The Challenge of Creating a Skilled Workforce

Regional workforce development boards are
working with local school districts to help produce graduates with skills useful for tomorrow’s workplace
By Laura Bray

In 1950, 20 percent of jobs required a college degree, 20 percent required some post-secondary training, and 60 percent were learn-as-you-go jobs. How times have changed.

According to Diane Rath, chair of the Texas Workforce Commission, today 60 percent of jobs need one to two years of post-secondary education, and only 20 percent are learn-as-you-go jobs. What happened?

Rath says workforce development has become more critical since 21st-century employers now need more highly skilled and trained workers to help them compete in the competitive global environment.

“College has been oversold in this country,” maintains Bill Cox, president of San Antonio-based Cox Manufacturing. “The percentage of jobs requiring a college degree hasn’t changed in 50 years. The perception that ‘you have to go to college to be successful’ just isn’t true.”

According to the U.S. Council on Competitiveness, the number of jobs requiring technical training is growing at five times the rate of other occupations. And according to a recent study by the Conference Board, 40 percent of the nation’s workforce will be ready for retirement (although certainly not all of them will choose to do so) by 2010.

“I often ask employers to take a look at their business to see how many of their employees will be eligible for retirement within five to seven years,” says Alan Miller, executive director of Alamo Worksource. “Then I ask them, ‘Okay, where are their replacements?’ That’s when it hits them. Our job is to help employers fill those positions so they don’t have to relocate or import workers.”

Presently skill levels in the general population don’t match the jobs being created, he explains. “In a region like South Texas, which has been developing at a faster rate than the national average, workforce development is even more critical. All these young people need work opportunities, but they need the education and skills to fill those openings.”

Indeed, according to the 2000 U.S. Census, the McAllen region is the fastest-growing area in the nation. 

“Kids and parents need to recognize that it’s no longer sufficient to have a strong back and willing heart. You must learn to earn,” adds Rath. “The majority of jobs being created have a foundation of math and science. We must lay the groundwork for those skills in elementary school.”

“It’s important to everyone to have a skilled workforce,” says Miller. “Older people often ask me, ‘Why should I care? I don’t have kids in school.’ But then I remind them that Social Secur-ity contributions are based on wage earners, and if all of them are low wage earners, there’s not as much going into the pot.”

A San Antonio partnership between 18 area school districts, the Alamo Community College District, and local industry is beginning to address the need for a skilled workforce at the high school level.

Three academies — the Alamo Area Aerospace Academy, the Information Technology and Security Academy, and the Manufacturing Technology Academy — provide education and experience to high school students who spend half a day at their local high school campus and half a day at one of the academies.

“Lockheed has done a great job in hiring graduates from the Aerospace Academy,” notes Miller. While the programs have been successful in generating skilled workers, they’re small in scale. “Programs like these graduate a dozen here and a dozen there, but we need to prepare hundreds of workers. It’s not a critical mass yet.”

Ventures such as the ACE (Architecture, Construction, and Engineering) Mentorship Program, which serves students at John Jay and Roosevelt High Schools in San Antonio, work to increase the awareness of high school students about careers in those fields, and the training needed to obtain jobs. Mentoring programs help familiarize students with construction as a career choice.

In addition to its many technical training programs, Texas State Technical College has begun to reach out to high school students by opening its Early College High School in cooperation with the Harlingen Consolidated ISD.

The first class of 100 freshmen starts this fall; eventually, the school plans a total enrollment of 400. Upon graduation, students could have up to 60 college credit hours as well as an Associate of Applied Science degree. One huge bonus: Students pay no tuition for these courses.

“We have 200 youth in our summer employment program in Corpus Christi,” says Zeke Romo, assistant vice president for operations for SERCO, a company that provides youth programs and workforce development services in the coastal bend area. “These jobs help them develop real-world work experience, teamwork skills and discipline. We work with employers to find positions where the youth can continue their employment after the subsidized period is completed. Summer employment programs help keep kids in school, because they allow youth to earn money during the summer for the next school year.”

Local workforce development boards are working with school districts to stress the importance of producing graduates with skills useful to today’s workplace.

“We try to make sure that parents, teachers and students are aware of what makes up the local economy, what kind of jobs are available, and what skills those jobs require, so the students can make good choices in high school,” says Miller. “Educators must have a clear picture of what business demand looks like so they can build appropriate programs.”

But it’s tough to supply that skilled workforce with such a steep high school dropout rate. “In Texas, one third of youth drop out of high school before getting their diplomas,” says Rath. “In the Valley, 50 percent drop out.  We must do a much better job encouraging youth to complete high school and continue their education.”

Many students drop out for economic reasons, explains Romo. “We try to help them find jobs, then encourage them to complete their GEDs or obtain further training.” 

Most community colleges in South Texas offer a variety of workforce development programs or customized training for business and industry, both of which help industry find skilled workers.

For example, Del Mar College offers training in health care, computer -assisted design, welding technology and anti-terrorism response, among others. South Texas College sponsors a program called “The Partnership for Business and Industry Training.”  It offers training for businesses as well as for individuals who want to learn new skills or upgrade existing ones.

When Toyota announced its new manufacturing plant in San Antonio, officials at the Alamo Community College District began working with the company to ensure it had an adequate pool of skilled workers. At its Palo Alto campus, Toyota outfitted a laboratory for training skilled technicians.

The Texas Workforce Commission (TWC) plays a leading role in raising awareness of workforce issues. In the fall of 2004, TWC announced its “Industry Cluster Initiative” to find and develop trained workers in targeted industries. The initiative focuses on knowledge-based and technology-related areas with the greatest growth potential.  (That’s why traditional powerhouse Texas industries, such as tourism and hospitality, were not targeted.) 

The clusters TWC focuses on are advanced technologies and manufacturing, aerospace and defense, biotechnology and life sciences, information and computer technology, petroleum refining and chemical products, and energy.

Each cluster team includes representatives from employers in the industry who provide direction to local school districts and community colleges about business labor needs. Economic development officials also participate. One of the first tasks of each cluster team is to assess the current and prospective labor supply as well as the available education and training resources; after that comes recommendations about allocation of state resources.

For example, the manufacturing industry cluster has identified changing a commonly held misperception as a high priority. Most people still tend to think of manufacturing jobs as “hard labor.” In today’s plants, that’s simply not the case. Most jobs are technology-driven; low-skilled jobs have moved elsewhere in the world or become automated. One-year certificates or two-year associate degrees are required for most positions.

“One of our challenges is the overall perception of manufacturing as a low-skill, low-pay opportunity,” says Cox, a co-chair of the advanced technology and manufacturing industry cluster. “I visited with a promising high school student for an internship. When the counselor found out the internship was in a manufacturing facility, she told him, ‘No student of mine is going to work in a factory!’”

Cox says that the United States has done a poor job of promoting the skilled trades as a career opportunity. “We’ve been subsidized for years by European immigrants who have gone through apprenticeship programs. Europeans have a much higher regard for the skilled trades,” he says.
This cluster’s primary focus is two-fold. “First, we need to address the lack of awareness about career opportunities in manufacturing. Second, we need to work on the proper alignment of the educational system, so kids are staying in school and then coming out of school with the right skills. At our facility, we give a rudimentary math test to all applicants, and 30 percent of them fail it.”

Cox also encourages his industry to do a better job promoting manufacturing as a career. “High school students have told us that many colleges visited their campuses, but no manufacturers. So all of us [in the cluster] have a responsibility to raise awareness.”

Officials agree that funding is critical. “In Texas, 28 percent of the adult population has no high school diploma,” says Wanda Garza, executive officer for workforce development and external affairs for South Texas College. “But Texas only spends $6.8 million for adult education, as opposed to Florida, which spends $277 million. We’ve been flat-funded for 10 years. There’s a real impact there in lost wages.”

In fiscal year 2006, TWC awarded over $10 million in Skills Development Fund grants to public community or technical colleges, the Texas Engineering Extension Service, or community-based organizations to design and implement customized job training projects. According to TWC, these grants generated over 3,000 new jobs and upgraded the skills of over 10,000 workers in their existing jobs.

Grants in 2006 included $3.6 million to the Alamo Community College District to assist Toyota in training workers for itsce San Antonio plant and $268,481 to a partnership between South Texas College and a group of healthcare providers to provide training for registered nurses, medical assistants, and licensed vocational nurses. The Texas Legislature approved $25 million in grant funds for fiscal year 2007.

Officials in the McAllen, Texas, area have identified advanced manufacturing as a means of promoting economic prosperity in the region. Companies in this industry typically pay good wages which help alleviate the higher-than-average unemployment rates in the region, and in return the community provides a trained workforce in a location uniquely positioned on the transportation corridor between Canada and Mexico.

In the spring of 2007, South Texas College in McAllen was awarded a $5 million job-training grant from the Skills Development Fund. The long-term goal is to establish an infrastructure to support Rapid Response Manufacturing (RRM). Plans include development of a North American Research and Education World Premier Park and a Center for Rapid Response Manufacturing.

 “We want to increase our manufacturing base one percent each year for the next 10 years,” says Garza. “When the apparel industry left, we took a hit. So we’re focused as a region on bringing back those high-wage manufacturing jobs.”

RRM shortens time-to-market and focuses on enhancing product reliability.

“These days, customers want something customized and within 48 hours,” says Garza. “If we can reduce the time to market with our RRM capabilities, we can cut out our competitors in China and [other parts of] Asia.”

The entire region is involved with the project. The University of Texas Pan American is working with several other universities to promote RRM in their engineering schools. And at South Texas College, they’re partnering with five regional economic development agencies and the Rio Grande Valley College Alliance (STC, Texas State Technical College, Texas Southmost College, Texas State College and Laredo Community College).

Garza says that the initiative also plans to work with the K-12 educational system to seed those future manufacturing jobs. The Region I Educational Service Center obtained a T-STEM (Texas Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) grant to better align high school, post-secondary education and business needs.

“When the grant opportunity arose, we were ready and right where we needed to be,” she says. “In their first round, they awarded 13 grants, and we were ranked fourteenth. So we were able to prepare our grant application in only three weeks for the second round of funding.”

In addition to training new workers, Garza says that grant funds also will be used to train incumbent workers with new skills.  “We’re using a certification model and not just training for one industry. All of the competencies and training will be validated, so these workers will have portable skills. And employers can be confident that their employees are credentialed, based on industry standards.”

Workforce development officials offered several recommendations on how best to develop students, members of tomorrow’s workforce.

“First, educators must recognize that the majority of folks get an education to get a job,” says Rath. “The educational system must adapt to that reality to make sure they’re producing a sellable product that meets the needs of employers.

“Second, employers must be aggressive in demanding from local schools the products they need. Employers need to make sure that students and teachers see the relevance of the coursework. [They also] should provide opportunities for teachers to be onsite in the summer, offer mentoring to teachers and students, volunteer their professionals in schools to teach math and science, and provide internships.”

A multi-level collaboration plan is critical to future workforce success, she contends. “Texas has led the nation in job creation for the past two years. Workforce development, schools, and business must all be in partnership in order for our economy to continue to succeed.”

Miller is on the same page, but places the onus on the youth themselves to stay motivated.

“We must encourage our young people to stay in school and get their high school diplomas and develop a sound set of basic and workplace skills,” he says. “Without that, you have a large unskilled, population with a bleak economic future. They won’t have the skills to partake in the economic prosperity our region is enjoying.” 

Laura Bray is a San Antonio-based freelance writer.