In the U.S., well-established apprenticeship programs mixing related training, on-the-job training, and skill credentialing are present in many types of industries and occupations, but this road to higher pay and broader skills is most common and established in iron-working and construction industries. Throughout the country, construction accounts for over half of the registered apprentices. At any one point in time, the U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that approximately 350,000 individuals participate in about 43,000 registered apprenticeship programs in the U.S. (U.S. Department of Labor, 1991/1992).
Graduates of apprenticeship programs earn a credential and, through this, future employers have a clear idea about the domains of skill that they have. At the same time, employers have more information than simply the content of a certification test. They know that each apprentice has had experience in a wide variety of tasks and problems associated with the occupation.
Apprenticeships, and related skill certifications, have survived in construction for a variety of reasons. Two important reasons involve the institutional context of the industry and the nature of the work.
The institutional arrangements in the construction industry are crucial. The construction labor market is highly regulated due to the importance of federal funding in many construction markets. Employers working on construction projects with federal funding must pay journeyman's wages (usually the union wage) to all those working in many occupations, but registered apprentices in those occupations can receive lower pay. The majority of apprenticeship programs in construction are administered jointly by unions and employer associations according to collective bargaining agreements. These agreements spread the cost and responsibility for apprenticeship training, curriculum planning, and testing. Significantly, this involves workers and their representatives directly in defining the necessary skills and overseeing their certification.
Another explanation for the persistence of apprenticeship in construction involves the nature of construction jobs. It is very difficult to standardize construction work. Skilled construction workers are constantly confronted by unexpected and unique situations that require problem-solving skills and teamwork. In other words, construction puts demands on workers that are similar to those thought to be required by high-performance organizations.
The 1991 Secretary's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills (SCANS) was an attempt to break out of the task orientation of the traditional approaches and address the issues raised by the new conceptions of work and related skills. SCANS gathered a group of experts with experience in analyzing the skill requirements of the emerging technology and innovative work organization. The group identified five competencies and three foundation skills that they felt were essential to either work preparation or further education. Commissioners agreed on the following basic/foundation skill components:
Although the concept of SCANS and similar broad-based skills categorizations add a new, more professionalized and autonomous dimension to workers' roles, they fail to break completely with the traditional classification of the worker. By adhering to strict differentiation between SCANS skills and technical and academic skills, jobs are still being characterized as lists, albeit more extensive lists. In addition to traditional occupational tasks, problem solving, creative thinking, and knowing how to learn skills ("skills" which are presumably needed in new high-performance workplaces) are merely added. In order to meet the needs of the new workplace, while staying in line with traditional conceptualizations of the worker, SCANS is simply a broader listing of parts or component skills--not a movement toward a model that integrates the worker as a whole with the overall organizational context or focuses more directly on the overall performance of the worker.
We suggest that even a list of skills as broad as the SCANS list cannot characterize professional work if it remains a mere list. Our understanding of professional work has evolved over time to include similar skills to those in the SCANS list but, as we will illustrate below in our discussions of the skill standards pilot projects, these professional skills are packaged, evaluated, and thus perceived in a different manner and are associated with greater status than similar professional-type skills for production and lower-level workers. Thus, SCANS represents a transition--it is based on a recognition of the need for a change--yet is still embedded in a traditional framework and perspective.
For example, Baskett and Marsick (1992) identify a shift in professional education towards what they term "competence models." They point out that "Competencies are identified by subject matter experts and clients, validated, and used as the basis for assessment and for classroom-oriented or alternative self-directed learning activities" (p. 8). But they point out that this model has been severely critiqued, pointing to Phillip Nowlen's argument that
"The most serious flaw in the competence approach is its underlying assumption that performance is an individual affair." Nowlen represents an emerging school of thought that emphasized an understanding of professionals in relationship to the complex environments in which they practice. Professionals do not work solo but are part of an "ensemble" that involves relationships with peers, the organization through which service is delivered, paraprofessionals on whom the professional depends to meet client needs. . . . Competence is much more than an abstract set of knowledge and skills. (p. 8)Thus, Basket et al. and Nowlen are in effect suggesting that the education of professionals does not always live up to the professional model.
Professional systems of certification have also been attacked for the proliferation of specialties and subspecialties (Miller, 1994). In the professions, this is often justified as a response to the increasing volume of knowledge and the inability of any individual to master that knowledge over even a moderate range of substantive domains. The search for status and prestige or political struggles about control over occupational entry also provides incentives for the establishment of subcategories. This can be illustrated by the case of skill certification for appraisers. There are eleven different industry and trade associations which provide training and certification. Certifying bodies range from the American Society of Farm Managers and Rural Appraisers to the Institute of Business Appraisers. Educational and work experience requirements vary drastically among industry organizations. The International Society of Appraisers requires only work experience and participation in industry-sponsored courses for membership whereas the American Society of Appraisers requires four years of college for membership in addition to work experience (Wills, 1993c).
On the other hand, current conceptions about work which suggest that there will be an increasingly rapid pace of change and a growing need for group and collaborative activities suggest that there must be some reform of the deep but narrow training that has characterized some professional specialties. In any case, in drawing lessons from professional systems of education and certification, it is important to take account of the problems and tensions that are also facing those systems.
Therefore, skill standards developed under the professional framework would promote an "expert decision-making" role for sub-baccalaureate workers which has similar characteristics to the role that professionals with formal educational credentials enjoy. Acknowledgment of the subtle nature of their duties challenges the idea that their organizational responsibilities can be described by a concise listing of skill standards and activities. The professional framework emphasizes the unique, nonroutine problem-solving abilities that will be required of the job. This has profound implications for the expansion of worker involvement within organizations.
Nevertheless, in practice, professional training and certification also faces many problems--these system often do not live up to the professional model. Thus, while the conception of professional work is a useful benchmark for the development of skill standards for front-line workers, professional systems cannot be adopted unchanged. The most effective outcome will probably be a synthesis that builds on professional practice, but avoids some of its drawbacks. This issue will be taken up in the last section of this report. We do emphasize, however, that while there are significant pitfalls to the professional path, the current discussion of industry skill standards has not adequately recognized the parallels between the objectives of industry standards and those of professional systems.