Education Commons^™

The Skills Gap In U.S. Manufacturing: The Effectiveness Of Technical Education On The Incumbent Workforce, Robert Michael Deal

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

This thesis explores the skill sets of the current American workforce, the skills required in modern, technically advanced U.S. manufacturing facilities, and the multiple approaches postsecondary education has employed to bridge the gap between the two. Millions of dollars are spent each year educating and training the incumbent workforce without any definitive measure of whether the financial investment or effort is actually providing a return.

To illustrate, organizations typically require a projected return-on-investment (ROI) before committing funds to a project. However, the same approach does not seem to be applied when investing in human capital for the purpose of improving …

Vocational Training In Higher Education: A Learning Centred Approach To Integrating ‘Educultures’, Jeff Ruigrok

Publications and Scholarship

The goal of this effort is to make plain any overlap between Post-Secondary Mechanical Technician Standards and Plumbing Apprenticeship Curriculum Standards. We'll investigate whether the overlap is significant enough to create a modern and updated classroom learning template. Mechanical Technician programs are generally 56 weeks in length. A Plumbing Apprenticeship is significantly longer. The essential question is: What portion of Technician Education equates to the first 100 to 200 weeks of Apprenticeship Training. If enough meaningful and actionable overlaps do exist there may be opportunities to strengthen real-world-connections to in-school lectures and labs.

The two key Standards that will be …

Teaching & Learning Template: Plumbing By Learning Type And Style, Jeff Ruigrok

Publications and Scholarship

No abstract provided.