Workforce Development - A Good Investment?

Some of the brightest new workforce talent may be right under your nose...

What do you want to be when you grow up? That’s a question all of us have to answer at some point. The problem is, many of us graduate high school and go to college without having a clear idea of our career aspirations. As a result, most who start college don’t complete a four-year degree and often those who do end up with majors that don’t suit their talents or ambitions in life.

One organization that helps today’s young people answer the question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” is Junior Achievement.

Junior Achievement is one of the world’s leading nonprofit economic education organizations. Provided free to schools, JA programs help kids in grades K-12 explore entrepreneurship, financial literacy and the world of work. Volunteers from the local community come into the classroom and share their work experiences with kids, getting students to seriously consider what they want to do for a career before they get to a point of choosing a major or making the decision to go straight to the workforce following high school. JA programs also help students better understand the connection between what they learn in the classroom and success in the workplace.

To learn more about getting involved in Junior Achievement, visit their website . There are JA offices across the country, and around the world. If you want to volunteer, participate or get your kid or school involved, visiting this site is a good place to start.

What's the real cost of Financial Illiteracy?

Can we afford to have financial illiterates in our business?  Moreover, what is the impact of having these as our customers?

Young adults are the fastest growing and largest category of bankruptcies in the U.S, according to Susan Molinari, national chairperson of Americans for Consumer Education and Competition, an advocacy group fostering consumer education and financial literacy.  She is She is co-author of the book Representative Mom: Balancing Budgets, Bill and Baby in the U.S. Congress (Doubleday Press)

Equally disturbing, a national “financial literacy test” survey of high school seniors found that, with the exception of those enrolled in a personal finance class, not one senior passed the test.

Faced with these alarming facts, Molinari, a former Congresswoman who served on the House Budget and Education Committee, is working hard to improve financial literacy among teenagers and young adults. “Those kinds of statistics say one thing to me and that is young people must be educated at an early age about how to become financially responsible adults,” says Molinari.

“To avoid financial pitfalls, young people must be taught the importance of developing a realistic budget and then tracking their money.” advises Molinari.

Here's my question - Why does the school system require classes such as math, English and science but not basic personal finance? We force students to learn trigonometry, yet how many of us really use it after graduation? In contrast, how many transactions involving money will we each conduct on a daily basis for the rest of our lives?

According to a 2007 survey commissioned by the National Council on Economic Education, only seven states require students to receive some form of financial education in the school system. What about the other 43 states? We need look no further than the daily news headlines about the mortgage meltdown, the stock market crisis, the housing slump or the rising cost of oil to truly see how relevant financial literacy is, particularly for the next generation.

Shouldn't we be investing in this "strategic infrastructure" for the United States, to help us work our way out of this mess?