The Great Skills Race

Echoes of the “skills gap” debate
can be heard in every advanced economy today. Schools are struggling to keep up
with a rapidly changing labor market, students are stressed as the cost of
higher education grows, and employers are frustrated with graduates who seem to
lack the right mix of academic and practical skills. Over the past decade, the OECD’s
Directorate for Education and Skills has been examining
vocational education and training systems around the world and helping
governments update their policies. In late 2014, the Directorate published a report synthesizing their findings from more
than twenty country reviews, including the United States.

Meanwhile, here at home, concerns that our higher education
system is failing to keep up with the demands of a fast-paced labor market have
generated a host of new initiatives dedicated to strengthening the link between
education and economic opportunity. The Lumina
Foundation, which has long been engaged in efforts to increase
degree completion rates, recently expanded its focus to include a strategy for
building better credentials that
can facilitate transitions into and through the labor market. In response to
the alarming rise of long-term unemployment and persistent skills
gaps, the Federal Reserve
System has launched several workforce development initiatives
aimed at fostering stronger collaboration between employers, institutions of
higher education, and government agencies around regional economic growth
strategies. Opportunity@Work, a
new social enterprise, aims to “re-wire” the demand side of the labor market by
helping employers make collective training investments that will deepen their
talent pool while building more on-ramps to good jobs for the many people who
seek them.

Please join us for a lively discussion among leaders from each
of these organizations about what it takes to develop and sustain the skills
needed to reap the rewards of today’s technology-driven global economy. What
can the United States learn from how other countries? When it comes to aligning
learning and jobs, what works and what doesn’t? We will be discussing these
questions and more. We look forward to your participation.  

Follow the discussion online using #SkillsRace and following @NewAmericaEd.

Participants:

Byron Auguste 
Managing Director, Opportunity@Work
@Byron_Auguste  

Simon Field
Project Leader, Directorate for Education and Skills, OECD
@OECD_Edu  

Todd Greene 
Vice President, Federal Reserve System of Atlanta
@AtlantaFed  

Mary Alice McCarthy
Senior Policy Analyst, New America
@McCarthyEdWork

Holly Zanville
Strategy Director, Lumina Foundation
@LuminaFound