Why the push to make students "Career
Ready"? Because companies are doing
much less training.
We often hear that public schools are failing
because they do not prepare students for jobs.
Employers complain, we are told, that recent graduates are unprepared
for the real world of work.
A recent article in the Wall Street Journal
explains what is really going on: "Companies complain that they can't find
skilled hires, but they aren't doing much to impact these skills , economics
and workforce experts say. U.S. companies have been cutting money for training
programs for decades, expecting schools and workers to pick up the slack"
(p. B1).
" ... one rough measure, the percentage
of staffers at U.S. manufactures dedicated to training and development, has
falled by about half from 2006 to 2013, according to research group Bersin by
Doloitte" (p. B1).
The WSJ quotes MIT labor economist Paul
Osterman's study showing that "manufacturers' spending on training has
been essentially flat for the last five years. 'Firms have gotten lazy [about
training]. They're looking for somebody else,' such as community colleges,
for-profit schools and online courses to that for them." (p. B5)
The WSJ also points out that the number of
formal apprenticeship programs "fell about 40% between 2003 and 2013,
according to the Labor Department."
(p. B5)
Lauren Weber, "Whose job is it to train
teachers? Wall Street Journal July 17,
2014, pages B1, B5.
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