workforce

The Department of Labor has issued on its website Telework and the New Workplace of the 21st Century, a compilation of a dozen studies presented at a national telework symposium held in New Orleans in October.

The report from the Institute on Education and the Economy at Columbia University indicates early results of the 1994 School-to-Work Opportunities Act are encouraging, but there are areas for improvement given the opportunity presented by reauthorization. The study also found School-to-Work student participants are less likely to drop out of school than non-participants, school attendance and grades improve, and many broaden their career options by going on for post-secondary education.

The Brookings Institutions Center on Urban & Metropolitan Policy report finds that a leading indicator of a metropolitan areas high technology success is a large gay population. Using four indices, 1990 census data, and the Milken Institute’s measures of high-tech concentration, the new analysis revealed other indications of diversity, such as a high concentration of artists or foreign-born residents, are additional significant indicators of successful technology centers.

The report notes several reasons to advance women in the sciences, including the economic imperative to increase the technological and scientific literacy of Americas workforce. At a time when U.S. industry cannot fill openings for technically advanced jobs, the talents of women are underutilized, reports the National Council for Research on Women.

The survey conducted by the Collegiate Employment Research Institute at Michigan State University indicates 2002 college graduates, particularly those with masters and doctoral degrees, can expect a tougher time finding employment after graduation next spring. The largest declines in hiring include engineering, computer science and business.

The Michigan Economic Development Corporation and the Presidents Council, State Universities of Michigan released the study showing a large majority of technically educated Michigan university students remain in the state after graduation. Researchers tracked the patterns of approximately 30,000 high-tech sector graduates from 1997 through 2000, and found Michigan retained 79 percent of graduates in the life sciences, information technology and engineering sectors who entered the workforce in high-tech positions.

The study of more than 2,000 graduates of the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh in 1980 and 1990, reports that while nearly 80 percent of graduates remained in Wisconsin, alumni working outside the state made 23 percent more than those who remained in the state. The study also holds that graduates in math or science-related fields were 50 percent more likely to move out-of-state for employment than other alumni.

The report states that brain drain and a lack of technically skilled workers, both scientists and engineers, are common complaints of state and local tech-based economic development practitioners across the country. The author contends government must increase the quantity of scientists and engineers, not simply the cost of the existing pool of available researchers.

The report from the Southern Technology Council (STC) provides one of the first in-depth looks at what factors influence graduate migration behavior after college. Putting emphasis is on recent science and engineering graduates, STC identifies several individual, institutional, and state-level predictors of student retention using a series of regression analyses of 44 different variables.

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The University of Georgia study showed the HOPE scholarship program has been influential in keeping the states brightest high school students in-state for college – a significant goal based on the Southern Technology Council findings regarding the likelihood of students remaining in-state after school. Based on this report, policy makers may want to focus first and foremost on keeping high school students in state for college, and working hard to attract bright students in science and engineering who attended high school outside the state.