“Be the change you want to see in the world” is often mistakenly attributed to Mahatma Gandhi. That sentiment is a paraphrase of a longer comment by Gandhi, but even so, it’s not bad counsel. Last week, I wrote about the transformation that the City of Pittsburgh is undergoing. The city has shifted its economic focus from coal and steel to a variety of high-demand, high-wage jobs. And it’s working.
One of the outcomes of the effort to redefine Pittsburgh’s economy has been that jobs in the science and technology fields (STF) tend to create additional jobs outside of the science and technology fields. This economic diversity is exactly what Pittsburgh is looking for. The city sees no reason to repeat its single-industry economic strategy.
Pittsburgh has attracted a range of science and technology employers, including DuoLingo, Google, PNC, Turnitin, AccuWeather, Eaton, General Dynamics Mission Systems, AIG, Cisco, Tesla, Confluence, Jaggaer, CERT, and CVS Health. It is also home to many robotics and AI firms. Those firms, and the technology sector in general, have a large number of open positions, and regularly look for talent to fill them.
The Community College of Allegheny County serves the City of Pittsburgh. Right now, CCAC is offering free enrollment in for-credit IT and technology classes to help local employers fill their open positions. These are not workforce development classes; rather, they’re regular 12- or 14-week credit classes that CCAC offers as part of a degree program. The program is available to residents of the City of Pittsburgh and covers the cost of tuition, fees, and textbooks. Verizon is one of the underwriters of the “LevelUp412” program.
CCAC is part of economic diversity in Pittsburgh
By offering programs at no cost to residents that directly support the long-term goals of local employers, CCAC is “being the change it wants to see.” At the same time, it offers residents a running start on a degree program that can help them take advantage of the growing number of sub-baccalaureate jobs that will be plentiful in Pittsburgh in the coming decade.
The tech boom in Pittsburgh hasn’t made CCAC immune to enrollment declines. In fact, CCAC’s enrollment has declined by about one-third since 2010. But the increasingly diverse economy in Pittsburgh now gives city residents a considerable choice when looking to train for a new job. It gives CCAC an opportunity to fill its classrooms with degree-seeking students. It also gives residents and local employers a reason to support CCAC and its programs.
Photo Credit: Norton Gusky , via Flickr
