Learning for careers: The career pathways movement in the United States

by Nancy Hoffman, Senior Advisor, Jobs for the Future
Bob Schwartz, Senior Research Fellow, Harvard Graduate School of Education

Over the last generation, it has become clear that something has gone awry in how the United States prepares its young people for life. In spite of millions of young people pursuing university education, fewer than one in three young Americans successfully attain a bachelor’s degree, while millions of good middle-skills jobs go begging because of our failure to build programs to equip young people with the skills and credentials to fill them. In a climate of “university for all” only 20% of young Americans enrol in career and technical education programs, the US version of Vocational Education and Training. This struck us as both a problem and an opportunity crying out for a public policy response.

So when the opportunity arose to come to the OECD for three months in 2010 to participate in the last phase of the landmark Learning for Jobs study, we took leave from our respective jobs (Nancy, at Jobs for the Future, a national NGO; Bob, at Harvard Graduate School of Education) and headed to Paris. We had already had the privilege of working as experts on country reviews for OECD, and knew this would give us the opportunity to go deeper into how school-based VET operated around the world and in particular in northern European countries like Germany, Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands and Switzerland. Learning for Jobs highlighted the essential characteristics of school-based VET. Little did we know, however, that our decision to get involved would lead two years later to the creation of a national network of U.S. states and regions committed to reshaping vocational education and training in the US. We have chronicled the first five years of the Pathways to Prosperity Network in our book, Learning for Careers, published in October 2017 by the Harvard Education Press.

Back at Harvard, in 2011 Bob fed the big lessons from Learning for Jobs into a new report, Pathways to Prosperity: Meeting the Challenge of Preparing Young Americans for the 21st Century. The Pathways report generated such strong interest among states that we invited a handful of states to come together in a mostly self-funded network based at JFF to act on the findings and recommendations in the report. Fast forward to 2017. The JFF Pathways team of 12 now works with 14 states and about 60 economic regions within those states to build pathways systems. A major initiative funded by JP Morgan Chase and led by the organization of chief school officers (state ministers) entitled, “New Skills for Youth,” is also strengthening states’ capacity to build career pathways, and myriad promising regional initiatives are underway to infuse greater career information and experience into the high school experience. Examples of Delaware and Tennessee’s pathways development and progress to date can be found here and here as well as in our book.

Most of the new initiatives, while inspired especially by the German and Swiss dual systems, do not now resemble these – and most likely never will. Nonetheless, some lessons from the best systems do influence the strategies states are implementing. Learning for Careers identifies three characteristics of strong European VET that can be translated into the US educational, economic, and cultural context:

• youth in VET take on adult responsibility in workplaces and demonstrate both maturity and technical skill - active learning outside of classrooms meets the developmental needs of adolescents to take “safe” risks, to be challenged, and to test out behaviour in an intergenerational setting; 

• employers act willingly in their self-interest and as partners to the state in building a pipeline of young professionals - employers willingly mentor young people as a social responsibility and as a contribution to social cohesion; and, 

• VET has a secret glue in the employer associations and chambers that aggregate employer need and train for a sector, not for a specific company - such sector organizations can play this role because of a common qualifications system which specifies competencies, behaviours, and knowledge required. (Non-governmental groups in the U.S. are haltingly attempting to build a qualifications system.)

If a European VET aficionado were to visit Delaware, Minnesota, Ohio, or Tennessee, she would see high schools and their tertiary partners building pathways in such fields as tech, advanced manufacturing, and healthcare and NGOs urging employers to open their doors to 16 and 17-year-old apprentices and interns. And perhaps most important, she would hear a difficult conversation about inequality and economic mobility. Our argument is that if through our Network we can enable many more low-income youth to enter the labor market equipped with the technical expertise, professional behaviors, and social networks now enjoyed primarily by children of privilege, we can put them on a path to economic mobility – a benefit for them, their families, and society at large.

Links
OECD Policy Reviews of Vocational Education and Training (VET) - Learning for Jobs
Learning for Careers - The Pathways to Prosperity Network

Join our OECD Teacher Community on Edmodo

Photo credit: @Shutterstock 

Why it matters if you can't read this

by Tanja Bastianic
Statistician, Directorate for Education and Skills 

Adults who lack basic skills – literacy and numeracy – are penalised both in professional and private life. They are more likely to be unemployed or in precarious jobs, earn lower wages, have more health issues, trust others less, and engage less often in community life and democratic processes.

Basic skills are not complicated. What we measure in the OECD Survey of Adult Skills is the ability to process the information needed to perform everyday tasks – to read the instructions on a bottle of aspirin or to know how many litres of petrol are needed to fill the tank.

In Australia, around three million working-age adults – one in five – currently have low basic skills and are living with the consequences. And if Australia doesn’t tackle this problem, it risks being left behind by countries investing more successfully in the skills of their people, especially in a world where work is undergoing a rapid technology-driven change and people have to adapt to new circumstances (See figure).

Many Australians with low levels of education have low skills – this comes as no surprise, as they often quit education at an early stage. Perhaps more surprising is that a higher level qualification doesn’t guarantee advanced basic skills. The OECD study published today, Building Skills for All in Australia: Policy Insights from the Survey of Adult Skills shows that 17% of Australians with a vocational Certificate IV, Advanced Diploma or Associate Degree still have low levels of basic skills. 

Australia’s post-secondary VET (Vocational Education and Training) system is inclusive and caters to adults with different needs, including those with poor basic skills.  This is a real asset to the Australian education sector. But the OECD argues that providers of post-secondary VET could do more to help those students with poor basic skills.

The study also highlights specific weaknesses in the numeric skills of young women in Australia, indicating that far greater attention should be devoted to ensuring that young women participate fully within Australia’s wider efforts to strengthen mathematics within secondary education. Opportunity exists, moreover, to better support young people who are Not in Education, Employment or Training (the NEETs) to reengage in learning whether through the development of pre-apprenticeship provision or access to better childcare for young mothers.

The OECD Australia review follows a number of similar studies on low basic skills conducted in the United States, England, and Finland. The OECD’s work on adult learning and skills is designed to help countries identify where skills-related challenges arise among adults, and then offer them an opportunity to redirect their skills policies and investments. The review of Australia is part of this work.  

Helping adults to improve their basic skills remains a challenge nearly everywhere and there are no easy answers. But the alternative – of doing nothing – is even worse. So each of these studies help us all understand the challenges better and offer a menu of interventions to help countries tackle the issue. 

Links

To read the report, visit Building Skills for All in Australia: Policy Insights from the Survey of Adult Skills

To read a literature review about the problem of low basic skills, visit Adults with Low Literacy and Numeracy Skills: A Literature Review on Policy Intervention

Figure: Share of adults with low basic skills (literacy and/or numeracy level at or below 2)

Photo credit: @Shutterstock 

Discover your talent!

by Deborah Roseveare
Head of the Skills Beyond School Division, Directorate for Education and Skills

Last night I got a taxi home and as often happens, the driver and I got chatting. Then he asked me a rather strange question – “Do you like the smell in my car?” Well, I have to say the smell was a very subtle one but it led to a fascinating conversation. 

With some pride, he told me that he was trying out a new product for cleaning car interiors developed by a friend of his. His friend already had his own business selling these products and then came the big surprise – this friend is only 17 years old. But isn’t he still in school? I asked. Yes of course, he was doing a professional baccalaureate (a vocational programme here in France).

This talented young man, who was smart enough to have skipped a class in primary school, had a passion for chemistry and had been doing experiments – more or less successfully -- in his mother’s kitchen from a young age. So why had he chosen a professional baccalaureate? Apparently, he wanted hands-on learning, get practical experience and develop the skills that would help him succeed in his business ventures.

It’s not often that a taxi gets me home too quickly, but I ran out of time to ask more questions. It’s always great to hear stories about young people discovering their talent, finding an education pathway that supports them in following their passion and gaining the skills to succeed in life. So I’m looking forward to hearing many more success stories that show young people and adults how you too can “discover your talent!” during European Vocational Skills Week 2016, which runs from 5-9 December 2016. 

Why focus on vocational skills? In a changing and more competitive job market, Vocational Education and Training (VET) delivers specific skills and knowledge for the jobs of today and tomorrow, leading to great careers and good life prospects. Pursuing VET can lead to quality employment, an entrepreneurial mind-set, attractive and challenging careers, and opportunities for continuous upskilling and reskilling.

Sometime in the coming years I expect to hear about a successful young entrepreneur putting innovative cleaning products on supermarket shelves and I’ll remember how vocational education and training helped him discover and develop his talent and gave him the skills to succeed.
   
Links:
European Vocational Skills Week 2016
OECD Policy Reviews of Vocational Education and Training (VET) and Adult Learning 
Twitter hashtags: #EUVocationalSkills #discoveryourtalent
Photo credit: © European Commission