EducationNews.org

Michael F. Shaughnessy
Senior Columnist EdNews.org
Eastern New Mexico University

Marlene Seltzer isPresident & CEO of Jobs for the Future. In this interview, she reflects on the current state of the job market and vocational/occupational and career readiness and the future, particularly for women.

1) How important is career/vocational/occupation information for women today?

Career information is critical, particularly in an economy that is increasingly complex to navigate. However, information is not the only barrier. Women in the labor market face a number of very real and significant barriers. There are barriers to entry into certain non-traditional occupations, such as construction or other "male" occupations, either because of discrimination or limited access to routes into those fields.In addition, limited skills, education, and experience are particularly high barriers to quality employment, particularly for low-income women. At least 42 percent of women leaving welfare do not have a high school diploma. Thirty percent have never held a job for longer than six months. Up to one-third of women leaving welfare have children under the age of three and face a grave lack of day care resources as well as inadequate transportation to where jobs are located. For many women eager to enter the workforce and advance to better paying work, these are more serious barriers than information.

2) Work! It seems to be a great place for some, not so great for others. How do we go about matching people with good paying jobs that seem to meet their needs?

Most people change jobs many times in their life—an average of 7-10 times, according to research estimates. Most adults have become more adept at finding their passions, pursuing jobs that fit their lifestyles and needs. But those with fewer resources, more limited connections to employment networks, and limited skills and education are at a distinct disadvantage.

Many Americans understand how to use electronic job matching services like Monster.com or specialized job matching services in their particular areas of interest and occupational specialization.For lower-skilled and less experienced workers, the public employment system and its "one-stop centers" are frequently able to help individuals find entry-level work.

But entry-level work is not the answer in today's economy, where most entry-level jobs do not pay enough to support a family. In today's economy, the real challenge for lower-skilled workers is advancement. What are the ways that people can move up from lower paying to higher paying jobs, from jobs to careers?

There is increasing interest in and experimentation with different models of career pathways and career ladders. These help individuals understand the pathways from where they are in the labor market to opportunities that they would like to attain.

These kinds of programs are about more than job matching—more than simply helping you find a job. They are about how workers are educated to know what skills, credentials, and experiences are required to move up in their field or across to different opportunities in their industry—and how public, private, educational, and nonprofit community institutions can work together to support advancement efforts.

A kind of career pathway approach that is gaining some traction nationally can be seen in the health care industry. A growing number of programs around the country are helping entry-level health care workers prepare for and pursue a career move as a licensed practical nurse. While LPNs earn significantly less than registered nurses and have more limited advancement options, their jobs are very attractive for assistants and other entry-level direct care workers who enjoy care-giving and are looking for higher income and more control over their work lives.

3) I personally believe that "Community Colleges Count." How do we get the average high school dropout to get that message?  

Economist Anthony Carnevale shares some alarming (and hopefully motivating) data in a new book from Jobs for the Future, Minding the Gap: Why Integrating High School with College Makes Sense and How to Do It (Harvard Education Press, 2007). He reports that "the wage advantage of a college degree over a high school diploma has increased from 36 to 76 percent, a cool million dollars over a working life" since the 1970s. He adds that 95 percent of college-degree earners have employer-provided health care coverage, versus just 67 percent of high school dropouts.

The data are clear that college degrees open the door to better pay, better benefits, and more opportunities for career advancement. And community colleges provide a doorway to affordable college credentials for many individuals coming out of high school or returning to college after years in the labor market.These institutions have flexibility, are conveniently located, and are affordable. Many have specializations in particular occupational credentials that have value in the labor market.

Community colleges face a challenge: because they tend to be underfunded and to enroll large numbers of students who face serious academic and personal barriers to succeeding in college, a lot of students leave before they earn the credentials they seek.The opportunity that these institutions provide is significant—and must be encouraged and supported. But the challenge for community colleges in the coming years (as it is for all non-selective colleges and universities) is to make sure that they can improve student success in their institutions, not just student access to college.Access without success has little payoff to those trying to gain credentials that can improve their economic prospects.

Jobs for the Future is involved in two ambitious projects designed to improve community college success for lower-income students. One, Achieving the Dream, involves more than 80 colleges in fifteen states in an effort to promote institutional improvement that is based on careful, institution-wide analysis of where students are having trouble moving forward in their community college careers. This initiative, with many national partners and funders, is a tremendously exciting effort to change the way community colleges plan and act to improve student outcomes. JFF's role in this effort is to help state governments and community college systems revamp their policies to be more supportive of student success.

A second JFF community college project, Breaking Through, is designed to help community colleges do a better job of serving working adults who only have basic skills, providing them needs with opportunities to gain higher skills, and move quickly and effectively into occupational programs whose credentials have a big pay-off in the labor market.This effort involves more than 20 colleges around the country that are working to improve adult basic education, developmental education, and the progress of adult students through these pre-college programs into and through credential programs.

4) "Jobs for the Future" sounds scary and challenging at the same time. Where do you see the job market going in the next ten or twenty years?

By 2020, U.S. employers will need as many as 14 million more workers with some college education than our educational institutions are likely to produce, according to Anthony Carnevale, who also gave a keynote address at Jobs for the Future's Double The Numbers 2007 conference last month. (Conference highlights can be found at the Web site www.doublethenumbers.org.)

The share of American workers with some college experience shot up 20 percent between 1980-2000, which is great. But if current enrollment trends continue, Carnevale says that increase will nearly plateau by 2020—rising only 3 percent in twenty years. That means that when college-educated baby boomers retire, there likely will not be enough degree-certified applicants to replace them here in America, even while there are likely to be as many as three million workers with a high school diploma or less who are unqualified to fill those positions.

5) Tell us about the National Fund for Workforce Solutions. What was your role in this?

The National Fund for Workforce Solutions is a foundation-led initiative aimed at improving employment training and empowering workers in low-wage jobs to move up the economic ladder by creating more flexible and strategically targeted funds for low income adults' training and education in as many as 40 communities nationwide.

The Ford Foundation, the Annie E. Casey Foundation, and the Hitachi Foundation launched the NFWS in 2003. These and other funders will supply between $30-50 million in grant money that the Fund will use to create dozens of local and regional workforce partnerships and to expand on those that already exist. Workforce partnerships engage funding sources, education and training providers, community and civic institutions, and groups that work with low-skilled individuals to improve local coordination and alignment of services with high-growth and high-wage employment opportunities. Built into the design are activities that help employers obtain better recruits, reduce turnover, and increase productivity.

The Fund is supporting Workforce Partnerships in Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City, San Diego, San Francisco, and Washington, DC, as well as statewide partnerships in Pennsylvania and Rhode Island. Additional sites will be added in 2008.

We at Jobs for the Future manage and distribute grant funds, oversee the selection of sites, support those sites with expert technical and learning assistance, and develop research and evaluation techniques with the help of our funders.

6) We seem to have an increasingly diverse workforce, and an increasingly heterogeneous workforce in terms of individuals with a variety of disabilities or exceptionalities. How can we help our economy and our employers cope with this diversity?

The diversity of our workforce is a challenge–but it is also a huge strength. Immigrant communities help us understand global markets and opportunities. Diversity of perspectives and tastes help create and expand niche markets that can generate opportunities for new products, services, and ways of delivering value.

Too often, addressing this issue gets shunted to the side—a few diversity training sessions, some team-building at annual events, etc. This is not sufficient. We have found that dealing in a coherent and integrated way with workforce heterogeneity—from a business perspective—can help strengthen recruitment, productivity, and innovation.In many communities across the country, particularly in slower growing regions or regions close to the Mexican border, immigrants are the only source of new workers.The issue of workforce heterogeneity and how to make the most of it must be acknowledged and embraced.

The new workforce creates education and learning challenges. English as a Second Language and basic skill development based at the workplace and tied to the terms and language needed in a particular field become increasingly important. In communities where new immigrant groups are settling and growing rapidly, the institutions that provide education and training will need help and new capacity if they are to adjust quickly.

The demographics of the new workforce—with a higher proportion of low-income, minority, and immigrant workers—also have implications for K-12 public education. Tomorrow's workers are in school today. Expectations for student performance and learning must continue to rise so that all students leave high school ready for college and career success. At the same time, schools must make sure they reduce dropout rates while they raise standards—what we at JFF call the "dual agenda" in education reform. One way we are promoting this agenda at JFF is by supporting the expansion of successful programs like the Early College High School Initiative (funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation); these schools provide a rigorous college prep curriculum combined with critical academic and social supports for academically underprepared students, providing them with access to college exposure, experience, and credit while they are in high school (see: www.earlycolleges.org)

7) What are you currently involved with and what kind of work are you currently doing?

At Jobs for the Future, we strive to strengthen our society by creating educational and economic opportunities for those who need them most. We work on three main fronts: research, on-the-ground projects that demonstrate the power of promising practice, and advocacy for policies that can support improved educational and economic outcomes for youth and adults.

Through partnerships with states and communities, national and local foundations, and other organizations, JFF develops effective models for helping youth and adults acquire the skills that employers require. We research the challenges that prevent many people from obtaining these skills. We also help create and advocate for policies that minimize these challenges and encourage success.

The vision that guides this work is that all young people should have a strong high school education and an advanced educational credential by age 26 in order to become self- or family-supporting adults. Further, adults without high school or postsecondary credentials should be supported to obtain skills that will help them secure employment in high-growth, high-paying sectors of the economy. We need everyone in this country to upgrade their work-related skills if our communities, families, and nation are to be succeed in meeting the demands of a changing global economy.

8) What question have I neglected to ask?

We always ask ourselves: "Is what we at JFF strive for possible?"

We believe the answer is: Yes. JFF's theory of change emphasizes three interrelated priorities: Identify and refine models that work for at-risk youth and adults; scale up effective models and practices and build the capacity of systems to scale up quality; and address the policy barriers to doing so with advocacy founded in best practice and data. Each of JFF's programs performs at least one of these functions.

The University Park Campus School Institute in Worcester, Massachusetts, is a prime example. It's a leading model for providing academically underprepared youth with the tools and supports to succeed in high school and college, and faculty and administrators trained through UPCS helped launch successful Early College High Schools nationwide. JFF has helped document the school's success and promote its approach to reformers in schools, districts, and states around the country.

The Early College High School Initiative is still growing; there will up to 250 schools in the next four years, reaching nearly 100,000 students. In the next two years, we hope to help the National Fund for Workforce Solutions grow to $50 million in grants that will change the nature of workforce development efforts in 30-40 communities nationwide.

Other JFF initiatives include efforts to accelerate the progress of adults into and through college credential programs, increase the opportunities for high school students to experience and benefit from college courses and credits while in high school, and address the challenge of productivity in higher education. These programs all promote the development and expansion of effective strategies for helping individuals advance educationally and economically so that they, too, can achieve the American Dream.

Published December 4, 2007