What is the best way to educate the U.S. workforce - Essay Example

workforce held jobs that did not require a college degree [Kangas, n.d.], indicating that there was glut of over qualified people at the top, as a result of which many of them are being displaced downwards, making it even more difficult for non-graduates to secure jobs. The welfare reform legislation which was signed into force in 1998, has introduced the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act, that operates upon the principle of “work first” as opposed to the “training first” option that was in force before.

A broad based training policy has proved to be difficult to implement, since the U.S. labor market is fragmented.[Carnevale, 1999]. Thus, the Workforce Investment Act was also introduced to reform the Government training programs for welfare recipients [Haittiangadi, 1998]. Prior to this, the School to Work opportunities Act of 1994 has introduced vocational and apprenticeship programs as a part of the high school curriculum [Schaffer, 1999]. This was first initiated in Broome County in 1990, in an effort to implement the German apprenticeship model in the United States school curriculum [Emanoil, 2001], and prepare students better to make the important transition from school to workplace.

What is the best way to educate the U.S. workforce? The validity of traditional academic- based systems of education are being questioned as they produce students who are poorly equipped with the skills required at work, especially in today’s techno-savvy environment. They are distracted in class, working after school at low paying, part time jobs where everything of value is generally learnt within a short period of time and they stay on for purely financial reasons. However, the net result is that they remain stagnant at the low level jobs and rarely advance higher.

The other side of the same coin is the “massification” of education with student base expansion since the 1980s [Alexander,