Formal Education Overrated in Bolstering Job Skills, Economic Productivity

"Laudable efforts to promote opportunity have too often become too narrowly focused on raising educational attainment and academic test scores," writes Robert Lerman of the Urban Institute in his article, Building a Wider Skills Net for Workers. Although years of schooling and test scores are certainly relevant to success in the job market, Lerman says, so are a range of other skills, including noncognitive skills and occupational qualifications.

In Schools of Dreams: More Education Is Not an Economic Elixir, Peter Cappelli of the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School writes that no compelling evidence exists for the thesis that giving people more formal academic education will result in a restructuring of jobs and increased productivity and growth in the economy at large. According to Cappelli, "The nation will derive much more economic benefits from apprenticeships, school-to-work programs, and the close associations that many community colleges have developed between employers and classroom topics," he writes.

Matthew Zeidenberg of Columbia University writes about Community Colleges under Stress, and Brian Bosworth confronts The Crisis in Adult Education. Brian Bosworth of theSeattle consulting form FutureWorks outlines a variety of strategies for helping undereducated adults.

The summer Issues in Science and Technology also includes the following articles:

Fixing the Parole System. Mark Kleiman and Angela Hawken of the University of California at Los Angeles argue that a system relying on swiftness and certainty of punishment rather than on severity would result in less crime and fewer people in prison.

In Strategies for Today's Energy Challenge, Democrat Jeff Bingaman ofNew Mexico argues that developing new energy sources provides an economic and technological opportunity forthe United States.

In A New Manhattan Project for Clean Energy Independence, Republican Lamar Alexander ofTennessee writes thatthe United States must marshal its resources and talent to tackle the challenge of coping with climate change.

ISSUES is the award-winning journal of the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, Institute of Medicine, and the University of Texas at Dallas. www.issues.org

SOURCE Issues In Science and Technology

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