Skilled technical occupationsâ€"defined as occupations that require a high level of knowledge in a technical domain but do not require a bachelor's degree for entryâ€"are a key component of the U.S. economy. In response to globalization and advances in science and technology, American firms are demanding workers with greater proficiency in literacy and numeracy, as well as strong interpersonal, technical, and problem-solving skills. However, employer surveys and industry and government reports have raised concerns that the nation may not have an adequate supply of skilled technical workers to achieve its competitiveness and economic growth objectives. In response to the broader need for policy information and advice, Building America's Skilled Technical Workforce examines the coverage, effectiveness, flexibility, and coordination of the policies and various programs that prepare Americans for skilled technical jobs. This report provides action-oriented recommendations for improving the American system of technical education, training, and certification.

A roadmap for how we can rebuild America's working class by transforming workforce education and training. The American dream promised that if you worked hard, you could move up, with well-paying working-class jobs providing a gateway to an ever-growing middle class. Today, however, we have increasing inequality, not economic convergence. Technological advances are putting quality jobs out of reach for workers who lack the proper skills and training. In Workforce Education, William Bonvillian and Sanjay Sarma offer a roadmap for rebuilding America's working class. They argue that we need to train more workers more quickly, and they describe innovative methods of workforce education that are being developed across the country.

"Grubb's powerful vision of a workforce development system connected by vertical ladders for upward mobility adds an important new dimension to our continued efforts at system reform. The unfortunate reality is that neither our first-chance education system nor our second-chance job training system have succeeded in creating clear pathways out of poverty for many of our citizens. Grubb's message deserves a serious hearing by policy makers and practitioners alike." —Evelyn Ganzglass, National Governors' Association Over the past three decades, job training programs have proliferated in response to mounting problems of unemployment, poverty, and expanding welfare rolls. These programs and the institutions that administer them have grown to a number and complexity that make it increasingly difficult for policymakers to interpret their effectiveness. Learning to Work offers a comprehensive assessment of efforts to move individuals into the workforce, and explains why their success has been limited. Learning to Work offers a complete history of job training in the United States, beginning with the Department of Labor's manpower development programs in the1960s and detailing the expansion of services through the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act in the 1970s and the Job Training Partnership Act in the 1980s.Other programs have sprung from the welfare system or were designed to meet the needs of various state and corporate development initiatives. The result is a complex mosaic of welfare-to-work, second-chance training, and experimental programs, all with their own goals, methodology, institutional administration, and funding. Learning to Work examines the findings of the most recent and sophisticated job training evaluations and what they reveal for each type of program. Which agendas prove most effective? Do their effects last over time? How well do programs benefit various populations, from welfare recipients to youths to displaced employees in need of retraining? The results are not encouraging. Many programs increase employment and reduce welfare dependence, but by meager increments, and the results are often temporary. On average most programs boosted earnings by only $200 to $500 per year, and even these small effects tended to decay after four or five years.Overall, job training programs moved very few individuals permanently off welfare, and provided no entry into a middle-class occupation or income. Learning to Work provides possible explanations for these poor results, citing the limited scope of individual programs, their lack of linkages to other programs or job-related opportunities, the absence of academic content or solid instructional methods, and their vulnerability to local political interference. Author Norton Grubb traces the root of these problems to the inherent separation of job training programs from the more successful educational system. He proposes consolidating the two domains into a clearly defined hierarchy of programs that combine school- and work-based instruction and employ proven methods of student-centered, project-based teaching. By linking programs tailored to every level of need and replacing short-term job training with long-term education, a system could be created to enable individuals to achieve increasing levels of economic success. The problems that job training programs address are too serious too ignore. Learning to Work tells us what's wrong with job training today, and offers a practical vision for reform.

An OECD study of vocational education and training designed to help countries make their systems more responsive to labour market needs. It expands the evidence base, identifies a set of policy options and develops tools to appraise VET policy initiatives.

This book studies young people who are Not in Education, Employment, or Training (NEET); a prime concern among policymakers. Moving past common interpretations of NEETs as a homogeneous group, it asks why some youth become NEET, whereas other do not. The authors analyse diverse school-to-work patterns of young NEETs in five typical countries and investigate the role of individual characteristics, countries’ institutions and policies, and their complex interplay. Readers will come to understand youth marginalization as a process that may occur during the transition from school, vocational college, or university to work. By studying longitudinal analyses of processes and transitions, readers will gain the crucial insight that NEETs are not equally vulnerable, and that most NEETs will find their way back to the labour market. However, they will also see that in all countries, a group of long-term NEETs exists. These exceptionally vulnerable young people are sidelined from society and the labour market. The country cases and cross-national studies illustrate that policies intended to help long-term NEETs to find their way in society are very limited. The book provides useful theoretical and empirical insights for scholars interested in the school-to-work transition and marginalized youth. It also provides helpful insights in vulnerability to policymakers who aim to combat youth marginalization. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

Lists 163 programs and funding streams that provide about $20 billion in employment training assistance. Covers: FY 1995 appropriation