NEWSWEEK.COM 15
We need a
sustainable short-term
training strategy
for the long-term
future of work.LEARNING Clockwise from top left:
masked in a lecture hall; President
Biden; practicing parallel parking at
Iowa Central Community College in
Fort Dodge, IA; heading to school.as a provision for universal pre-K that
will go a long way to supporting work-
ing families. But it would be a real
game-changer for learners if Congress
ever decides to allocate the $62 billion
proposed in President Biden’s Amer-
ican Families plan to fund childcare,
emergency aid grants, mental health
support and other wraparound ser-
vices at community colleges. Few
short-term training programs provide
these supports to their learners.
Third, job training must focus on
economic resiliency. If we direct work-
ers toward training for jobs that they
will lose to automation, then we’re
just kicking the can down the road.
We need a sustainable short-term
training strategy for the long-term
future of work. Research shows that
the jobs that are growing fastest will
require both technical and social
skills. To date, too few programs cover
both—but these dual capabilities are
a requirement for future-ready jobs.Finally, to hold institutions
accountable for success, we need bet-
ter and more intentional data track-
ing by race and by socioeconomic
status. Too few public and private
funders have mandated, collected or
shared data on participation in edu-
cation and training programs by race
and class. They also too rarely connect
to administrative data sources that
would help all stakeholders under-
stand the longer-term outcomes.
President Biden’s racial equity exec-
utive order is a good first step toward
using data and evidence to under-
stand the reach of various training
programs. But we need more data
and more accountability to move the
needle on racial equity in job training.
While higher education and
training has served as the ultimate
upward social elevator, our current
approach isn’t lifting up all Ameri-
cans equally. To change course, we
need first to reverse decades of
underinvestment in job training;
then we also need to expand the
types of training we invest in; finally,
we need to use proven strategies to
advance equity in education, train-
ing and workforce development.Ơ Rachel Lipson is director of Har-
vard University’s Project on Workforce,
an interdisciplinary initiative focused
on policy and research at the intersec-
tion of education and labor markets.
Dr. Angela Jackson is a managing
partner at New Profit, where she leads
the venture philanthropy organiza-
tion’s investments around the “future
of work” and economic mobility. The
views in this article are the writers’ own.