AT&T Says American Workers Are Not Skilled Enough

It is a small story that was reported by Reuters news service. It is not a story that grabs that headlines but it is a huge condemnation about what is happening in the schools across the country:

“…”We’re having trouble finding the numbers that we need with the skills that are required to do these jobs,” AT&T Chief Executive Randall Stephenson told a business group in San Antonio, where the company’s headquarters is located.”

link: AT&T CEO says hard to find skilled U.S. workers

This is a search to fill customer service jobs. It is not ‘rocket science’. If the AT&T analysis is correct, then the tax dollars directed at education are not producing enough educated young adults who can hold down a job that can be handled overseas.

If the AT&T conclusions appear incredulous upon first impression, there are corroborative data from the school drop out rates. These educational statistics are complicated by how the data are collected and interpreted. Nevertheless, a 2006 report in Time is indicative:

“…Of the 315 Shelbyville students who showed up for the first day of high school four years ago, only 215 are expected to graduate. The 100 others have simply melted away, dropping out in a slow, steady bleed that has left the town wondering how it could have let down so many of its kids.”

These kids who dropped out were thirty two per cent (32%) of that initial high school class in Indiana. They were not left behind; they disappeared. The educational system did not turn out a ‘finished product’. What does this say about those kids who drop out and still need a means to make a living? What does that say about the forthcoming disaster of social security? Those problems can not be outsourced overseas; and it is a slow growing catastrophe.

Catherine Forsythe
Director of Operations
FlyingHamster:  http://flyinghamster.com/

[tag]at&t, skilled workers, schools, drop out rate, education[/tag]