Senate trial. Unfiltered coverage on cspan, on demand at cspan. Org impeachment. Richard wang joins us from seattle for discussion on the future of work in this country. Mr. Wang, your day job in a of codingof dojo. Richard we essentially provide someoned tech training, with no data science or developer background, i train them three months and get them ready. After coming out of our program, they will be ready to become a Software Developer working with a tech company in the tech sector. In addition, you write for forbes, one of your recent columns you talked about the idea of a skills gap in this country and how Apprentice Programs might be a way to bridge the gap. Explain with the skill gap is that you see. Richard we are in the fourth industrial revolution. For this revolution we are looking at virtual reality, robotics and different technologies happening. Everything underneath this layer is powering our economy. Right now, students coming out of Fouryear College or not getting trained on these essential skills. There are a lot of students coming out of Fouryear College carrying 100,000 in debt. 300,000, andem, they cant get jobs. They are underemployed. They become baristas. These are smart young people. They are underemployed, working in a low skilled job. So they get stuck. In the Public Sector we have to do a better job equipping young people with in demand skills to be inductive in the future economy. Host the column from forbes, modern apprenticeships, a remedy for a skills gap in a public so focused on the traditional Fouryear College route. Explain how Apprenticeship Programs work and how they could be expanded. Aboutd i think we have 9 of the United States youth that goes into a trade school. In germany the number is 60 . We have this negative connotation. Programs,one of those some colleges offer a technical skill set and after you turn for the go in Company Based on the skill set you studied. It gives you real, live experiences of what it is like to be on the job. When you are done you can go back to school or end up with a job. That is a great way in terms of marrying what you just learned and apply and get a job right away after you graduate. Host a chart from the department of labor on the Apprenticeship Programs in this country and those actively participating in them, the final column at the bottom, the 2018 numbers. Some 558,000 active apprenticeships in this country in 2018. That is up from 2008 when it was 442 active apprenticeships. You see that ever competing with the millions that go to the traditional Fouryear College programs . Richard i do not think so, but we need to do a better job in terms of providing young People Better solutions. I think the fouryear universities have a strong brand. Parents wantf our us to go to a fouryear university, but at the same time, it is not right for everyone. We have to provide different options for young people because coming out of college carrying 100,000 debt and not finding a job, that isuality not beneficial for everyone. Now,ook at the numbers although we are at an alltime low for unemployment, job quality is at an alltime low as well. There are a lot of Young People Working two or three jobs and that is not sustainable. Those jobs are a trap. Ore you get into those two three jobs, you cannot get out of that environment, so you get stuck. We have to provide better Training Programs for young people and options to explore. Colleges costing that much money should not be the option for everyone. You can talk about your own education routes, want to hear from viewers who went to technical schools, that number, 202 7488000. Those who participated in an Apprenticeship Program, 202 7488001. College graduates, 202 7488002. Number 202 that 7488003. We will be talking about the skills gap. Richard wang, people are calling in. In some of your pieces you said there was a role the federal government can play in pushing the Education System in this new direction. What is that . The speed of Technology Changing we have to create a circular skill economy. We need to incentivize employers ill the workforce and arete a program where we sending people back to school every seven to 10 years. The speed of change and always have to obtain new skill sets to be useful and valuable on the labor market. We have to maintain competitiveness, go back to school every seven to 10 years to get retrained. I think the federal government has to create policies to enable that to happen and create Wraparound Services for people to pursue those options. That is why i think where i think the federal government should come in. At the end of the day we pay tax dollars and the government should create a ladder of epic of economic mobility. Host especially for those folks who cannot afford to take time off to go back to school every seven to 10 years. Richard would you repeat that again . Host what can the government do . Are we talking about tax breaks, for reTraining Programs people can tap into so they can make a living while they are going back to school . Richard exactly, for coding dojo we have programs like this family services. We have highly skilled refugees coming into washington. Androvided free tuition they provided them Wraparound Services and payment. They got paid while they went through school. That is one of the things the federal government will have to do. We have done this successfully in the private sector. The federal government should look into this. Wraparoundrovide services, providing a salary while they get retrained and tax benefits go back to the federal government because now they are getting higher paying jobs. Is a dynamic that is missing. President ial candidate andrew wang talked about the dividend. We can provide something similar. Host how much is not going to cost and where do you get the money . Richard in terms of cost, i think we spend enough money in terms of the federal defense budget. We spend way too much money in medicare. We could bring some of that toward education and when people get this money they get retrained and go through school. To 80,000 and00 in the end, it will triple backup. It is a vicious circle within the economy. Get our young people back to doing productive, highquality work . A conversation this morning about the growing skills gap in this country, the future of work and education, giving viewers a chance to chat with tech entrepreneur richard wang out of seattle this morning. He is the ceo of coding dojo and dojo. Com, if you want to check out his website. Joe from Staten Island who goes to a technical school, go ahead. [indiscernible] my mother went to typing school. [indiscernible] i want to start a computer school. She lives in manhattan. My High School Guidance counselor said go to college, go to college. They said computer school, typing school is womens work. Bringing thator up. I want you to speak to that. In school not one person said to go to a technical school, everyone said go to college. How do you change that . There is a major branding problem with trade schools and technical skills. This is where the federal government can do good in providing different options. If you look at our public Education System, their performance metric is how many students are going to college . Those incentives have to change. Forcollege really right this individual or is trade school the right option . We have to provide more awareness of all the other options area host you think there is a stigma about a noncollege route . Richard absolutely. That give me an example of and how the folks in your area of expertise are looking to change that. Four to in the past , running an Educational Company that teaches people to code, seattle, silicon valley, new york, you see your friends were Software Developers and ask, how do i get there, maybe go to coding boot camp, similar to coding dojo. In, we train you to get you ready for the real world to become a Software Developer. Areas that are urbanish. It is tougher. In terms of marketing, branding of alternative education other than colleges, the government has to do a better job. Gone through an apprenticeship out of oregon, what kind of program . Caller it was 30 years ago. I am an old guy now, retired. 30 years ago when i was a freshfaced young man i was raised by an International Brotherhood of journeyman electricians. The value of the journeymen card and the licensing that went along with it. My father explained to me, there are only three licensed trades, electricians, steamfitters and plumbers. I decided to become a plumber. Course,own to take the i stood in a line, there were 1000 guys and they were going to take 25 apprentices. I did that two times and never got a call back. I thought, how do i do this . I i joined the military, joined the air force as an active duty plumber. After seven years active Duty Air Force i applied for that plumbing apprenticeship again in the mid1980s and by golly, i finally got in. After five years of going through the entire course and making good money along the entire way and in enjoying everything i did, about 1990i became a journeyman, and became a piping plumber. I spent my time in hospitals doing purity piping, oxygen, medical vacuums. The day i turned 506i had enough time and i retired and i walked out the door and i make a ton of money every month. The apprenticeship did not cost me a dime. Have 600regon we apprentices in school. There were 50 when i went to school. The number has increased. I suggest mr. Wang goes to the ibew Training Center in seattle. I suggest he goes to the ua Training Center in seattle. They will be happy to show you how we do it. Host thank you for sharing your story. What do you want to take from that . Richard that is great. We are seeing an increase in time that is great. One thing we have to think about, not just young graduates out of college or people pursuing college, but also, we are getting into Artificial Intelligence economy, the aia economy. Economy. We have 3 million truckers driving trucks. We are starting to see autonomous trucks in the next five to 15 years. When that happens, we are displacing more than 3 million truckers. For some of my colleagues, they have used google assistant. Those are like robots. In the u. S. We have more than 2 Million People who are carpenters. When these things start to displace workers, you look at the rough map of call center support. How are we going to retrain and reskill this audience . That is a big problem we have to solve. In terms of rescaling or workforce and getting apprenticeships and skill gaps, it is not just for the audience of people who graduated from college, but also for people about 40 years old. If you look at truckers, average age is 47. They make anywhere between 40,000 and 70,000, which is good without College Degree. How will we rescale . Average tuition growth among National Universities over 20 years. 2020 for private national 41,500ties it is up to a year. Outofstate, 27,000. Instate, 11,000. Compare that to the year 2000 when private universities were 16,000, outofstate, 9600, instate, 3500 a year. Richard absolutely. That does not account for room and board or tuition costs. They come out of universities probably with 300,000 of debt. It is a lot of money. Even you declare bankruptcy, it will still stay with you. We have to make a difference in terms of, is college the right option for everyone . Host how much does it cost for somebody to enroll in the coding dojo program and how long does that take on average . Program the coding dojo ranges from [indiscernible] we train anyone to learn how to code. The process for us, we invest two or three years in learning our method methodology. How do you digest a very hard concept into simple steps . It is digestible so anyone can learn this stuff and become computationally proficient. Host how much do people make on average after they go through your program and what kind of jobs do they go into . Richard we operate in 10 different locations around the country and have online as well. Adjusting for costofliving, average salary out of the program is 75,000 a year. Host how many folks have gone through it . Richard over five years, more than 6000 graduated from the program. Host codingdojo. Com. Richard wang is the ceo, as we talk about the future of education. Terrell went through the college route, out of fairfax, virginia. I am in the i. T. Field, about to go in the off office. It is a sad fact that the vast majority of people making higher decisions are not technical people, which is why they require four year degrees. There are people i know with Electrical Engineering degrees who literally cannot troubleshoot a wire. I went to the air force before college. I mean literally cannot troubleshoot a wire. Here is what happens when technical people make higher decisions. High School Graduate with a lot of experience. There are all these College Folks who did not know what to do when we hired for Cisco Network type things. There was unanimous recommendation to hire this guy. Our boss was not technical, did not like that. We said no, this is the person we need. Continued resistance on our part, she relented, we hired the guy, and he turned out to be good. That is the problem. If you are a coder, you have heard of [indiscernible] a number of years ago, back when the 2. 4 version was current, there was an 18yearold out of brazil heading the entire branch. 2. 6 this time, no College Degree at all, but he was good. They said, you are good, you have proved yourself, maintain it. That is how it ought to be. My question to you, how do we change that mindset of these nontechnical hiring people that make the hiring decisions to go for more folks like where you teaching with your Apprentice Program . Doell college kids and i. T. , not bother going to college, get your certifications. It does not help for developers. Host thanks for the question. I want to give mr. Wang a chance to answer. Richard thank you for the question. It is going to be hard. When you have a selection bias within management ranks. They are more likely to hire people like them, that is a sick human bias. We are seeing a trend. If you look at google, microsoft, there moving toward, we do not need a College Degree. Did steve jobs have a College Degree . No. He did not finish college. Many do notioneers, have College Degrees. [indiscernible] we are starting to see movement. Hopefully that will spread pretty fast. Based on the private sector, some people who do computer notnce really well, it is people that come out of Computer Science traditionally. People with art degrees, english, philosophy. At the end of the day, it is your problemsolving skill set. It matters how you think, how you approach a problem, how you find unique and crate of solutions. Piercing a good trend. If we maintain our current approach, we do not have enough talent. We have to be better in terms of educating ourselves about practices we need to adapt adopt. Globally we have more than 7 Million People. 25 million around the globe. That is not enough to support the entire Global Digital economy. We have to find a better way to train people, getting them into tech jobs. Host you mentioned the average salary coming out of coding dojo program, 75,000 a year. Codinged on twitter, can be outsourced . Richard it could be, but what . Certain parts can be, but you certainly want to stay in house. One thing we find over the years, there is a heavy operation cost. Somebody else doing work for you, in terms of quality, oversight, communication, those are the shadow costs we are not seeing. Companies now, the trend they are seeing, we start to see this bringingwhere they are talent back to the u. S. Because we find American Workers are very creative and work outly hard, and it cuts inefficiencies within the value chain where you have your worker here with you in the office. Technical went to a school in virginia. Good morning. Caller yes, i went to a Vocational Technical School almost 50 years ago, in the early 1970s. Those schools are called cte, career and Technical Education. Nursing. Practical i believe the school i went to students inning out the practical nursing field. I do believe in the traditional Fouryear College. A lot ofer did reap benefits when she went to college in the early 1990s. Host what was the biggest benefit . To have a helped her , good wage earner. Degree the particular wasnt that great, not what they still, thehead, but fact she has a degree from this particular college helped her to category. Er economic host thanks for the call. Richard thank you so much. I totally agree. We are not discrediting the value of a four year degree, were are talking about cost and benefit. That is great for your daughter in the 1990s. If you look at some of the stats americans have a College Degree or higher. That means 67 of americans do not have a College Degree. Essentially the average american is a high School Graduate. This begs the question, is a high school is a College Degree right for everyone . If it is not, how do you ensure the majority of americans, 67 , will be successful in the ai economy . We have to provide an alternative solution for everyone to succeed. More importantly, driving an inclusive economy so everyone will have a chance to win. Host one more chart to show viewers and i will let you comment. Debt inthe total loan this country. The blue line from the early 2000s up through the Fourth Quarter of 2018. 1. 46student loan debt, trillion compares to auto loan 1. 27the darker line, trillion and Credit Card Debt is. 87 trillion. Your thoughts on those numbers . Richard i think the numbers speak for themselves. I think it will be really interesting to see, what is a return investment above 1 trillion in debt for students . It is not just about spending money and counting the numbers. At the same time, investing yourself. Above 1 trillion in debt [indiscernible] where are the debtholders . Are they in the high skilled jobs, middle skill or low skill jobs . The numbers tell a better story. We pullin reality, once those numbers, those are things we would like to see. Topic untils our and we willends take as many calls as we can, including charles, who went through an Apprenticeship Program here in washington, d. C. Programi went through a where the National Stadium was, pouring concrete. I was able to learn heavy equipment operation as well as how to finish concrete. We look at construction in the district of columbia, and the fact they have no vocational trade schools training residents or students, you have to wonder. I have earned six figures over the last two years without a College Degree. You look at the infrastructure needed and have to ask yourself, are we going to have schools [indiscernible] massachusetts for example has a robust vocational and Apprenticeship Program. Though students outperform traditional students. My training has given me the ability to be selfemployed. Peers that went to traditional colleges, have to work two or three jobs and still have to worry about student debt. Something has to be done. Richard i think that is great. Thisgig this gig economy, and jobs taken away by ai, clerical work, it will not displace many of the trading jobs like plumbing and pouring concrete. Oof jobs, the aipr sheer supply and demand. We really need to think about how we provide policies and alternative solutions for the four year university. We have not heard anything about that from president ial candidates, whether elizabeth warren, Bernie Sanders or some of the front runners. We need to push for better policies. Here. Digital economy is many people are being displaced by these technologies. Candidates toh provide solutions for the time we are facing now. Host in terms of what this administration has pushed, explain what the carl perkins education act is. You have another comment on that . Host the carl perkins Technical Education act signed by the president in 2018, 1. 2 billion a year for state Workforce Development programs. That, i my reaction to do not know where that money is being sent, and sourcing to what segment of the economy . We are facing such a big problem. I am not sure that amount of money will be sufficient, or just pilot programs. Many federal programs require pilots. Not enough for the scale we are looking. I would probably need to study more in terms of how the money is being sent to the private sector. In terms of your study and, what was your educational and training path for what you do now . As strongly me, influenced by my parents, i came to the u. S. When i was 15. I am the first generation that went to college. For my parents, they came as immigrants. You have to go to college. I came out with significant debt notlearned a bunch of stuff relevant to the work i do today. I have to work on the go, by myself. Again, though i went through the traditional four year, it is way too expensive. Believe universities are not for everyone. There should be alternative solutions for that. Host just south of washington, d. C. Is fort washington, maryland. Went the college route. Caller good morning to you all. This is definitely a button for me. I have a small story and a question because i came from a situation where i was definitely pushed i am 28 right now. I was definitely encouraged by my family strongly to go the degree route. School i became super aware of the situation and i left early with an associates, close to getting a bachelors, but realizing this hole i was getting put into and the degree path not able to provide, i had to leave and try to live practically. The thing was, and now my situation is not having any real skills that can allow me to move forward. My point is this, that people need to have a clear set of options about other ways of being educated because i have found the technical route and trade skills and other options are often times a lot more practical for people. My question is, how flexible is coding dojo in helping their potential students with their apprenticeship, who may transition, though students damaged by the Current System . Coding dojocoding dojo i never knew about, but now that i know about it i am interested in looking into it. I would love to learn some skill i can take with me, because i definitely was affected by this system that trapped me and i do have debt. I want to pay that back, but with no skills, you understand. That is my situation. Host thanks for the call. Richard thank you for the question. I think you hit the nail on the head. Stuff and90 of universities all based on theory. The real workforce, we can relate that that we had to learn the skills we need to know on the job, on the go. , you are always projectsskills, coding handson. It is not just about theories. 90 of what we teach you israel real on the job skills needed to be successful. We have been looking at how we teach over the past five years. What we find most useful, how do we take the workforce environment and provide you with skills and teach you how to learn so you can be successful not just after you graduate from the program, but 10 years down the road, so you master the fundamental Building Blocks so you can always be productive, does not matter what environment you are being deployed to. Host two more minutes and one more call from massachusetts. Caller thanks so much for having this conversation. To countunate enough myself as having my cake and eating it too in this situation. I attended a Vocational School here in massachusetts. It was focused solely on agricultural vocations. I majored in floral design. I was a student and learned about budgeting and buying and selling and how taxes look when you are running a company. I learned about biology in a greenhouse and standardized tests that ask questions i thought were silly they were so simple, then my friends who went to a Standard High School were [indiscernible] goten took the knowledge i and went to college route. Go toortunate enough to graduate school at Harvard University for education. Think i would have gotten to that level and succeeded in the way that i had if it had not been for my agricultural education. On a given day we were up in trees chopping down limbs. You could doar old that, after that, harvard does not seem like a challenge. I think Joseph Kennedy delivered remarks at my state Vocational School. Me that the vibes are different now and these schools do not have the same stigma attached, but my school was 300 acres large here in massachusetts. We cannot have all of those schools, so my question is, how do we expand these practices so everyone in a Public School setting can get them . Host i will give you the final minute. Richard this goes back to my proposal. We have to create a circular skills economy where everyone can upskill in the digital economy. This is where the federal government has to step in to drive awareness, educate everyone on alternative solutions and we should have policies in place that every seven to 10 years, sending people back to school to get retrained, upskilled, so they can all be successful. You go through the vocational programs and after you realize, maybe i want to do something upskill else upskill,. You go back to school and come to harvard, you are much. More effective again, this is an example of the success in terms of an economy where people go to school, go into the field and work, and after seven to 10 years go back to school again, so they can be competent and relevant to the everchanging economy now. That is what we have to do. The government can provide a lot employers,ncentive for Wraparound Services, and freedom to make payments for people who want to make school and get paid while they are in school. It is at the policy level that we need to do a better job. Is the ceo ofwang coding dojo. Guest thank you so much. The house will be in order. Announcer for 40 years, cspan has been providing america with unfiltered coverage of congress, the white house, the supreme court, and Public Policy events from washington, d. C. And around the country so you can make up your own mind. Created by cable1979, cspan is brought to you by your local cable or satellite provider. Cspan