Emily Stover DeRocco Speech
National Associations of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges
June 08, 2006
Baltimore, MD
Thank you, Craig, it is a pleasure to be here this afternoon with so many distinguished members of our university system. As Craig knows, I had the privilege of attending the finest state university and land-grant institution in the country and I strongly believe in the potential that Penn State and the lesser colleges and universities in the room have to offer.
On a more serious note, the United States used to be the unquestioned leader in all aspects of the world economy. Now we have competitors all around us, who are vying to do things faster, better, cheaper than before. Our own successes - the airplane, the computer, the internet - now make it easier for others to compete with us. We've made the world a smaller place, and in so doing have created global competitors we never before had to worry about.
We're not going to respond to this turn of events by throwing up our hands and bemoaning our fate. We're not going to wring our hands and wish for the low-skill jobs we've lost. No, we are going to do what America does best: we're going to innovate, and invent, and transform the world all over again. Where will we begin? With education. You know all too well that it's hard to overstate the critical role a quality education plays in creating growth and prosperity. One-third of productivity growth in the US between 1950 and 1993 was due to increased levels of education. And it is a simple fact that countries whose students achieve high scores in math and science reap the rewards in terms of faster economic growth.
America has long had the best educated workforce in the world. Yet in recent years our nation as been lagging behind other advanced countries in math and science. We can't let our competitive advantage in education slip away. That's why the President's American Competitiveness agenda includes significant new funding to strengthen math and science education in our elementary and secondary schools, and to bring people who have real-world experience in mathematical and scientific fields into the classroom.
But we can't stop there. 90 percent of the fastest growing jobs in our economy require a post-secondary education. That's a sea change, in just a few years. Not that long ago, a high school diploma virtually guaranteed a job good enough to finance a home, a family, a retirement. That's just not the case anymore. Nearly two-thirds of all jobs created will require a post-secondary education.
We have a lot of catching up to do. Not only do we have to find ways to encourage high school graduates to continue their educations, we also have to find ways to help older workers who have been displaced to learn new skills and perhaps to attain the college degree they didn't get when they were younger, so they can find jobs in the sectors of the economy that are growing.
Training adults and at risk youth for their first, next and better job has traditionally been the mission of my agency, the Employment & Training Administration. But that mission has become clouded by a system that now exists to perpetuate itself.
This system was created back in 1933 as one of the many New Deal programs, and, in too many areas, it still reflects its roots as a social services program. For example, the process of helping an individual is still more important than the results of our services. This is evident from the language of the law, which describes in painstaking detail how and in what order services should be delivered.
This situation leads rather naturally to a system where employers are regarded merely as the end of the process rather than customers or even partners. This mentality must be overcome if the public's investment in talent development has any chance of showing a positive return.
The Administration has moved to reform the system by creating a series of initiatives designed to recognize the realities of the 21st century economy and to engage both employers and education institutions at all levels. The first is the High Growth Job Training Initiative. By partnering with employers and engaging educational institutions, the High Growth Initiative hopes to demonstrate to our system how to put employers back in charge of talent development.
Through the process of engaging employers, it became clear that many face the same challenge; they are unable to find the workers they need to fill their available jobs. It isn't that there are not people looking for work, but rather that those people do not possess the skills that are needed in today's workplace.
That is why a cornerstone of the High Growth Job Training Initiative is to engage educational institutions. Individuals must now learn more specialized skills to work in any industry and they must do so prior to employment because many traditional employer-based training programs are a thing of the past.
