Posts Tagged ‘education’

This is the story of one middle class guy in Newark, Ohio trying to climb back up after the bottom falls out.

Dustin Lange worked his way up the ranks of at a property management company in Newark, Ohio without a college degree. His income as a vice president at the company put him in the top quartile for earnings nationally.

But when he got laid off at age 34, he was left in the lurch. Lange found his high school diploma was no longer enough to get an equivalent job in the real estate industry. And throughout the economy, the jobs promising a middle income wage and a employment growth now require at least some post-secondary education.

So Lange has had to retool and recalibrate his lifestyle. He moved out of his big house in a well-groomed development on the other side of town and he’s gone back to school to become a nurse.

View the interactive feature about Dustin Lange and job market trends.

published by the Oakland Tribune

EL CERRITO, California – El Cerrito High School Junior Kenneth Thornton, 16, had switched his cell phone to vibrate and stashed it in the pocket of his baggy Rocca Wear jeans. When it went off in Jim Perrero’s Friday morning history class, he ducked under his desk.

“Who is this?” Thornton whispered, “I’m gonna call you back.”

Sliding back up into his chair, Thornton said he had to take the call.

“I didn’t know that number it could have been important.”

But answering a cell phone at El Cerrito High is now risky business. The school’s 1,250 students were greeted on the first day of school with warnings that their phones would be confiscated if they were in view at any time during school hours. (more…)