The Future of Workforce Preparation
I didn’t really “get” what the CEA’s report on The Jobs of the Future was all about. It basically seemed to be saying what we already know—job growth will be largely concentrated in meds and eds, health care and education. And also that college graduates will be better off than those relying on high school diplomas. But Micah Kordsmeier explains that the important part is the ideas for “unlocking the limited success of job training and re-training programs.”
That makes sense! America does a hodgepodge of training and retraining initiatives under the Workforce Investment Act and “[r]esearch suggests that WIA participants benefit from the program, on average, although quality is uneven.” In essence, if we can build on the things that work and cut out the underperforming programs, we’d be in much better shape. They also make the key point that the best way to make sure that “post-high school” people have the skills they need is to make sure that they actually graduate high school with a solid basis of knowledge. As the CEA puts it “the most important ‘post-high school’ education and training reform is a strong early childhood and elementary and secondary education system.” The education elements of the Obama agenda haven’t gotten much attention yet, but the Teacher Incentive Fund boost cleared a key subcommittee mostly intact earlier this week and union leader Randi Weingarten put out a supportive statement yesterday about CAP’s work on incentive pay. So the wheels are turning.
14 Responses to “The Future of Workforce Preparation”
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July 16th, 2009 at 3:28 pm
Interesting that an associates does a little better than a Bachelors or more. My Master’s got me nowhere. But my IT training got me a state job.
July 16th, 2009 at 3:32 pm
It would be much more relevant and interesting to see some proposals for actually creating those jobs.
July 16th, 2009 at 3:36 pm
have you been in a high school lately? My son in law is a high school teacher in a rural middle american town – a few years ago it would have been described as “Mayberry”. today – not so much. Between the drugs, the babies raising
babies, barely literate parents,kids taking care of sick parents or siblings, and the opposite end of the spectrum – the helicopter parents……….learning is often by accident. spelling, grammer, writing, history, civics – what’s that? If its not a text or a tweet…they don’t have the time……they have the attention span of gnats. good luck getting any teacher to take on another initative, or
program, or service……….
July 16th, 2009 at 4:00 pm
Considering the widening gap in remuneration, I see a great future for the personal service industry. I think you might even be able to get Republicans on board for government grants to train future butlers, maids, valets, cooks and footmen.
July 16th, 2009 at 4:04 pm
Interesting that an associates does a little better than a Bachelors or more.
The chart shows % employment growth. It doesn’t show % employment. It also doesn’t show expected income. Getting a Bachelors degree will still be more valuable than an asociates degree.
have you been in a high school lately? My son in law is a high school teacher in a rural middle american town – a few years ago it would have been described as “Mayberry”. today – not so much…
I’m not aware of any statistical evidence showing that highschool performance has declined over the past few years. Teaching kids is hard but some school districts (Mass., Kansas etc) do it much better than others (Alabama, D.C.).
July 16th, 2009 at 4:05 pm
Education: the bubble that will replace housing. As an added benefit to those who are creditors of student loans, it’s extremely difficult to discharge them. The banks are surely disappointed that it ended up being so easy for the mortgageholders, whose obligations constituted their balance sheet, to just walk away and leave them underwater. If they can just replace all that easily abandoned debt with student loan debt, they won’t have to worry so much about pesky defaults.
July 16th, 2009 at 4:09 pm
Education: the bubble that will replace housing. As an added benefit to those who are creditors of student loans, it’s extremely difficult to discharge them. The banks are surely disappointed that it ended up being so easy for the mortgageholders, whose obligations constituted their balance sheet, to just walk away and leave them underwater. If they can just replace all that easily abandoned debt with student loan debt, they won’t have to worry so much about pesky defaults.
How do you leverage student loan investment? The problem with private provision of student loans is that the government already garuantees them so the private lenders are getting fees for doing almost nothing. Another problem might be that over-emphasis on student loans for 4 year institutions leads to college tuition inflation. Hopefully, there’ll be more emphasis on 2-year and vocational schools in the future.
In any case, I don’t see how student loan lending can lead to the sort of financial bubble we just saw in mortgage backed securities.
July 16th, 2009 at 4:11 pm
Isn’t there a larger question of whether the economy is actually producing enough living-wage jobs to absorb the workforce? And whether demand for skilled labor is actually up to the task of absorption? (see Gordon Lafer, The Job Training Charade)
July 16th, 2009 at 5:19 pm
I don’t see how student loan lending can lead to the sort of financial bubble we just saw in mortgage backed securities.
No? The potential scale may be less, since at any given time only a small number of people are students (but we can imagine that through superior marketing, retraining programs can be sold even to older workers). You also don’t have the mortgage-equity-withdrawal element, where people were given some very nice short-term incentives to go deep into debt.
But some other things still point to a bubble, and some of same risks to the financial system exist.
How do you leverage student loan investment?
Strange question… how do you leverage anything? You make a crapton of student loans (compared to your working capital) and sell them. You also mention that the government guarantees the loans as if this were somehow a *mitigating* factor; seems to me the incentive is for the bank to sell as many loans as possible, without caring whatsoever what the risk of default might be.
Also, not all student loans are backed by the federal government.
The main factors I can see: ongoing inflation in tuition costs (which must ultimately obey Stein’s Law); a drop in interest rates for student loans (government-inflicted via the CCRA); and a pervasive belief (not borne out by statistics) that a degree is a ticket to financial success. Not only that, but quite a number of people who are disappointed in their job prospects on obtaining a BA don’t realize their mistake and instead double down in hopes that the next credential will be the one that opens all the doors for them…
July 16th, 2009 at 5:21 pm
Yes, this would be the question. Although coming at it from a different perspective, I think it would make even more sense to ask whether the education being provided actually results in human productivity gains large enough to justify the higher incomes that will supposedly result.
July 16th, 2009 at 5:58 pm
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July 16th, 2009 at 6:22 pm
bbartlog – your way assumes a certain amount of labor demand, no? Even enormous gains in (potential) productivity won’t help if the will to employ isn’t there. The 1930s are actually a good example – mechanization was actually making the 1930s a huge decade for productivity increases, but it didn’t lead to a huge explosion of living-wage jobs.
July 16th, 2009 at 6:55 pm
I don’t see how student loan lending can lead to the sort of financial bubble we just saw in mortgage backed securities.
No? The potential scale may be less, since at any given time only a small number of people are students (but we can imagine that through superior marketing, retraining programs can be sold even to older workers). You also don’t have the mortgage-equity-withdrawal element, where people were given some very nice short-term incentives to go deep into debt.
In short, student loans CANNOT lead to the sort of bubble we saw in mortgage backed securities.
Strange question… how do you leverage anything? You make a crapton of student loans (compared to your working capital) and sell them.
What’s the size of the market for student-loan-backed securities? Who’s going to lend you money at 30:1 to play in that market? Banks could leverage 30:1 in mortgage backed securities because their prices were skyrocketing and demand was rising dramatically. Neither of these factors are true for student loans.
July 21st, 2009 at 2:09 pm
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