[House Hearing, 115 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
MENTORING, TRAINING, AND APPRENTICESHIPS
FOR STEM EDUCATION AND CAREERS
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON RESEARCH AND TECHNOLOGY
COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED FIFTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
FEBRUARY 15, 2018
__________
Serial No. 115-48
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available via the World Wide Web: http://science.house.gov
_________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
29-935 PDF WASHINGTON : 2018
COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY
HON. LAMAR S. SMITH, Texas, Chair
FRANK D. LUCAS, Oklahoma EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas
DANA ROHRABACHER, California ZOE LOFGREN, California
MO BROOKS, Alabama DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois
RANDY HULTGREN, Illinois SUZANNE BONAMICI, Oregon
BILL POSEY, Florida AMI BERA, California
THOMAS MASSIE, Kentucky ELIZABETH H. ESTY, Connecticut
JIM BRIDENSTINE, Oklahoma MARC A. VEASEY, Texas
RANDY K. WEBER, Texas DONALD S. BEYER, JR., Virginia
STEPHEN KNIGHT, California JACKY ROSEN, Nevada
BRIAN BABIN, Texas JERRY McNERNEY, California
BARBARA COMSTOCK, Virginia ED PERLMUTTER, Colorado
BARRY LOUDERMILK, Georgia PAUL TONKO, New York
RALPH LEE ABRAHAM, Louisiana BILL FOSTER, Illinois
DANIEL WEBSTER, Florida MARK TAKANO, California
JIM BANKS, Indiana COLLEEN HANABUSA, Hawaii
ANDY BIGGS, Arizona CHARLIE CRIST, Florida
ROGER W. MARSHALL, Kansas
NEAL P. DUNN, Florida
CLAY HIGGINS, Louisiana
RALPH NORMAN, South Carolina
------
Subcommittee on Research and Technology
HON. BARBARA COMSTOCK, Virginia, Chair
FRANK D. LUCAS, Oklahoma DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois
RANDY HULTGREN, Illinois ELIZABETH H. ESTY, Connecticut
STEPHEN KNIGHT, California JACKY ROSEN, Nevada
RALPH LEE ABRAHAM, Louisiana SUZANNE BONAMICI, Oregon
DANIEL WEBSTER, Florida AMI BERA, California
JIM BANKS, Indiana DONALD S. BEYER, JR., Virginia
ROGER W. MARSHALL, Kansas EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas
LAMAR S. SMITH, Texas
C O N T E N T S
February 15, 2018
Page
Witness List..................................................... 2
Hearing Charter.................................................. 3
Opening Statements
Statement by Representative Lamar S. Smith, Chairman, Committee
on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of
Representatives................................................ 4
Written Statement............................................ 6
Statement by Representative Barbara Comstock, Chairwoman,
Subcommittee on Research and Technology, Committee on Science,
Space, and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives........... 9
Written Statement............................................ 11
Statement by Representative Daniel Lipinski, Ranking Member,
Subcommittee on Research and Technology, Committee on Science,
Space, and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives........... 13
Written Statement............................................ 15
Statement by Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson, Ranking
Member, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House
of Representatives
Written Statement............................................ 17
Witnesses:
Dr. Victor R. McCrary, Vice President, Research and Economic
Development and Professor of Chemistry, Morgan State
University; Member, National Science Board and Chair, Task
Force on the Skilled Technical Workforce
Oral Statement............................................... 19
Written Statement............................................ 21
Dr. John Sands, Department Chair, Computer Integrated
Technologies, Moraine Valley Community College; Director and
Principal Investigator, Center for Systems Security and
Information Assurance
Oral Statement............................................... 41
Written Statement............................................ 43
Mr. Montez King, Executive Director, National Institute of
Metalworking Skills
Oral Statement............................................... 50
Written Statement............................................ 52
Dr. John Bardo, President, Wichita State University
Oral Statement............................................... 56
Written Statement............................................ 58
Discussion....................................................... 69
Appendix I: Answers to Post-Hearing Questions
Dr. Victor R. McCrary, Vice President, Research and Economic
Development and Professor of Chemistry, Morgan State
University; Member, National Science Board and Chair, Task
Force on the Skilled Technical Workforce....................... 88
Dr. John Sands, Department Chair, Computer Integrated
Technologies, Moraine Valley Community College; Director and
Principal Investigator, Center for Systems Security and
Information Assurance.......................................... 99
Mr. Montez King, Executive Director, National Institute of
Metalworking Skills............................................ 105
Dr. John Bardo, President, Wichita State University.............. 110
MENTORING, TRAINING, AND APPRENTICESHIPS
FOR STEM EDUCATION AND CAREERS
----------
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 2018
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Research and Technology
Committee on Science, Space, and Technology,
Washington, D.C.
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 9:11 a.m., in
Room 2318 of the Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Barbara
Comstock [Chairwoman of the Subcommittee] presiding.
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Chairman Smith. [Presiding] The Subcommittee on Research
and Technology will come to order. Without objection, the Chair
is authorized to declare recesses of the committee at any time.
Good morning to everyone here, and welcome to today's
hearing entitled, ``Mentoring, Training, and Apprenticeships
for STEM Education and Careers.''
Before I recognize myself for my opening statement, let me
explain to all present that our Chairwoman, Barbara Comstock,
is stuck in traffic and I don't think is even across the bridge
yet, so we're going to go on and start. We have other
individuals caught up in traffic as well. All that is probably
compounded by the fact that we're starting an hour earlier than
normal because this is a day where a lot of Members are leaving
town in a few hours.
I still think it's important for us to get started, and as
soon as Barbara Comstock, the Chairwoman, arrives, she'll have
an opening statement. As soon as Mr. Lipinski arrives, he'll
have a statement as the Ranking Member. And I'm going to go on
and give my opening statement just so we can get started and
introduce you all, but at various points we might be
interrupted as individuals arrive and have opening statements.
This hearing continues the Science Committee's work on
STEM. The STEM Education Act of 2015 updated the definition of
STEM to include computer science. And the 2017 American
Innovation and Competitiveness Act strengthened external
stakeholders' roles in setting STEM priorities.
Most recently, the Committee and the full House approved
several bipartisan bills aimed at boosting students' interest
in STEM subjects and opportunities for our military veterans
and for women and underrepresented minorities, starting in
kindergarten.
Apprenticeships, mentoring, and on-the-job training are
proven ways to meet workforce needs. I look forward to hearing
from our witnesses about the potential for using these
workforce development methods to boost STEM education and
careers.
According to the National Science Board's most recent
Science and Engineering Indicators report, the number of U.S.
jobs that require science, technology, engineering, math, and
computer skills has grown nearly 34 percent in the past decade.
STEM workforce demand is forecast to increase steadily for
years to come. Filling our STEM workforce needs, from
certificate-level technical occupations to Ph.D.'s, is
essential for our economic competitiveness.
STEM jobs are growing in every sector of our economy, from
the shop floors in advanced manufacturing, to computer
programming for our huge service industry sector, to
cybersecurity for every public and private computer network.
According to a recent report from Brookings, half of all STEM
jobs are available to workers without a four-year college
degree, and these jobs pay a wage ten percent higher than jobs
with similar educational requirements. Filling the workforce
pipeline with qualified STEM workers at every level is crucial
for our future economic prosperity.
The innovative workforce training programs in which our
witnesses are involved can provide new opportunities for STEM
education and training and encourage young people to pursue
STEM-based careers. Successful workforce development programs
extend beyond the four walls of classrooms and laboratories.
Partnerships between industry and academia can create new ways
for young people to pursue STEM careers and boost formal
education and training with on-the-job work experiences.
[The prepared statement of Chairman Smith follows:]
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Chairman Smith. That concludes my opening statements, and
I'm going to check to see what we want to do on the minority
side. You want to just wait for Lipinski or do you want to----
Ms. Bonamici. Mr. Chairman, if we could please wait for Mr.
Lipinski----
Chairman Smith. Okay.
Ms. Bonamici. --to deliver the opening statement when he
arrives.
Chairman Smith. Okay.
Ms. Bonamici. Thank you.
Chairman Smith. We'll----
Ms. Bonamici. I yield back.
Chairman Smith. --wait for the gentleman from Illinois to
arrive, but I'd like to go on and introduce our witnesses so
we'll be ready to start.
Our first witness today is Dr. Victor McCrary, Vice
President of Research and Economic Development and Professor of
Chemistry at Morgan State University. In this role, Dr. McCrary
and his team focus on developing a university-wide research
ecosystem, increasing external support for the faculty
research, and championing an entrepreneurial culture among
faculty and students. Dr. McCrary is also a member of the
National Science Board and Chair of the Task Force on the
Skilled Technical Workforce. With the NSB, Dr. McCrary recently
proposed the blue-collar STEM initiative to explore the
technical skills required by the Nations' workforce which do
not necessitate pursuing a traditional four-year college
degree.
Dr. McCrary earned a Bachelor of Arts in chemistry from the
Catholic University of America and a Master of Science and
executive master's of engineering from the University of
Pennsylvania. He also earned a Ph.D. in physical chemistry from
Howard University.
Dr. Sands is our second witness, and he is the Department
Chair of Computer Integrated Technologies at Moraine Valley
Community College. Dr. Sands also serves as the Director and
Principal Investigator for the Center for Systems Security and
Information Assurance, where he and his team study the
technology workforce needs both nationally and in the local
Chicago metropolitan region in Ranking Member Lipinski's
district.
Dr. Sands earned a Bachelor of Arts in communications from
Chicago State University and a master of arts in human
performance and testing from Governor State University. He also
earned his Ph.D. in education from Colorado State University.
Our third witness today is Mr. Montez King, Executive
Director of the National Institute of Metalworking Skills
(NIMS), developing national standards and competency-based
credentials in manufacturing trades. In this role, Mr. King is
responsible for overseeing the administration, programs, and
strategic plan of the organization.
Prior to joining NIMS, Mr. King served as Training and
Technology Manager for Magna International, one of the world's
largest OEM automotive parts manufacturers. In October 2017, he
was appointed to the President's Task Force on Apprenticeship
Expansion. Mr. King began his career at Teledyne Energy Systems
as a Machinist Apprentice and spent over 25 years advancing
into management positions. He holds a Maryland State machinist
journeyman's certificate, a Bachelor of Science in information
technology, and a Master of Education degree in adult education
from the University of Phoenix.
Our final witness today is Dr. John Bardo, President of
Wichita State University. Wichita State's Innovation Campus and
applied learning initiatives have drawn positive national
attention because the partnerships forged with local and
international companies including Airbus, Dassault Systemes,
and Koch Industries. The university has a long history of
working with industry through its National Institute of
Aviation Research and National Center for Aviation Training.
Dr. Bardo's academic interests involve the relationships
between higher education, the economy, and quality of life.
He received a bachelor's degree in economics from the
University of Cincinnati and a master's degree in sociology
from Ohio University. He also earned a Ph.D. in sociology from
Ohio State University and attended the Institute for
Educational Management at Harvard.
And we welcome you all, appreciate your expertise. And as I
mentioned when I introduced myself to you a few minutes ago,
it's nice to have a hearing on such an interesting subject,
that's a very positive subject, that's a bipartisan subject,
and that's important to the future of America.
I'm going to hold off for a second and get a read for how
far away Chairwoman Comstock is before we proceed.
Ms. Bonamici. Mr. Lipinski's in Rayburn, so he's almost
here.
Chairman Smith. Okay. We're getting close. Since we're
already off to a pretty good start, I think we're just going to
recess for about five minutes and wait for the Chairwoman and
the Ranking Member to arrive. They'll each have an opening
statement, and then we'll go straight to your testimony. So we
stand in recess for about five minutes.
[Recess.]
Chairwoman Comstock [presiding]. Good morning, and my
apologies. There was an accident on G.W. Parkway--I have the
benefit of being close by, but sometimes also there are some
disadvantages.
So this morning's hearing will explore how participation in
mentoring, training, and apprenticeship opportunities impact
STEM students and may assist in addressing the growing need for
a diverse and technically trained STEM workforce. The purpose
of this hearing is to identify what STEM workforce development
programs should be further examined and what statistics are
needed to increase our understanding of these tools, the
contexts in which they are most effective, and the barriers to
their application and expansion.
About 20 percent of all jobs in the U.S. economy require
some level of STEM training, and that will grow. Those
occupations are projected to grow about nine percent over the
next decade, faster than any other employment category. In
order to meet this demand, Congress needs to make informed
decisions on what are the most impactful and innovative tools
to address the STEM skills gap and build up America's skilled
technical workforce.
A majority of these technical STEM jobs do not require a
bachelor's degree. In many cases, these good positions, such as
computer programmers, information technology support, and
nurses, require two-year degrees, occupational licenses, or
certifications. Technical STEM jobs are often among the best-
paying and most stable jobs available to individuals with sub-
baccalaureate education. By supporting innovative workforce
development programs for STEM careers like those our witnesses
are part of, we not only increase the students' economic
opportunities and security, but also our nation's.
To ensure the United States' competitiveness in the global
economy, we must leverage this hard work and ingenuity of women
and men of all ages, education levels, and backgrounds to grow
America's technical workforce.
I look forward to building on the progress this Committee
has already made through the INSPIRE Women Act, which was
signed into law by the President last year, and the recently
House-passed Building Blocks of STEM, to encourage and grow the
number of young women and under-represented minorities in STEM
fields also. Reaching these groups at a young age and
motivating them to stay in the STEM fields is extremely
important, but we must also ensure we support programs aimed at
keeping women and under-represented minorities in the STEM
pipeline and advancing in STEM careers.
There are recognized models from across the country and the
world that demonstrate how apprenticeships, mentoring, and on-
the-job training are tools used by many different industries to
address skills gaps. One thing is clear: The most successful
programs are an integration of academia, technical training,
and hands-on work experience.
I know as I go throughout my district and I meet with
employers who need employees, they really want to be able to
bring them in and train them to their workplace, and so I think
what we're talking about here today really fits that needs gap.
So I look forward to hearing from our witnesses today about the
programs they lead and how they are working with industry to
meet the diverse and growing needs for a STEM capable
workforce. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Chairwoman Comstock follows:]
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Chairwoman Comstock. And I now recognize the Ranking
Member, Mr. Lipinski, for his opening statement.
Mr. Lipinski. Thank you, Chairwoman Comstock. I don't know
if you know, but I was racing you to get in. You passed me on
G.W. Parkway, and I saw you again on the 14th Street Bridge,
but somehow you made it in here before me so I apologize for
being late. We were both stuck in the same traffic jam on the
parkway. So I want to thank Chairman Smith for holding fort
here and Ms. Bonamici also.
The National Science Board recently released its biannual
Science and Engineering Indicators report. My biggest takeaway
from the report is that we're falling behind. China has learned
from our economic success, which we've achieved in large part
through investments in science and innovation. China and others
are aggressively investing in research and development and in
their own STEM workforces. Meanwhile, we're tapping the brakes.
This is not the time to be complacent about our standing as
a global economic leader. Other countries are nipping at our
heels, and we must take meaningful action before it is too
late. While creating financial incentives and lowering costs
for businesses may help provide a boost, fiscal policy alone
will not keep our economy strong. To ensure our long-term
economic health, we must continue to actively invest federal
dollars in the long-term foundation on which our economy is
built: research and development and human capital.
In today's increasingly technological and data-driven
economy, a strong STEM workforce is critical for growth and
global competitiveness. When workers are equipped with the
technical skills that industry needs, companies are able to
innovate, increase production, expand, and create new jobs.
This virtuous cycle is interrupted when employers cannot find
workers with the skills they need. This is where we find
ourselves today.
The so-called STEM skills gap is not new. While we can
debate the precise cause and scope of the gap, its effects are
undeniable. The demand for STEM skills is growing and rapidly
evolving as employers continually update their business models
to stay ahead of the competition. And our education system has
generally been slow to respond and adapt to the changing
economy. As a result, businesses have struggled to find
qualified workers. The skills gap is worse in some industry
sectors than others but in many cases, it is dragging down
productivity.
There are good examples of innovative approaches to career-
focused STEM education around the country such as the NSF-
funded Advanced Technological Education program at Moraine
Valley Community College in my district, run by one of today's
witnesses, Dr. Sands.
I'm also encouraged by companies such as Accenture and IBM.
They are piloting an old model of workforce development: the
apprenticeship, in new fields like cybersecurity and customer
service. But we'll need far more innovative programs like these
to meet growing demand.
The issue of STEM workforce development is a particularly
important one to me. Chicago is unique among major U.S. cities
and the degree to which the economy strong in both service and
manufacturing jobs. These sectors are increasingly driven by
technology, automation, and data analytics, so the demand for
STEM skills is high.
I look forward to hearing from our witnesses today their
thoughts on mentoring, apprenticeships, and other innovative
strategies for workforce development and whether they should be
more widely adopted in new industry sectors and geographic
regions. As Ranking Member of this Committee--Subcommittee I'm
particularly interested in hearing ideas on the role federal
science agencies can play in increasing coordination between
industry and educational institutions.
We need to close the STEM skills gap in the near term, but
I think it is just as important to create an agile STEM
workforce that can respond to changing needs over the long
term. Our future depends on it.
Thank you, and I yield back the balance of my time.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Lipinski follows:]
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[The prepared statement of Ranking Member Eddie Bernice
Johnson:]
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Chairwoman Comstock. Thank you. And I now recognize Dr.
McCrary for five minutes to present his testimony.
TESTIMONY OF DR. VICTOR R. McCRARY, VICE PRESIDENT,
RESEARCH AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
AND PROFESSOR OF CHEMISTRY,
MORGAN STATE UNIVERSITY;
MEMBER, NATIONAL SCIENCE BOARD AND CHAIR,
TASK FORCE ON THE SKILLED TECHNICAL WORKFORCE
Dr. McCrary. Thank you, Chairwoman Comstock and Ranking
Member Lipinski. On behalf of my colleagues on the National
Science Board, I'm grateful for this opportunity.
The number of U.S. jobs requiring substantial STEM
expertise has grown nearly 34 percent over the past decade. As
of 2015, nearly one in seven workers with at least a four-year
degree say their job requires a bachelor's level of STEM
expertise. However, more than 16 million more jobs do not
require a bachelor's degree yet require significant experience
in at least one--and expertise in one technical field.
Moreover, these jobs are growing in number.
At the same time, other countries are challenging our
leadership in science and technology. Between 2000 and 2014,
the number of Americans with four-year STEM degrees rose 53
percent. In China this number was 360 percent. Just last week,
the National Science Board released a statement predicting that
China would surpass the United States in R&D investment this
year.
China's targeting up to 15 percent of their GDP at talent
development, and China is not the only country that is chasing
us. If we want to remain a world leader, we must leverage the
hard work, creativity, and ingenuity of women and men of all
ages, educational levels, and backgrounds. We need scientists
searching for cures for genetic disorders, engineers securing
our electrical grid, skilled technicians in our hospitals and
labs, and farmers growing more with fewer resources. We can't
do this by relying on a relatively small and distinct STEM
workforce. Instead, government, business leaders, and educators
must work together to build a STEM-capable U.S. workforce.
That workforce goes beyond traditional scientists and
engineers to include the often-overlooked skilled technical
workers who helped form the backbone of our economy. Skilled
technical jobs are well-paying and are found across the United
States. Businesses large and small need adaptable STEM-capable
workers at every educational level and from all demographic
groups in order to compete. But according to a survey conducted
by the GAO, employers in 80 percent of local area said they had
trouble filling jobs in skilled technical occupations.
Because we both see a need and an opportunity, the board
has created in November of 2017 a Task Force on the Skilled
Technical Workforce. I've submitted the task force charge along
with my written testimony. We're exploring ways the NSB and NSF
can help strengthen this segment of the workforce, including by
identifying gaps in information and data, exploring ways to
build and leverage partnerships, and examining evidence-
informed approaches to removing the barriers that far too many
students and workers encounter.
Although it is still early in the work of the board's task
force, I will use the remainder of my time to highlight several
points that have already become clear to us. What we have here
is a failure to, or, more specifically, to coordinate between
businesses desperate for STEM-capable skilled U.S. workers and
students and incumbent workers seeking well-paying, stable
jobs. Too often, the students we produce or the training we
provide to workers doesn't seem to align with what industry
wants.
At the same time, industry hiring practice says can
themselves be a barrier, for example, requiring a four-year
degree for openings where a certification or two-year degree
might be a better fit.
During a recent listening session at Baton Rouge Community
College in Louisiana, board members sat at a table in which
industry participants lamented their inability to find workers
with specific skills and a community college student sitting
right there at the table saying, ``Hey, that's me.''
We also see that there's a stigma associated with community
colleges, technical schools, and vocational training in the
minds of students, parents, employers, and yes, academics. We
need to change that perception and fix our own blind spots and
baggage to recognize how critical these workers are to the
success of our nation's science and engineering enterprise.
To give you an example, last year the NSB visited LIGO in
Louisiana. We heard of the LIGO scientist who won the Nobel
Prize in physics for the discovery of gravitational waves, but
what you might not know about LIGO is that it's an industrial
facility, miles of carefully welded high vacuum pipeline and
banks for air filters as tall as a house. It's skilled
technical workers, HVAC experts, electricians, and other
workers without a four-year degree who built that, keep it
running, and they are fundamental to the scientific discoveries
that are made. This is blue-collar STEM.
Next, we must better leverage our public investments. At
NSF, programs like INCLUDES and Advanced Technological
Education or ATE do this by facilitating partnerships between
educational institutions and local businesses or between
research-intensive universities like the University of
Tennessee and local community colleges. We learn what works so
others can take these practices to scale.
We have--all have a role to play in this. Technical
schools, community colleges, trade labor organizations,
chambers of commerce, industry, four-year colleges, research
universities, and HBCUs like Morgan State University and other
minority-serving institutions need it to create onramps into
STEM for all segments of our population. We cannot compete
without their inclusion and wholehearted participation.
I'm glad you're having this hearing, and I'm looking
forward to learning from the rest of the witnesses.
Madam Chair, this concludes my testimony.
[The prepared statement of Dr. McCrary follows:]
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Chairwoman Comstock. Thank you. And I now recognize Dr.
Sands, and I understand you have a video, so I look forward to
that.
TESTIMONY OF DR. JOHN SANDS, DEPARTMENT CHAIR,
COMPUTER INTEGRATED TECHNOLOGIES,
MORAINE VALLEY COMMUNITY COLLEGE;
DIRECTOR AND PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR,
CENTER FOR SYSTEMS SECURITY AND
INFORMATION ASSURANCE
Dr. Sands. Yes, good morning, Chairwoman Comstock and
Ranking Member Lipinski. I'd like to start with a short video
that talks a little bit about our programs and highlights one
of our students.
[Video shown.]
Dr. Sands. I'm here today to share my knowledge and opinion
on how apprenticeship programs can address the growing gap in
the country's technical workforce. I'd like to present a few
potential approaches to increase the quality and participation
rate of apprenticeship programs in technological areas like
cybersecurity.
Over my career, one of the areas of the workforce
development I've been most involved in is the study and
implementation of effective programs to increase student
awareness of critical technology fields. Both as a Professor
and Principal Investigator, I have led teams to develop new and
innovative career awareness programs. These programs present
students with self-directed opportunities to explore
interesting technical jobs. The exploration also requires
students to examine the typical roles and responsibilities
associated with each position. These programs also enable
students to review salaries, job credentials, and potential
career pathways.
Another area is expanding partnerships and apprenticeship
programs. Moraine Valley Committee College has been successful
in building partnerships in which local businesses benefit from
a continuous pool of qualified applicants. Students benefit by
gaining experience and learn workforce skills that are
difficult to replicate in the classroom.
One example of the successful program would be the
partnership between Moraine Valley Community College and ESPO
Systems. In the fall of 2017 ESPO Systems was nominated for the
Illinois Community College Trustee Association Business and
Industry Partnership Award. Representatives from both ESPO
Systems and Moraine Valley focused on building apprenticeship
programs that provide students with a meaningful and relevant
workforce experience. This program also serves dozens of
students, most of which go on to full-time employment. ESPO
Systems and Moraine Valley staff meet each semester to plan,
review, and evaluate the program.
One of the other areas that I think is important is
establishing apprenticeship program standards. As a rash of
data breaches continue to make headlines, businesses have
gained greater interest in working with academia and federal
agencies in adopting national standards. The NSA/DHS Centers
for Academic Excellence program is a good example. This program
establishes curriculum requirements, student learning
assessment, and a series of institutional requirements. This
program serves as a great mechanism to expand apprenticeship
programs for the cybersecurity industry.
Another area is establishing national credentials earned by
completing an apprenticeship program. I believe there is strong
support for establishing a national credential that would be
directly linked to students' successful completion of a
recognized apprenticeship program. The cybersecurity industry
is well-organized to adopt this type of program that could be
directly associated with one of the two national programs that
are operated by federal agencies, and those two programs would
be the CyberCorps Scholarship for Service program, which is
funded through the National Science Foundation; and the other
would be the Centers of Academic Excellence in Cyber Defense,
which is funded by the National Security Agency and Department
of Homeland Security.
I also want to stress the importance of community colleges.
I would like to highlight the unique role community colleges
can contribute to establishing a better national network of
apprenticeship programs. Community colleges, as the name
indicate, belong to and serve their communities. Students
attending community college programs are looking for
inexpensive and efficient pathways to new careers and academic
opportunities.
Community colleges provide their communities with the
nurses, healthcare workers, heating and air-conditioning
technicians, automotive technicians, information technology
specialists, just to name a few. Community colleges have a
close relationship with the current technology programs at
their local high schools and can provide students with an early
awareness of career opportunities in technical fields. Any
expansion of apprenticeship opportunities should leverage
community colleges in their unique position within communities
across the Nation.
That concludes my testimony. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Sands follows:]
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Chairwoman Comstock. Thank you. And I now recognize Mr.
King for his testimony.
TESTIMONY OF MR. MONTEZ KING,
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR,
NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF METALWORKING SKILLS
Mr. King. Thank you, Chairwoman Comstock and fellow
members, for inviting me to speak out about innovative work
training programs.
I want to start out with some statistics. I don't want to
create an echo chamber because of my panelists here, but I need
to say that the stakes are high. And I would like to start with
about 3.5 million jobs are likely to be needed within the next
decade. And with the skills gap, there's likely to be about 2
million of those jobs unfilled. And another really interesting
statistic is only 16 percent of all American high school
seniors are either proficient in mathematics or are interested
in STEM careers. That's significant. So when we talk about
building training programs, you can have the best program in
the world but if you don't have any bodies in there, it doesn't
matter. So you have to increase the interest.
So how do we do that? I'm going to move to my next slide.
This leads into my next slide.
[Slide.]
Mr. King. And just bear with me because everyone has their
own way of recruiting, and I recruit people all the time. I'm
always looking for someone to enter into the skilled workforce.
So the Walking Dead syndrome is the truth in reality. It is--
now, think about--this is a popular series that's on TV. And
the series framework is based on an overwhelmingly large
population of zombies searching for a small majority of flesh
for the survivors. This is a small amount of survivors and you
have all of these zombies, millions, millions with maybe 1,000
survivors. And they're all looking for the same thing. And this
is a striking parallel to our college campuses. It extremely--
it really is.
Now, think about all of those individuals on the college
campuses going for jobs--they're trying--they're planning for
jobs that either won't exist when they come out of school or
rapidly evolving or it's not within that skill frame where most
of the jobs will--we've heard statistics where you show that
most of the jobs will be for--won't require a four-year degree,
but most of our students or our kids are going for four-year
degrees. So it's extremely important to speak the reality and
truth to our young people so that they know the truth. And it
really works when we talk to these young people about the
Walking Dead syndrome.
So how do we train? And you got to--we've got a look at
today's economy where the jobs are more integrated, cross-
discipline, technology-driven so when we build these STEM
education training programs, I believe we need to focus on the
work-and-learn opportunities, more work-and-learn
opportunities. We also need to focus on creating an education
pathway that supports students from middle school through their
career advancement.
And this leads into my next slide.
[Slide.]
Mr. King. So when you look at this slide, you see a work-
and-learn career pathway model where we have our gateway, how
do we get in, and then we have our goal. And then you can see
credentials as we get to our goal as the industry-recognized
credentials. Now, if you look at the vertical path, you see
that's a straight upward path, training, education, go to
college, right? Everyone--you're taught to go to college. And
then you have on the horizontal hands-on experience. You have
those individuals that maybe come out of high school and just
go with hands-on experience. But what we're seeing is neither
path is necessarily the best path. We need to go on a diagonal
path where you're getting education and hands-on experience
contemporaneously interwoven together. So this is what we're
seeing as a successful model, maybe not for everyone but it can
help with those--that large pool of opportunities that exist
and that are not being filled.
So I'll go into my last point, which is industry
engagement. Industry has to identify the standards are. It's
not the schools, it's not the education community. We are to
follow what industry says is needed. And so how do we do that?
So when we look at industry-recognized credentials, industry-
recognized standards, that is the key. The standards are the
foundation that are actually written by industry. Industries
are writing down what their needs are and then developing
credentials around those standards to measure individuals
against the standard.
So if we use the credentials as an adhesive or a connector
throughout the careers, for example, for me, I got started in
middle school. Someone gave me the Walking Dead syndrome, maybe
in different words, but they gave me that syndrome or they
talked to me about it. And as I moved through my career, I
earned the credentials and I had the work experience, making me
a straight-A student through the entire process.
So I want to thank you again for having me, and I look
forward to some of the questions coming through.
[The prepared statement of Mr. King follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairwoman Comstock. That captures everyone's imagination.
Thank you.
Dr. Bardo, follow-up that act, right?
TESTIMONY OF DR. JOHN BARDO,
PRESIDENT,
WICHITA STATE UNIVERSITY
Dr. Bardo. Well, thank you very much, Madam Chairwoman, and
thank you for--everybody for having me here today. And the
timing couldn't have been better in terms of following Mr.
King.
For those of you that don't spend all day thinking about
Wichita, which I can't imagine any of you sitting up there
wouldn't be doing that, Wichita is the third-highest
percentage--it has the third-highest percentage of engineers in
the workforce compared to San Jose and Houston. And we are very
dependent on technology-based exports. In fact, to set up our
programs when I came back home to Wichita, I did a study of the
structure of the Wichita economy. We're very tightly tied to
Dallas-Fort Worth, and we're very tightly tied to the I-35
corridor. We also export to five or six places in the United
States, export goods are where you make your money, and then we
export overseas.
We knew that those were very important things to know about
the economy, but how does that play out within individual
industry? So we at the university started a blueprint for
regional economic growth, which was an analysis with business
of their needs. We didn't go in and tell them what they needed;
we asked them. And we identified eight areas where the economy
of greater Wichita could grow, and our goal as a university is
to support each of those areas over time as funds become
available.
You may also not know that Wichita has--Wichita State has a
very long tradition of working with business and industry. We
obtained our first major gift of the year--I was born in 1948,
which was a wind tunnel given by Beech. We are now second in
the United States in the percent of research money funded by
industry. So we're very serious about our relationships with
industry.
And one of the points I want to make with you today is that
that tie between industry research and education is absolutely
crucial if you're going to be able to really make a difference
for the capacity of the United States to build STEM and to
build STEM-based industries.
We also, as a university, are very prone to experiment.
We've been prone to experiment over the course of decades--this
isn't new--and we're very excited about the fact that we have a
modified apprenticeship program going at a four-year
university. Wichita State is what is in the vernacular known as
a research II, which means that we are not the highest level of
research but we're second. And we have a modified
apprenticeship program. We started it--they tested it--with an
aircraft industry. There were going to outsource a large
engineering project to India. We convinced them to allow our
undergraduate students to do it. It came in on time, better
engineered, and while they weren't hiring, they hired 35
percent of the students who worked on the project, and 83
percent of the students stayed in the labor shed. A few others
left. Two went to--one went to med school and one went to get a
Ph.D. in engineering, and we're okay with both of those
outcomes.
We also were in the process of amalgamating a technical
college into the university, Wichita Area Technical College
July 1 will become Wichita Tech, WSU Tech. Why are we doing
that? There are so many people who have hands-on skills who
want to learn, who want to be part of the economy, want to be
part of STEM, but they don't want to take on a 15-week course.
They don't want to take on a 120-hour degree. And so what we're
trying to do is to find ways of moving those students into the
workforce and the model you were using, moving them into the
workforce and building their capacity through offering short
courses, through offering degrees, through offering
certificates and building their capacity over time so that they
can lead in their field.
If they want to be a welder, if they want to be a sheet
metal worker, we want them to do that. If they want to be a
sheet metal worker supervisor, we want them to do that. If they
want to be a designer of new aircraft, we want them to do that.
So, Madam Chair, to cut this short, it's time for Congress
to act as it did in the '80s. The Bayh-Dole Act changed the
future of higher education in the United States. I believe it's
time for Bayh-Dole II, and I believe this Committee is the
committee that can make that happen. Thank you very much for
having me here today.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Bardo follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairwoman Comstock. Thank you very much. I really
appreciate all this testimony. It's given us so much food for
thought, as well as great visualizations, too. So thank you.
You know, as I was watching the video and as I go around
and talk to businesses, as well as our schools, we know it's
always a challenge to get more young women involved and engaged
and stay in, as well as underserved populations and minorities,
so I think a lot of what you've talked about here really
addresses some of that, too. So how can we really, maybe, get
them like from kindergarten?
I know in my district we have a children's science museum
that is stood up and now is going to expand and that's where my
three-year-old granddaughter loves to spend every waking
moment. And I've been in kindergarten classes now where they're
coding and--you know, there's no daylight and everybody's in
there. And what some of our schools that have like the
highest--very high-needs schools, high--school lunch programs,
have some of the best science programs in it now. So how do we
get that pipeline way down there so that there's never--you
know, they're always in it? I'll start with you, Mr. King,
sure.
Mr. King. And that's focusing more on the interest, right,
to keep them----
Chairwoman Comstock. Yes. Yes.
Mr. King. Yes. I'm a big stickler on putting together
achievements as, you know, Dr. Bardo had mentioned, having
those achievements all the way through from that young age
going through their career. And I want to put a personal--just
a personal question--attribute here is that I was--someone
showed me how to chase a thread. I needed a bolt for my
bicycle, and it stuck in my head. And that was it. I was done.
The rest of my career I knew exactly what I wanted to do. I
wanted to be--I changed everything about my perception of
college and how I would go through. And I think those types of
experiences and moments is what we need to share with the kids
so that they can do an interest inventory at that early age,
and with that interest inventory it leads you out to your
career. And it's a true career, not something that's being
pressured by what others say. It's about what you actually
enjoy doing.
Chairwoman Comstock. So it's with those young children,
instead of maybe Daddy comes in and does something for the
little girl, that they actually walk them through it----
Mr. King. Yes.
Chairwoman Comstock. --and say you can do it, too.
Mr. King. Absolutely, but then you have those underserved
communities where they don't have that father----
Chairwoman Comstock. Yes.
Mr. King. --or they don't have that mother to show them,
and that's where mentoring becomes an important piece. And so
that's why I've dedicated over ten years of my life mentoring
individuals that have that gap so that they can get the same
experience. It's just not through their biological.
Chairwoman Comstock. Right. And Dr. Bardo?
Dr. Bardo. If I might, please. One of the things that we
know is that we lose a lot of girls in middle school, and so
really encouraging college women to spend time with girls in
middle school is a big deal because it gives them a role model.
It shows them you can be a normal girl and major in a STEM
area. If you look, many of the new areas, particularly in
engineering, are becoming more female-centered. Bioengineering
we're seeing a lot more women interested. And part of the sales
there is you can make a difference in people's lives, and so it
becomes, you know, yes, it's math, yes, it's engineering, but
at the end of the day, I can make a difference in people's
lives.
The other thing that we're experimenting with are half-
credit-hour badges. We know that mother of three who's trying
to hold down two jobs isn't likely to be able to make a 15-week
course, so what we've done is break down many of our areas into
half-credits that take about a week-and-a-half to do, and you
can probably figure out how to get a babysitter or how to make
things work and that allows you to inch in. So we're pretty
excited about that.
Chairwoman Comstock. Oh, that is great. And then also
with--you know, I have a young woman's leadership program, and
one of the things we try and do with the young people is get
them into a workplace setting. You know, my mom was a teacher,
my dad was an engineer but he was sales, so I never was in
those type of job settings. I wasn't in a hospital, I wasn't in
a manufacturing plant, and a lot of these places where you just
don't understand what goes on there.
So I think what I love about the mentoring programs and
doing this is you're really getting kids in there and making
sure we can get them to get some experience and see themselves
in a workplace and see the whole path around them and the kind
of environment they would be in. And I would think,
particularly with an underserved population that might not have
that experience where mom or dad is taking them to a workplace,
that, you know, this really seems like a great way that we can
get everybody on a level playing field where we get them
engaged. And I guess that's sort of not quite as a question,
but, Dr. McCrary----
Dr. McCrary. Well----
Chairwoman Comstock. --you have a----
Dr. McCrary. Yes, Chairwoman Comstock. One other way that
we've been able to successfully do that is engage the technical
professional societies who have engaged with students at a very
early age. So, for example, we worked in a program a few years
ago with the American Chemical Society, the National
Organization for Professional Advancement of Black Chemists and
Chemical Engineers, and parents very early on. What happens
when your young daughter says I'm going interested in becoming
a chemist or becoming a chemical engineer, and so get those
societies working very early, particularly the minority
technical societies like Society of Hispanic Engineers, SHPE,
Society of Women Engineers.
Many of these national organizations have chapters
throughout the country that are working at the K-12 level and
at the same time offering workspace opportunities, as you
mentioned, bringing people in chemical plants and engineering
places and exposing them to them--students to them. So those
type of programs are strongly encouraged.
Chairwoman Comstock. Great. Okay. And I will now recognize
Ms. Bonamici for five minutes.
Ms. Bonamici. Thank you, Chairwoman Comstock and Ranking
Member Lipinski, and thank you to all of our witnesses.
First, I want to express concern about President Trump's
proposed budget plan. He's calling for a large cut to the Job
Corps program and as well as completely eliminating funding for
WANTO, the Women in Apprenticeship and Nontraditional
Occupations. We have in Oregon, Oregon Tradeswomen, and they
receive funding through WANTO. They've been recruiting,
preparing, placing, and retaining women in the building trades
very successfully. We need to be investing in more, not less,
in programs that prepare people to go to work.
And I frequently hear from employers out in Oregon about
the challenges they face in recruiting skilled workers, and
unfortunately, small and medium-sized businesses often don't
have the resources to establish work-based learning programs.
So I have introduced bipartisan legislation with my colleague
also on the Education and Workforce Committee, Congressman Drew
Ferguson from Georgia, the Bipartisan Partners Act, which would
support partnerships to help small and medium-sized businesses
establish work-based learning programs and support services for
workers using existing funds so it's no additional cost to
taxpayers.
Mr. King, I understand that the National Institute of
Metalworking Skills helps manufacturing businesses of all sizes
establish and implement apprenticeship programs, but can you
identify some of the challenges that small and medium-sized
businesses face creating those job-training programs and how
Congress could help level the playing field? And I do want to
save time for another question as well.
Mr. King. When it comes to the smaller organizations, even
bigger organizations dealing with the unions, for
manufacturing-sector jobs, the registered apprenticeship
program has proven to be a little cumbersome and not as
attractive for many of the employers. You can go into the
construction industry, and it's working well for them, but when
you're thinking about manufacturing, it does pose some
problems. And the ROI, return on investment, it doesn't seem
attractive to employers.
So as a member of the task force, we are working towards
recognizing apprenticeship programs because there's many
programs out there that we call pseudo-programs. I mean they're
training. Most companies are training; it's just not either
registered or it's not recognized. And with a few quality
checks to make sure that it includes some of the key
components, I think we can expand more work-and-learn
opportunities, and we can of course also spark more interest in
kids.
Ms. Bonamici. Terrific. And I encourage my colleagues on
this committee to look at the Partners Act that Congressman
Ferguson and I have.
I want to shift a little bit to big picture, and I know the
Chairwoman and Ranking Member know that I'm on the Education
and Workforce Committee, as I mentioned, and have over the
years looked for ways to make sure that students who are going
through school who may be interested in STEM are educated to be
more creative and innovative because I keep hearing about the
innovative economy. So I started the STEAM Caucus and--about
integrating the arts and design into STEM learning, and there
are nationally recognized STEAM schools across the country that
are very successful in engaging more students in STEM learning.
CTE, career and technical education, as well in the K-12
system, the more well-rounded education that is part of the
Every Student Succeeds Act which this--the last Congress passed
with strong bipartisan support is also going to help engage
students early on.
But what I wanted to mention is that not too long ago
Google decided to test its sort of hiring hypothesis and they
crunched all the numbers--hiring, firing, promotion data--since
its inception. Here's what they found. Of the eight most
important qualities of their top employees, STEM expertise came
in last. The seven top characteristics were all soft skills:
being a good coach, communicating, listening well, possessing
insights into others, including others of different values and
points of view, having empathy toward and being supportive of
one's colleagues, being a good critical thinker and problem
solver, and being able to make connections across complex
ideas.
So I know that we're talking about blue-collar STEM jobs
here today. However, for people who want to advance in careers
and for people who want to be successful and stay at companies,
what are apprenticeship and work-based skills training doing to
include all of these really critical interpersonal skills in
their curriculum? I'll start with Mr. King and then anyone else
who wants to weigh in.
Mr. King. Sure. With the work-and-learn apprenticeship
models, it gives you those soft skills by--I can tell you, for
example, for me coming into my--on a work-study program, the
work day started at 7:00, and I got there at like 6:50 and it
was about five minutes after 7:00 when it was time to work. I
was a good kid, but I just didn't have the soft skills. But the
work-study program and working around those professionals is
what helped me develop the soft skills I needed prior to even--
I mean, you could've taught me all you wanted in the classroom.
It was in that workplace is where it actually happened for me.
Ms. Bonamici. Does anyone else want to add to the
importance of the soft skills?
Dr. Sands. Yes, I'll add a little bit to it. You know, as I
mentioned, we work with several companies in their--in the
design of their apprenticeship programs, and part of what we
try to do is ensure that the types of tasks and jobs that
students are involved with will help build those types of
skills.
And we've worked with--you know, there's programs out
there--I don't know if you've heard of Necessary Skills Now
through the Center of Occupation Research and Development, but
they focus on six areas. And part of what I think needs to be
done is those types of things like communications and ethics
and so on need to be built into the experience of an
apprenticeship program. It's not just the technical aspects but
it's also, like you said, the workforce skills.
Ms. Bonamici. Thank you. Dr. McCrary?
Dr. McCrary. I just wanted to give you an example. Morgan
State University is a member of a--has a Center of Academic
Excellence and Cybersecurity, as one of our colleagues
mentioned earlier, and when we met with them last fall, not
only did they want to meet with our Dean of Engineering and our
Dean of Computer Science, which is natural, but also our
College of Liberal Arts and our School of Business. Why is that
important? Because cybersecurity is not just confined to
electrical engineering and computer science. It involves
psychology; it involves foreign languages. And so they wanted
to have that approach in terms of their research. And so for
students in those areas, they also want to attract those
students, as well as those in the hard-core STEM areas.
Ms. Bonamici. Absolutely. Thank you very much, and I yield
back. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Chairwoman Comstock. Thank you. And I now recognize Mr.
Marshall for five minutes.
Mr. Marshall. Yes, thank you, Chairwoman.
Dr. Bardo, when I think of Wichita State University, I
think of the innovation creativity entrepreneurship capital of
the world. And you guys have always been way out there. You've
always been a great visionary. Can you just take a minute and
share a little bit about your Innovation Campus and what that
looks like just so the other members could hear it?
Dr. Bardo. Sure. What we're attempting to do at Wichita
State is actually create an innovation university. And when you
do that, you have to start with something that people can
recognize. So we started by taking an old golf course and
turning it into a public-private partnership enterprise where
students can work. They can take three and four years of work
in real businesses working on real projects at the same time
they're studying general education, studying liberal arts,
studying engineering, biology, whatever area they're in. We're
making it a living learning environment because what we know
about innovation is it isn't something that happens from 8:00
to 5:00. It could happen at 3:00 in the morning. It could
happen over a beer.
And so we're encouraging restaurants, hotels, other
entities that encourage students and faculty to come together
and collide with each other and with businesses to be on the
campus. We've seen a major increase in business interests. We
have drawn businesses from as far away as Sweden to our campus.
And, you know, we're in the great flyover. We're right in the
center of the center and it can be done in that area, and it
can be done successfully. But we're seeing great interest to a
point where tours are getting to be a little bit of a problem
because we're giving so many of them, and we're seeing
excitement both in the local community and in the broader
technology industry around us.
Mr. Marshall. So your largest employer there I assume is
Koch Industries. What have they done on campus with you guys?
Dr. Bardo. They've done business on our campus in terms of
creating a business center. Annie Koch, who is Koch's daughter-
in-law now is creating an experimental school to see if we can
take young children and get them engaged in STEM issues and in
innovation early so--they're starting with preschool actually.
And their building this school right on the campus, right near
Airbus, right near our engineering building, and we're
encouraging those students to be engaged with us from the time
they're little children. We think that that's a way of getting
them excited, getting them interested and then over time, as we
learn, we'll try to generalize this out into public education
but we'll also start encouraging students with disabilities,
low-income students also to come in and be part of this
experience so that it's a different way of looking at education
as well.
Mr. Marshall. Talk about teach the teachers a little bit.
One of my biggest concerns is that this needs to be introduced
in grade school much like used to teach French in grade school.
I know Emporia State back home is doing a great job with
teaching the teachers. Are any of you having experience with--
how are we teaching the teachers, Dr. Sands?
Dr. Sands. Yes, I'd like to maybe highlight one of the
programs that's funded through the National Science Foundation.
We run a cybersecurity center at Moraine Valley, and a big part
of the cybersecurity center is a faculty development academy.
And over the years it's evolved so, first of all, it's a
virtual academy. Most computer systems nowadays are accessed
remotely, so this academy is actually accessed remotely. And
we're able to train faculty from across the country at free or
very low rate. And basically, especially in the area of
cybersecurity, is that the target moves constantly and the
content changes constantly, so faculty development is a
critical part of running quality programs. So we've been able
to train--over the ten years that we've run the academy we've
trained over 6,000 faculty members from across the country, and
that would include high school faculty, it would include
community college, and we've even had university faculty be
part of it. But centralizing those things and having national
centers like the ATE centers enables, you know, less--a better
investment and able to reach a larger audience without having
to have centers all over the place.
Mr. Marshall. I have time for one more question. Dr. Bardo,
talk about the--is it the Bayh-Dole Act? So paint the picture.
What would that look like in the future? If you were king,
paint that picture what Congress--what it needs to do--be done
to update it for us.
Dr. Bardo. Well, we have--I'm not sure exactly what you're
speaking to.
Mr. Marshall. The Bayh-Dole Act you talked about----
Dr. Bardo. Oh, the Bayh-Dole Act, yes.
Mr. Marshall. Forgive me.
Dr. Bardo. Birch Bayh was a well-known Congressman many
years ago, and of course Senator Dole we all know and love. The
Bayh-Dole Act allowed universities to take inventions and to
sell them to the marketplace. Prior to that time, the Federal
Government owned anything that the Federal Government
participated in. This was a sea change for universities, and we
didn't recognize it.
What the Bayh-Dole Act II would do--I mean, it obviously
would have a different name and it might be the Comstock-
Marshall Act but the--
Mr. Marshall. It has a ring to it.
Dr. Bardo. But the--what this would do would be to focus on
what does the next generation need to look like? So, for
example, to solve the problems of cybersecurity, to solve
problems of health takes big science and big data. And what's
ended up happening is that a relatively few universities
control basic research, which isn't necessarily a bad thing.
Don't--I'm not criticizing. But for the rest of us we can make
a real impact by integrating the work we do with the community.
And so the Bayh-Dole Act II would really focus not on
transferring intellectual property to business but would focus
on trying to create applied STEM work that would benefit
faculty, benefit students, and benefit the economy of the area.
And in my long testimony I did make several suggestions of
things that I felt might be something to be considered.
Mr. Marshall. Okay. Thank you. And I yield back.
Chairwoman Comstock. Thank you. I now recognize Mr.
Lipinski for five minutes.
Mr. Lipinski. Thank you. I want to thank the witnesses for
their testimony. I want to start out by asking Dr. Sands
about--sort of elaborate on the cybersecurity credential, how
you would see this coming about, how does that get--how would
that get established in your eyes?
Dr. Sands. You know, we have several national programs out
there now that really could be leveraged to build a national
credential. So, you know, as an example, the NSA/DHS Centers
for Academic Excellence, they've established credentials for
institutions so, you know, as far as aligning curriculum,
faculty requirements, even institutional requirements. You
know, if you're hanging a sign out at your institution at your
cybersecurity center, guess what, you've just become a target,
so you need to practice what you preach.
And so part of that program has set those types of
standards, and I think it would be an ideal program to expand
those types of things to student credentials that as soon a
student could earn as part of their service in an
apprenticeship program. And a really good example of that might
be the SFS program. So the SFS program, now the CyberCorps
program, it's a scholarship program where students basically
are awarded a--funding for scholarships during their academic
time at school, and then they have to pay that back through
service to either a federal agency or state or local
government.
But I think we could actually put standards on that
apprenticeship program, and they could earn those credentials
as part of their service in the apprenticeship program. Right
now, there really isn't a standard out there for that.
And the other thing I think would be really important is
that the SFS program really focuses on federal and local
government jobs. I think that should be expanded to the private
sector as well because the private sector is suffering right
now with the shortage of cybersecurity workers as well.
Mr. Lipinski. Now, do you find--is it difficult to find
students who are equipped to enter the--you know, the
CyberCorps Scholarship for Service program?
Dr. Sands. I think there's a challenge, and it's a very
selective program. But I think as more and more community
colleges--community colleges are new to the game, so they just
came into this program in the last two years, and I think
community colleges will have a lot in contributing additional
students into the program.
But I think other programs like GenCyber, it's a program
that's funded through National Science Foundation also, enables
us to run summer camps. So like this summer we ran a camp--a
GenCyber camp, and we had 50 kids. By the way, half of them
were women, which is really unusual in this area--or young
girls. It even reached out to organizations like the Girl
Scouts. But it allowed kids to come in for a week and learn
everything from basic coding, capture-the-flag types of
activities in cybersecurity, and then it wrapped up with a
short competition.
But what it enables us to do is to get the really talented
kids that never thought about this type of career or a career
in the STEM area to see the types of jobs that are out there
and then the types of skills and opportunities that are
provided in these fields.
Mr. Lipinski. And I know that you have developed curricula
for grade school, high school. How do you go about doing that?
Do--and do you see schools being, you know, willing and able
to, you know, implement these?
Dr. Sands. It was a challenge early on because most schools
don't want their students using cybersecurity tools on their
production networks, so what we found was a model that, again,
uses a virtual environment. So most schools aren't going to let
students even modify credentials on their local machines. But
by creating a curriculum that's virtual, now you have a safe
sandbox where kids can actually learn the administration of
systems and they can actually use systems that take advantage
of vulnerabilities and see how those things work.
And the other thing with that is that we can actually
control what we are exposing students to, so, you know, we want
them to see the benefit of these tools, but we also want, you
know, there to be ethics that's taught as part of the program
and so on.
But I think, you know, just to address it, one other thing
is, you know, exposing students to the actual jobs that are out
there and then bringing them on trips to organizations or
healthcare facilities or server farms where they can actually
see what a typical IT or cybersecurity person does and the
types of facilities that they work in. Most of us have no idea
what those facilities look like, and, again, most high school
teachers have never experienced those types of things.
Mr. Lipinski. Thank you. And I want to thank you for your
work and proud to have you in Moraine Valley there in the
southwestern suburb of Chicago.
Dr. Sands. We thank you for your support.
Chairwoman Comstock. Thank you. And I now recognize Mr.
Banks for five minutes.
Mr. Banks. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thanks for holding
this important hearing.
I'm very pleased to see the Trump Administration putting an
emphasis on expanding apprenticeships and expanding educational
opportunities beyond the traditional four-year college degree
as we've discussed today. There are millions of job openings in
our country that require a technical certification short of a
college degree. These jobs pay well and can support a middle-
class lifestyle.
And in my home State of Indiana, I was proud to work with
then-Governor Mike Pence, who recognized the untapped potential
in this area and instituted a number of initiatives to increase
access to technical and career education. Fifty-eight percent
of Hoosier jobs are classified as ``middle-skilled,'' requiring
more than a high school diploma but less than a college degree.
At the same time, only 47 percent of Hoosiers currently qualify
as, ``middle skilled.''
According to the latest jobs report from the Bureau of
Labor Statistics there are roughly 6 million job openings in
our country. At the same time, the labor force participation
rate among those 25 to 54 is still more than two percentage
points below where it was at the beginning of 2008. We need to
find a way to connect these workers with good-paying jobs that
are and will become available which the data shows are often
technical jobs that require certifications.
So my first question for you, Dr. Sands, as you direct an
Advanced Technological Education Program, do you have protocols
in place to enroll those who are currently unemployed to fill
middle-skilled job openings in your area? Can you describe
that?
Dr. Sands. Yes. We have several different programs. I can
highlight one program. We had a program last year where we
worked with returning veterans, and basically, it was
completely designed around short-term credentialing. So
basically, we had a cohort of 12 veterans. By the way, 11
finish the program and 10 found employment after completing
this program. But, you know, we have to change our traditional
programs in many cases to reach those types of students. So
they were able to finish this program in a 12-week period,
again, work as a cohort.
It was almost the perfect program because a lot of these
students that were veterans already had security clearances,
which are really critical in the cybersecurity field, so we
were really leveraging, you know, a national resource that was
really sort of untapped. And we've run a second type of program
since then that's also been very, very successful.
But I think in many cases what we need are programs that
are based on stackable credentials, so there are many entrance
and exit points, and curriculums that are designed around the
requirements for those industry certifications. So not only are
they gaining academic credentials, but they are--you know, like
some of the other members have testified, they're also based
around industry certifications and the skills and knowledge
required with the industries.
Mr. Banks. Great. Thank you. Mr. King, will your task force
report on expanding apprenticeships include strategies on
connecting prime-age workers that have dropped out of the labor
force with apprenticeship programs and skilled technical
positions?
Mr. King. Yes, that is a major goal within expanding
apprenticeship is not just for, you know, feeder system out of
schools but even those--I have a statistic here that shows that
there are about 5.5 million disconnected people between the
ages of 16 and 24 who are currently out of school and not
working, and so the key is to--you know, how do we get those
individuals involved and teaching them more about the truth and
reality of the opportunities and also including industry-
recognized credentials where you can attain those credentials
without having to go through a four-year program or even a two-
year program. And as you earn the credentials, you can then
articulate those into college pathways if your heart desires.
So yes, with the industry-recognized credentials, it makes
attaining these jobs much more accessible to these individuals
that you're speaking of, yes.
Mr. Banks. Thank you very much. Thanks for being here. I
yield back.
Mr. Marshall. [Presiding] The Chair recognizes Ms. Rosen
for five minutes.
Ms. Rosen. Thank you. I want to thank you all for being
here today. And I know Chairwoman Comstock isn't here, but I
want to thank her because, this week, a bill that I originated,
Building Blocks of STEM and Code Like a Girl Act, were actually
passed out of this committee and voted on unanimously in the
House Tuesday night. And so, as a woman who's a former computer
programmer, I am especially interested in young girls learning
to code, and the Building Blocks of STEM does what you guys are
doing, helping teachers in the classroom with curriculum and
training and scholarships and education. So I thank this
subcommittee for moving that forward and then the whole House
and everyone who worked with me on that because we got
something done this week in this space.
So I want to talk a little bit about community colleges,
local businesses, how we create those public-private
partnerships. You know, when I'm in Nevada, I ask my local
businesses, just like you said, to show kids a pathway to work
for them for a good job in their company, whatever that is,
whether it's in elementary school, junior high, or high school
and to engage with those kids, Boys and Girls Clubs, wherever
it makes sense for their business because we know--I know that
the fear of data and analytics, it's really that fear I'm not
smart enough to analyze this or see a computer or think about
data is the barrier to success.
And I had the opportunity to participate in some STEM
roundtables with colleges--kids at the--or students at the
College of Southern Nevada and community college, and we know
that we're not funded so well there. So I guess I want to ask
all the panelists. What can we do through the--if it's not NSF
maybe through the Department of Education or the Department of
Labor to reach out with our community partners like you're
doing in a broader way to overcome this fear of data and
analytics and show people a pathway to these kinds of jobs. You
know, if you watch TV, you think there's about three jobs,
police, firemen, right, and so they're not getting exposed to
some of these really interesting, amazing jobs. So could you
speak to some of that?
Dr. McCrary. Briefly. I think a couple things that we have
to do is start also at the K-12 level and start with both
parents and counselors. Particularly for the skilled technical
workforce, we have to remove the stigma about these jobs, that
these are actually good-paying jobs, as well as showing multi-
ramps or onramps toward careers.
As one of my colleagues says, it's not just going to four-
year schools or bust but also there are a lot of other
opportunities in those jobs. So I think one is working with
high school counselors, working with parents. I will say
that's--what I said earlier in--some of the technical
organizations have held trials working with parents, talking
with parents who may be--their students may be first-generation
college, so talking to them about these careers.
I think the other thing is building partnerships, and so
that's where the National Science Board and NSF can facilitate
that conversation between community colleges, technical
schools, four-year schools and even trade union organizations
to talk about----
Ms. Rosen. Right.
Dr. McCrary. --the opportunities that are there and the
ability for people to manage their careers throughout the
spectrum.
Ms. Rosen. Fantastic. Anyone else want to address it?
Dr. Bardo. Please. We are in the process of amalgamating a
technical college within a research university, but we also are
in the process of restructuring our College of Education to be
the primary face that works with the technical college because
we really do believe that there's a combination there of
working with the teachers, working with the schools, and
starting young. But the technical college in Kansas has the
authority and the funding to work in the schools----
Ms. Rosen. Right.
Dr. Bardo. --which we as a research university don't. At
the same time, we've got capacity to prepare the teachers for
the changes that are coming.
Ms. Rosen. Right. I think that's where it starts, with the
teachers in the classroom.
Dr. Bardo. Right. But we've been very excited because one
of the projects--aircraft is designed throughout the world with
the software package called CATIA and working with CATIA--
actually with their parent company--we've been able to get that
software into the schools for free. And so when a student comes
to the university, they've already been programming in the core
language that is being used in industry.
Ms. Rosen. Fantastic, thank you. I really appreciate all
the work you're doing. It's so important and empowering our
teachers to realize that there's pathways for kids to learn
these skills and all kinds of great ways is the best way to do
it, so thank you. I yield back my time.
Chairwoman Comstock. Great. And I now recognize Mr. Tonko
for five minutes.
Mr. Tonko. Thank you, Madam Chair. And welcome to our
guests. I would hope just listening to some discussion, that
while we advance this effort for skills-based programs, we need
to keep that balance going with higher ed so that we don't
abandon one against another. They're both vitally important. So
that concern is one that I think needs to be addressed head-on.
I recently met with leaders at Hudson Valley Community
College, HVCC, in my capital district region of New York, an
institution that is making a difference on the issue of
workforce needs and in advanced manufacturing. They shared
insights from local business leaders and employers expressing
the need to train more people in advanced manufacturing in
order to close the skills gap both in our region and certainly
in our country.
By 2024 the--New York State will have an estimated 168,730
new jobs open in advanced manufacturing and many more obviously
across the country. With an aging workforce and rising demand
for the skills, we need to be preparing our students, our
schools, and our industries now to ensure we have workers ready
to enter these emerging fields. HVCC is taking a visionary step
forward in this space, creating the Gene F. Haas for Center for
Advanced Manufacturing Skills known as CAMS, which will allow
the college to double its enrollment in the advanced
manufacturing technology, their AOS degree program, and meet
the urgent and growing demand for skilled workers in our
region.
CAMS will be a one-stop hub for employee training and
recruitment. The building's design provides corporate partners
with access to offices and conference space adjacent to faculty
offices, student classrooms, and labs. Facilities will be
available for business demonstration purposes, shared training
activities, meetings, and events that connect the college to
its workforce partners more than ever before.
HVCC is also developing innovative programs for student
workforce training. For example, their Manufacturing Technology
Pathways program allows students to take short noncredit
skills--skills-based courses leading to local certifications
that will help them develop a career ladder of stackable
credentials for students that are valued by manufacturers.
They also offer an intensive boot camp training program
providing a pathway to entry into careers in advanced
manufacturing or the options of taking credit classes. I've
also been told that, currently, there is more demand by
employers for graduates of HVCC's advanced manufacturing
technician program than there are graduates. It's a great thing
to know we're training people for career opportunities that
exist today. I've been at the graduations, I've seen the
interest, I've seen the passion, and it's a powerful statement
made by these young career-path-bound people.
Local companies such as Global Foundries, GE, Watervliet
Arsenal, and Simmons Machine Tool Company compete to hire these
graduates, and there is still a shortfall. This speaks highly
to the program but also informs us of the urgency of closing
this skills gap.
So to all panelists, can community colleges fill a vital
role in the community of closing skills gaps? Is there a
special relationship that they can have with--that closes the
gap between industry and higher ed? Anyone?
Dr. McCrary. Well, you--one of the things that you pointed
out, the balance between the skilled technical workforce,
apprenticeships, and also higher education, if you think about
in the STEM fields, 49 percent of those people who entered the
STEM fields come through community colleges, and so community
colleges provide those opening doors and a path whether you
want to go on for a four-year education or go in for, say, a
higher technical skilled workforce degree.
I think in those areas that's where the community colleges
can really link with the four-year institutions, as well as
with the trade organizations to be those pathways for those
skilled technical workers and to be able to fill the shortages.
Mr. Tonko. Dr. Sands?
Dr. Sands. Yes, I'd like to also speak to this. I think
community colleges play a special role in that, so community
colleges can provide a second chance so, you know, someone
didn't--you know, failed a chance to go on to a university many
times come back through the community colleges, get
credentials, get in the workforce, and many of those students
go on to finish undergraduate and graduate degrees. But we also
get returning--we've had in our program people to return with
graduate degrees, they come back and they are either changing
careers or they're trying to upgrade their skills. So I think
community colleges are well-placed to provide those types of
options.
And, you know, when I go to different things within my
community, I mean, whether it's at a hospital or an auto repair
place or whatever, most of the times I asked where they're
getting their students. And nine out of ten times, you know, I
hear it's someone that came through, you know, the neighborhood
community college. So I think, you know, they play a vital role
in this.
Part of the thing is in investing so that they have the
tools and the technology that represent the greatest impact and
represent what industries actually need because I think that's
the biggest challenge we have sometimes is that, you know, a
lot of these things are changing at a rapid pace and community
colleges don't always necessarily have the funding to represent
those types of technologies and the types of skills that are
necessary to meet changing areas of technology.
Mr. Tonko. Yes. Dr. Bardo, were you going to say something?
Dr. Bardo. Yes--
Mr. Tonko. Mr. King, too?
Dr. Bardo. Yes, just very quickly. One of the really big
issues that we are seeing is we do so much applied research
that we're seeing five and ten years out what the advanced
manufacturing is going to look like, and it's going to be very
different than it is today. We're working with major
corporations primarily from the Midwest but really all over the
world, and the changes that are coming are dramatic. So it's
not just the funding for today and it's not just getting them
into the job today. One of the issues we're seeing in Wichita
is people aren't silly. They look and say, ``Well, wait a
minute, in five years, we're not to be making aircraft the way
were making them today. We're not going to be designing
fuselages the way we're doing today, so why should I spend all
that time preparing when I know that my job's going to be
gone?''
So having a long-term view where you give people a ladder
to success so that it's not just today's job, but if you take
today's job, we're going to continue working with you and help
you move as advanced manufacturing moves.
Mr. Tonko. Thank you.
Mr. King. Yes. I think community colleges are extremely
important. Right now, NIMS, we're working with Raytheon, which
is a large missile defense company with an apprenticeship
program that we're planning to scale across the entire
organization. And--but we're working in Tucson first as a
launch and we're actually--we brought--we're bringing the
college and Raytheon together with NIMS as a consulting piece
to work together. So Raytheon and the local college, they're
now going all the way--they're planning to go all the way into
the middle schools to start giving Raytheon hats. I mean, you
know, and the community college will be working with them on
the recruiting piece. So it can't be done with just one piece.
It has to be done together. But putting skin in the game, we
have Raytheon and the college working together. I think that's
key.
Mr. Tonko. Thank you. I yield back and I thank the Chair
for allowing me to go well past, but we had a lot of people
anxious to answer, so----
Chairwoman Comstock. Yes.
Mr. Tonko. --thank you, Madam Chair.
Chairwoman Comstock. No--and I appreciated the information,
too, so thank you.
And I now recognize Mr. Hultgren for five minutes.
Mr. Hultgren. Thank you, Chairwoman. I appreciate you all
being here. This is a very important hearing and it's something
that I'm passionate about.
As a Member of this Committee, I see sparking an interest
in young people in STEM fields as a vital part of what we need
to be doing and certainly what our nation needs in order to
remain competitive going into the future. More importantly than
that, I do think discovery and innovation are part of our DNA
as a nation.
Back in my district I've had the privilege of starting a
STEM scholars program where I meet with about 30 young people,
high-schoolers from around my district. I represent seven
counties just outside of Chicago, and this is our second year
of having our STEM scholars. And I meet with them once a month.
I'm going to be with them this Saturday for a couple of hours.
We go to different parts around northern Illinois to see how
they can apply STEM education and STEM passion in careers right
in our area.
We're so fortunate to have some great laboratories like
Fermilab and Argonne, but we have some amazing companies that
are doing some really cool work as well. And every place I go
people are looking to hire more engineers, more programmers, so
we need to keep figuring out ways to spark that.
I asked them if they had any questions for you all. I hope
it's all right. I'm going to throw out some questions from my
STEM scholars and see what your thoughts are. One of the
scholars, Akin from Oswego, stressed the importance of hands-on
learning and the effects that internships for high school
students can have. These are often hard to find and take a
company that is willing to host. His school can also give
credits for these internships. How can we measure the success
of this kind of career exposure at a younger age, and how can
we improve the relationship between businesses and schools to
develop these opportunities?
Dr. McCrary. I'll give you one example, and this is at the
four-year level because there's a concern even at the four-year
level that many of our students, even our engineering students
are very good from a book point of view but they don't know the
difference between a Phillips head screwdriver and a regular
screwdriver.
Mr. Hultgren. I struggle with that, too, but----
Dr. McCrary. One program is we're working with industry is
we're working with Northrop Grumman. Morgan State University is
located in the Baltimore/Washington region. Part of that
industry is national security. They have a program called cyber
warriors, and what they have done is they're working with our
students. They have them do hands-on coding. Actually do mock
attacks on systems and--so that our students can get that
hands-on, plus coupled with internships. You know, when I came
along--I won't say how long ago--you could come out and not
have an internship during the summer, you'd go work for a
company, and they'd say you can get up to speed in two years.
But most businesses nowadays are out of business in two years
if they can't have an employee who hits the ground running.
And so also with many of our companies, as well as
government partners like the Navy, we work very early on,
freshman coming in and getting internships and getting hands-on
experience, coupled with their formal learning makes a product
that comes out the door that both industry and government
wants.
Mr. Hultgren. That's great. One of my STEM scholars from
our first year was a high school student but was also part of a
cyber warrior team through his high school where they were
doing, like you said, these types of mock attacks but also
learning from it. And I talk about it with my own kids. I've
got four kids, but my younger guys are 13 and 16. Whenever they
travel with me, they're my tech support team, so whenever I've
got a problem or question with my technology, they're the ones
to answer.
Let me get through another question quick. Another student,
Taylor, who goes to school in Elgin, had some questions about
your experiences as being mentors. How willing are you to take
on a mentee, and how many are you able to work with? Have you
turned anyone down? Also, how valuable are these experiences to
you as a mentor?
I would throw it out maybe to one of the other panelists if
anybody has a thought on being a mentor.
Dr. Sands. You know, the way we sort of deal with that is
that we have a couple different groups on campus that
specifically serve as mentors.
Mr. Hultgren. Right.
Dr. Sands. So we have Women in Technology, and we basically
have about 60 ex-graduates of the institution, and we pair them
up with current students for mentorship, so it really expands
our capacity. And we have that in several other areas.
And one of the other things I'd mention--you mentioned the
national labs. We work with Argonne National Labs and, you
know, they host an annual competition that students are able to
get hands-on experience, but they have a group of businesses
that work with the participants and provide mentorships and
trips to their facilities--
Mr. Hultgren. Great.
Dr. Sands. --and--you know, and so on.
Mr. Hultgren. Fantastic.
Dr. Bardo. The--one of the things we learn from the beta
test that we completed is that the students are pretty excited
about being involved in a real project in a real business.
Mr. Hultgren. That's right.
Dr. Bardo. And what the business told us--actually, what
the V.P. in charge of that division told us was that it gave a
new life to many of the long-term employees, that they really
felt that having the young person there changed their
perspective as well. And so they had a reverse mentoring day
every so often where the student would mentor the older worker
as well.
Mr. Hultgren. Great.
Dr. Bardo. And so mentoring within a formal organization,
actually our experience has been that has been a tremendous
boon both to the organization and to the student.
If I might mention, one of the things that we heard from
industry is that if you hire a new engineer with a bachelor's
degree it takes approximately two years for that engineer to
contribute to your bottom line, which is why you'll hear
industry say there are no engineers available.
Mr. Hultgren. Right.
Dr. Bardo. Well, there are, but they're young ones----
Mr. Hultgren. Right.
Dr. Bardo. --right? And so the--what we found is, as we put
students through the apprenticeship program, that it cut the
time to profitability for the business to six months, so it had
a huge impact--
Mr. Hultgren. That's great.
Dr. Bardo. --on the bottom line of the business. It had a
huge impact on the workers who were working with the students,
and it really changed the quality of the students' education.
Mr. Hultgren. That's fantastic. I'm out of time. I have
more questions from my STEM scholars. I may follow up in
writing if that's all right to get answers to my STEM scholars.
One last thing I'll say is quite a few of my STEM scholars are
part of robotics. FIRST Robotics has been amazing. This idea of
gracious professionalism, teaching young people, I think that's
something we need to learn here in Congress about the idea of
gracious professionalism, but so excited again about the mentor
relationship that we see through robotics but so many other
things and really encouraging, Dr. Bardo, to hear about how it
is cutting down that time it takes for someone to add real
value on the ground, so thank you. Thank you all for your work.
I look forward to figuring out how we can work together as well
for what we know is the right thing for America.
With that, thank you, Chairwoman. I yield back.
Chairwoman Comstock. Thank you. And thank you, Dr. Bardo,
for that point. That is really interesting and that really kind
of goes to one of the things that we know in the future
economy. You have to be lifelong learners. So for the mentors
to also be getting that push from the mentees is exciting.
And I now yield five minutes to Mr. Beyer.
Mr. Beyer. Thank you, Madam Chair, very much. And thank you
all for being here.
Dr. McCrary, in his recent report on America's skilled
technical workforce the National Academies recommended that the
National Science Foundation commission a study on how countries
with, quote, ``more proficient workers'' have developed their
skilled technical workforce. So we all know about the German
experience with apprenticeships. So I lived in Switzerland for
four years, and one of the most interesting pieces was that,
you know, 70 percent of the kids were going into the technical
vocational training rather than the college-bound. And they had
the Fachhochschule, which is essentially their equivalent of
the community colleges. And what's fascinating every year was
that they--there were more jobs than there were trained workers
coming out of these apprenticeship programs. They're training
people for the skills that were needed in the workforce.
So the key question that we asked overseas and which they
tried to ask the Department of Labor through the Obama and
early Trump Administrations was how do we change the culture
here to make that happen?
Dr. McCrary. I think we have to change the culture is first
we have to, again, as I said earlier, have to change the
stigma. We have to say that very early on for a number of folks
that there are opportunities besides just the traditional
linear four-year track. Places like Maryland, places like South
Carolina have started very successfully apprentice-based
programs. And what they have done is they've gotten into the
schools very, very early, talked to people about the different
opportunities.
I'll give you a good example. In Baltimore city, right now,
there's about anywhere between 1,500 to maybe 2,000 throughout
the state electrical workers that--jobs need to be filled,
according to IBEW about 100,000 across the Nation. But many of
these jobs involve coding, and many of these jobs involve
understanding circuit analysis. In some sense, the electrician
that we knew years ago is not the same today. So what they have
done is gone out to the schools and talked about how exciting
these jobs can be, how they can put a number of things
together.
And getting back to what you said about the apprentice-
based education, one of the things our task force is going to
be looking at is looking at that apprentice-based model and see
how that compares with what we can do here, some of the
programs that are going on in some of the states now, and how
can we adapt parts of that to the economy here in the United
States.
Mr. Beyer. Thank you very much. Dr. Sands, you have this
community college background, which is terrific. You see more
and more states little by little adopting the free community
college model. It was led first I guess by a Republican Mayor
in Memphis and then by a Republican Governor in Tennessee. I
think the Republican Governor of Maryland is moving in that
direction pretty quickly. Is this--by making that 13th and 14th
grade free, does this help that? Do we still need to have a
cash investment in it on behalf of the individual to make the
education worthwhile? What's your perspective?
Dr. Sands. I think it's more critical than ever. I mean, we
look at the cost of universities and colleges across the
country, and community colleges, even at the current rates, are
really the only option that a lot of these students have. So,
you know, any help that community colleges have in lowering
tuition especially--I mean, I can just mention in the State of
Illinois with our financial issues, the need for more
affordable education is more important than ever.
Mr. Beyer. Very cool. And, Dr. Bardo, you talked about the
mismatch in terms of where the apprenticeship programs have
grown up. You know, we do great in Connecticut and in Virginia
and maybe not so well in Louisiana and Arkansas. What's the
long-term implication of having this disparity?
Dr. Bardo. I think the fundamental issue is that education
changed a lot, and we in higher education have been slow to the
table to get to the notion that you have to have experience and
apply the knowledge that you learned to know--when I was in
college, when you were in college, to pass a test, you know,
you got an A, you were good. Then it became, okay, well,
everybody has to have an internship, some kind of an
experience. And what we're finding today is that really deep
understanding of whatever you're studying, if it's English or
it's engineering, really requires you to look beyond the
classroom. And I think that not having that happening is really
hurting our workforce, it's hurting our national
competitiveness, and it's hurting the competitiveness of those
states that aren't taking this seriously and moving forward.
Mr. Beyer. Great. Thank you very much.
Madam Chair, I yield back.
Chairwoman Comstock. I thank the witnesses for their
testimony and the Members for their questions, and now the
record will remain open for two weeks for additional written
comments and written questions from Members, including some of
those that may be from the STEM scholars. That sounded very
interesting.
And I really thank you for the good work you're doing. I
think we are really going to be needing a sea change in how we
approach these jobs, and you've really mapped out for us some
ideal approaches on how we can really change this up for the
better.
And the great thing about a lot of this is we're talking
about people who aren't going to have to get hundreds of
thousands of dollars in debt for going to college for a degree
that may not even be what they wanted. You know, if we really
start working with these kids at a young age, have them
understand these jobs are available, really have them hands-on
experience and see the whole career path and opportunities that
are available to them, they can both get into areas that will,
you know, pay for themselves, as well as really be what we need
in the economy, so I just think there's a lot of exciting
synergies here that we've just started to scratch the surface
of, but you've really given us a great path here.
So I know we were already talking up here on some possible
legislation in this area and how we can continue to support
your efforts, so thank you for all you're doing. And we're
adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 10:50 a.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]
Appendix I
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Answers to Post-Hearing Questions
Answers to Post-Hearing Questions
Responses by Dr. Victor R. McCrary
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Responses by Dr. John Sands
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Responses by Mr. Montez King
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Responses by Dr. John Bardo
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