We found a wide variety of opinions about the value of community colleges, technical institutes, area vocational schools, proprietary schools, short-term training programs, and the other education and training providers of the sub-baccalaureate labor market.[85] By far the largest group of employers was simply unable to express any opinion about the providers in the local area. They were unfamiliar with local educational institutions; they did not know from which educational institutions their employees (or their best or worst employees) come[86]; they were unable to venture any opinions about which local providers prepared their students the best or about what changes they would make in local educational programs.[87] We interpret this lack of opinion as an indifference to educational providers: Since experience, informal job tests, and probation count much more than educational qualifications in hiring permanent employees and since job-specific skills can be learned in a variety of ways, there is simply no need to be familiar with local educational programs.
The striking exception to the general lack of opinion about educational providers came in Cotooli, where the dominance of the co-op programs places employers and providers in close proximity. There, virtually every employer was familiar both with the co-op programs and with the specific institutions participating. Furthermore, the comments about the quality of co-op education were uniformly positive; the only negative remarks were that--because educational institutions receive the same amount of tuition and state aid for each student--local providers found it difficult to provide enough training in high-cost fields like machining and electronics.
In two other labor markets--Rosefield and Palmdale--a majority of those employers who expressed any opinions about community colleges and other vocational providers were quite positive. In the Rosefield area, a number of electronics manufacturers hire directly from the local community colleges and several have made an associate degree a hiring requirement. Indeed, virtually all the high-tech manufacturers regard the community college favorably; the only negative comments came from those employing individuals with less technical skills--accountants, business occupations, and the like. In the Palmdale area, only one firm required an associate degree--at the behest of company headquarters in New York--but the general reputation of the community colleges was relatively high even though employers typically did not require community college education.[88]
A minority of employers with opinions about community colleges in Palmdale and Rosefield and a slight majority of employers in Frankton were less complimentary about community colleges. Many castigated educational institutions for using outdated equipment and methods. In some cases, especially machining and electronics, it is almost impossible for educational institutions to keep up with technological changes. As the manager of a machining company in Cotooli explained,
We took [our apprentices] to [the local technical college] and they asked about their program, and the instructor down there said, "Yes, if you come down here we will teach you how to program a three-axis machine," and one of our apprentices said, "But I'm already programming a five-axis now." [The college] can't buy a Consatti 5-axis machine and the Siemens control on that. That machine is a two million dollar machine, and that's what our apprentices end up learning very soon.
However, even programs not requiring expensive equipment can lag behind; for example, a supervisor of computer operators at a large high-tech firm in Rosefield criticized a nearby community college's computer program because it started with an introductory class that was ten years out of date and then shifted to assembler languages that are not widely used.
In some cases, the internal policies of community colleges rather than the speed and expense of technical advancement are blamed for lags. A number of employers noted the long time necessary to establish new programs and to eliminate obsolete programs, blaming "humungous" educational bureaucracies of colleges and the need for everyone in an institution to approve any changes. In contrast, one reason for the high rating of contract education among employers is that community colleges can usually develop firm-specific programs through their contract education divisions within very short periods of time.
A different criticism is that educational programs are too theory-oriented, without sufficient practical or hands-on experience, not specific enough, and not oriented to producing a product.[89] When asked about suggestions for improving electronics programs, a supervisor of a tire manufacturer in Frankton replied,
Get them more on-the-job training while they're in school because when they come to us they think they're ready to go to work, and they just realize they're just now ready to learn. They've only got half the prescription for success, and the other half is out here dealing with people.
Similarly, in talking about the superiority of the firm's apprenticeship program, the manager of a Cotooli machining company said,
The difference [between our apprenticeship program and educational programs] is that we base our instruction on real life situations and not on the theory behind it. We bring in actual parts. We bring in actual prints. We talk about real life situations. I don't think you get that necessarily in a school situation.
The director of a large milling company in Cotooli described the problem:
I don't think the technical colleges necessarily can give the depth of training which can be learned in the industry itself. . . . They take them [students] into a CAD class at [the local technical college] and will teach them some software on how to use computer engine [sic], but I don't think they, along with that, give them the depth of understanding of what they're really doing. They can make the shapes, and they can make the models, and depending on how sophisticated the CAD system is, they'll do a three-dimensional whatever on the screen and do all those kind of nice things that the software does, but unless you are driven by a product, I don't know that it's gained you a whole lot. . . . If you're not working on a product-oriented [process], something that you're going to sell, something that's really got meat to it, that you've got to make money on, it's almost like it doesn't mean anything.
The need, once again, for relatively firm-specific forms of education makes the normal educational programs of community colleges too generic for firms to find them useful. As a manufacturer of pumping equipment in Frankton complained,
If [my employees] were to take SPC [statistical process control] in a class with a bunch of other people, they're going to learn generic SPC and the instructor is not going to have the time or the knowledge to take them through what we do here on our production line.
In this particular case, the firm had developed an in-house training program to teach more firm-specific versions of general skills; in other cases, contract education has been the solution to providing more specific training.
In a slightly different vein, a recruiter for a temporary agency for drafters and other technical workers complained that
state-supported community colleges require that students take other subjects such as social science courses. They have to take courses that do not relate to drafting.
Others criticized the inability of community colleges to keep up with escalating requirements of academic skills. The director of human resources for a high-tech manufacturer in the Palmdale area[90] stated,
I think applicants have the initial list of basic skills. However, those skills apply to what was required five or ten years ago. But because of the development of automation in the factory, artificial intelligence, and SPC and the company direction to use that technique to modernize its production capabilities, the expectation levels for our technicians has moved up. So the bar keeps going up; therefore, it's more difficult to find the standard graduate out of a junior college that meets these goals because the colleges haven't kept up with the expectation of employers.
Even employers who hire extensively from community colleges find flaws in their programs--most often in various nontechnical capacities like communications skills.[91] The personnel directors for an employer near Rosefield--one that has established a co-op program with several community colleges--commented on the quality of community college programs:
Taking an overall look at the programs, on the technical side, I think they're very good. However, communications skills, both written and oral, aren't up to the same quality. When students are involved in a technical curriculum, they aren't allowed much time to develop other skills even though the general education courses are required, and so the written and oral communications skills don't get developed as they should.
Even within specific labor markets there was substantial variation in opinions about these educational providers. Frankton provides the best example: Those employers who did express opinions about educational providers were divided in their views, with some reporting disappointing experiences while other expressed approval of the local community college. In the Rosefield area, the division of opinion followed occupational lines: Those employing electronics technicians reported that local programs were excellent, and they and tended to require an associate degree; while those employing accountants and other business occupations were generally critical and provided no special recognition of community college credentials.
Where employers were able to compare various educational providers, they tended to prefer institutions on the basis of their equipment--whether it was up-to-date and comparable to that used within the firm--and the similarity of the training to actual conditions on the job, a position which often translated into a preference for educational programs stressing hands-on rather than theoretical training. Indeed, in a few cases employers prefer a shorter, hands-on program to a longer theoretical program. For example, a personnel manager for a Frankton hospital prefers to recruit associate degree nurses from the local community college rather than baccalaureate nurses from the state college "because the A.D.N. at Frankton City College has more hands-on, practical experience, whereas the other side is more theory." Once again, this clarifies that employers are looking for preparation--whether through experience or formal schooling--that is as specific to their own equipment, production methods, and organization as possible.
While it is difficult to interpret the variation in opinion about postsecondary institutions, our best guess is simply that it reflects the variation in the quality of programs and the extent of their connections with employers. Community colleges are notoriously independent and varied--indeed, proudly so because of their rhetoric about serving local communities. State controls over local colleges are relatively weak, particularly in the states where our four labor markets are located. Except in health occupations, where licensing requirements govern, there are neither state nor federal standards for occupational curriculum and no mechanisms like SAT tests that help standardized occupational curricula. Vocational curricula remain stepchildren within many community colleges where the transfer-oriented curriculum has higher status; and given the lack of follow-up on occupational students as well as the heterogeneity of students' reasons for attending a community college, accountability is virtually lacking. With funding based on attendance, the institutions are more enrollment-driven than outcome-oriented, as we have argued above. In this situation, substantial variation in the quality of occupational programs can persist--and we suspect that this variation shows up in performance and then in employer responses.
Other types of institutions fared less well. Almost no employer had much of an opinion about the short-term vocational programs offered by area vocational schools and adult schools--programs that may offer fifteen-week, half-day courses, for example--aside from one personnel manager in Palmdale who had taken the time to visit several local institutions and who complained about their inability to teach enough in short programs. The public job training programs--JTPA and the JOBS program for welfare recipients--were not used by any of the 113 employers we interviewed; for all practical purposes, these programs are invisible. Nor is the Targeted Jobs Tax Credit (TJTC), which provides a tax credit for the first two years of employment and is designed to cover the costs of training, ever used to hire disadvantaged individuals.[92]
Finally, proprietary schools were almost as invisible. While many secretarial and clerical workers probably got their training through proprietary schools, employers were usually unaware of what institutions they came from. Several proprietary schools, particularly in business areas, came in for harsh criticism. Only two stood out: a technical trade school in Phoenix was highly praised by a number of electronics manufacturers, as described earlier; and one computer networking company in the Palmdale area hired virtually all of their computer operators[93] from a nearby proprietary school "that trains them specifically on the equipment we use." In this particular case, the training is more like that offered through customized training--precisely tailored to the requirements of a single company--than to general vocational education with broad applicability.
The general indifference of many employers to sub-baccalaureate credentials does not mean that education in community colleges and technical institutes provides no advantage to those individuals who pursue it. There are several mechanisms by which such education provides an economic advantage:
However, under other conditions the value of sub-baccalaureate education is uncertain. In particular, the sub-baccalaureate credentials with the greatest economic value--in electronics and related fields and in health--are all in technical subjects requiring math and/or science.[94] The benefits in nontechnical fields--business and accounting, for example--are especially uncertain. Thus, the simple idea that education alone can guarantee access to middle-skilled occupations is clearly incorrect.
[85] See Questions 8 through 15 on the employer interview protocol in Appendix A. In addition, some employers ventured opinions but on the basis of experience that seemed quite flimsy. One supervisor who had attended the local community college and who thought that his community college background had helped him get his initial position simply said in support of Frankton Community College, "It helped me, didn't it?" Another individual related a tale of trying to place a job announcement in a college's placement office; finding little enthusiasm, she had washed her hands of the community college without further contact. We have tried to distinguish opinions about educational providers that are based on substantial experience from those based on whimsy.
[86] One electronics instructor in Rosefield complained about employers reproving him about the poor preparation of students from other institutions. The point was that employers could not distinguish among the institutions their technicians had attended and in a synecdochic fashion treated any representative of two-year institutions as responsible for them all.
[87] Occasionally, this occurred because we interviewed individuals at the wrong level of a firm. In some very large firms, where specialization is advanced, hiring is separated from production: Those in charge of hiring do not see how employees perform on the job, and, conversely, supervisors in charge of production do not play a role in hiring. Under such conditions, those in charge of employment have no information about whether their hiring procedures result in productive employees, and it is possible for hiring standards to be inconsistent with skill requirements.
[88] Because responses to questions about local institutions were both vague and positive about entire institutions rather than specific programs, we suspect that the good reputation of several local colleges for their transfer programs had more to do with their reputation than the quality of their vocational offerings.
[89] It is difficult to reconcile these complaints about the extraneous education required in community colleges with the emphasis on the need for basic academic skills in the labor force.
[90] This individual was a member of the advisory committee for a local community college's electronics program and reported taking the community college to task for not performing follow-ups on students to find if they found training-related employment.
[91] This corroborates a finding of Hudis et al. (1992), who discovered that employers in health occupations complained about communications skills although the technical skills taught in community colleges are adequate.
[92] In the sole exception, a manufacturing firm in Cotooli reported hiring a single individual straight out of school who proved to be a worthless employee--"He worked two weeks and was off fifty-two" using the TJTC. In this case, the tax credit was apparently the reason for hiring--"zero [wages] for two [employees]"--but the firm was clearly not going to repeat this dismal experience.
[93] As in virtually every other case, this firm also distinguished carefully between computer operators with proprietary school training and computer programmers who must have baccalaureate degrees and often M.A.s.
[94] One implication is that individuals unable to go into technical fields because of poor preparation in math and science--which includes many lower-class and minority students and those who did poorly during high school--are effectively precluded from the most lucrative programs.