Ben Hill-Irwin Technical Institute and the Georgia Interconnect Association designed and developed jointly a project to provide basic knowledge and practical application skills training. The curriculum included all necessary competencies for a student to graduate as a communications network technician. To compensate for the added expense of…

The High Skills, Competitive Workforce Act of 1991 is proposed legislation designed to stimulate cooperation by business, labor, schools and colleges, and state and local governments to improve the education and training of the U.S. work force and to develop new systems and strategies for meeting the economic needs of business and workers. The act…

This report assesses the changes occurring in both South Korea and the People's Republic of China regarding educational development. It is noted that with the introduction of advanced technology, both Korea and China have tried to catch up with international developments. Additionally, in order to compete successfully on the world market, both…

Business is recognizing that the associate degree is a necessity in high technology fields. Innovative practices link businesses with community colleges, allowing apprentices to gain basic job skills and a higher education. A research study explored three industries and their relationship with community colleges: automotive, construction, and…

The growing gap between the skill requirements of jobs and workers' capabilities, the slow growth of the U.S. work force, and the demands of a global economy will reshape the work force in Ohio. To meet these challenges, the Governor's Human Resources Advisory Council proposes as its mission the achievement and maintenance of a high performance…

The spread of New Information Technologies (NITs) to every sector of the economy has far reaching implication for the design of jobs, for patterns of work organization, and for vocational educational training systems. The full potential of the NITs is however being restricted by chronic skills shortages, particularly of high level NIT skills.…

The Australian government, employer groups, and the trade union movement acknowledge a critical need to improve work force skills. Focus is on the notion of competencies and measurable learning outcomes. The driving force has been the linking of industry restructuring with occupational classification restructuring (award restructuring). The…

This paper assesses the new immigration law and its impact on the growing minority segment of the U.S. labor force. It frames the issues raised by the law that concern non-Asian American minority citizens, presents evidence that supports these concerns, and suggests both short-term and long-term policy implications. The analysis begins with an…

A partnership between the New York City Central Labor Council and the Center for Advanced Study in Education, City University of New York, New York, planned, conducted, and evaluated a worker literacy program for health care paraprofessionals who prepared for college as a step towards career advancement. The program featured close involvement of…

Workplace literacy programs have been viewed as the way to raise workers' basic skills so they could perform more effectively in increasingly complex work environments. As these programs have proliferated, so have the number of issues associated with workplace literacy. Some issues are related to assumptions underlying the need for workplace…

This report presents the background materials for a 1991 conference of the National Puerto Rican Coalition on labor force participation issues affecting Puerto Ricans. The first of three sections, "Shaping Tomorrow's Workforce: A Leadership Agenda for the 90's," calls for an effort to unite a fragmented collection of programs for…

Kirkwood Community College's (KCC's) economic development efforts in Iowa provide a full-service, regional delivery system for customized job training, retraining, and economic development services and programs. The mission of Kirkwood Economic Development Services (KEDS) is to assist the region's business and industry in becoming more productive,…

Trends in the workplace and legislative mandates have forced community colleges to consider how to integrate general education with vocational training successfully. The technological base of American industry has changed dramatically in the direction of greater complexity and interdependence, requiring workers to possess not only higher levels of…

An economic theory of training holds that training in technical skills and training in employment relations (namely, information reliability or the ability to quickly and reliably disseminate information among the members of the firm) reinforce each other. This theory is an organizing framework for understanding some practices at Japanese firms in…

This paper describes and analyzes general issues and examples of good practice in work-based learning relative to higher education in the United States, and applies them to comparable situations in the United Kingdom. Higher education has re-evaluated work-based learning to respond to changing socioeconomic conditions, such as the needs to…