Education and the work force: changing to meet demands - includes related articles

New Mexico's changing work force and the demands technology will place on post-secondary education are forcing the state's institutions of higher learning to take a long, hard look at the roles they will play at the turn of the century.

Without vision, scrutiny, redirection and change, higher education will stagnate, according to the New Mexico Commission on Higher Education.

Not only will education stagnate, but the population that will become increasingly dependent on higher education will stagnate along with a rapidly changing economy and global market.

U.S. industries will require constant re-training and attention to technological advances.

Educators in New Mexico are preparing for the turn of the century, looking at what changes are needed, what employers demand and the economy requires, even the evolutionary changes of the learning process itself.

Starting in the year 2000, members of the work force are going to have to compete for good paying jobs more so than ever before.

While there will likely be plenty of low paying, low skill jobs available, there will be fewer jobs for the large contingent of college graduates seeking work.

"Looking at the preliminary data, the population and the number of jobs available in New Mexico are fairly close," says Charles Lehman, economic analyst for the state's Department of Labor, "but the question is are the educational levels going to match up with the job needs."

The New Mexico Department of Labor recently updated 'Occupational Outlook 2000', a 1991 study projecting job growth to the year 2000.

New Mexico is slowly moving from a goods-producing market to a service-providing state, and although an abundance of jobs will not require a traditional four-year degree, jobs will require far more skills than they do now at the turn of the century.

Technology will continue to play a role in future employment, and workers will need problem solving skills and be able to make decisions and adapt to rapidly changing environments.

Human resources will be the key to New Mexico's economy, not natural resources, and education will be vital in developing a work force as slower employment growth, shifting industrial trends and technological advances shape the future.

Managerial-related jobs will increase 27 percent, the second highest growth rate for all occupational groups. A plentiful supply of recent college graduates and experienced workers will create heavy competition.

With 32,700 new jobs, professional, paraprofessional and technical occupations will see the highest rate of growth. Jobs include accountants, engineers, technicians, computer programmers and analysts, lawyers, nurses and educators.

About 163,730 jobs will be in this category by the beginning of the 21st century.

Sales occupations will grow rapidly, and retail sales work will provide more job openings than any other single occupation with high growth rates and high turnover.

Increased automation will limit the overall growth of clerical and administrative workers, but in some cases it may boost demand for clerical workers because of changing technology.

Employment in service occupations, which include guards, waiters and waitresses, cooks and child care workers, to name a few, is expected to increase by 28 percent through the year 2000.

Food service jobs could account for nearly half of 26,240 new jobs in that category. Health service jobs will grow the most with an increase in the elderly population and the continued trend of working mothers with young children entering the work force.

Service occupations will provide good employment opportunities, but many jobs will not require high levels of skill or education and wages will be low.

Production, operating and maintenance jobs will see slow growth and technology will limit much of the growth. Foreign competition and a trend in moving assembly operations to countries with cheaper labor will affect this category.

According to Lehman, projections indicate a fifth of the work force will have college degrees, another fifth some type of post-secondary education, while about two-fifths will have only a high school diploma, and the remaining fifth a limited education.

Susan Dickson, who has spent months updating the labor report, says there will be many low skill jobs available at the start of the century, jobs that will require little education.

"We're saying education is becoming more important if they want to get good jobs," says Dickson. "There may be quite a bit of competition for good paying jobs, and a lot of jobs will need more technical skills."

This may put pressure to cut back university and college programs, but educators are trying to prepare early enough to meet the needs of the state through programs in line with economic conditions.

Education -- and the education process -- will undoubtedly change.

Stronger training programs, better learning strategies and a commitment to quality, not quantity, will only help the state of the economy, say educators.

In the recent past, American companies set the standard. Now America must compete in a global economy where other countries are investing a larger percentage of their GNP in education and worker training, according to the Department of Labor report.

At the heart of the matter is to insure educators see that graduating students have the skills to succeed in the work place.

National trends indicate the best jobs in the 21st century will be in health care, law and computer-related fields. Jobs in those areas will require job-specific training and high quality education.

Less than six percent of workers will find a place on assembly lines, and service jobs could eventually comprise 90 percent of the economy, according to national projections.

Workers who want to advance will find themselves going back to school several times in their working lifetime.

Given advances in technology, more than half of new jobs will require at least some post-secondary education, and many jobs will require skills in information processing.

Technical-vocational training will become more crucial for the New Mexico economy as a plentiful supply of technical jobs may lie in the near future.

National estimates indicate 30 percent of jobs will require four or more years of college compared to 22 percent in 1985, although that projection may be lower for New Mexico because of the state's mix of service industries and tourism.

The way the education system works now, however, won't suffice.

The sophisticated economy will mean not every student will be able to, or possibly even need to, travel the traditional routes of education being followed today.

Where going to college and getting a degree was once a perceived notion that a person would get a good job, that perception is dying a quick death.

There are too many mediocre students who slide by, get a degree and then can't find the job they prepared for.

Educators in New Mexico know that trying to do tomorrow's job with yesterday's tools won't work, and each of New Mexico's post secondary institutions is actively involved in planning for the future.

New Mexico has 23 post-secondary institutions; six four-year; 14 two-year; three vocational institutes; plus, two specialized schools for the deaf and visually impaired for school-aged children.

Each of the institutions is planning for the future based on recommendations from the New Mexico Commission on Higher Education.

A strategic plan was formulated in 1988 with each of the state's institutions given the lead to start changing and preparing for the demands of the 21st century.

New Mexico can expect more female, older, minority, immigrant and disabled students whose needs must be met, and the education system must respond to an economy fueled by service industries along with a working environment requiring employees who can adapt to new technologies.

Although only a starting point, the plan is an outline for where education is today and where it needs to go.

Students will no longer have only a few educational paths to follow, as the economy demands more diversity. Students must be better prepared for learning, living and working in the next century.

In 2005, large numbers of students will need to obtain working skills from the educational system.

New Mexico must find how to take an existing group of institutions and develop a system which meets the needs today and into the next century, according to the plan.

The large number of diverse institutions in New Mexico can be a strength rather than a weakness, according to planners.

It will mean eliminating useless programs, changing the tenure system to guarantee a qualified pool of educators and growing the programs that need to grow, whether it's for the vocational-technical level student or the graduate student in the high-level science field.

The traditional, four-year liberal arts education will undergo a revolution. It will be an education in which students are engaged with professors and students will be encouraged to connect their studies with other specializations.

Change comes to academia

The University of New Mexico was convinced there was a greater need for graduate level classes for working professionals closer to home.

Alan Reed, director of UNM North and in charge of graduate programs, says it's no longer theory, but a proven fact.

UNM North, with courses in Santa Fe, Los Alamos and Taos, had about 450 students a couple of years ago, most of them specialists at Los Alamos.

Today, there are 800 students seeking advanced degrees through UNM North, which two years ago also took over Taos Community College.

COPYRIGHT 1993 The New Mexico Business Journal
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