BWhat if you can't get the continuing education classes, units, or credits you need, or are required to get, keep, or advance in your job This is beginning to become a real dilemma indeed, and a growing and vexing problem. I think by now we've all seen that famous YouTube video; Did You Know In that video it paints a picture of the present and the future as our society speeds forward into the information age. Many of the jobs that people once held for 20 or 30 years, have become obsolete in the last decade, with many more to follow in the next 5 to 10 years.

There was an interesting article recently in our local community college newspaper The Chaparral not too long ago (May 16, 2011 edition) - the article was a very well-written and brilliant piece by Erik Jenkins, Jr. (section editor) titled; Students, Faculty, Brace for Drastic Budget Cuts at COD - 300 More Classes Cut, Adjunct Professors Laid Off, and Administrators Fired as College of the Desert Finds Way to Make Up for Massive Budget Shortfall - and the article stated that the college was raising tuition, cutting 300 classes, laying off teachers, and the waiting lists are long.

The local college will have to cut at minimum $1.8 million to $2 million and it could be as high as $5.5 million. Indeed, I wanted to follow up on this and some of the Starbucks employees I talked to are also part-time students and they can't get all the classes they need to graduate on time and transfer to a 4-year college. Now then, this begs the question which must be answered;

How can we on one hand say that we must re-train our workforce for the new jobs of this century, while we are cutting classes left and right, and preventing folks both students and continuing education adults from taking the instruction needed to get a stable and decent job If unemployment is truly our main consideration in our society, and if we really believe that we need to retrain our workforce, then we need to make sure that the institutions which help with retraining are alive and strong. Tearing them down now will have repercussions for decades to come.

We cannot retrain Americans if we are cutting hundreds of classes at all of the community colleges throughout our country. We cannot retrain Americans if our federal regulatory agencies are attacking pay for colleges or cutting them off from student loans. We need to rethink our strategy here because whatever it is that we claim that we are for, we obviously are not following that up with action. Indeed I hope you will please consider all this and think on it.