Archives: The Sealy News Online, Sealy Texas

Roughly 80 percent of the fastest-growing job categories in coming years will require some postsecondary training, but not necessarily a bachelor’s degree.

The need for skilled workforce laborers is only growing and Sealy’s Blinn College is hoping to meet that need.

Starting this semester, the college is expanding its technical training courses, upping the ante when it comes to welding courses, and adding phlebotomy, certified nurse’s assistant and EKG technician training.

“Essentially the Texas comptroller has said that the major jobs in Texas are going to be technical jobs,” said Jeri Dulaney, director of the Sealy Blinn College campus.

“I think the focus of our campus has to be, at least in part, preparing people for those technical jobs, especially the ones local manufacturers need to fill,” she added.

According to a recent report by the Texas comptroller office, decades of unmatched technological advances have remade the U.S. economy.

Last year, more than 80 percent of all Texas jobs did not require a bachelor’s degree and neither did 44 percent of jobs paying an above-average income for the state, according to the same report.

Dulaney said the Sealy campus, which had 189 students during the fall semester, will continue to serve its traditional students looking to take core classes, but added it’s time to branch out and include workforce training.

The dwindling enrollment in vocation training is starting to take a toll on many Texas businesses. Employers in and near Corpus Christi, Port Arthur, Beaumont, and Texas City report that they cannot find enough welders.

The problem is common in Sealy.

“When I see the needs every week for welders, the issue becomes then that we’ve got to do some of that training,” Dulaney said.

And there is a need.

Dulaney said she’s talked to several local manufacturers, and each said it is hard to find workers, especially when it comes to welding.

In the past, the college offered 24-hour welding classes, but techniques taught in those courses were too general to meet local needs. That’s why Dulaney is tripling the course to 72 hours.

However, the campus, located in the Outlet Mall, doesn’t necessarily lend itself to teaching welding or other workforce education classes.

Blinn will work with Sealy High School to offer the fast-track welding program in the spring, after the school finishes its agriculture program.

“The issue is at the mall there is no place to teach welding,” Dulaney said.

She is working with the Sealy Economic Development Corporation to find a more permanent home for the college, which would allow workforce training courses to be taught on site.

Blinn has a history, Dulaney said, of focusing on students who transfer to four-year universities.

She said the college also needs to focus on technical training.

In 2007, Texas had 43,715 job openings for workers with some postsecondary technical or career training, but the state’s public institutions produced only 36,442 students with skills needed for those jobs.

In contrast, state universities awarded 104,054 bachelor, master and doctoral degrees, but there were only 85,065 jobs requiring that high of an education.

“Right now, we have more people with bachelors, masters and doctoral degrees than we do jobs,” she said. “My goal is to meet the needs of the students, and all signs are pointing to a skilled workforce.”

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