Our nation needs a baseline understanding of the current landscape of high school skilled trades education--and a road map of what could or should happen next--to build on the promise that trades education offers to meet both individual and societal needs. To understand the state of skilled trades education in America's high schools, Jobs for the…

"Skills shortage" is often used to describe the difficulty that can arise when trying to match a ready supply of qualified applicants to open positions. To believe the term accurately describes situations where unemployment rates are low and employers have to compete for skilled workers frames the discussion as an issue of supply and…

This is a case study of a group of students enrolled in traditional skilled trade certificate programs at a large Midwestern community college. Considering severe shortage of skilled labor in the geographic area of the college, there is great need for better understanding of ways to alleviate the labor shortage by attracting more young adults to…

In the post-World War II period, workers with a high school diploma or less were able to attain jobs with middle-class wages in American industry. Good jobs were available in manufacturing and other blue-collar industries that employed large numbers of high school-educated workers. But as automation, globalization, and related phenomena have led…

Skilled Technical Sciences (STS) programs prepare students for success through academic integration and technical skill development. This fact sheet from the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, Office of College and Career Readiness, Skilled Technical Sciences provides information on these programs.

This study considers the role of apprenticeships in the education of Louisiana's gens de couleur libres during the early nineteenth century. Although Louisiana was a slave society, demand for skilled labor in the taming of eighteenth-century Louisiana allowed Africans to be cast not merely as brute labor, but as an adept workforce. Such conditions…

The apprenticeship training system in British Columbia (BC) includes public post-secondary institutions, the Industry Training Authority (ITA), private training institutions, and employers. Currently, apprenticeship training is available in more than 100 trades, including 49 Interprovincial Red Seal trades. The majority of apprenticeship training…

This paper focuses on the potential of competency assessment to support the long-term growth of the labour market by facilitating the appropriate employment of skilled immigrants. A competency-informed approach involves looking holistically at an individual's ability to apply knowledge and skills with appropriate judgment in a defined setting. The…

Work-based learning (WBL) has risen rapidly in the policy agenda over recent years in the European Union. Efforts to strengthen WBL, particularly in vocational education and training (VET), are increasingly common throughout European countries. This report analyses the 2016 EU labour force survey (EU-LFS) ad hoc module, which covers the topic of…

The Strengthening Career and Technical Education for the 21st Century Act (Perkins V) places a strong emphasis on the alignment of Career Technical Education (CTE) programs of study with state, regional and local economies. Specifically, the legislation requires Perkins-funded programs to prepare students for "high-skill, high-wage, or…

Since 2011, the government of British Columbia (BC) has focused on building the Canadian province's economy through the development of a Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) sector. In service of this endeavour, the government launched the "Skills for Jobs Blueprint," which attempts to more clearly align BC's education system with resource…

One definition of a network administrator describes a person who works with computer infrastructures with an emphasis on networking. To determine the specific skills required of a network administrator by employers, data was collected from 698 nationwide job advertisements on Dice.com. The data collection focused on technical skills rather than…

The author earned a physics degree in college and then failed to find a job in the aerospace industry. He writes of how he fell back on his training as an electrician for sustenance and from that extrapolates how the trades have become confused with work of the hands rather than of the mind. He uses the venerable debate between Booker T.…

The purpose of this paper is to provide another perspective on the problematic nature of the concept of skill and in particular a tendency to place a lower value on certain types of job in the service sector than those in other industries. Qualitative research was conducted in three service industries in Australia, comprising interviews with key…

In an increasingly competitive world, it has been proved that invention, development, and profusion of new technologies through science and technology are the fundamental source of economic progress. Australia, which is one of the world leaders in education and India, which has the capacity to produce the highest number of young skilled manpower…