Views on training and education - government policy - Poll Results

Nation's Business, May, 1993 by Joan Szabo

Education and workplace training continue to be important to small-business owners, who often have difficulty finding the qualified workers they need. But most readers responding to a poll in the February Nation's Business said tax breaks would be preferable to federally mandated spending by companies to finance additional worker training.

The nation's companies already spend an estimated $30 billion a year training their workers.

Readers expressed their views on training and education in response to questions posed in Where I Stand, a monthly feature that seeks opinions on major issues affecting small firms. Results of the poll are sent to top officials in the White House and Congress. Plugging the skills gap is a top priority for the Clinton administration. The president sees a highly skilled work force as vital to economic growth. Well-trained workers are regarded as a major incentive to encourage domestic and foreign firms to open facilities in this country.

The administration believes that a top-notch work force, with its potential for increased productivity, will offset any perceived advantage for U.S. companies in going abroad in search of cheaper labor.

A sizable 70 percent of all respondents to the poll on worker training said that to improve such efforts, the federal government should offer tax breaks to companies for their training costs. Twenty-six percent said they would prefer to see the federal government foster business and labor cooperation. Only 4 percent of those responding said that Washington should require firms to spend a certain percentage of payroll on training.

More than half of respondents voted against establishment of a national apprenticeship program to help train young people not bound for college, while 36 percent favored the idea. President Cllnton has proposed setting up such a program, which would be similar to the German apprenticeship system, to better prepare young people for the workplace. When he was governor of Arkansas, Clinton established a state youth-apprenticeship program.

Many European nations have successful youth apprenticeship programs, but it is the German system, with its origins in the 500-year-old crafts guilds of the Middle Ages, that has attracted the greatest amount of interest and attention in the United States.

Concerning college loans, 47 percent said not every American should have the right to borrow federal funds to attend college. But 44 percent favored such a guarantee.

When such loans are made, said 62 percent of the respondents, public service should be an option along with more traditional repayment plans.

In regard to training high-school dropouts, who often lack the skills needed to land jobs in today's high-tech workplace, nearly half of the respondents said they did not think a national program should be established to help them acquire marketable skills.