College Guide
Blog
May 17, 2012 5:33 PM
“Ready to Go to Work”
Apparently the mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emanuel, has an interesting new plan to help graduates of the City Colleges of Chicago, the city’s long troubled public college system, get jobs: just pay companies to hire them.
According to an article by Tina Sfondeles in the Chicago Sun-Times:
Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced a $2 million stipend for companies willing to hire City Colleges of Chicago graduates.
“You hire one of our community college kids, we’ll pay their stipend for the first four weeks of work,” Emanuel said Saturday during his commencement address to 3,300 graduates at the University of Illinois at Chicago Pavilion. “… I want the rest of the country and all the people to know we got great community colleges with great kids who are ready to go to work.”
Well perhaps, but this fiscal transfer agreement suggests that the degree from one of the City Colleges alone might not really be sufficient to ensuring success in the workplace.
If you’ve really got all of these “great kids read to go to work” why do you have to pay companies $2 million to hire them?
Facebook
Twitter
boatboy_srq on May 18, 2012 11:04 AM:
If you’ve really got all of these “great kids read[y] to go to work” why do you have to pay companies $2 million to hire them?
Maybe because it's 2012, and unemployment rates for recent graduates of just about any college/university are through the roof? Maybe because that $2mil is cheaper than either the unemployment they'd collect or the collections processes on their (inevitable) student loans?
brt on May 19, 2012 12:45 AM:
It is interesting that Rahm is offering this stipend. The City of Chicago is broke (thanks to his predecessor) and the City Colleges is facing a $30M budget deficit. Who is paying for this fund? The city of Chicago? The City Colleges of Chicago? Mr 1% himself (using the money he made serving on the board of Fannie Mae)?
The fact is, while he was member of the House Education and the Workforce Committee, he knows nothing about education beyond what his staffers and campaign contributors have told him; and they're all a bunch of talking heads that couldn't get jobs in the real world if they tried (praise the gods they had political connections to save their sorry a$5es from starvation).
Another fact that few people know is that City Colleges is not covered by the well known "Shakman Accord/Agreement" prohibiting political hiring in the City of Chicago. That said, a Priztker is now on the board of trustees; and Paula Wolf finally got herself "a position" after her UIC fiasco - no politics there.
When it comes down to it, the Shakman Accord/Agreement should not be done away with by the feds. In fact, it NEEDS to be expanded to the sister agencies not currently covered by the accord/agreement. The days of political manipulation need to end at CCC and the other sister agencies!
IF the mayor was not allowed to play politics with the City Colleges, how much better could they be? One has to wonder....