Edmentum’s New CTE Courses & White Paper: How are you addressing the growing need?

We at Edmentum are excited to announce the release of new Career Technical Education (CTE) courses this summer! With this release, Edmentum will be the leading online provider of CTE courses in terms of breadth and depth. CTE is an educational model that aligns secondary and postsecondary education to demands of the labor market and provides students with technical, academic, and career skills necessary not only to be successful in the workforce but also to be lifelong learners. In the coming months, we’ll take a look at the current state of the CTE field, its importance, and what educators and students can expect from Edmentum’s new courses. Today, we’ll start by considering how CTE is rapidly evolving to address the changing needs in the economic environment and introduce Edmentum’s newest white paper.

The need for CTE programs will prove to be critical in upcoming years. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Occupational Outlook Handbook, many of the fastest-growing and highest-paying jobs through 2022 will be in fields like healthcare, the skilled trades, information technology (IT), other STEM-related fields, and marketing. This is why we at Edmentum have worked so hard to expand our CTE program; these courses provide the training and skills necessary for learners to be prepared to enter these job fields.     

The challenges facing today’s high school graduates are reflective of the changing U.S. economy, and CTE seeks to address those challenges. More and more jobs now require some kind of advanced training or credential, while fewer and fewer jobs are available to workers who only hold a high school diploma. And the trend will continue: a recent report from the Georgetown Public Policy Institute predicts that by 2020, two out of three jobs will require some sort of postsecondary education or training. These rapidly evolving dynamics of the economic environment have spurred a transformation in the delivery and design of CTE courses. The widely accepted model for CTE is built around the National Association of State Directors of Career Technical Education Consortium’s (NASDCTEc) National Career Clusters® Framework, with which Edmentum’s CTE courses align. Let’s take a look at how CTE has progressed from its beginnings in the 1970s, in comparison to this current system.

The Transformation of Career Technical Education:

This is why Edmentum is so proud to be at the forefront of CTE learning and why we’re so excited about our new courses. With these releases, Edmentum will offer a CTE library that includes 80 semester-long courses. Our new courses will offer learners engaging content to prepare for in-demand careers across all of the 16 Career Clusters, including depth in four key areas:

• Business Management and Administration
• Arts, A/V Technology and Communications
• Health Science
• Science, Technology, Engineering  and Mathematics (STEM)

Stay tuned in the coming weeks as we dive deeper into CTE. Want to learn more today? Click here to download our newest white paper: Career Technical Education: How are you addressing the growing need?