Tough Choices or Tough Times by National Center on Education and the Economy

Author:National Center on Education and the Economy [NCEE]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781119177838
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2015-06-03T00:00:00+00:00

In some communities, the necessary leadership emerged quickly, in some cases more slowly, and in some not at all, but, on the whole, the change from what had been in place before was dramatic. Some communities decided to put a lot of their chips on industries at the cutting edge of international technology development, like biotech. One seacoast state decided to place some bets on creating a competitive edge in the composite technologies central to the next stage of boat building. A midwestern state concentrated some of its resources on developing its competitive position in biofuels, and a mountain state did the same in the oil sands industry. But almost everywhere, the regional authorities placed many bets. Many, for example, looked hard at ways to strengthen their health care industry, some concentrating on providing more and better-trained health industry workers, some by investing in their research capacity, and others by strengthening the intermediary organizations that help to make their health care providers more up to date and efficient, and many used a combination of these strategies.

One industry that a number of authorities bet on that had not been anticipated by the Commission was the education industry itself. In a now-famous case, one Authority put together a coalition of local universities, telecommunications firms, software developers, community colleges, venture capital companies, and one Indian company with unique expertise in Web-based technical education to create a state-of-the-art capacity to make advanced Web-based learning support systems for technician-level jobs in emerging industries. This one strategic decision put that metro area in a position of world leadership in industrial training for a long time.

Almost everywhere, these new Authorities strengthened the capacity of community colleges to anticipate and respond to the changing needs of businesses in their region, and developed much better and more efficient systems to get English-language training to new immigrants. They also developed more effective campaigns to raise the aspirations of high school dropouts and adults who had given up on themselves and provide them with high-quality programs to get them the foundation skills they had long ago given up on ever getting. In many places, they were able to greatly improve the services available at the career centers that people went to when they lost their jobs, were searching for their first job, or needed the education or training that would put them in a position to get their next job. They made sure that each center had highly trained counselors who were familiar with the occupational needs of employers, the forecasts on future needs that local economists had done, the standards that candidates for jobs would have to meet, the best places to get training for any particular job or career, and all the various sources of funds that individuals in a wide variety of circumstances could call on to pay for the education and training they needed. They organized another set of services for employers that helped them organize more effective in-company training or collaborate with one another to offer training they all needed but none could develop alone.

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