The National Science Board (NSB) released a report titled, The Skilled Technical Workforce: Crafting America’s Science and Engineering Enterprise. Its findings are based on stakeholder engagement meetings with relevant organizations in the Washington, D.C. area, as well as nationwide listening sessions that NSB conducted with workers, students, businesses and educators.
NSB found four main challenges that the Skilled Technical Workforce (STW) is facing:
Meeting students where they are, and designing STW education around those needs. The researchers reported the need to center programs around students that work within the constraints of students’ lives. The researchers stressed that lifelong learning is the new reality, and in order to have a skilled and capable workforce, programs need to meet students where they are.
Building partnerships among STW stakeholders. Partnerships between government, industry and educational institutions should occur in order to avoid a “one-size-fits-all” approach. This allows communities to align curricula to meet local community needs.
Increasing awareness of employment and career opportunities in the STW. The report emphasizes that there are numerous paths to educational and career success. The paths should not be presented as an “either-or” option, instead, the STW should aim to complement rather than compete with other education paths. NSB reports that learners pursuing careers in the STW have opportunities for higher earning potentials, greater job selection and to pursue additional postsecondary STEM education.
Data gaps are creating challenges in establishing a system-wide approach to the STW. Stakeholders are finding it difficult to assess the STW in order to create new programs and partnerships, as well as disseminate information to the public about opportunities within the STW. NSB says that this will be a long-term project that will require the input of multiple organizations for data, however, it is crucial for the continued development of the STW for there to be system-wide data.
Based on the systemic challenges the STW faces, NSB proposes interconnected recommendations, relevant to CTE, for policymakers and STW leaders:
Change the message. The report states that there needs to be an acceptance of various educational paths that are complementary and interdependent. Students should be able to make an educational choice based on their own informed preferences.
Focus on the data. NSB recommends that data should be collected on a wide range of characteristics of the STW, and partnerships between stakeholders should develop to enable collaboration of resources and data.
Build partnerships. NSB recommends that STW stakeholders should work together to fit local community needs. To incentivize this, NSB says policymakers should further develop federal programs to require partnership participation from stakeholders.
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