The important political, social, and economic factors that must be considered in order to keep labor force skills up-to-date are described. Education and training in economic development, technological displacement, technical change and employment, and human capital and the displaced worker are discussed. (MLW)

The pros and cons of government intervention in technical education, especially that of engineers, are discussed in the context of Ireland's efforts to support technological manpower development by predicting manpower needs, setting up institutions, and giving financial support. (MSE)

Why do employers go to the trouble and considerable expense of providing training for the people who work for them? Traditionally, the purpose of company-sponsored training has been to prepare specific people to do specific jobs or to do them better. (SSH)

A committee of business executives and educational leaders list common interests including the possibilities of joint lobbying, influencing students, reduction of welfare and unemployment costs, addressing the problems of minority and disadvantaged students, cooperatively developing human resources, and determining community needs. Options for…

Ways need to be found to organize faculty development programs to increase responsiveness to both individual faculty and institutional needs. A collegewide faculty development program at the Virginia Commonwealth University organized around human resource development (HRD) concepts is described. (Author/MLW)

Describes a computerized regional information system developed jointly by 18 counties in Tennessee, North Carolina, and Virginia for use in the planning of vocational education programs. (JG)

The Congress passed the Workforce Investment Act (WIA) in 1998 seeking to create a system connecting employment, education, and training services to better match job seekers to labor market needs. However, questions have been raised about how WIA funds are being used and, in particular, how much is being spent on training. Contributing to the…

Changing the name of human resource development (HRD) is not the wisest course of action given HRD's current state. A renamed HRD would still be the current, ambiguous, ill-defined field struggling to establish its identity and stalled in issues about what is central to the profession, how the profession adds value to the world, and what HRD…

The Workforce Investment Act of 1998 provided states with a great amount of flexibility in the implementation of a system-wide approach to job training and workforce development. The legislation consolidated employment and training services into a one-stop system that is known as JobLink Career Centers in North Carolina. This document presents…

Half of college students drop out before completing a degree. These low rates of college completion among young people should be viewed in the context of slow future growth in the educated labor force, as the well-educated baby boomers retire and new workers are drawn from populations with historically low education levels. This paper establishes…

Jacobs (2000) and McLean (2000) affirm the need to expand boundaries of HRD to include multiple topics in a variety of contexts. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) provide possibilities and limitations for the socio-economic development of women in India. The roles of NGOs in serving the socio-economic needs of women provide a broader,…

This innovative session consists of a panel discussion on different approaches to researching and understanding action-learning programs, based on collaborative empirical work. Panel members compare their use of a critical-pragmatist approach and an actor-network approach. These different but complementary approaches are compared regarding their…

This guide is designed to be used by union leaders wishing to increase the basic skills (the full array of reading, writing, communication, math, reasoning, and problem-solving skills) of their members by running a workplace learning program. It provides guidelines for analyzing the needs of the target group of workers and for developing an…

This report evaluates the institutional effectiveness of the Houston Community College System for the 1998-1999 fiscal year. Part 1 describes the institution's progress toward eight strategic goals outlined in 1996-97: promoting student success, improving student access, ensuring responsive curricula, building new and varied partnerships,…

Lakeland Community College (LCC) (Ohio) has begun a work-study program for its students to become reading tutors for students in grades kindergarten through five at local schools. The program offers quality reading tutorials for local elementary students as well as training for community college students who wish to become educators after…