Community colleges filling employment needs

Louisiana has twelve community and technical colleges across the state, with Delgado being the most well-known. Richard Nelson, President of Louisiana’s Community and Technical College system, says the programs those institutions offer a quick path to a potentially lucrative career change. "Our colleges have a lot of programs in high demand right now. We have one program up in Monroe at Delta Community College that is feeding people directly into that giant Meta project where they go for four weeks and then go and make up to $80,000 per year," Nelson told WWL listeners.

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Nelson emphasizes that there are plenty of high-paying jobs right here in the state of Louisiana waiting for those without traditional four year degrees. "Nursing is in incredibly high demand across the state no matter where you are. Welders, electricians, HVAC techs ... these guys are in absolutely huge demand and a lot of that is being driven by these big industrial projects like the Meta data center project.

Workers are being moved in from surrounding Texas and Arkansas according to Nelson, and he sees Louisiana's community and technical college system as a cheap and affordable path for homegrown workers right here in the state. "We have this huge influx of investment from these giant capital projects and 70-80% of the jobs they're going to create will come from the community and technical colleges," Nelson adds.

He has also seen a growing trend of workers with traditional four-year college degrees coming back to community or technical schools to gain more specialized certifications as careers change with the times. "Generally our programs take two years or less to complete and a lot of our students work while they're going to school," Nelson notes. As the job market changes with developments in artificial intelligence, he says staying dynamic is key and believes these alternative pathways to employment will continue to become more popular.