Excerpt from a recent Los Angeles Times article:
On a recent afternoon, high school senior Marc Herrera demonstrated how to use a robotic palletizer at the Career Technical Education Center, run by the Kern High School District. He had recently toured the local Amazon fulfillment center and saw workers there using a giant version to efficiently stack goods onto a pallet.
Herrera, 17, is already earning college credits through the high school’s robotics engineering program and plans to pursue a bachelor’s degree in industrial automation at Bakersfield College. Salaries in the field start at around $70,000, according to Anthony Cordova, the college’s dean of instruction for industrial technology and transportation.
The Career Technical Education Center also offers a logistics and distribution program, which prepares students to get entry-level jobs at local warehouses and move up the ladder, said Principal Brian Miller.
“If you come in with a work ethic and background, like a lot of these kids will,” Miller said, “there is tremendous opportunity to get into the supervisory ranks, the management ranks, where you’re going to be making six-figures, pretty quickly, which is a really good job for our area.”