Schooling for work - Future Focus - Responding to the shortage of skilled candidates

HR Magazine, May, 2003 by Jennifer Schramm

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, working with several other large charitable organizations, announced in February a $31 million grant to "create a nationwide network of 168 alternative schools" designed to "serve students failed by traditional large comprehensive high schools."

This latest contention that public schools are failing the most vulnerable students and that new approaches are needed comes at a time when alternative schooling is gaining favor among parents and educators. The U.S. Network for Education Information says that about 10 percent of children attend independent or alternative schools, and some experts estimate that more than 4 percent of children from kindergarten through 12th grade are schooled at home.

Meanwhile, high school graduation rates have retreated from the peak they reached in 1969. That year, for every 77 high school graduates, there were 23 other students who might have graduated but dropped out of high school along the way. In 2000 there were 70 graduates and 30 dropouts.

Such figures are not encouraging now that the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics is forecasting a labor shortage starting as soon as 2010. Even more troubling, current graduation rates stand in contrast to the rise of the knowledge economy and the growing need for highly educated workers.

The numbers presage two looming problems for HR practitioners. One arises from the widely forecast labor and skills shortages, made even more serious by low graduation rates. The other problem centers on the difficulties of measuring and understanding the knowledge and skills base of job candidates who lack traditional qualifications.

Of the two problems, the second may be easier for HR practitioners to handle. Improvements in technology are helping nontraditionally educated students use the Internet to link into national curriculums and may also make it easier for students outside traditional school systems to gain high school accreditation.

The general educational development test, called the GED, may also offer a partial solution. The recently revised GED test aims at uncovering "high-level" thinking skills such as reasoning, analyzing and decision-making, which are important in a knowledge economy.

Moreover, many nontraditionally educated children graduate from college. Companies considering them for jobs are likely to be far more interested in how well they did in college than in whether or not they were home-schooled or attended a small or alternative school.

For HR practitioners, the bigger worry will be the shortage of skilled candidates overall. Some companies are already attempting to do something about it by building worksite public schools or by donating to support local public schools. But probably the most common approach companies will take to make up for workers' educational deficits will be to use internal training and development programs. At the same time, companies will try to make themselves as attractive as possible to highly educated potential employees. Even the latter strategy will most certainly involve offering more training and skills-enhancing opportunities.

The rise of alternative schooling and problems in public education lead to a conclusion that companies hoping to trim their training budgets may not like to hear, namely, that every aspect of learning for work-from skills evaluation to training delivery and career development initiatives--will be even more critical in tomorrow's workplace than they are in today's.

For more information on emerging issues, visit www.shrm.org/trends.> JENNIFER SCHRAMM IS MANAGER OF THE WORKPLACE TRENDS AND FORECASTING PROGRAM AT SHRM.

COPYRIGHT 2003 Society for Human Resource Management

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