Tom Perez Quotes

Under the leadership of President Obama and a whole host of partners, including nonprofits, foundations, and advocates, the Department of Labor has made historic investments in community colleges, apprenticeships, coding boot camps, and summer jobs.

Working with a Republican co-sponsor, Rep. Glenn Thompson of Pennsylvania, I introduced a bill to strengthen our nation's career and technical education programs and more closely align them with the needs of local businesses and industries.

I want to invest in community colleges, training programs, and high-quality apprenticeships that help people gain the skills they need for the jobs of the future.

We changed the names of our technical schools to colleges, we expanded the eligibility for HOPE scholarships for technical training, and we added some formula funding.

Community colleges are popular among political leaders of both parties. But because of the lack of funding and a lack of direction, they have lost their critical edge in preparing workers for a 21st-century economy.

Clinton understands that in a competitive global economy we need the best-educated workforce in the world. She and I worked together on a proposal that will revolutionize higher education in America.

Hillary Clinton said we need to bring back vocational education in high school. We need to support community colleges. We need to make sure that people who are not going to finish college have a job waiting for them and the skills to do the job. These are all - have become fairly standard Democratic policy positions.

For decades, community colleges have been the backbone of American workforce training. Because they are nimble and closely attuned to local community needs, they are inherently positioned to be influential leaders of the movement for a sustainable economy.

We do not need Departments of Commerce, Labor, and Education; we need a single Department of Skills that will promote an integrated approach to global competitiveness.

I feel strongly that we have to have an education system that starts with preschool and goes through college. That's why I want more technical education in high schools and in community colleges, real apprenticeships to prepare young people for the jobs of the future.

Again and again, universities have put a low priority on the very programs and initiatives that are needed most to increase productivity and competitiveness, improve the quality of government, and overcome the problems of illiteracy, miseducation, and unemployment.

Wisconsin is very proud of the career and technical college system that we have back home.

For wide swaths of training and education there are valuable spillovers which mean that the private sector needs support from the government. That is why I have been so determined to protect and grow apprenticeships and put higher education on a sustainable footing.

I think people understand that if you're going to have a successful economy, you need people's potential to be realized. That means education. It means university education, sure, but it also means training, apprenticeships and various kinds of skills diplomas that we know are necessary.

Governor Romney, how many fewer college degrees would it take to make America more competitive?

There is still much work to be done to help our students secure good-paying jobs and achieve their ultimate goals, and in Congress, I'll continue to support Career and Technical Education programs.

What we want is for our young people to be skilled.

Each day, we're sharpening Iowa's competitive edge in education and expanding our workplace partnerships with job-ready, STEM savvy, lifelong learners.

We need more partnerships like Vigor Industrial and Portland Community College where men and women in search of a career can get the training they need to get hired right out of school.

Let's also make sure that a high school diploma puts our kids on a path to a good job. Right now, countries like Germany focus on graduating their high school students with the equivalent of a technical degree from one of our community colleges, so that they're ready for a job. At schools like P-TECh in Brooklyn ... students will graduate with a high school diploma and an associate degree in computers or engineering. We need to give every American student opportunities like this.

Clearly, apprenticeships are a win-win: They provide workers with sturdy rungs on that ladder of opportunity and employers with the skilled workers they need to grow their businesses. And yet in America, they've traditionally been an undervalued and underutilized tool in our nation's workforce development arsenal.

There has been no appreciable improvement in our country's ability to produce the kind of talent we need in this space. There have been some small initiatives around the country that have been noteworthy.

Community colleges need to be upgraded. We got to have training for real jobs. We've got a lot of jobs that are going unfilled because we don't have the technology in the heads of graduating college students to deal with them.

It's a combination of targeting higher paying jobs in these growth areas and fostering closer cooperation with higher education; a rising tide that lifts all boats.

I, for one, struggle a little bit with a $250,000 education for a philosophy degree. They are a wonderful people, but we can't employ philosophers in manufacturing in the United States. We need a one- or two-year technical add-on for a high school.