Good article.
The first state-aided schools were in the 1840s
in Germany -- for the sons of army officers who
couldn't afford to pay for high quality
schooling. This then widened to free mass
education (and of lesser quality!) in order also
to supply obedient, jingoistic males who could,
if necessary be, enthusiastically conscripted for
large-scale warfare without the state having to
resort to press-ganging as was then necessary for
the army and navy in times of warfare. This was
then followed by English politicians and other
industrial countries in order to supply large
quantities of biddable boys for the factories and
girls for domestic service (as well as, if
necessary, enthusiastic young men for the army).
Well, in recent decades, state schools have
increasingly fallen down on the job of adequately
preparing enough young people for whatever the
job scene is at any time. So far, the employers
have been able to pick and choose from the better
qualified without incurring the coasts. Well,
tough luck! As the state schools decline still
further and are now having to give way to all
sorts of alternative independent schools then
employers will have to start getting into the act
much more than they are beginning to do already.
And, as a byproduct, let's hope that the new
schools will be able to bust the protective
practices of several of the older professions --
particularly in law, medicine and finance --
which the state, so far, has been unwilling to do,
Keith
At 15:24 23/06/2011, you wrote:
Why some jobs go begging in tough economy
by John W. Schoen June 23, 2011
<https://www.readability.com/articles/e8akjzno?legacy_bookmarklet=1>Read
Later
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43486360/ns/business-us_business/
Theres widespread consensus that millions of
jobs go unfilled in the U.S. because employers cant find skilled workers.
But theres less agreement on where the money
will come from to train those jobless workers.
Nobody, it seems, wants to pick up the tab.
Despite an unemployment rate of 9.1 percent in
May, nearly three million job openings went
unfilled up from roughly 2.1 million went the
recession ended in June 2009. To be sure, there
aren't nearly enough jobs for the roughly 15
million Americans who are out of work.
But many of those jobs remain unfilled because
employers can't find qualified candidates to do
the work. From manufacturing to health care,
employers report that they can no longer rely on
hiring entry level workers and training them on the job.
In the '60s and '70s you could go from an entry
level job on the loading dock to manufacturing
engineer or accountant to a maybe a manager in a
corner office, said Anthony Carnevale, director
of the Georgetown University Center on Education
and the Workforce. It doesnt work that way
anymore. The qualifications have gone up. The
commitment between employer and employee has
gone down. And (employers) dont want to take
five years to get you ready. They want you ready
to start working and learning the day you walk in the door.
Employers aren't stingy about adding and
updating skills for existing workers. Carnevale
estimates American companies spend some $130 billion on training costs.
"But they dont want to do qualifying training," he said.
Darlene Miller, CEO of Permac Industries in
South Burnsville, Minn., said the days are long
gone when a new hire could learn how to operate
machinery on the job. Miller said she would add
another half-dozen workers to her payroll of 38
workers if she could find people skilled at
operating the high-tech equipment she recently
purchased to boost productivity.
"We just can't afford to take the time and the
money to hire and someone to just shadow someone
else and learn hands-on," she said. "The
equipment is just too high-tech to do that."
Miller is a member of President Barack Obama's
Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, which
recently announced a goal of turning out an
additional 10,000 American engineers annually by
leaning on the private sector to boost
university funding, add internships and create other incentives.
"These are the jobs of the future. These are the
jobs that China and India are cranking out,"
Obama said in a visit to a Durham, N.C.,
lighting factory last week. "And were falling
behind in the very fields we know are going to be our future."
For more than 14 million job seekers, local
community colleges filling some of the skills
gap: over the past two years, enrollments are up
15 percent. But those roughly 1,200 schools are
heavily reliant on declining state and federal
funding, which have forced some schools to cut
back on course offerings, according to
Christopher Mullin, a policy analyst at the
American Association of Community Colleges.
"State funding continues to be cut and federal
funding continues to be under strain," he said.
Miller says budget pressures at community and
technical colleges also have restricted
investment in the latest equipment and
technology needed to teach students the latest skills.
"A lot of the schools do not have the equipment
that we have they can't afford to buy it," she
said. "They have the drill presses, they have
the engine lathes, they have archaic 1940s
equipment. So the students have no clue what the
real world is really doing out there."
Community colleges and students also face a
looming funding squeeze set off by negotiations
over cutting the federal budget deficit.
Republicans have proposed cuts in the $34
billion Pell grant program, one of the biggest
sources of tuition assistance for some 9 million
students, more than 80 percent of whom have incomes under $30,000.
State funding is also being cut for four-year
public colleges, where the career benefits of a
bachelor's degree are substantial. While the
overall unemployment rate at 9.1 percent, the
jobless rate for four-year college graduates is
about half that level. College graduates earn an
average of $1,150 a week nearly twice as much
as a worker with just a high school diploma.
But even among college grads, there is a
widening gap in the wage and employment prospects for various fields of study.
"We've got too many of Americans taking
guaranteed loans and going to college and
majoring in philosophy or sociology and
graduating (with) $100,000 in debt yet with no
real marketable skills," said Peter Schiff, head
of Euro Pacific Capital, an
<http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43465034/ns/business-eye_on_the_economy/>investmentfirm<https://www.readability.com/articles/e8akjzno?legacy_bookmarklet=1#rdb-footnote-1>1.
Among the college class of 2011, engineering
dominates the list of top-paid majors, according
to results of a new survey conducted by the
National Association of Colleges and Employers.
But of 1.6 million bachelor's degrees awarded in
2009, fewer than 90,000 were in engineering.
In some fields, the skills shortage is getting
worse. The aging baby boomer population is
rapidly increasing demand for nurse
practitioners, but the supply of skilled workers
isn't keeping pace. There are currently four job
openings for every qualified nurse practitioner
in the U.S., according to careerbuilder.com.
In the end, someone has to pick up the cost of
the skills shortage. The mismatch has forced
employers like Lifespan, a chain of five Rhode
Island hospitals, to come up with its own
solutions. The company currently has about 450
job openings; 86 of those are hard-to-fill
skilled nursing jobs, according to Brandon
Melton, Lifespan's head of
<http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43465034/ns/business-eye_on_the_economy/>humanresources<https://www.readability.com/articles/e8akjzno?legacy_bookmarklet=1#rdb-footnote-2>2.
"The way we fill that gap is with overtime and
by paying for contract laborers, about 45 nurses
that we import from other parts of the country
for a few months at a time," he said.
The nursing shortage is hitting Lifespan's
bottom line by more than doubling the salaries
of those contract workers and adding to
overtime. So the company has begun training from
within, sending hundreds of its existing
employees back to school and paying their
tuition. The $350,000 cost of tuition
reimbursements represents just a tiny fraction
of the $850 million the company spends on labor costs.
"We can either continue to fill that gap at
double time or we can invest in our own employees," said Melton.
----------
References
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(www.msnbc.msn.com) (
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43465034/ns/business-eye_on_the_economy/ )
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<https://www.readability.com/articles/e8akjzno?legacy_bookmarklet=1#rdb-footnote-link-2>^<http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43465034/ns/business-eye_on_the_economy/>humanresources
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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43465034/ns/business-eye_on_the_economy/ )
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Keith Hudson, Saltford, England http://allisstatus.wordpress.com/2011/06/
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