An Urgent Call for 21st Century Training and Education Initiatives

In the face of continuing job losses, rapid technological change, global competition and stagnating wages and benefits, today’s workers and their families—along with young workforce entrants—live with anxiety and uncertainty about their future quality of life and their prospects for good jobs and upward mobility.  Yet our national government remains dangerously blind to the pressing need for greater systematic public investment in education and skill-development programs linked to economic policies that support high-wage job creation, improved living standards and stronger worker bargaining power.  This neglect has weakened our economy, eroding our nation’s ability to generate and sustain middle-class jobs and compete internationally, and has threatened our national security.

To meet this challenge, our nation needs a cohesive national strategy that links substantial investment in job creation to an improved educational system and significant public resources directed toward skill-development programs.  Implementing that strategy will require farsighted presidential leadership; a substantial financial commitment; a new working partnership among stakeholders in labor, business, education and government; and the kind of bipartisan comity that has been absent too long from our national life.  Otherwise, the future will not be kind—either to job seekers without skills or to a nation without the will to create the workforce it needs.

Losing Ground in Education and Skills

A decade ago, our adult population led the world in educational attainment; the United States is now 10th in the percentage of young adults with a post-secondary credential. Why does this matter? It matters because our economy no longer offers a large pool of well-paying jobs that can be acquired without a post-secondary education. Unfortunately, while the need for post-secondary credentials has grown, financial support for the U.S. system of higher education has not kept pace with that demand. State and local funding per student at public colleges and universities is at historically low levels. As a result, working students and students from working families who seek post-secondary credentials will have a tough time. Similarly, public investment in job training and employment security programs has suffered from years of neglect and severe underfunding.

Workers and their families see that companies are increasingly turning to the world labor market, either importing workers or exporting jobs, often to their own new facilities overseas. According to authoritative survey results, a clear majority of Americans recognize that the nation is facing a skill shortage in blue-collar professions, such as electricians and machinists, and agree that the nation’s workforce must increase its level of training and skill development to compete effectively in the global economy. Yet training is lacking when it comes to filling real shortages of qualified workers in many skilled occupations in health care, manufacturing, construction, services, high technology and defense-related industries.

Moreover, the looming retirement of the highly educated Baby Boom generation is bringing the problem into even sharper focus.  Though young people and their parents appreciate the value of post-secondary and professional education, a tumultuous global economy and government inaction provide inadequate guidance for precisely what occupations and careers young people should enter.  How effective are our education and skill-development systems for replacing workers on the verge of retirement?  How will we develop the skills that are demanded for the industries of the future—in "green" technologies, advanced manufacturing, the energy sector and health care, for example?

Skills shortages and the loss of manufacturing jobs also damage our national security. The factory floor serves as a source of experimentation, innovation and product development.  That vital link between production and innovation, however, is being severed as manufacturers move plants offshore, a practice encouraged by Pentagon policies that promote globalization of defense products and severely flawed procurement procedures that fail to protect U.S. jobs.  Even as U.S. manufacturers increasingly offshore production, the U.S. government has failed to support and maintain the robust, competitive industrial base required for our national security.  And in too many mission-critical weapon systems, component parts are being manufactured by nations whose allegiances are suspect, whose reliability in times of crisis is uncertain or whose antipathy towards America is a given.

In spite of all the political rhetoric about serving the needs of working parents, we continue to squander the talents of their children. For example, the National Educational Longitudinal Survey (NELS) shows there are 430,000 students from families making less than $85,000 a year who are in the top half of their high school graduating classes, but they do not get a two-year or a four-year degree within eight years of high school graduation. In sum, we are wasting valuable resources that could improve our educational performance and bolster our economic competitiveness.  Compared with their more affluent peers, top students from working families are more likely to use their college education as public servants by becoming school teachers, public administrators or members of the civilian or military uniformed services. Helping these students validates the uniquely American notion of social progress and opportunity.

Recommendations for Action

At the National Level:

• Commit the nation to providing students with the basic skills and knowledge they need to further their education.
• Commit the nation to providing all Americans with access to a post-secondary education that carries them as far as their ambitions and capabilities take them.  This includes further education, including an associate’s degree, a bachelor’s or graduate degree, a vocational credential or industry certification.  Help finance this effort by expanding funding for the Pell Grant program and making it more accessible to working adults and dislocated workers, and promoting quality, registered, joint apprenticeship programs.  Expand funding for quality community college programs, apprenticeship programs and other workforce training and certification programs.  It is essential that new funding be provided to support these activities.  Effective job preparation combines degrees with good school-to-work programs at the high school level and on-the-job skill upgrading.  There can be many paths to becoming skilled.
• Address the "demand" side of the equation by investing in sectors that are important to the national interest where future skilled jobs are anticipated or could be cultivated.   Make sure there is a workforce development component in federal programs.  Encourage education in high-need sectors through institutional, state and federal financial aid such as loan forgiveness, grants and training incentives toward these sectors—infrastructure, defense, green technologies, aerospace, renewable energy, education and health care.
• Improve coordination among the too-often isolated efforts of states, employers, unions, post-secondary institutions and public schools (including the Workforce Investment Act and the 21st Century Competitiveness Act, for example). Programs should be grounded in the public sector and provide incentives to link secondary and post-secondary education paths, fund incumbent worker training and provide an infrastructure for serving working adults—not just those who have already been dislocated.
• Support new high-tech education and training institutes in each state modeled on the land grant colleges. These would help set the standard of 21st century excellence and innovation in workforce development.  These institutes should build upon existing skill standards programs, such as the work of the labor-industry Manufacturing Skills Standards Council, and coordinate their efforts with longstanding technology-development efforts, notably the Manufacturing Extension Partnerships (MEPs). The MEPs are well-positioned at the state, regional and national levels to link new technology development with greater public investment in skill development.
• Launch a concerted national initiative to inform parents, young persons and new workforce entrants about the availability of vocational, technical and apprenticeship training and education opportunities that lead to good jobs at family-sustaining wages while contributing to the competitiveness of the American economy and enhanced national security. Working families are vitally interested in learning about these post-secondary vocational options.
• Assist employers and unions in developing subsidized on-site learning representatives who can help employees with career counseling and access to training needs.
• Ensure that everyone has full access to a diverse range of excellent, affordable higher education opportunities, as affirmed in our 2007 statement, “Opportunity For All: Higher Education for Students from Working Families.”
• Tap the thinking and experience of those already active and expert on these issues from the AFL-CIO and other advocates for greater public investment in workforce development programs.

At the State and Local Levels:

• We must start with investing in children’s education—the most cost-effective way to build a skilled, intellectually flexible workforce. For our children to compete in the global economy, they need a world-class core curriculum from pre-K through grade 12 that has common content at least through grade 8, and that lays clear paths to graduation and beyond.
• We must therefore renew our commitment to career and technical education at the high school level, while at the same time maintaining standards, so that these courses can lead to a variety of post-secondary goals. This means training students in the newest techniques, working on 21st century materials and using the most high-tech tools. Such training will require major public investments that enable high schools to prepare students for all kinds of work-related, post-secondary, higher education. There can be many paths to becoming skilled.
• We need to ensure that work-oriented credentials reflect skills competence.  Existing credentials may or may not reflect skill mastery or measure accomplishment occupation by occupation. Skill mastery is a central element in providing dignity, legitimacy and productivity to work, and the credentials that attest to it must be respected by employers, employees and the public.
• Provide incentives for all players and stakeholders to work together—public schools, community colleges, universities, apprenticeship programs, unions, employers and government at every level.

America is searching for national leadership and a way forward to a better future.  We need a movement that will rise above well-intentioned but balkanized efforts at skills creation and workforce reform.  It will need to combine the best of fragmented private models and the most effective pieces of public legislative authority with new money and risk-taking designs.  We must create both a comprehensive approach and the political support to back it up.  Unless we lead such an effort, this nation and its people will fall victim to a very real crisis.  Nothing less than the future of our country is at stake.