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. The Provision of Incentives in Firms. Journal ofEconomic Literature 37(1): 7 63.Spaulding, Shayne.2001.Performance-Based Contracting under the JobTraining Partnership Act.Master s Thesis, Johns Hopkins University, Bal-timore, MD.U.S.Department of Labor (USDOL).2000a. Core and Customer SatisfactionPerformance Measures for the Workforce Investment System. Trainingand Employment Guidance Letter No.7-99.Washington, DC: Employ-ment and Training Administration.  .2000b. Negotiating Performance Goals; and Incentives and Sanc-tions Process under Title I of the Workforce Investment Act. Training andEmployment Guidance Letter No.8-99.Washington, DC: Employmentand Training Administration.  .2002.Summary Report on WIA Implementation.Washington, DC:Employment and Training Administration.West, Thomas, and Gerard Hildebrand.1997. Federal-State Relations. InUnemployment Insurance in the United States, Christopher J.O Leary andStephen Wandner, eds.Kalamazoo, MI: W.E.Upjohn Institute for Employ-ment Research, pp.545 598.Zornitsky, Jeffrey, Mary Rubin, Stephen Bell, and William Martin.1988.Establishing a Performance Management System for Targeted Welfare Pro-grams.National Commission for Employment Policy Research Report 88-14.Washington, DC: National Commission for Employment Policy.Oleary training.book Page 56 Friday, September 17, 2004 8:56 AMOleary training.book Page 57 Friday, September 17, 2004 8:56 AM3The Effectiveness of PubliclyFinanced Training inthe United StatesImplications for WIA and Related ProgramsChristopher T.KingThe principal focus of this chapter is publicly financed, subbacca-laureate education and training in the United States.I first discuss thecontext within which training is provided in the United States.I thenexamine the nature of publicly financed training and review the evi-dence on the effectiveness of various types of training for key targetpopulations of interest, emphasizing the results from experimentalevaluations.I conclude with a series of observations, implications, andlessons for U.S.training policies and programs, with emphasis on theWorkforce Investment Act (WIA) of 1998 that is expected to be reau-thorized by Congress.TRAINING IN CONTEXTTraining comes in many different shapes and forms and is providedin many different ways.Gary Becker (1975) made the important dis-tinction between general and firm-specific training.General trainingprovides the trainee with skills that apply to many employers in thelabor market, while specific training mainly offers skills that havevalue within a given firm or for a given employer.The presumption isthat individuals (or government) should finance more of the former,while employers should support more of the latter, since they are itsprincipal beneficiaries.57Oleary training.book Page 58 Friday, September 17, 2004 8:56 AM58 KingMany of the offerings at educational institutions, especially com-munity and technical colleges, can be considered training, althoughmuch of it may be intended for other purposes.The late GeorgeKozmetsky, founder and chair emeritus of the University of Texas atAustin s IC2 Institute, made the further distinction between educationas knowledge for understanding and training as knowledge for value inthe market.We can categorize training by its primary objective, as follows:" Qualifying training that is intended to prepare and qualify indi-viduals for jobs." Skills maintenance and upgrading training that is intended tomaintain or improve workers performance on the job, assistthem in building new skills for retention and career advancement,and generally enhance their earnings potential in existing or newjobs.Human capital investment in the United States tends to be focused dis-proportionately on qualifying training initial preparation for work(Ganzglass et al.2000).On a macro level, investing in training can alsobe viewed as part of a larger strategy to bolster national economic com-petitiveness (see, for example, Commission on the Skills of the Ameri-can Workforce 1990; Marshall and Tucker 1992; Secretary of Labor sCommission on Workforce Quality and Labor Market Efficiency1989).Training can take many different forms.It can be formal andhighly structured.Alternatively, it can be informal and very unstruc-tured, occurring as part of the regular ongoing workplace processes.Institutional or classroom training is one of the more typical mecha-nisms for providing formal training and is often contrasted with on-the-job training (OJT), under which employers may receive a public sub-sidy to offset the costs of providing structured training to workers.OJTis a relatively structured form of learning by doing.In the early days ofmanpower training, public offerings under the Manpower Demonstra-tion and Training Act of 1962 supported institutional training and OJT,as well as training that combined them in varying mixes.Apprentice-ship training is one of the older and more intense forms of trainingunder which workers receive both formal and informal training in con-junction with unions.In the past few decades, there has been growingOleary training.book Page 59 Friday, September 17, 2004 8:56 AMThe Effectiveness of Publicly Financed Training in the United States 59emphasis on what is referred to as customized training, publiclyfinanced training designed and offered in close collaboration with andfor employers (Isbell, Trutko, and Barnow 2000).We can also classify training by skill level.In the 1990s, trainingbegan to focus more on basic skills e.g., reading, math, teamwork,learning-to-learn as well as occupational skills.This trend towardbasic skills training was in response to growing recognition thatemployers were seeking workers who were ready to be trained more sothan workers with particular skill sets (Secretary of Labor s Commis-sion on Achieving Necessary Skills 1990).And, workers secure training from many sources.Surveys ofemployers and employees indicate that employers expend considerabletime and resources on training, both formal and informal, for theirworkers (Frazis et al.1998).In fact, the amount of training provided byemployers dwarfs that provided with public support: expenditures ontraining by employers, public and private, may approach $80 billion ormore annually by some estimates (American Society for Training andDevelopment 2002).According to the recent review by Lerman, McK-ernan, and Riegg (2004), employer-provided training has been increas-ing in all of the surveys that measure such activity [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]