Work Force Needs To Keep Learning, And So Do Colleges

Forget the old saw that you need a college degree to get ahead.

Now workers need to keep going back to school just to hold their own. And according to a Washington State University survey to be released today, it’s time the nation’s four-year colleges start answering the call.

Four out of five American workers responding to the survey said they need more education to be successful at their jobs. They want not only classes but conferences, workshops, televised courses and other noncredit classes that give them information as they need it.

But most colleges and universities are simply “doing more of the same,” offering on-campus, semester-long classes for 18- to 22-year-old undergraduates, the report says.

The $77,000 study, conducted by WSU’s Social and Economic Sciences Research Center, has major implications for the American work force as it comes to grips with a so-called knowledge society built on high-speed communications, computers and ever-changing technology.

“The more that technology takes hold in private agencies and firms, the more pressure on people to keep up with that technology to stay productive,” said Priscilla Salant, a senior research associate at the SESRC and an author of the study.

“Getting educated once is not enough in the kind of knowledge society we’re in,” said Don Dillman, another study author and director of the SESRC.

The study also has serious implications for four-year colleges and universities, said Salant.

“Higher education is really being pressured to do more with less and be more efficient in teaching,” she said. “Many legislatures are asking them to focus just on teaching undergraduates. If they do, they are cutting themselves off from an enormous opportunity to provide education to people when they need it.”

The 64-page report places the issue of lifelong learning in the context of a society shifting from organized, well-paid industrial workers to workers who need both manual skills and up-to-date theoretical knowledge.

“They require a different approach to work and a different mind-set,” the report says, quoting management analyst Peter Drucker. “Above all, they require a habit of continuous learning.”

Salant said she expected to hear workers say as much when the SESRC began its work, but in nowhere near the numbers the study produced. The cry for continuous learning cut across the board, from auto mechanics facing new electronic equipment to construction people computerizing their inventories.

Nine out of 10 young adults - those 30 years old or younger - said additional training or education is important for work success. But nearly three out of five adults between 50 and 64 said it was important to them too.

By the same token, workers with lower incomes and less education valued continuous learning as much as those with more advanced degrees and higher incomes.

But workers with less education and lower incomes are less likely to receive extra education and run the risk of being left behind, the report said. Higher-paid workers also are more likely to be encouraged by their employers to get extra training or education, the report said.

Roughly half of the respondents said it is “very important” that colleges and universities teach older, returning students. Given their druthers, they said they also would provide more tax money for off-campus education and technical help than for research.

Bob Cooper, president of the Spokane-area Economic Development Council, said area industries complain frequently about an inadequately prepared work force and the cost of continually upgrading workers’ skills.

“They’re frustrated and they want more partnerships with the colleges,” he said. “It appears that the community colleges are usually the ones that are stepping up to the plate.”

While the report is a wake-up call for four-year institutions, WSU officials were not about to be embarrassed by its findings. WSU President Sam Smith heads the Commission on Information Technologies for the National Association of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges, which offered comments and suggestions for the survey.

While Smith was publicizing the report in Washington, D.C., WSU Provost Tom George said the school is responding to the changing work force’s needs in several ways. The school has televised classes on its Washington Higher Education Telecommunication System, the Extended Degree program of individual study, and the branch campuses, which are slated to have 10,000 students by the year 2010. One class actually is taught at the Boeing plant in Seattle, George said.

“We’re looking at more creative ways of teaching more students,” he said.

On the downside, only 64 WSU courses are taught over WHETS, compared with the 2,596 courses taught in Pullman classrooms. And none of those classes is officially scheduled at night, although George said that may change.

, DataTimes