Happy St Patrick's Day!
As AI threatens jobs, there's a quandary presented for both seasoned professionals and college students alike - where are jobs going and how sustainable will retraining be? I've collected up some material that will hopefully give our readers some food for thought in these areas.
As a "side-gig", I'm on the part-time teaching faculty at our local community college, Portland Community College. Faculty is presently in its second week of being on strike, looking for a fair Cost of Living Allowance (COLA), primarily due to well-fed management's pre-strike offering of only 0.3% as a COLA.
There's alleged belt-tightening and austerity that was brought into discussion when it looked like the state might cut the education budget in early summer, but indications are this will not happen.
Management, on the other hand is sticking to some kind of surplus-building austerity, perhaps pointing to the surplus in future when they give themselves another 24% raise.
Students have wisely chosen hands-on vocational training, with welding and electronic engineering technology, for example, being chock full of registering students and the reason I got brought into the faculty fold last year. The austerity push will likely threaten to cancel class sections, choking the funnel off of enrolled/enrolling students in these full programs, or postponing graduation dates. More on that in the archives section.
I'm not expecting to teach until the fall semester, so am not really affected by the strike, though I will do picket duty in support of my union brothers and sisters - I wasn't teaching for the money, whereas some of them buy eggs with their paychecks.
in solidarity,
-andyT
