Mass production, introduced into the factories of the United States in the early 1900s, required workers who were trained to be cooperative, loyal to the company, and possessed specific job skills to operate the machinery. To produce these workers, American corporations turned away from the educational programs of the public schools, and began to…

Some of the few U.S. studies on the link between training and productivity have used a subjective measure of productivity or a measure of the productivity of the most recently hired worker relative to a fully trained worker, rather than output, labor productivity, total factor productivity, or value-added measures. Administered by the U.S. Bureau…

The National Center on the Educational Quality of the Workforce's National Employer Survey represents a unique source of information on how employers recruit workers, organize work, invest in physical capital, and use education and training in the workplace. The U.S. Bureau of the Census administered it as a telephone survey to a nationally…

This document contains minutes of the fifth meeting of the National Advisory Commission on Work-Based Learning. The meeting's stated objective was to produce a set of specific action steps for the U.S. Department of Labor to promote work-based learning. A summary of introductory remarks (Jack MacAllister) is followed by a description of the…

Recent Australian research provides a solid body of evidence that training investments can yield very high levels of returns for firms across a range of sectors. It highlights these important factors about returns on investment (ROI): ROI come in many forms; immediate ROI are highest when training is highly focused; measuring ROI is not always…

These proceedings consist of 46 papers on the influence of vocational education and training (VET) research on policy and practice. These papers are grouped into these categories: impact of research; equity in participation; partnerships and stakeholders; practice and practitioners; research and policy; learning, work, and organizations; and VET,…