Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Literacy & the Workforce

Mounting Pressures Facing the U.S. Workforce and the Increasing Need for Adult Education and Literacy
National Commission on Adult Literacy – 2007

The U.S. still has the best-educated workforce in the world, an advantage due to the superior education attainment levels of the a generation that is swiftly approaching the age of retirement.

Those now entering the U.S. workforce have not attained the same level of education as their counterparts in other countries. The U.S. has been stuck at the essentially the same level for 30 years.

The education pipeline is leaking seriously at every point:

~ too few complete high school
~ too few high school graduates are going to college
~ too few college entrants are getting degrees

The U.S. will unlikely be able to regain its place of primacy by 2025. A return to a position of being the best-educated nation in the world will take an extraordinary effort at this juncture.

The Challenge: how does America successfully reengage adults who have too little education to hold living wage jobs. Failure puts the nation at risk. Rising to this challenge will require developing new strategies and new tools.

The old ones have proven to be insufficient to the task !
-based on “Authors’ Introduction & Executive Summary”

Can California Import Enough College Graduates to Meet Workforce Needs ?
Public Policy Institute of California – May 2007

Economic projections for California indicate a continuation of the trend toward a more highly skilled economy. But projections of educational attainment for the future population tend to predict a wide gap between the levels of skills the population is likely to possess and the level of skills the economy is likely to need.

For another similar report about Workforce and Literacy: America’s Perfect Storm

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