stop at a 2 year degree in "coding" at a local community college. The very best developer I know has a masters degree, 25+ years of experience, and STILL spends more time learning.

My objection to things like this are the false belief it instills that all you need to do to learn to be good at this is go to community college for a while, where you'll be taught by other people who aren't good at coding. If they were good, they'd be doing it, not making peanuts teaching community college. The second false belief is that it's a ticket to a high paying job. High pay comes with scarce skills. If you send everyone to community college and they actually do become good at coding, it won't be a high paying job.

We should send everyone to a 4 year school and teach them basic economics so they'd understand things like this. Doctors don't make a lot of money because their jobs are important or it costs a lot to train one. They make a lot of money because when you need one, you'll pay whatever you have to, and because there are a limited number of them. In the ideal world, we'd call that 4 year degree high school. It's terrible that people entering the real world don't understand this stuff, and it's why the US electorate falls for nonsense like this time and again.