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Education key to workforce development

Danita Bye

Stanley

North Dakota’s economy has remained resilient since commodity prices fell by half two years ago, and the shortage of workers has remained the biggest challenge to our employers. The Williston Basin Petroleum conference and the newly unveiled North Dakota Petroleum Council ad campaign highlighted the immense workforce needs and opportunities in the Bakken, a situation shared across North Dakota.

When our economy hit the downturn, our employment rate barely budged, rising from a low of 2.6 percent in October 2014 to a high of 3.2 percent in April 2016. Compare that figure to the nation’s highest unemployment rate of 10 percent after the 2008 recession. It is clear that our labor force is tapped in North Dakota and it is the greatest challenge to our continued economic growth. We can only grow the workforce by keeping our own young adults and through attracting new, largely young adults to our state. To accomplish either, we must be intentional and strategic in many of our public investments and efforts.

This includes our education system at the primary, secondary and post-secondary levels. To achieve our best prospects, a strong basis in science, technology, and math (STEM) is needed. This holds true whatever a student pursues from the trades to PhD. programs. The best jobs of the future will be in the advanced trades and in engineering/computer science fields. Farming and ranching will become even more precision-oriented, depending on technology to increase production and competitiveness. All required strong STEM programs.

North Dakota is doing many things right. We have expanded Advance-Placement courses in our high schools and, despite budget cuts, our higher education programs in engineering and computer science are effective and answering much of the private sector’s needs. However, there’s more we can do to expand access to STEM education, and modify how such education is delivered.

– First, small schools systems need to develop their abilities to deliver STEM education. Small student and faculty sizes make it a challenge to develop specialized programs, whether it be advanced placement courses or trade and technical programs. They will need to work among themselves, with larger districts, and with the state for solutions. The drone camp for students put on by public and private leaders in Tioga is a shining example of a creative way to capture student’s imaginations with the jobs of the future. Through collaboration between school districts, we can provide students with many new experiences, such as robotics, the arts, and more.

– We need pathways to degrees that fall outside the traditional campus and semester models. Our technical schools, BSC and NDSCS at the forefront, have done a great job creating programs geared to new jobs. Now we need pathways to career advancement, where white and blue-collar workers can advance their knowledge continuously at all levels of education, including associate, bachelor, and graduate degrees, as well as non-degree and certificate tracks.

– We need to blend technical education into the liberal arts. Skills learned next to a liberal arts education open new pathways that can solve society’s challenge of college graduates not holding the skills needed for a job. For instance journalism students can benefit immensely from training in intermediate programming and graphic design.

The continued development of our workforce and North Dakota’s competitive edge depends on these programs. I am proud to be a North Dakotan who is a part of the oil and gas industry. It is clear that the Bakken will continue to grow, adding as many as 50,000-70,000 more oil and gas jobs in the coming decades. The eastern and central regions of the state will likewise continue to grow. We need these solutions to educate and train our own children and attract new families to our state.

North Dakota has a reputation for raising citizens with strong work ethic and character. We must commit to providing them with the education needed for the world’s faster-changing and more-technical careers.

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