Giving Compass' Take:

• Rural colleges are finding it challenging to find vocational teachers that are able to commit to schedules to teach and work, forcing some states to get more creative in order to retain faculty. 

• The very end of the article mentions that colleges are now reaching out to businesses to ask for their help teaching students vocational skills.   Can philanthropists support the continuation of this trend by collaborating with businesses and educators to create job development and vocational classes for students?

• Read about this small college as an example of a vocational and liberal arts college that has success in blended learning. 

From a window in the Williston State College petroleum technology laboratory, in the heart of North Dakota’s oil country, Alberto Bellina can see a Halliburton oil complex tucked against snow-covered hills.

Rural colleges have always had trouble attracting instructors in most disciplines, but the outlook is particularly bleak in vocational programs. Nurses or electricians can make far more in the private sector than a college can pay them to teach, and being in remote locations with fewer experienced workers to tap as instructors doesn’t help.

That leads to a skilled worker shortage that spells trouble for the schools as well as for local businesses.

The problem threatens not just colleges and local economies, but the national economy as well. The United States is facing a dramatic shortfall of skilled workers, and the economic-modeling company Emsi says a huge wave of retirements will hit blue-collar industries particularly hard in the next few years.

The challenges have pushed rural colleges to experiment with new ways to attract and keep teachers. In North Dakota, for example, nursing schools are holding more classes at hospitals and clinics to make it easier for nurses to keep working while they teach.

It has been nearly impossible for the school to find instructors with the required master’s degree who are willing to give up nursing duties to teach theory, but a classroom in a hospital at least allows nurses to lead clinical studies while continuing to nurse.

Teaching vacancies pose challenges to rural vocational programs across the country, but even experts who know these problems exist say they don’t know the extent of them. Colleges often don’t do a good job of telling state authorities about their persistent faculty vacancies, and states don’t do a good job of pushing the issue.

Read the full article about rural areas need vocational teachers by Matt Krupnick at The Hechinger Report