Nicholas Lawrence Shore

2001 E Linda Ave

Stillwater, OK 74074

President Joseph R. Biden

1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW
Washington, DC 20500

March 24th, 2021

Dear President Biden,

Hello! I am Nicholas Lawrence Shore, and I am a concerned college student
who believes my fellow Americans are being deceived by many institutions in
higher education. I believe we can negate this by creating a division of the
Department of Labor that gives both public and private higher education
institutions a vocational rating. This rating would be representative of the apparent
capability of any education facility to give jobs to those who graduate. We need to
make sure American universities and colleges are focused on providing jobs, not
on personal enrichment, by establishing a vocational rating system.

In American classes, we teach about the ideas in a field of study instead of

the work involved in those careers. We are never taught the realities of our field of
study. For example, my sister graduated from Oklahoma State University with a
bachelor’s in zoology and a minor in conservation. She was not taught anything
related to day-to-day duties and activities once during her entire tenure as a
student. Instead, her professors taught her only about science itself. I have
absolutely nothing against learning, however; corporations issuing certifications
that do not have a vocational value, yet pretend the certification does, should be
held responsible. Unfortunately, legal cases relating to if something is vocational
would be hard to prove in a courtroom.

Many vocational training programs already exist that maintain connections

to various corporations and focus groups around the world, but they are not
enough. London-based Specialist Vocational Training iterates on the importance of
workplace competence by stating “The NVQ is a work-based qualification which
recognises the skills and knowledge a person needs to do a job. The candidate
needs to demonstrate and prove their competency in their chosen role or career
path.” Here in America, the most prolific of these companies is Pearson Education
with their various programs, claiming “Available at Levels 1 to 7, these flexible
qualifications cover a huge range of careers, from hairdressing and design to
policing and engineering.” Although one could argue that the services from these
companies suffice, they do not cover the more expensive career-orientated fields
such as Zoology. Additionally, they do not hold the same sway or esteem that most
of our higher education institutions enjoy. We need to address the problem inside
our universities.

Graduated students often regret their college experience due to failures in the
education itself. According to a study conducted in 2019 by PayScale, 12.2% of all
respondents regretted their area of study. That is one out of every eight college
students that feel they wasted their time in higher education. Perhaps a better
statistic to analyze is what fields regret their loans. If they were enabled and
educated to re-pay these loans, then surely the only degrees with regret are not
economically viable? Wrong. Computer science, humanities, business, education,
social sciences, art, and health sciences all had more than 24% of their students
regret their degree. Some of those fields are admittedly not as vocational as others.
Although computer science and business are not considered low-paying fields,
because of how little they prepare for the real world – they are deeply regretted.

There are extreme and prevalent economy-wide issues with the way
American universities conduct themselves. After all, Forbes claims 1.6 trillion
dollars of our economy is tied up in student debt. This is money that could be spent
by the younger generations to buy houses, start families, and consume products.
Some of your political colleagues in the democratic party have their plans to solve
the student debt issue, and all of them rely on a direct economic stimulus. Most of
those proposed measures will not survive the US senate at this time due to the fear
of socialism. However, I propose a different breed of argument. According to
Forbes, 90%, or $85,000,000,000 of student loans are to the federal government.
Therefore, the United States taxpayer is footing the bill for these non-vocational
endeavors. That price tag is will continue to cost the same as it did last year, but I
hope that these measures would ensure that the money is better spent.

Thank you for your time, as it is invaluable – as is our education! Please

consider enriching the lives of all American students, including myself, by making
this slight addition to the Department of Labor. I hope you will contact me at
nicholas.l.shore@gmai.com or (405) 338 – 5771 to discuss the nuances of a
vocational rating system.

Sincerely,

Nicholas Lawrence Shore

 Works Cited

Friedman, Zack. “If $1.6 Trillion of Student Loan Debt Is Forgiven, This Is What Happens.” Forbes, 3

Dec. 2019, www.forbes.com/sites/zackfriedman/2019/12/03/student-loans-debt-forgiven-

impact/?sh=2e6e3b8574e9. Accessed 31 Mar. 2021.

Gruver, Jackson. “Biggest College Regrets - Compensation Research.” PayScale, 25 June 2019,

www.payscale.com/data/biggest-college-regrets. Accessed 25 Mar. 2021.

Pearson Education Ltd. “Edexcel NVQ and Competence-Based Qualifications (QCF) | Pearson

Qualifications.” Qualifications.pearson.com, qualifications.pearson.com/en/qualifications/nvq-

and-competence-based-qualifications.html. Accessed 25 Mar. 2021.

Specialist Vocational Training. “What Is an NVQ? (National Vocational Qualification).”

Www.vocationaltraining.org.uk, www.vocationaltraining.org.uk/nvq-overview. Accessed 31

Mar. 2021.