The Providers of Education and Their Connections to Employers

The community colleges, technical institutes, and area vocational schools that prepare individuals for sub-baccalaureate labor markets are themselves quite varied, and their students have many different purposes. Uniformly, they have established several mechanisms to connect their programs to employers, potentially providing linkages that help students into employment and ensure that educational programs have the appropriate content. In practice, however, the mechanisms vary in the way they operate:

• Advisory committees provide some information about labor market demand and help institutions establish new programs. However, in many cases, they meet only infrequently or are institution-wide rather than occupation-specific and thereby provide very little information.
• Placement offices are understaffed in most institutions and usually concentrate on part-time, "stay-in-school" jobs rather than linking occupational programs with employment opportunities.
• Placement by occupational instructors does occur in some institutions, but in most cases, it is uneven and sporadic.
• Student follow-up and tracking mechanisms, which provide information about the subsequent employment of students, can allow instructors and institutions to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of their programs. However, these information systems are poorly developed in most postsecondary institutions, so that in practice instructors and administrators have no idea where their occupational students go.
• Contract education, or firm-specific customized training, is clearly booming and is another potential source of information to educational providers about the skills necessary in employment. However, most institutions establish contract education in divisions separate from regular vocational programs, limiting contract education's value in establishing links to employers.
• Work experience and co-op programs, combining school-based instruction with on-the-job experience, can also link employers and providers and offer students complementary approaches to learning. In three of our labor markets, these programs are rare. In Cotooli, however, well-developed co-op programs have indeed fostered close working relations between local firms and education providers; employers speak knowledgeably and positively about the educational system and without the indifference we observed in other areas.
• Student demand affects postsecondary providers, which are funded based on enrollment (through state aid plus tuition) and are therefore highly sensitive to enrollment changes. If students were well-informed about labor market demand, this would be a mechanism for bringing vocational offerings into line with employment opportunities. However, students are not always well-informed; educational institutions often respond to changes slowly; and the incentives against funding high-cost programs (e.g., in electronics, health, and other technical areas) mean that high employment demand may still not lead to expanded enrollments.
• Licensing requirements, predominantly in health occupations, specify the content of educational programs as well as hiring requirements employers must follow, establishing a congruence between employers and providers that is missing in other occupations areas. These requirements therefore establish organized labor markets in contrast to the unorganized occupations more typical of sub-baccalaureate labor markets. While there are not many other examples of licensing requirements, the skill standards now being discussed would have similar effects.

We conclude, then, that many of the mechanisms linking employers and educational providers work poorly with certain exceptions, especially the co-op programs in Cotooli and the licensing requirements in health occupations.