Finding qualified employees is still a challenge for employers in the region.

“The critical issue right now is the big gap we have between a high school diploma and a university diploma,” said Oliver Schlake, clinical professor at the Smith School of Business in Maryland.

“Those four years in between are not filled, necessarily, with the needed education that some employers look for.”

Schlake looks to his home country for ideas on how to solve the problem. “We need to find a better way of addressing that gap,” he said.

In Germany, Schlake said, education has found a new way. The country has opened a number of “job schools”, designed to teach specific skills for specific jobs that require education beyond a high school diploma.

“It would provide us a two- to three-year training that combines on-the-job training with the necessarily theoretical basics,” said Schlake.

Similar initiatives in America haven’t caught the same level of popularity. “This has to be a joint approach between the potential hiring companies, which in the German model, are fairly much involved in the curriculum development,” Schlake said.

“Employers need to realize it’s an initiative they can push forward,” he said.

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