Postsecondary Education

Congress last week passed and the president today signed legislation reauthorizing the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act, which provides important funding for programs focused on the academic, career, and technical skills development for high school and higher education students. Highlights of the reauthorization include new opportunities for partnerships between employers and educators to improve student preparation for in-demand jobs, measures that improve alignment with other workforce development programs, and increased program accountability.

The need for quality talent is so great that those who excel at unlearning, learning, and reinventing themselves have a higher probability of success for overcoming common biases including race, gender, age, and academic background. Finding employees and candidates who have the ability and initiative to constantly reinvent themselves is the goal of every company today, though it isn’t easy.

On Monday, the U.S. Chamber revealed a new art installation, “Building the Workforce of the Future,” showcasing some of America’s leading employers in workforce development efforts. These employers are: PNC, The Home Depot, IBM, Microsoft, ExxonMobil, the Greater Houston Partnership, Wyoming Machine, and Novelis. The display illustrates the work of these companies, across the four phases of the nation’s talent pipeline, to close the skills gap and cultivate a highly-trained workforce of tomorrow.