Florida Polytechnic University works to churn out graduates ready to take their knowledge and put it to use in the real world.

  • Secretary of Labor visits Florida Polytechnic University
  • University teaches students real world skills
  • Alexandar Acosta calls it 'demand driven education'

On Friday, the school got a chance to show the U.S. Secretary of Labor Alexander Acosta how it’s preparing students to find careers.

First, he checked out a virtual reality headset designed to teach students studying forensics how to investigate crime scenes.

“This is amazingly well done,” Secretary Acosta said. “What’s amazing is this looked like a professional project. It looked like it was produced by a company. But it was produced by two students right here. My comment to them was they should commercialize this because companies would pay serious money.”

It’s an example of what he calls demand driven education, where educators teach skills that are in demand in the workplace.

He was also there to see how companies are partnering with university students.

That’s why he was impressed with another project on campus involving students who are working with the company “Skim Shield” to find a way to repel Zika carrying mosquitoes using sound.

“They’re working with industry. They’re working with companies. They are not just teaching classroom skills. They are teaching real world skills. And that is something our economy requires and that is something our students benefit from because they get jobs,” Acosta said.

Secretary Acosta said there are currently six million job openings. He said many of the people looking for work don’t have the skills to fill them.

“The individuals weren’t given the skills that they needed by our educational system to work in those positions. So we’re focused on apprenticeships. Apprenticeships are a mechanism where individuals can earn while they learn. They can start to work and they can get practical real world skills that industry is demanding,” Acosta explained.

Right now, he estimates there are around 500,000 apprenticeships across the country. He’d like that number to be in the millions. He said the average starting salary for apprenticeships is over $60,000.