Making WBL available to large numbers of students will require an unprecedented commitment on the part of U.S. employers. Osterman (1995) estimates that even if only 25% of high school juniors and seniors eventually participate, 1.5 million work placements will be needed each year. Thus, a paper presented at the 1993 Association for Public Policy and Management posed a highly relevant question: "Employer Involvement in School-to-Work Transition Programs: What Can We Really Expect?" (Hershey & Silverberg, 1993).
Some researchers are attempting to answer this question. Studies are being carried out to examine how STW programs are facing this challenge of employer recruitment and retention. Works addressing the employer participation question can be divided into two types: (1) those which are more theoretical, hypothesizing the possibilities; and (2) those which report on employer involvement in programs that are currently functioning. Within these two categories, we find both positive and negative outlooks on the employer participation question; however, based on the real efforts currently underway to recruit and retain employer partners for WBL programs, there seems to be cause for optimism.
The theoretical arguments behind the issue of employer participation in WBL are presented in the articles in Bailey (1995a). This volume, which is composed of the papers from a May 1994 conference, presents reasons why we should, and why we should not, expect employers to provide WBL slots to students. Bailey outlines a framework of three types of motivation which may affect employers' decisions to participate in STW programs: (1) philanthropic, (2) individual, and (3) collective.
Employers may decide to provide WBL placements for philanthropic or altruistic
reasons, to help youth or the community. While firms which feel a particular
sense of corporate responsibility or commitment to helping the community may be
motivated to participate for philanthropic reasons, Bailey contends that purely
philanthropic motivation is probably not enough to sustain a large and intense
work-based education system. Alternatively, employers may decide to become STW
partners for individual reasons, if participation is seen to bring net benefits
to the particular firm. Student interns may be of use to individual firms as
short-term, no-cost, or low-cost labor; they may act as temporary help. WBL
programs may also be used by employers as part of their long-term labor
recruitment strategy. If student interns can be groomed to become future
permanent employees, firm recruitment costs may be reduced. However, the low
monetary cost of student interns is often offset by the high supervisory cost
of having such interns. In addition, the goal of having youth continue on into
some type of postsecondary education may wipe out the employer incentive to
train interns. Thus, how strong individual incentives might be is left an open
question. Finally, there are collective reasons for employer participation,
which Bailey believes are probably stronger than the philanthropic or
individual ones. Bailey (1995b) states that "one of the most common arguments
for improving education in the United States is that employers lack a skilled
workforce"
(p. 20). The collective perspective is that while companies
might not benefit immediately or directly from their own student interns, the
establishment of a STW system would strengthen the labor supply for all.
Work-based education should help to develop a more skilled labor force overall,
which should be an incentive for firms to participate.
Specific disincentives for employer participation are presented by Osterman (1995). He lists the actual costs to employers of participating in these programs (also see Klein, 1995). Beside the direct costs of student wages and training expenses, Osterman posits an "intangible cost" of "the opposition of the adult labor force to the extensive use of cheap youth labor in a context of broad economic insecurity." He concludes that "the prospects for widespread employer participation seem bleak" (p. 79). Stern (1995), agreeing that it will be very difficult to recruit large enough numbers of employers to create quality WBL for students, suggests less demanding ways in which employers can participate; for example, they may provide job shadowing and unpaid career exploration internships to students, which can help students learn about different occupations. These, however, still require a "significant commitment" from employers (p. 49). Another suggestion is to offer unpaid, summer internships to teachers to give them "field" experience. Other alternatives include providing mentorships; encouraging student attendance and performance by asking to see potential student employees' grades and attendance records; hosting field trips; giving advice on curriculum, instruction, and assessment; and donating money and/or materials. Klein (1995) also lists involvement on industry advisory boards (acting as consultants to assist educators in improving vocational training and administration), participation on business roundtables, and "adopt-a-school" programs as ways in which businesspeople can become indirectly involved with their local education systems.
Another strategy frequently proposed in the literature is to use the jobs youth already have (Packer & Pines, 1996; Phelps & Jacobs, 1994; U.S. Department of Labor, 1995) by making more connections to and getting more support from the adults at these workplaces. Of course, employers would have to be convinced "to transform and enrich the jobs they offer youngsters" (Packer & Pines, 1996, p. 47); the challenge is to "show employers that such a transformation is in their own long-run best interest" (p. 47). Employers could perhaps be enticed to participate in this way by the prospect of gaining reduced worker turnover in these traditionally high-turnover jobs. Packer and Pines argue that even fast food jobs can teach important basic employment skills.
Klein (1995) attempts to evaluate the economic incentives for employer participation, despite the lack of empirical research available. Incentives are organized into three areas of concern: (1) effects on business climate, (2) impact on organizational efficiency, and (3) cost of program participation. According to Klein, classical economic theory would suggest little reason for firms to participate in these programs, saying "the incentive for profit-maximizing firms to sponsor training is nearly indistinguishable from charitable giving when students' productivity fails to offset their cost to the firm" (p. 3). If program participation is not mandatory, non-training firms can induce recently trained student-workers to leave the firms that trained them. Firms that train may publicize their participation in such programs for positive public relations, but the value of this type of return is unclear. On the more positive side, Klein gleans from the literature on cooperative education programs that many employers have used such programs to reduce their recruitment costs. Klein states that "student contributions to organizational productivity may eventually offset their wage, training and supervisory costs; however, actual rates of return may vary as a function of industry placement, student experience, wage subsidies, and student attrition" (p. 12). He also notes that participation in school-to-work programs can assist firms in achieving Equal Employment Opportunity hiring objectives: Firms can use the programs to recruit minority employees. Another hypothesized benefit of participation is that, by having interested young people on-site, the morale of the regular workers may improve.
The evidence we can use to judge the above perspectives is not yet very extensive. Small-scale interviews of employers, both those participating in WBL and those who are not participating, have been conducted. A few larger-scale employer surveys have been completed. In addition, studies are just beginning to emerge which report on the success new school-to-work programs are having (or not having) with regard to employer recruitment and retention.
Researchers from Public/Private Ventures have conducted focus groups of private, secondary labor market employers in order to investigate the idea of turning jobs youth already have into school-to-work positions (U.S. Department of Labor, 1995). These researchers report that while the supervisors interviewed stressed time and money as serious constraints on their options, they also identified employee development as a high priority. More specifically, the authors state that the employers have an interest in young workers, that worker turnover is a serious problem for them, and that they are sensitive about the perception that they offer "dead-end" jobs. They would like a more positive image and are interested in ways to lower turnover. The authors point out that several nationally prominent employers, such as McDonald's and Taco Bell, "have undertaken initiatives that seek to reduce turnover among young workers and strengthen their school connections" (p. 34). The report concludes that "the interests of employer and employee overlap considerably; both could benefit from creating more opportunities for taking responsibility and developing skills at even the lowest levels of work" (p. 34).
In focus groups of employers who were not participating in WBL, the National Center on the Educational Quality of the Workforce found that the absence of labor shortage was an important disincentive for these firms to participate (Zemsky, 1994). The larger firms were consumed with "making their enterprises more competitive: leaner, more focused, less engaged in community projects" (p. 4), while the smaller firms had plenty of access to older, trained workers and saw no need to hire and train young people. Some of the businesses also cited concern about students' communication skills.
On the other hand, surveys of participating employers were quite positive about their involvement with students. The participating employers surveyed by telephone found STW to be beneficial to themselves as well as to the students, and said they would sign up more students and would recommend participation to other business owners. The author of the study's suggested pitch to employers is "Try it, you'll like it" (p. 8). In agreement, researchers from Jobs for the Future believe that "once employers get involved in working closely with schools and young people, they tend to become more rather than less committed to intensive efforts" (Kazis & Goldberger, 1995, p. 188).
For a study prepared for the National Institute for Work and Learning, McNeil and Kulick (1996) interviewed five employers participating in STW programs (only two of the five actually offered WBL placements to students; the others participated in different ways). Employers were asked why they chose to become involved in the programs, and how they expected to benefit. They responded that they were concerned about the quality of education, committed to the local community, and in need of higher-skilled entry-level workers (p. 4). Their primary motivation appeared to be their desire to gain higher-skilled entry-level workers. Some of the firms said they would be less willing to make a commitment to involvement in a program if the only goal of the program were to provide an enhanced educational opportunity for students and not to prepare them for and encourage them to enter their particular industry. The employers were also asked about their familiarity with Tech Prep, co-op, vocational education, and youth apprenticeship; they had "a limited understanding of many work-related programs or a negative perception of them" which "has implications for employer recruitment" (p. 10). The employers stated that STW programs are expensive, and most supported a tax incentive, subsidized student wages, or reimbursement of the costs of training and supervising students.
In larger-scale surveys of employers, employee recruitment has been found to be a major incentive to participate in WBL. A survey for the Office of Technology Assessment (1995) of 73 employers involved in 15 STW transition programs (54 were employers who were currently participating; 19 were former participants) revealed that nearly two-thirds of employers cited recruitment goals as the most important reason for their participation. One-quarter cited educational and community improvement goals as their most important reason for participating, yet three-fourths said these goals were a "strong" or "primary" benefit of involvement (p. 84). This study summarizes these findings by stating that "the self-interested goals of recruitment are more important to employers--but not greatly so--than philanthropic goals of improving education and the community" (p. 85).
The two motivations of philanthropy and employee recruitment were also found to be most salient by researchers Lynn and Wills (1994). Their telephone survey of 224 employers participating in cooperative education in 18 high schools in six different metropolitan areas found that the "two overarching reasons why employers participate are to perform a community service or to recruit entry-level workers" (p. 28). More than half of the employers reported that they retained some students in their firms after the program had ended. While particularly the larger employers stated that they were concerned about performing a community service and projecting a positive image in the community, more than 25% of all the employers stated that they saw involvement in the program as a way to fill part-time positions and to get lower-paid part-time help. Because of this benefit, and the employee screening functions the schools perform, the authors of this study state that "employer responses indicate that these arrangements are a `good deal' for the employer" (p. 31).
Pauly et al.'s (1995) comprehensive report on 16 STW programs questioned program staff about the most important factors which influence employers to participate. The top factor was philanthropy: "interest in helping the students and the local community" (p. 171). However, employers from different industries varied in their responses. While hospitals were interested in helping the health care sector in general and gaining positive public relations from their involvement, manufacturing firms were more interested in the recruitment benefits they could gain.
Through their work with a variety of school-to-career programs around the country, Jobs for the Future has found another way firms can benefit: "participating employers report unanticipated benefits to existing workers who supervise and mentor young people. Improved management skills, greater enjoyment of their jobs (and hence, better employee retention), and increased attention to improving their own skills development are frequently mentioned by workers and employers" (Goldberger & Kazis, 1995, pp. 29-30; also see Klein, 1995). These researchers agree that employers also gain from employee screening and recruitment, although "how many recruiting successes they need for the program to be worthwhile will vary by industry, firm size, and the level of commitment a firm makes to a given program" (p. 29). They have found that "industries such as metalworking, health care, and printing, whose firms are experiencing shortages in skilled entry level personnel, or which anticipate shortages in the future, are already proving to be more receptive to new strategies for finding qualified young people for entry-level jobs" (Kazis & Goldberger, 1995, p. 187).
A study of LaGuardia Community College, a 26-year-old postsecondary cooperative education program, shows that "it is possible to maintain an internship program involving thousands of placements and hundreds of employers" (Wieler & Bailey, 1996, p. 32). An examination of employer participation in LaGuardia's program over time, using information on every internship placement between 1984 and 1995, shows that retention of participating employers is very important, perhaps even more important than recruitment, and needs further study. LaGuardia's success, however, may be due to the fact that the LaGuardia model does not ask anything of employers other than to treat their interns as regular employees and fill out a checklist evaluation form at the end of the internship. LaGuardia faculty believe that employer self-interest motivates their participation, meaning that employers are primarily interested in the screened, inexpensive, or altogether free labor they receive through the program. This study also shows how local economic conditions can be very influential regarding the ease or difficulty of employer recruitment and retention. Local recessions make employer recruitment more difficult, and negatively affect employers' willingness to pay students for their internships.
Jobs for the Future's National Youth Apprenticeship Initiative, a study of ten programs around the country from 1991 to 1994, presents promising findings regarding employer participation. While most of the programs began with a focus in one industry, almost all increased the number of industries and occupational areas served over time. The programs have significant and sustained employer involvement, and the intensity of employer involvement has increased over time . . . While a few programs have had difficulty securing the involvement of sufficient numbers of employers in specific occupational areas due to local economic conditions, most have succeeded in identifying an initial core of employers willing to provide structured work-based learning opportunities and to participate as full partners in designing and managing the initiative" (Kopp & Kazis, 1995, p. 10).
Mathematica Policy Research, Inc.'s study of the School-to-Work Transition/Youth Apprenticeship Demonstration sites (Corson & Silverberg, 1994; Hershey & Silverberg, 1993) is a preliminary look at the implementation of these programs. Employers are found to take a wide variety of roles in these programs, some of which involve a considerable outlay of resources. The researchers differentiate between the employers providing real jobs versus structured skill instruction to students, stating that the burden placed on employers can be reduced if they can choose one or the other, and not be asked to supply both (as in traditional apprenticeship programs). Mathematica researchers find that "the challenge of combining employment and a structured program of workplace training is a substantial burden on employers--one which appears likely to limit employer participation" (Hershey & Silverberg, 1993, p. 9); they are not optimistic about the possibility of implementing youth apprenticeships on a large scale because of this fact.
Some of the programs studied by Mathematica were initiated and built around a single large employer, while others rely on multiple businesses for WBL opportunities. Corson and Silverberg (1994) point out the pros and cons to each type of operation--that is, that relying on only one employer may be risky, yet it simplifies logistics and saves time in recruitment and retention activities. The report cites a stark illustration: The program manager in the York Pennsylvania Youth Apprenticeship program estimated that he contacted approximately 120 companies in order to obtain apprenticeship positions for 20 students for the school year 1992-1993 (p. 86).
Several studies cite the difficulty of relying on school personnel who likely have less experience working with employers, and hence less access to employers, to recruit employer partners (Corson & Silverberg, 1994; Kazis & Goldberger, 1995). Some researchers say there is a "cultural gulf" (Kazis & Goldberger, 1995) between employers and educators; as other researchers put it, "firms learn best from each other" (Phelps & Jacobs, 1994, p. 9). However, this is not necessarily the case when school personnel include vocational teachers (Jones & Rosenbaum, 1996). A case study of a regional vocational instruction center, part of a larger study of school-business partnerships, found that the teachers, many of whom began as skilled workers in their fields and belonged to unions, had a stronger connection with area employers than the school's job coordinators whose job it was to act as formal school-business liaisons.
Lynn and Wills' (1994) research found across the sites they studied, "school staff tended to indicate that employer recruitment was not a significant problem and that there were generally enough employer slots for the referral of eligible students" (p. 23). There was, however, some problem with turnover of employers; again, retention needs more attention. By contrast, the findings of the Office of Technology Assessment (1995) report regarding employer recruitment were more negative. The survey (see above) found that, using the equivalent of one-half of a full-time staff person's time, "the median growth rate of employer participation in the 15 programs in the past two years has been six employers per year," which "translated into a median increase of 11 students per year in the 15 programs" (p. 76). With a growth rate of only 14% a year, and given the small starting sizes of these programs, the authors of this report believe that "many years will be required for school-to-work transition systems to reach substantial proportions of all the students in the school districts in which those systems are located" (p. 77). However, it is possible that with the passage of STWOA, and the increase of knowledge about and interest in STW programs, a higher rate of employer recruitment can be achieved.
While much of the original thinking regarding the potential for employer involvement in WBL programs was skeptical, those studies cited above which have looked at the extent of success that programs are actually having with employer recruitment and retention are mostly positive. Internship placements are being found for students who want them, albeit in some cases with a great deal of work. So-called "theme" programs are expanding into new industry areas.
The future, particularly the question of going to scale, can be looked at in two different ways. On the one hand, the forecast may be gloomy. It is likely that there has been a "creaming" of employers, meaning that the employer partners initially recruited are those whose participation was won most easily. If those who have already been recruited are necessarily those most likely to participate, then further recruitment might be very difficult indeed, considering the extent of the resources spent in order to achieve the current level of employer involvement. Thus, "an important policy issue is whether external inducements beyond persuasion and coordinating assistance will be needed" (OTA, 1995, p. 83) if WBL programs are to be made available to most students.
Alternatively, it is possible that if the STW idea becomes better-known and understood, it will be easier for program staff to find employer partners. For example, the following account was given to researchers at the Institute on Education and the Economy (IEE) at Teachers College, Columbia University: A General Motors plant in Flint, Michigan, had been searching at length for an educational partner to help it create a program to recruit young apprentices, while simultaneously, the area vocational/technical education center, located literally down the road from the GM plant, was searching for employers for its new STW programs. The two eventually found each other and a partnership was formed. However, this situation illustrates the lack of awareness in communities and among employers about STW efforts which still hinders their proliferation. One of the main contributions of STWOA may be to create community activities that reduce the search cost of schools and employers for WBL.
In addition, as more research is completed on employer incentives and disincentives for participation, program staff should learn to present their programs more persuasively to potential employer partners. Again drawing from a study in progress at the IEE, school-to-career coordinators in Philadelphia explained to IEE researchers the process of transforming themselves into salespeople for the program. They had to learn to promote their program not on the basis of benefits that would accrue to the students, but by emphasizing the benefits the employers could expect to receive by their involvement.
Therefore, given the current state of knowledge about these issues, the future prospects for large-scale employer participation are uncertain. What is certain is that we will have more information in the near future. One large study, Jobs for the Future's Benchmark Communities Initiative, which is a partnership with five communities to design, implement, evaluate, and sustain school-to-career systems, is currently in its second year. Early lessons include the finding that "recruiting employers through industry clusters is beneficial to partnerships," and "responsibility for employer recruitment must be carefully coordinated" (Martinez et al., 1996, p. 8). Employers become frustrated and confused when confronted with requests for internships and other resources from multiple schools or school districts. Using a single area agency to organize this effort, perhaps through an industry or business cluster, can be more efficient and effective.
Results from another large study are just beginning to emerge. The IEE is starting to disseminate findings from their three-year study of employer participation. Two telephone surveys have been done; more than 350 questionnaires were completed by employers who participate in six programs which were also directly observed by the IEE; and over 300 surveys were completed by employers who do not participate in any STW programs. The sample for the survey of nonparticipants was matched, geographically and by industry, with the sample of participants. The survey data is currently being analyzed; a report will come out in 1997. The survey results and field data from thirteen programs in nine sites around the country will produce a report which will give a clear and detailed account of the incentives and disincentives for employer participation in these programs, as well as a general outlook on the state of STW in America.
An update on the programs first studied by Pauly et al. (1995) was released two years later (Pedraza et al., 1997). The good news from this report is that most of the early employer participants are continuing their involvement, and new ones have been recruited, so employer participation is not seen as the overriding barrier to the proliferation of STW efforts. The researchers also believe that benefits to employers grow the longer they are involved in a program. Should the focus of the research on employer participation shift to an emphasis on employer retention? This has interesting and positive implications and should be examined more closely.
Another possibility for further investigation is whether the increase in demand for internships, brought about by the growth of WBL programs, will create such competition for employer participants that programs end up taking internship slots from one other. Wieler and Bailey (1996) found that LaGuardia Community College has experienced more difficulty in finding internships for their co-op students, particularly paid internships, as increasing numbers of students in the region seek placements.
An area that has yet to be studied in any depth is the effect that unionization on employer involvement in STW programs. Corson and Silverberg (1994) comment that "although some unions play an active and progressive role in promoting STW transitions, many resist efforts to place students at worksites" (p. 87; see also U.S. Department of Labor, 1995, p. 46, for a note on union attitudes toward these programs). It is probably advisable that unions be taken into consideration in any discussion of "stakeholders" in the area of school-to-work. Of two recent national STW conferences, only one included a session specifically on union involvement with and concerns about school-to-work. This area is one in which more research is particularly needed.