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In both Canada and the United States, immigrants constitute a disproportionately large share of the supply of university-educated labour trained in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields. This article examines the Canada-U.S. differences in the occupational skill utilization and earnings of STEM-educated immigrant workers. Using data from the 2016 Census for Canada and the combined 2015 to 2017 American Community Survey, this analysis focuses on immigrants with a university degree in a STEM field who were aged 25 to 64 and arrived as adults. Over one-half of STEM-educated immigrant workers in both countries held non-STEM jobs. In Canada, only about 20% of these immigrants with non-STEM jobs worked in occupations that required a university education, compared with 48% in the United States. There was a large earnings gap between STEM-educated immigrants and native-born workers in Canada, even after adjusting for sociodemographic differences, while no corresponding earnings gap existed in the United States. The earnings gap in Canada was particularly large for STEM-educated immigrants holding non-STEM jobs. Possible explanations for these results are discussed.

This study compares the differences in the mismatch between the education and occupations of immigrants in Canada and the United States, operationalized by over-education. It further explores how the cross-country differences may be related to the supply of and demand for university-educated immigrants and the way they are selected. Using comparable data and three measures of over-education, this study found that university-educated recent immigrants in Canada were much more likely to be overeducated than their U.S. peers. The over-education rate gap between recent immigrants and the native-born was much more pronounced in Canada than in the United States. In addition, while labour market demand was associated with a lower level of over-education in both countries, a greater supply of university-educated recent immigrants was positively associated with a likelihood of over-education among recent immigrants in Canada, but not in the United States. Furthermore, in Canada, the over-education rate was significantly lower among immigrants who were admitted through some form of employer selection (e.g., immigrants who worked in skilled jobs in Canada before immigration) than those who were admitted directly from abroad. Overall, this study provides insight into how the immigration system interacts with broader aspects of the labour market to shape the labour market outcomes of immigrants.

Stagnant earnings and growing inequality in the US labor market reflect both a slowdown in the growth of worker skills and the growing matching of good-paying jobs to skilled workers. Improving the ties between colleges, workforce institutions, and employers would help more workers gain the needed skills. Evaluation evidence shows that training programs linked to employers and good-paying jobs are often cost-effective. Helping more states develop such programs and systems would help raise worker earnings and reduce inequality. (Contains 1 table and 41 endnotes.)

Teacher selection, retention, and evaluation form a contentious policy knot. This paper: (1) reviews the recent history of teacher labor markets; (2) describes the teacher selection, preparation and retention policies of three countries that successfully reformed their systems; (3) proposes a different theoretical guide; and (4) reviews key teacher survey data and a large, current experiment in teacher evaluation. Based on this evidence, it then proposes a more promising experiment in teacher selection, preparation, and assignment. This proposed experiment offers an opportunity to overcome some cultural and institutional character flaws. It would systematically select, train, and place our most capable teachers with our highest-need children and families. It deliberately limits turnover and limits costs in several ways.

In this paper the authors identified the size of America's home market as a crucial component of its historical comparative advantage. The authors showed that over the last four decades nearly 60 percent of per capita U.S. growth has been dependent upon growth in the domestic consumption. Thus, a comprehensive demand side strategy also must target the domestic consumers U.S. businesses know best. On the supply side, they asked themselves what education and skills matter for individual and national economic success in the global economy? The authors' research demonstrated that education matters for growth and college matters the most. Boosting college completion rates by just 10 percent would inject $125 billion into the economy over the long run. Education credentials often serve as a signaling devise that employers use to gauge what potential hires might know and be able to do on the job. Employers are really interested in the knowledge, skills and abilities people bring to the workplace, not just their education credentials. The authors examined a new data set to test this hypothesis and found preliminary evidence to support it. The authors showed that the greater the level of skill required of occupations, the higher the education levels of job incumbents. Secondly, they found that the greater the level of skill required of occupations, the greater the average earnings for workers in those occupations, after holding constant the level of education. Consequently, not only is there a clear payoff to education, there also is an independent payoff to higher skills. And that appears true not only for competencies like innovation, critical thinking, and complex problem solving, but also for basic skills and social skills that are important in interacting with colleagues and customers. They also found that these competencies were useful in estimating which jobs are most vulnerable to being offshored overseas. In conclusion, they recognize that globalization is neither automatically beneficial nor universally destructive. Neither their analysis nor history offer assurances, though their work does suggest some ways forward. Therefore, they should identify strategies that will enable America to seize opportunities presented by globalization while minimizing its negative effects on communities, workers, and their families. Average Earnings by Education of Workers and the Competency Level Occupations Require are appended. (Contains 14 figures, 8 tables and 57 endnotes.) [This paper was written with Zamira Simkins.]

Within the context of the school finance literature, the concepts of equity and adequacy raise a number of complex definitional and pragmatic issues. The purpose of this paper is to clarify those issues and to use those concepts to evaluate the recent policy proposal called Weighted Student Funding (WSF). Though WSF contains some equity-enhancing elements, it is likely to fall short of its equity goals because the weights are likely to be inappropriate and the approach fails to take full account of the concentrations of challenging-to-educate students and their effects on the distribution of teachers. In addition, the WSF proposal can be faulted for paying no attention to adequacy, potentially stigmatizing individual students, and placing so much focus on individual schools. A more complete evaluation of WSF would require a broader institutional perspective that extends beyond the equity and adequacy considerations of this article. (Contains 8 footnotes.)

Employment in nursing homes is projected to increase from 583,000 in 1973 to 1,036,000 in 1985. Substantially more workers are expected to be employed in nearly all occupations. The projected growth of 78% is faster than that expected in any segment of the health industry. Most nursing home employees are service workers. Two of these occupational classifications, practical nurses and nursing aides, orderlies, and attendants, accounted for over half of total employment in 1973. For many occupations in nursing homes, annual openings resulting from the need to replace workers who leave the labor force are expected to be more significant than those resulting from employment growth. An analysis of employment growth and the supply-demand situation for key occupations in the nursing home industry indicated that nursing homes should be able to meet their manpower needs provided that wages, benefits, hours, etc., will be competitive in the job market. An appendix describes the methods used by the Bureau of Labor Statistics to project manpower requirements in key nursing home occupations based on its program for developing projections for the entire economy's industrial and occupational structure. (JT)

The dimensions and determinants of positional inequality in the American occupational structure are examined. Using data from the 1972-1973 Quality of Employment Survey, dimensions of occupational differentiation with multiple discriminant analysis are constructed and a causal model is developed to represent the interrelationships of those dimensions. It is found that the differentiation of intrinsic occupational rewards is attributable largely to the educational and task requirements of occupations, while union, supervisory, and organizational resources available to occupational groupings are the strongest determinants of the differentiation of extrinsic rewards. Implications of these findings for functional and conflict theories of inequality in occupational rewards are discussed. (Author/HD)

On average, unemployed U.S. citizens remain jobless for much less time than their European counterparts do. The relatively low level of unemployment in the United States is attributable to two factors: a social protection system that offers far less protection than those in Western Europe do and a broad range of job openings. The fact that employment growth in the United States has far exceeded that in Germany cannot be explained by superior economic growth. The recent employment growth in the United States has not resulted in an increase in national income; rather, the national income is being divided among more people. Average wages have stagnated, and the wage differential between the upper and lower income brackets has increased. Most growth in employment in the United States has been concentrated in the services sector, where income is often either low or well above average. Policymakers seeking to stimulate employment in Germany must not ignore the high costs of the recent positive employment trend in the United States: increasing wage disparities, social inequality, and high levels of poverty. General wage restraint, redistribution and greater flexibility of working hours, and (possibly) a negative income tax for low earners can also stimulate employment. (Contains 71 references.) (MN)

This study, commissioned by the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF), is designed to review current evidence on the most effective ways in which employers can support schools to improve pupil educational and economic outcomes. It is a study in three parts. It aims, first, to conceptualise employer engagement in education as a strategic tool, developing a new typology to make sense of it, second, to review high quality research literature through the lens of the new typology, and, finally, to discuss the practical implications of the study for policy-makers and practitioners. The paper, moreover, seeks to provide an evidenced overview of promising approaches and programmes to support schools intending to undertake activities with employers. The report assesses the prospective impacts of employer engagement in terms of both educational and economic outcomes, focusing on pupils in both primary and secondary education. Specifically, the study: (1) identifies the different types of employer engagement in terms of what is intended by policymakers and users and the related evidenced outcomes; (2) identifies areas and interventions of promise, highlighting where further research is needed; and (3) identifies key features of successful practice. [This report was co-published by Education and Employers.]

In the United States, we tend to assume that young people should become educated and then go to work, as though the two were entirely separate stages of life. This dichotomy blinds us to the fact that work itself can be a powerful means of education-giving students opportunities to apply academic subject matter to real-world problems, and pushing adolescents to grow up and gain other deeper learning skills such as following difficult assignments through to completion, working in teams, solving unscripted problems, and communicating effectively with colleagues of differing ages and backgrounds. In the paper "Let's Get Real: Deeper Learning and the Power of the Workplace," author Nancy Hoffman argues that the current discussion about deeper learning in the nation's high schools ought to acknowledge that career readiness isn't just an outcome of the K-12 curriculum but a process- often overlapping with academic studies-through which young people learn deeply and prepare for working life. Hoffman makes the case that current federal, state, and local policies could be updated to incentivize and enable work-based learning opportunities and alignment between expectations for success in education and success in the workplace. Greatly diminished youth employment opportunities in today's labor market make work-based learning opportunities connected to educational pathways more critical than ever. Hoffman contends that there are models of high-quality work-related education in many states, some promoted through national initiatives and networks, others impressive "one off" schools and programs, as well as vocational or career and technical education, or CTE, schools and centers. The problem is that such excellent programs and schools currently serve only a relatively small number of students. And the question is: can these excellent models be further scaled up and their approaches refined and adapted in our many comprehensive high schools? Can the U.S. develop a system that promotes career education? Hoffman argues that there are several policy opportunities that could make this goal a reality. [This policy bulletin is based on a report published by Students at the Center, an initiative of Jobs for the Future. For the full report, see ED561286; for the executive summary, see ED561289.]

In the United States, we tend to assume that young people should become educated and then go to work, as though the two were entirely separate stages of life. This dichotomy blinds us to the fact that work itself can be a powerful means of education. Indeed, the workplace is where many young people become most engaged in learning high-level skills and content, insofar as work gives them opportunities to apply academic subject matter to real-world problems. The workplace is an excellent place for young people to develop the range of academic, interpersonal, and intrapersonal capacities that are referred to, collectively, as "deeper learning." This paper argues that the current discussion about deeper learning in the nation's high schools ought to be reframed, in order to acknowledge that career readiness isn't just an outcome of the K-12 curriculum but a process--often overlapping with academic studies--through which young people learn deeply and prepare for working life. In order to mature, young people need to participate in activities that take them out of their comfort zones, challenge them, place them among adult workers in authentic settings, and ask them to perform. To scale up existing opportunities for work-based deeper learning, federal and state policies should incentivize: (1) Employers to take young people into workplaces for meaningful learning experiences; (2) Educators to implement work-based experiences as a means of learning deeply; and (3) Intermediary organizations to translate between educators and employers and provide the infrastructure that makes collaboration possible. These approaches will require careful attention to principles of educational quality, with an emphasis on deeper learning. [This report was produced as a collaborative effort with Students at the Center, a Jobs for the Future initiative. For the full report, see ED561286; for the policy bulletin, see ED561285]

For young people in the United States, whatever their backgrounds, one of the essential purposes of schooling should be to help them develop the knowledge, skills, and competence needed to search for and obtain work that they find at least reasonably satisfying. Our present educational system does precious little to introduce young people to the working world or to prepare them for just how large a role work is likely to play in the rest of their lives. While the phrase "college and career readiness" appears seemingly everywhere in the current discourse about the goals of high school, the "career readiness" part often seems like an afterthought, tacked on as if to suggest that if students pursue an academic, college-prep course of study--the real priority of most recent school reforms--they will also, as a side benefit, have better job prospects. This lack of attention to career preparation only serves to intensify the class divide, leaving the most privileged students to anticipate and prepare for professional careers like those of their parents, while students from low-income families continue to think of work mainly as a way to survive. This paper argues that the current discussion about deeper learning in the nation's high schools ought to be reframed in order to acknowledge that career readiness isn't just an outcome of deeper learning; rather, career readiness is better defined as a process through which young people learn deeply and become prepared for the American version of working life. Hoffman begins by reviewing where the United States now stands with regard to youth experience in the labor market. She turns to a more hopeful subject when she discusses the psychological benefits of learning through a combination of school- and work-based activities. She continues with a description of an existing education system that relies on partnerships between employers, unions, a central government, and educators to make work a source of deeper learning that meets both the developmental needs of young people and the economic need for a steady supply of well-trained talent. She then reviews some promising initiatives that aim to promote high-quality, work-based learning for a wide range of U.S. students. [This report was produced as a collaborative effort with Students at the Center, a Jobs for the Future initiative. For the executive summary, see ED561289; for the policy bulletin, see ED561285.]

Increasing numbers of recent college graduates are ending up in relatively low-skilled jobs that, historically, have gone to those with lower levels of educational attainment. This study examines this phenomenon in some detail, concluding: (1) About 48 percent of employed U.S. college graduates are in jobs that the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) suggests requires less than a four-year college education; (2) The proportion of overeducated workers in occupations appears to have grown substantially; in 1970, fewer than one percent of taxi drivers and two percent of firefighters had college degrees, while now more than 15 percent do in both jobs; (3) About five million college graduates are in jobs the BLS says require less than a high-school education; (4) Comparing average college and high-school earnings is highly misleading as a guide for vocational success, given high college-dropout rates and the fact that overproduction of college graduates lowers recent graduate earnings relative to those graduating earlier; (5) Not all colleges are equal: Typical graduates of elite private schools make more than graduates of flagship state universities, but those graduates do much better than those attending relatively non-selective institutions; (6) Not all majors are equal: Engineering and economics graduates, for example, typically earn almost double what social work and education graduates receive by mid-career; (7) Past and projected future growth in college enrollments and the number of graduates exceeds the actual or projected growth in high-skilled jobs, explaining the development of the underemployment problem and its probable worsening in future years; and (8) Rising college costs and perceived declines in economic benefits may well lead to declining enrollments and market share for traditional schools and the development of new methods of certifying occupation competence. (Contains 12 figures, 4 tables, and 65 notes.) [This paper was written with the assistance of Anthony Hennen, Harrison Cummins, Daniel Garrett, Joseph Hartge, and Nicholas Wetzel.]

Chicago has a dynamic history of embracing change, evolving from an agricultural and commercial hub to the steel powerhouse that would undergird America's industrial revolution. The "City of Big Shoulders" now bears a sizeable burden, one that again requires it to embrace change. The metro area must shift to an economy built on knowledge industries and high-tech firms, relying on a dramatically shifting labor force that lacks the versatile skills demanded by emerging industries. Latinos were three of every five new entrants to the region's labor force over the past decade. Most have roots in Chicago, but many remain poorly educated. If current trends continue, many of the younger generation are bound for low-paying, semi-skilled jobs at best, entering the workforce with neither the human capital nor cultural connections that will boost the local economy's productivity or attract cutting-edge firms. Eager Latino workers are flooding a metro labor force that may reflect stagnant productivity and fail to provide the upward mobility. This threatens to dampen Chicago's economic vitality. This brief presents new research that illustrates how both Mexican immigrants and many of their US-born counterparts--Latinos of Mexican origin--are overrepresented in low-skilled, low-pay manufacturing, food service, and construction industries. Given the grim economic implications of a regional economy built on the shoulders of a low-skilled workforce, the brief calls for investment in education--particularly early childhood education--as a critical means to build a well-equipped, competitive workforce. (Contains 5 charts and 28 endnotes.) [Based on a technical paper written by John Koval.]

Much of the effort to increase postsecondary attainment in the US has focused on increasing the number of students who are college ready, bolstering support for students who successfully access college, and equipping adults who seek new skills with pathways to quality degrees and credentials with labor market value. In this context, it is noteworthy that a sizeable population of adults, young and old, are already eligible to receive a postsecondary degree; yet, for a variety of reasons, many have left college without receiving it. Many others are a semester or less from satisfying their institution's degree requirements. These students have invested substantial resources--tangible and intangible--in seeking a college credential, either at the associate's or bachelor's levels, but have left within striking distance of that degree. The Institute for Higher Education Policy (IHEP) refers to this phenomenon as "near completion". Leveraging its independent voice in higher education, IHEP seeks to elevate the issue of near completion and to outline ways in which institutions serving these students--as well as policymakers, researchers, and other education stakeholders--can reengage and graduate this population. This background paper for the National Summit on Near Completion discusses the scope and associated factors of near completion, as well as some initial efforts that may be promising in transforming near completion into degree attainment. The summit itself provides a forum for more in-depth discussions that can help shape a national agenda around the near-completion population. (Contains 8 footnotes.)

The paper addresses a model of entrepreneurial university embraced by American business schools as perceived by a Romanian Fulbright scholar. The purpose of this study was to highlight the practices pursued by the US entrepreneurial universities in their journey towards increasing performance excellence and strengthening the prestige of the university. The study builds upon two quality management principles--continuous improvement and customer focus-- materialized, in the frame of American entrepreneurial universities, in the wide-spreading and strengthening of partnerships with all parties interested in the university's educational process. Results indicate that the entrepreneurial model of university is concerned with the quality of its "products", specifically students' competencies and qualifications, but also with the results and performances obtained both scientifically and technologically, and on the labor market. Results show that the development of the entrepreneurial university model should be supported by direct involvement and total commitment of the entire teaching staff, in partnership with the business environment, other educational institutions, governmental and non-governmental organizations, and society as a whole. To help consolidating and expanding the concept of entrepreneurial university, schools should be concerned with assessing themselves against three criteria: the teaching and learning activity; the institutional culture and its impact upon society; and the orientation towards market/ business environment.

This paper extends previous numerical results of the Flexible Equal Employment Opportunity (FEEO) model, a goal programing model (developed by A. Charnes, W. W. Cooper, K. A. Lewis, and R. J. Niehaus) consisting of Markoff transition elements imbedded in a goal programing framework with priorities that allow for element alteration to provide the organizational flexibility (in policies of promotion, recruitment, and training) necessary to achieve long-range equal employment opportunity (EEO) goals while still preserving the high priority of meeting the shorter range day-to-day operating goals of the organization. In the first section of the paper EEO goal-setting procedures are documented. Focus is on demographic considerations (making goals realistic from the labor market point of view) and upward mobility (consideration of affirmative action policies for the internal staff). A second section provides a numerical example with actual Navy data of the extended version of the model through which internal promotion and upward mobility considerations can be evaluated explicitly. A discussion is then provided of the implementation and continuing research possibilities. (JT)