Articles – Page 10

The Federal Government’s Worsening Millennial Talent Gap

Outdated hiring practices are to blame, says Partnership for Public Service President Max Stier.

Polls show that, compared to other generations, millennials believe in an active federal government.

Most millennials favor a “bigger government providing more services,” finds the Pew Research Center, while another survey by Deloitte finds that millennials overwhelmingly support government’s potential to solve such pressing problems as climate change and income inequality.

Yet only 7 percent of current federal workers are under age 30 – the lowest share in almost a decade. Why are so few millennials working in federal government?

Continued at the Washington Monthly…

In Kentucky, Angel Investor Tax Credits Woo Small Business Investors

The state’s expanded credit is now among the more generous incentives nationwide.

Eric Ostertag is the kind of entrepreneur states love.

A physician with a doctorate in molecular biology, Ostertag has launched three ventures: Transposagen, a genetic engineering company; Vindico Pharmaceuticals, which specializes in nanotechnology; and Hera Testing Laboratories, Inc., another biotechnology firm.

The companies began in Philadelphia, but all three are now based in Lexington, Kentucky. The state offered Ostertag a matching grant for high-tech companies that win federal Small Business Innovation Research awards. “I moved my companies because of the incentives,” Ostertag said.

Now the state is offering Ostertag’s investors an incentive too: a generous new tax credit for “angel” investors who invest in Kentucky-based small businesses.

Continued at Republic 3.0…

Not your grandfather’s factories

It’s not easy for manufacturing to attract the younger, skilled workers that it needs. We need to focus on both the educational pipeline and public perceptions.

Via Governing

For much of the past 30 years, the American public’s view of manufacturing has been unrelentingly grim: shuttered factories, laid-off workers and the steady disappearance of “Made in America” products from consumers’ shelves.

But U.S. manufacturing is showing strong signs of rebirth. Since the end of 2010, U.S. manufacturers have added more than 730,000 jobs, and industry analysts predict that the sector could see as many as three million new job openings over the next 10 years.

Now, however, American manufacturers are dealing with another kind of bad news: Even as industry’s prospects have recovered, its image has not. Americans still think of factory jobs as dirty, dangerous and offering little job security.

As a result, millions of young Americans are potentially snubbing a promising career path in an industry poised for a renaissance. Absent a dramatic and rapid makeover of not only public perceptions but also the educational pipeline that manufacturers depend on, the sector’s looming worker shortage is severe enough to short-circuit both its own rebound and its contributions to overall growth.

A new report by Deloitte and the Manufacturing Institute finds that American manufacturers could face a deficit of as many as 2 million workers over the next decade, fueled in part by industry expansion but also by the looming retirement of the Baby Boomers.

These jobs are both highly skilled and well paid. “Nearly all of the jobs that were unskilled or semi-skilled have either been automated out of existence or moved offshore in search of cheaper labor,” says the Manufacturing Institute’s Gardner Carrick. Today’s factory jobs, he says, are focused on “operating, maintaining or programming the machines that are doing a lot of the actual manual labor and hard work that used to be done by human beings.”

This means the vast majority of manufacturing jobs today require some sort of post-secondary degree or technical credential. It’s an investment that pays off: In 2013, according to the National Association of Manufacturers, the average manufacturing worker earned $77,506 in total pay and benefits. Yet surveys by the Manufacturing Institute find that only one-third of parents would encourage their children to work in manufacturing and that a majority of teens have no interest in it as a career.

The onus of solving manufacturing’s recruitment problems lies, of course, principally with industry. To that end, manufacturers have recently launched an annual effort — Manufacturing Day — to show young Americans first-hand what today’s manufacturing jobs are like. In 2014, the initiative involved more than 400,000 participants at events across the country, including an appearance by President Obama at an Indiana steel facility’s open house.

But even if interest in manufacturing careers rekindles among students, they’ll still need the right skills and training to land a job. That’s why state and local policy-makers should be working to rebuild the educational infrastructure that withered when manufacturing collapsed.

The best way to do this is to revive, modernize and encourage career and technical education (CTE) at both the high-school and post-secondary level, which a number of states have already begun to re-embrace. Kansas, for example, now pays tuition for high school students enrolled in college-level career and technical education classes. The state also offers high schools a variety of incentives to encourage CTE, including paying the transportation costs of high-schoolers attending classes at a college or career and technical institute, subsidizing the cost of credential assessment, and even offering financial rewards to students graduating with an industry-recognized credential.

Another promising initiative is Tennessee’s “Drive to 55,” a statewide effort to increase the share of residents with post-secondary credentials to 55 percent from the current level of 32 percent. One aspect of the program, Tennessee Promise, gained national prominence as the model for President Obama’s free community college proposal. Other states have embraced apprenticeship as a way to draw millennials and other young workers to manufacturing.

Unlike old-fashioned “vo-tech” programs that may have served as an outlet for students deemed unready or unsuited for college, the best of today’s CTE programs combine post-secondary education with industry-recognized credentialing. Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Career and Technical Institute, for example, is one of a growing number of schools that specialize in providing students with both academic and industry-recognized credentials.

For many millennials still struggling to find their way post-recession, manufacturing’s nascent revival offers a potentially ideal path for rebuilding their economic fortunes. And for manufacturers, the talents of the millennial generation and beyond are critical to sustaining its rebirth. But to broker this marriage between manufacturing and millennials, the role of government will be vital.

Are Apprenticeships the Answer for Struggling Millennials?

German-style apprenticeships are gaining momentum as a way to help America’s young workers.

In America, the rite of passage that comes with turning 16 is to get a drivers’ license. In Germany, it’s to become an apprentice.

Since the 1970s, nearly two out of three young Germans opt at age 16 to enter the country’s apprenticeship system, which covers roughly 350 different occupations from mechanics to hairdressers, electricians to office workers.

Continued at Republic 3.0 and UPS Longitudes…

Online Learning Goes the Distance

Why the future of college will be online.

Over the past ten years, online education has become an increasingly mainstream part of the higher education landscape.

Since 2002 – when roughly 1.6 million college students had taken at least one course online – enrollment in online education has more than tripled. Nearly three-fourths of all four-year colleges now offer online classes, including at elite schools, and the vast majority of public two-year colleges now offer online coursework as well.

Casual observers may equate online education with the free open online classes that some schools, along with high-profile startups such as Coursera, have offered with much fanfare (so-called “massive open line courses” or “MOOCs”). But the growing ubiquity of online education is tied to its evolution in a wide variety of formats and contexts, including classes that “blend” online coursework with traditional classroom settings and a growing role in workforce training and development.

Continued at the Washington Monthly…

Core Core Foes Losing the Fight – And That’s Good

Common Core opponents are losing the fight – a hopeful sign that sound policy can trump ideology.

Via Chicago Sun-Times

Ask any parent of a school-age child: It’s not unreasonable to expect some objective measures of achievement.

First-graders should know how to count to 100 and add and subtract up to 20. Third graders should know the difference between a noun and a verb. High school seniors should be able to solve basic problems in algebra and write essays using facts to support opinions.

Standards such as these have been voluntarily adopted by 43 states and the District of Columbia. But these standards also bear the label of “Common Core” – now fighting words among certain conservatives for whom the Common Core is as anathema as Obamacare.

For the past several years, activists have waged war against states’ adoption of Common Core State Standards, and so far this year, they’ve persuaded lawmakers in 19 states to introduce legislation proposing their repeal.

But for all the sound and fury, Common Core opponents have accomplished next to nothing, succeeding in just one state – Oklahoma. And while some may see the right wing’s losing fight against the Common Core as simply evidence of their waning political muscle, the real reason behind these losses is an optimistic one: the Common Core remains intact because it’s good policy. In a political landscape littered with the victims of ideological warfare, this is one battle where common sense is prevailing over demagoguery.

Continued at the Chicago Sun-Times…

Moving 9-1-1 Out of the Landline Era

If our 1968-vintage emergency-number system were enabled for the newer ways we communicate, it could work a lot better — and cost a lot less.

Via Governing

Among the many services state and local governments provide, few are as popular, as trusted or as essential as 9-1-1. Americans place roughly 240 million 9-1-1 calls each year, says the National Emergency Number Association, and access to 9-1-1 is nearly universal. Nevertheless, the system so many Americans rely on today to report emergencies and other problems stands on the brink of obsolescence.

While Americans are now accustomed to using Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and other social-media platforms for the rapid-fire sharing of news and information, most 9-1-1 systems can’t handle the texts, videos, data and images that we increasingly use to communicate.

That’s because in many parts of the country 9-1-1 is still rooted in the landline-telephone-based infrastructure that gave the system its start in 1968. As of November 2014, just 152 counties in 18 states even had the capability for citizens to text to 9-1-1. And only a handful of states — such as Iowa and Vermont — have taken the leap to Internet-enabled 9-1-1, known as “Next Generation 9-1-1.”

But for states that do invest in the transition, the rewards include not just better public safety but cost savings in the long run.

Iowa, for example, recently unveiled “Alert Iowa,” a two-way emergency “mass notification” system — among the first of its kind — that allows Iowans and Iowa’s 9-1-1 to talk to each other using social media, text and email.

“The traditional way of using 9-1-1 when someone has something to report is very closed and one-way,” says Iowa state Sen. Jeff Danielson, who led the effort to enact Alert Iowa. “A citizen calls in, they give the information, they hang up, and nothing more is done. Under mass notification, the dispatch centers can then push that information out on Facebook, Twitter, text and email, engaging the public to give us more information about what’s going on.”

Danielson, who also serves as a firefighter in Cedar Falls, says the two-way system could have prevented such tragedies as the abduction and murder of 10-year-old Lyric Cook-Morrisey and 8-year-old Elizabeth Collins from his district in 2012. “There’s a window of opportunity when children go missing that closes as time goes on,” said Danielson. “If there had been a more rapid way to inform the public of where the girls were and what they were doing, we could have engaged the eyes and ears of the community much better.”

One big advantage of the new system, Danielson says, is that it was centrally deployed statewide rather than individually by Iowa’s 115 dispatch centers. Not only does this enable the rapid dissemination of information and enhance interoperability, it’s cost-effective. “That saves a lot of money in licensing fees, operational software, etc., all across the state,” said Danielson.

In 2009, the federal government issued its blueprint calling for a national transition to Internet-enabled 9-1-1, citing the same kinds of benefits that Iowa now sees. In addition, the report said, a national migration to Next Generation 9-1-1 would mean better interoperability within states, among states and with the federal government, which could be crucial in a large-scale emergency or terrorist attack. The report also found that under some scenarios Internet-enabled 9-1-1 could save as much as $19 billion over 20 years in comparison to the current system.

In Iowa, investment in Next Generation 9-1-1 was the result of a two-year-long campaign by Danielson to reform emergency-number funding. Unlike many states, Iowa hadn’t been adding 9-1-1 user fees to wireless and prepaid phones. “Our entire 911 dispatch center revenue stream was based on landlines,” said Danielson. By equalizing the fees on all users, the state raised $3.7 million.

Some states could find money to invest in 9-1-1 simply by ending the diversion of 9-1-1 surcharges to other purposes. According to the Federal Communications Commission, states spent just 4.5 percent of the 9-1-1 fees collected in 2013 on investments to deploy Next Generation 9-1-1. But the report also found that states diverted more than $183 million — roughly 8 percent of the fees collected — to uses other than 9-1-1, including to their general-fund budgets or to pay down debt.

While overall public faith in government has eroded to all-time lows, states and local governments have been largely fortunate in their ability to maintain their citizens’ trust. But maintaining that trust also requires investment. Where better to invest than in a service as fundamental as 9-1-1?

How to Expand Middle Class College Savings

The Obama Administration should embrace efforts to expand 529 college savings accounts. Here are three ideas how.

In the face of popular backlash, President Obama recently shelved a controversial plan to end the tax-free college savings accounts known as 529s.

Despite its initial defense of the proposal, the White House dropped the idea after immediate and intense criticism from both Republicans and Democrats.

Republicans now plan to capitalize on this misstep with a plan to expand 529s. According to The Wall Street Journal, a bipartisan proposal sponsored by Reps. Lynn Jenkins (R-Kan.) and Ron Kind (D-Wis.) may get a vote as early as next month.

While the White House could revert to its original stance and oppose the Republican plan, here’s a better idea: embrace the idea of expanding access to college savings and take it one step further.

Continued at The Hill…

The Myth of the Asian Vote

Asian-Americans aren’t a monolithic, formulaically winnable political constituency.

With every approaching election, the political consulting class becomes enamored of a new “it” class of swing voters.

In the past, it was “Wal-Mart moms” and Christian evangelicals. In 2016, emphasis on demographic trends will likely put racial and ethnic groups in the spotlight — and Hispanic voters in particular.

But attention is also turning to Asians as a potentially potent political bloc.

But while the ranks of Asians are swelling, is there really an “Asian vote” that campaigns can reliably court and an “Asian agenda” that candidates should pursue?

The answer might well be “no.”

Continued at The Hill…

Maryland’s International Incubator Woos Foreign Startups

Maryland’s state-sponsored “International Incubator” woos foreign investment by helping entrepreneurs get their start.

If you’re a foreign entrepreneur looking to break into the U.S. market, the State of Maryland wants to help.

On the third floor of a nondescript office building perched on a busy commercial strip in College Park, Maryland, foreign-owned start-ups can get a boost at the Maryland International Incubator, a first-of-its-kind incubator focused exclusively on foreign companies settling in the United States.

Since its start in 2009, the incubator – a partnership between the University of Maryland and Maryland state officials – has helped launch more than 30 foreign-owned ventures in the state.

Continued at Republic 3.0…