Alert! A jobs program that actually leads to jobs!

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Monday March 19, 2007 · 10:13 AM PDT

2007/03/19 · 10:13

The New York Times runs an editorial today that makes a very important argument: government programs that aim to funnel people into jobs need to include training that will actually make people employable, and hopefully employable in the long term.

Sounds simple. Jobs programs should train people for jobs. Better still: jobs programs should train people for jobs that are in demand.

But somewhere along the way this straightforward logic is abandoned.

"Too often," the editorialsays, "the government treats such [job training programs] like arbitrary hoops for the unemployed to jump through if they expect to receive unemployment benefits." What results is a cyclical trap, people going through job programs without gaining any new training, and thus unable to land the jobs that will allow them to leave poverty and unemployment benefits behind. Instead, these people are left jumping through hoops.

SarahDMI

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Thursday February 15, 2007 · 1:15 PM PST

2007/02/15 · 13:15

Posted on behalf of DMI Fellow Maureen Lane.

Tuesday,the New York Times reportedthat the University of Phoenix has become the nation's largest private university with over 300,000 students, and that it has done so "by delivering high profits to investors and a solid, albeit low-overhead, education to mid-career workers seeking college degrees."

Clearly, the University of Phoenix is a turning a profit. What's problematic about this is that the marketing of degrees and certificates can snare students into costly loans and subsume the mission of higher learning to commercial interests.

When I came to Hunter College 10 years ago, I was over forty years old. I did not know about college or financing it. I was fortunate to attend Hunter College of the City University of New York and pursue a liberal arts bachelors' degree. A good many other low-income students like me were enticed by advertising from for-profit universities that pushed many of my friends to borrow to the limit the government is willing to subsidize in order to finance their degrees.

SarahDMI

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Friday August 11, 2006 · 8:52 AM PDT

2006/08/11 · 08:52

POSTED ON BEHALF OF AMY TRAUB, ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR OF RESEARCH AT THE DRUM MAJOR INSTITUTE FOR PUBLIC POLICY

A new study by the highly-regarded Pew Hispanic Center unearths yet more evidence that immigrant workers do not take jobs from Americans. Analyzing employment patterns in all 50 states and the District of Columbia from 1990 to 2000 and 2000 to 2004, the study finds no consistent association between the growth of the immigrant population and the employment prospects of native workers, even those with a similar age and educational profile to the arriving immigrants.

So should we all just sit back and stop worrying about immigration policy? Is the status quo, in which millions of undocumented workers live without authorization (or rights) in the United States and labor in substandard jobs, actually a beneficial, or at least benign situation for U.S. citizens?

Not quite.
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Alert! A jobs program that actually leads to jobs!

Predatory Learning?

Immigrants Not "Stealing" Americans' Jobs -- But Don't Relax Yet