Written by: Karen Lee
Photo by LittleT889, CC BY-SA 4.0 / Cropped from original
I work at Honolulu Community College (Hon CC). We want to educate young people (and old people, and everyone in between!) to become leaders in the workplace. With 70% of jobs in Hawaiʻi requiring post-secondary education and training by the year 2031, we strive to prepare students for current and future careers in Hawaiʻi that make a family-sustaining wage. Although a college education provides people with valuable life competencies like hard work, persistence, grit, adaptability, self-awareness, and more, it also very practically puts them on a path to be able to afford to live in Hawaiʻi, our home.
Hon CC currently enrolls about two-thirds of its students in career and technical education programs. This includes programs in the skilled trades and transportation trades, but also in areas such as administration of justice, fashion technology, cosmetology, architecture/engineering/construction technology, human services, and music entertainment.
Recent national news reports a growing interest in these types of fields by youth:
- Wall Street Journal, 4/1/24: “How Gen Z is Becoming the Toolbelt Generation”
- Fast Company, 8/24/23: “You Can’t Have an AI Plumber: Why Gen Z Might be Ditching College for Skilled Trades”
- The Hechinger Report, 12/31/21: “Long Disparaged, Education for the Skilled Trades is Slowly Coming into Fashion”
It is my desire that we blur the lines between the workplace and education. We continue to engage with industry leaders and use workforce partners to populate our advisory committees, guest speaker lists, lecturer pool, and to provide internship opportunities. These opportunities (especially the internships and other work-based options) increase leadership in jobs. Many industry partners already do this, in addition to providing scholarship funding, new tools, and equipment to our programs. We’ve created easier paths to connect noncredit training to degree programs and started a number of quicker, 8-week classes in addition to more online classes.
Education is an investment in young people that cannot be taken away. It is necessary for Hawaiʻi’s future and future leadership.
University of Hawai‘i News — University of Hawaiʻi alumna Jocelyn “Josie” Howard received the Health Equity Champion Partner Advocate Award on behalf of We Are Oceania at the Asian and Pacific Islander American Health Forum Annual Award Ceremony in Washington, D.C.