Business and education leaders from 20 communities in the state are gathering around a career readiness initiative called Pathways.
The Initiative places focus on community strategies for having 60 percent of Illinois adults with a postsecondary credential by 2025. State Farm CEO Ed Rust also chairs the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. He says engaging children as early as possible in math and science starts the process of critical thinking.
He says fostering that knowledge will be necessary to help them keep up. Rust says technological change in his career has been nothing short of phenomenal:
“And that is not going to slow down. And the global-reach and I know global gets used so frequently today. But the reality is what we deal with this in a business or a community reaches around the world,” Rust said.
The push to educate more children for the workforce, may be heavily need based, particularly in the areas of Science Technology Engineering and Math. The Pathways Initiative is taking a note from a 2006 NIU study called Keeping Illinois Competitive. The study says 2015 will be one of the first years significantly more people 65 and older are retiring than there are 18-24 year olds entering the workplace.