Lisa is a vice president of a small woman-owned defense contractor. She entered manufacturing right out of high school working on an assembly line up north for a video game manufacturer. She later joined the military and got training in electronics and returned to the same company as a technician. She eventually decided it was too cold up north and moved to Florida. “Without a job. Just packed up my things and said, ‘That looks warm. I think I’ll go there.’” She worked for several Tampa Bay area manufacturers before deciding to go to the University of South Florida (USF) in Tampa and get a bachelor’s degree in business. She went back and worked for different area defense contractors and commercial manuscripts and decided “maybe my bachelor’s degree wasn’t quite enough” so she went back to USF to get her MBA. After her MBA, she got a master’s degree in management and worked her way up to vice president of operations in different companies.

When asked what skills her company is looking for, Lisa said they wanted workers with a background in electronics who were proficient in computer-aided design (CAD) and computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) software like AutoCAD and Pro/ENGINEER. They wanted people with manual skills like soldering and intuitive ability like print reading along with “base level things that a lot of people have forgotten” like math skills, “reading ruler skills,” basic algebra, and computer skills. But she was most concerned about “employability skills that people have forgotten, good communication skills, good writing skills that we don’t get taught in school.”

The interviewer followed up on that point and asked Lisa how employees could be better prepared for technician jobs. Lisa sighed, took a long, exasperated pause, and responded:

Um, and that seems to be the thing that we keep missing over and over again. We hired people and we have people that come in and interview and a lot of times it’s not the technical skill that they miss out on in the interview. It’s the culture piece. You can bring in 20 people that have the technical background or the technical expertise that fits the job and it’s the culture fit a lot of times. It is the being able to communicate how well they’re going to fit the company, right? People can’t convey how well they’re going to work you know and their personality because really culture is the personality of the company and being able to convey their own personality, so that you can assess how their personality is going to mesh with the personality of the company.

Twenty-three of the 26 employers interviewed for this study mentioned finding workers with the right “cultural fit” (or a similar term) as an important challenge to overcome in recruiting. These employers defined “culture” as the personality of the company and “fit” as the personality of worker with respect to that culture. Employers described the ideal worker as possessing good technical knowledge and ability along with employability skills, particularly related to the unique needs of their company and fit within their company. But employers acknowledged this ideal worker was rare so they were more willing to sacrifice technical skills for strong employability skills, most notably, the “right attitude” as evidenced by qualities like personal responsibility and a strong work ethic and the ability to “fit” in by demonstrating interpersonal skills like teamwork, leadership, and the social skills needed to get along with coworkers. Russell jokingly used a war metaphor, “spray and pray” to describe his company’s recruiting strategy of maximizing exposure through placement agencies and employment websites (i.e. Monster.​com) to “see what kind of resumes float.” He noted his preference to recruit and hire local workers, but he is willing to pay to relocate someone with “the right skillset, both technical fit as well as cultural fit.” Employers were eager to say “We’ll train them up” if they found workers with the right employability skills but without the technical skills.

This book addresses the problem of work force “skills gaps” and how high school career and technical education (CTE) courses can help fill those gaps by teaching students the employability skills or “soft skills” desired in the workplace. These skills can prepare students to get a job in a science, technology, engineering, or mathematics (STEM) field and/or attend college right out of high school. STEM employers need to hire young workers with the right technical skills to replace an aging technical workforce. Most employers in this study are active on K-12 and higher education advisory boards and host internships and apprenticeships to help train young workers. Almost all are willing to train up high school students or recent graduates who possess the necessary personal and interpersonal skills. Employability skills include the cultural capital students need to apply and benefit from their academic skills and cognitive ability. These skills are necessary to be competitive for the estimated 30 million jobs in the United States that do not require a bachelor’s degree yet pay an average of $55,000 a year (Carnevale, Strohl, Ridley et al. 2018).

Research for this book was part of a larger research project funded by the National Science Foundation, titled “Successful Academic and Employment Pathways in Advanced Technologies” (DUE #1104214) on which I served as Principal Investigator. This project is heretofore referred to as PathTech Tampa Bay. The goal of PathTech Tampa Bay was to examine pathways from high school into the workforce through engineering technology associates of science (AS) and associates of applied science (AAS) degree programs at community colleges. This study included fieldwork in high schools, community colleges, and STEM businesses in the Tampa Bay area. The resulting PathTech Tampa Bay study was a holistic examination of secondary and post-secondary pathways into what are generally considered to be “good tech jobs” that acknowledge the challenges individuals face within education and employment sectors.

This book addresses three major research gaps in contemporary education research in order to better understand how employability skills are taught and learned in CTE classrooms. First, research on K-12 STEM education generally focuses on academic STEM courses, traditional math and science courses (i.e. algebra, calculus, chemistry, physics) that center around a theoretical approach to learning core concepts (Gottfried, Bozick, and Srinivasan 2014). There is far less research on applied STEM courses that focused on the practical application of academic STEM knowledge and concepts to “real world job experiences.” Applied STEM CTE courses address the stated need for “organized educational activities” that contribute to overall student development including employability skills, technical skills, and job-specific skills (Perkins IV 2006:4). From a policy perspective, we also know relatively little about how the federal Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act (Perkins IV), recently Perkins V reauthorization, and subsequent state policies such as Florida’s Career and Professional Education (CAPE) Act prepare high school students for the workforce, particularly STEM careers (Wang 2013). The CAPE Act required all Florida school districts in the state to establish at least one career academy with the goals of encouraging partnerships between K-12 education and industry and promoting industry-recognized certifications (Dixon, Cotner, Wilson et al. 2011). Career academies deftly balance college preparatory and career readiness to cater to students who plan to work and/or attend college after high school. Career academy proponents and CTE observers believe these programs represent a hard push against the twentieth-century K-12 focus on College for All (Attewell, Lavin, Domina et al. 2007) as opposed to career readiness.

Second, the current research focus on academic STEM courses generally presumes STEM pathways in which students transition directly from high school math and sciences into STEM bachelor’s degree programs at four-year universities en route to STEM careers that require a bachelor’s degree. Research does not acco...