WORK IN PROGRESS

at RAND: Academic Skills at Work

by Cathy Stasz and Dominic Brewer

For the past decade, much has been written about changes in the post-industrial economy and what they mean for education. Educators, employers and policy-makers are redefining what we mean by "skill" or "competency." The focus has been on non-cognitive attitudes and on "generic" skills, such as problem solving and communication. These new understandings of skill are finding their way into practice in the design of school-to-career programs and in the development of industry skill standards.

The traditional academic curriculum of seat time in mathematics, English, social studies, science, and a foreign language, however, remains the mainstay of education programs, as well as the basis for advancing through the education system and attaining credentials in many professions.

NCRVE's 1998 project at RAND, "Academic Skills at Work," continues our history of research on teaching and learning generic skills. Rather than viewing academic skills as isolated or separate from other skills, we recognize (a) skills act in concert--i.e., the concept of skill is multivariate, and (b) skilled performance is sensitive to context. By analyzing the issues from this perspective, we hope to bring light to the confusing questions of changes in work, and the implications of those changes for education.

In fact, the failure to view skills in this way creates problems for education and training policy. We do not typically measure generic skills or work competencies, though these tend to be more important in employment. Hence, the push for a highly skilled workforce leads to an emphasis on academics--not because higher level academic skills are needed in work, but because that's how we measure "skill" in the education system.

We are developing the multivariate notion of skill along three lines of inquiry: (1) a literature review of empirical research on academic skills in work; (2) a new analysis of data from a previous ethnographic study of work in seven technical jobs; and (3) a quantitative analysis of secondary, longitudinal data. This article outlines our progress on the first and third tasks.

How Skills Are Measured and Defined

A review of the literature on skills illuminates the disjunctions between the perspectives of educators and employers, and between various measurements and definitions. For instance:

1. Employers and educators place different value on academic skills. Since the 1983 report "A Nation at Risk" educators have been busy raising academic standards. In 1982 only 13% of high school graduates had completed a core curriculum of four years of English, three years of social studies, science, and math; by 1992, 47% of graduating seniors had taken this coursework.
   
   Yet surveys show employers consistently claim to downplay school-based factors when hiring young people. Rather, decisions are based on an applicant's attitude and communication skills, determined through interviews, applications, and previous employers' recommendations.
   
   
2. Different ways of measuring skill has different implications for policy. Studies of changes in labor market returns to different education levels show an increasing payoff to a college education during the 1980s. In these studies, "education" is a proxy for "skill," and the implicit assumption is made that these are primarily academic skills. More of it seems to be better.
   
   In contrast, ethnographic studies, which actually observe what people do on the job, often tell a different story. While formal knowledge or education plays a role in job performance, it is much less important than "working knowledge"--knowledge and skill derived from experience.
   
   If skills which are important to an individual's labor market success are properly viewed as multifaceted--broader than simply traditional academic trait--then it is important from both a research and policy standpoint to capture these different skills. Previous quantitative analyses of labor market returns treat skills as unidimensional, measured only by academic performance (test scores on standardized tests) or curricular indicators (completed units of coursework).

Using just these types of measures, several influential studies in recent years have concluded that schools should focus on increasing and improving academic skills. However, if it were possible to capture the many types of skills (non-cognitive skills, attitudes, and generic skills) an individual may possess, one might conclude that a sensible school policy would be something very different-for example, to devote time to semi-structured social or extracurricular activities. One goal of our work is to consider whether existing survey items are reasonable proxies for non-academic skills, such as opportunities to acquire social or teamwork skills.

Analyzing High School Data

Initially we will use data from the National Educational Longitudinal Study of 1988. This survey contains nationally representative data on the high school class of 1992. It includes background characteristics, school experiences and activities, and post-high school outcomes (college, labor market experiences, and others). Ultimately, we will use similar data on a second cohort, the high school class of 1982, to make comparisons across time.

In analyzing this data we are first of all attempting to characterize individuals' skill bundles. We will map students' academic skills in terms of test scores, grades and coursework, and examine measures that may serve as proxies for non-academic skills (such as participation in extracurricular activities and work in afterschool jobs). We will also be exploring the relationships among these multiple skill indicators.

The data suggests a complex relationship between academic skills and non-academic skills. High school dropouts, for example, clearly have considerably lower standardized test scores than high school graduates; similarly they have lower GPAs. But, if one controls for whether a school offers each activity, high school dropouts and high school graduates have somewhat similar levels of participation in varsity sports, band and student council, and there are no clear differences in participation in volunteer work, all of which may be indicators of social skills or teamwork. Ultimately we want to determine if high school graduates who enter the job market have systematically different skill bundles than those who enter two-year or four-year colleges upon graduation.

Second, we will analyze the data, looking at key outcomes such as college-going and labor market results for persons directly entering the labor force. Our intent is to determine if the addition of multiple skill dimensions in the analysis affects the estimated relationship between traditionally measured skills and these outcomes. This will also permit a preliminary determination of whether employers tend to reward non-academic skills.

Cathy Stasz is a senior behavioral scientist and NCRVE site director at RAND.

Dominic Brewer is a RAND economist based in Washington D.C. He specializes in the economics of education.