On the House Floor, Education and the Workforce Committee Chairwoman Virginia Foxx (R-NC) highlighted “launchpad jobs,” which are setting students up for career success without requiring a baccalaureate degree.
Launchpad jobs are at the center of a new study out that shows “one in five workers without a degree are out-earning the median college graduate and two million nondegree workers are earning more than $100,000 per year.”
Chairwoman Foxx’s Remarks:
“For decades, Americans have been sold the line that a college degree is a prerequisite to success and economic mobility. This can be discouraging to the vast majority of the American workforce without a baccalaureate degree.
“But study after study shows that this narrative no longer holds true. In the face of rising college costs, a new model for stability and success is available—it celebrates hands-on job experience.
“A new study of 65 million American wage earners by the Burning Glass Institute, an independent nonprofit research center, found that by the age of 40 one in five workers with only a high school diploma earned above the median income for college graduates – $70,000 – without the drag-down effect of a college degree.
“Even more impressive is the nonprofit’s finding that 5 percent of them – a cool 2 million Americans – earned six-figure salaries.
“How did they get started on these successful careers?
“One factor is what Burning Glass calls ‘launchpad jobs.’ These jobs give high school students and graduates real-world, wage-earning experience that develop skills they can build careers upon. The jobs are widely varied: telemarketer, computer support specialist, software developer, flight attendant, commercial diver, and quarry rock splitter all offer this new route to success.
“A recent New York Times article profiled two young people whose success is indicative of the value of these ‘launchpad jobs.’
“One young man worked a summer internship at a local bank the summer after his high school graduation. This earned him a place as a full-time bank teller and soon a loan officer. Now, at the age of 21, he earns $50,000 a year – with no college debt, mind you.
“These launchpad jobs are not antithetical to college, either. That 21-year-old bank teller is currently getting his Bachelor of Arts while working as a loan officer: his job is helping him build the life he wants.
“One huge problem with college is that it pushes young people to study and choose a major when they have no real-world experience that would guide their choice of what and how to study. These launchpad jobs can address this obstacle.
“A young woman who participated in a career learning program in her junior year in high school received experience that qualified her for a job at a local pharmacy during her senior year. When she graduated high school, she had a high-earning job that she used to put herself through undergraduate school and beyond, ultimately earning a doctorate in a field she knew from first-hand experience she loved and was good at. At 28 years old, she now earns $100,000 a year as a pharmacy operations manager at a teaching hospital.
“She credits her success to so-called launchpad programs: ‘I never would have known of the opportunity without the work-study program,’ she said.
“If we want to strengthen the American workforce and help young wage-earners achieve economic stability and success, we need to stop shunting them into an education model that saddles them with debt and delays their real-world experience. Instead, we need to empower programs that offer high school students experiences that help develop real skills and launch young Americans into successful careers.”
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