President Obama’s latest budget would give $8 billion to community colleges to train workers in growing sectors of the economy. Yet it is unclear if such programs work, and the latest plan stresses the slow-growth green energy industry.
The Community College to Career Fund would award grants to the institutions to train students for careers in sectors such as clean energy, advanced technology, health care and transportation. The 2009 stimulus contained $2 billion for such grants, with the first $500 million awarded last September.
Community colleges often award vocational “certificates,” which indicate the completion of a discrete program of study. Limited research on these technical degrees suggest that longer study has a bigger payoff.
“For certificates of less than a year, I could not find evidence of consistent, strong labor market returns,” said Brian Bosworth, president of FutureWorks, a consulting firm. “Certificates of oneyear or more, yes, there is strong evidence of labor market returns. They are a good platform for people wanting to start a career and have long-term success.”
But it’s far less clear that federal grant programs to community colleges achieve such results.
“I do not believe that we have a strong enough database to say that (the president’s proposal) will work or how much it will pay off,” said Mark Schneider, vice president at the American Institutes for Research.
Schneider, who was commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics during the Bush administration, notes that the federal government does not yet have the data to examine the vocational programs nationally. But he adds that the Education Department should have “gainful employment” information regarding career-oriented programs in March.
The Education Department last year ordered colleges to show that they are preparing their students for “gainful employment” or risk losing federal student aid.
Other federal vocational training programs have had mixed results.
The Carl D. Perkins Vocational and Technical Education Act, passed in 1984, provided funds for high-school vocational training.
A report found some improvement in earnings for students taking part, but not any impact on their academic performance. Ultimately the report stated that the “path and pace of improvement are hampered by a lack of clarity over the program’s fundamental purpose and goal.”
The Workforce Investment Act of 1998 was supposed to provide low-income populations with greater access to community colleges and vocational training. But due to poor accountability, WIA actually limited access to training, according to an article in the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science.
Clean Energy Murky
Another problem may be the economic sectors that the new Obama program may target.
“It’s perfectly OK for the government to make sure that community colleges are doing this in high-demand areas,” said Bosworth, “Now can the federal government decide what is high demand for the whole country? Probably not, but I don’t think they’ll try.”
Education Secretary Arne Duncan said that the purpose of the fund was to “align job-training programs to better meet the needs of employers.”
Some touted sectors, such as health care, are growing rapidly.
Clean energy, however, is more murky. It’s been a high political priority for Obama going back to his presidential campaign. But despite billions of dollars in taxpayer funds for “green jobs,” it hasn’t been a high-growth industry.
“The size of the clean energy industry relative to other industries has been declining and not increasing over during the last decade,” said Jerry Taylor, a senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute.
He cites a 2011 study by the liberal Brookings Institution that found from 2003 to 2010 clean energy jobs grew at an average annual rate of 3.2% vs. 4.2% employment gains for the overall economy.
