[NLA] Thursday Notes, 3/14/02

[Thomas Sticht]

I agree with David Joost's trenchant comments. Following are some more
observations re the NAM research promulgated by USED/OVAE/DAEL in the
latest Thursday Notes. 
Tom Sticht

Let us all now praise high quality, research-based education!

Given the present federal administration’s concerns for high quality,
research-based approaches to education I was surprised to find the
Thursday notes for 3/14/02 discussing the Skills Gap report by the
National Association of Manufacturing. The report is so inadequate in
its methodology and reporting as to stagger one’s faith in big business.
But then I noted that the report was prepared in part with the aid of a
consulting firm named Andersen. I don’t know if this is the Andersen of
Enron fame or not. 

What is bad about this report? Almost everything, but here is a starter.
First, NAM sent out a survey to 6000 randomly chosen members of its
association. The dismal return rate was a little over 10 percent! So
close to 9 out of 10 companies apparently thought the survey so
unimportant that they did not even respond. Hardly a strong endorsement
of manufacturing’s great and grave concern with the skills of  America’s
workforce. 

Though we are told that about half (48%) of survey respondents reported
rejecting up to 1/2 of applicants for all job openings, we aren’t told
how many job openings there were and how many people were qualified for
each job. Could be there were two, three, or more qualified applicants
for each job. 

Summing over all manufacturing concerns in the survey, 10.5% thought
there was not a shortage of qualified job candidates, 60.3% thought
there was a moderate shortage, and some 20.2% thought there was a
serious shortage (some must not have responded). So some 70 percent (of
the 10 percent or so of those who responded) thought there was no or
only a moderate shortage of qualified job applicants and this includes
job categories from production workers to high level professional and
technical personnel. 

At the lower end of the skilled job category,  it was found that for
applicants for entry level production workers, 37 percent of companies
thought there were no problems, 44.7 percent thought there were moderate
problems, and only 16.3 percent thought there were serious problems.
That’s only about 96 companies out of 6,000 that both responded to the
survey and then thought there were serious "skill" problems of
applicants for production work. 

The most common reasons for rejecting job applicants were poor "basic
employability skills" for entry level hourly wage personnel – skills
like  poor attendance, tardiness, etc. These "skills" are what a lot of
people used to think of as "attitudes" or "behavioral" problems. Some
69% of respondents said they had problems with these job applicant 
"skills."

The next biggest problem was insufficient work experience which affected
34% of applicants for hourly and over 46% of professional, salaried
personnel. 

In third place for rejecting applicants was inadequate basic
reading/writing skills which affected some 31.6% of hourly production
workers; inadequate math affected 20.7% of hourly personnel, while
inadequate oral communication skills affected 17.5% of hourly personnel.
Inadequate oral communication affected 16.8% of applicants for
professional, jobs, too. 

Interestingly, when asked about the skills of current employees, poor
employability skills (tardiness, absenteeism, etc.) were the greatest
problem (59.1%) just like they were for job applicants, while the basic
skills of reading, writing, math and English language had ratings of
from over 20 to 32% as employee problems. Given these concerns for
hourly personnel’s basic skills in oral communication, literacy and
math, it is somewhat surprising (sic) to find that the major education
or training benefits offered to employees in the surveyed companies were
(1) specific skills for specific jobs-64.2%; (2) tuition reimbursement
for undergraduate or graduate courses-60.6%, (3) continuing education
for technical/professional personnel-39.6%, (4) certification training
for technical degrees or licenses-37.1%, (5) teamwork/leadership-33.5%,

and in the lower ranking education opportunities were basic math-15.8%,
ESL-14.5%, GED-9.3% and basic reading/writing-8.6%. 

The report provides no cross-tabulations, such as how many with oral
communication  problems also had serious drug problems.  By itself,
failing the drug screening was a larger problem (26.9%) than poor oral
communication problems (17.5%). No demographic data such as gender, age,
ethnicity, years of education, etc. are given. No common methodology for
companies to use to answer the questions are presented, though I note
that the report is intended for the press and public, so there may be
more information in some more detailed, private report. 

Altogether, the NAM report seems inadequate to reach any conclusions
about a "skills gap" between the skills of the workforce and the skills
needs of the manufacturing industries. It could be that the 10 percent
or so of companies that responded to the survey are just participating
in that perennial favorite of the older generation, that is, bashing the
new generation. This is suggested in part by the answer they gave to the
question, Do you believe your local schools are doing a good job in
providing students for the workplace? Only 22% said yes, while 78% said
no. Yet in the Introduction to the report it is stated that the U.S.
manufacturing workforce is the best in the world. If the schools aren’t
providing this great workforce, who is?
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