Athena Alliance

Athena Alliance: "Post Secondary Education and Training

Samuel Leiken, senior policy consultant to the Council for Adult and Experiential Learning (CAEL)

Three major trends are converging on our education and training systems.
The first is demographic changes that include:
an aging workforce
� in 1978 the median age was 34.8 years, in 1998 it was 38.7 years;
a slowing of labor force growth
� peaking in the 70s at 2.6% and declining in the 90s to 1.2%;
and, finally,
the baby boom retirement which is costing the economy skilled workers at all levels.

According to Anthony Carnevale of the Educational Testing Service, if current trends continue, there will be a net deficit of about 12 million workers with at least some college by 2020.

Second is an increased demand for technologically skilled employees as technology spreads into all endeavors. This diffusion means that IT literacy will become as critical to employability as basic literacy is now. The ephemeral nature of technology skills will engender a growing demand for virtually all workers to regularly refresh their skills.

Last but not least is globalization, which allows business to utilize low-skilled, low-wage workers worldwide. As a result, the old road of unskilled jobs as steppingstones to upward mobility is closed. At the same time, competitiveness will be determined by the ability to produce high added value, which requires better-skilled workers.

The implications of these trends include workforce churning, whereby people will have many employers and multiple careers, and a growing contingent workforce. More and more people will be changing jobs and more and more will be on their own. The pending labor shortage will put low-skilled workers in higher demand, making their training more urgent. In addition, incumbent workers will be more important to the economy and will require continuous upgrading of skills"