IBM Emphasize Vocational Training For Students In Letter To Trump

IBM's CEO Ginni Rometty, in an open letter to president-elect Donald John Trump, emphasized on "new collar" jobs that require vocational training rather than four years of degree.

"Let's work together to scale up this approach of vocational training, creating a national corps of skilled workers trained to take the 'new collar' IT jobs that are in demand here in America," Rometty wrote in the letter.

The letter mentions that at some of IBM centers, the company has as many as one third of employees without college degree, while the company has opened "public high schools that combine traditional education with the best of community colleges, mentoring, and real-world job experience."

In a recent article in USA Today, Rometty wrote: "As industries from manufacturing to agriculture are reshaped by data science and cloud computing, jobs are being created that demand new skills – which in turn requires new approaches to education, training and recruiting."

Sam Ladah, the HR Vice President at IBM, also revealed in an interview that 10-15% of new hires at IBM don’t have college degrees and many of whom work in the company’s cloud-computing business getting a starting pay of up to $40,000.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), USA, data shows that:

28%  of Database administrators
31% of Web developers
43% of Network architects
47% of Network and computer systems administrators, and
53% of Support specialists.

are non-graduate professionals.