Partnerships between Business and Adult Education Providers

Introduction

In 2010, President Barack Obama launched the “Skills for America’s Future” campaign, designed to harness the cooperative powers of businesses and community colleges to improve adult workforce training and education. A White House report states the President’s attitude on adult education and worker training as follows:

Indeed, as the United States slowly recovers from the “Great Recession” that began in 2007, more high-skill jobs must be created, and more workers must be trained for those jobs if economic recovery and growth are to be sustained (Gordon, 2009). Simultaneously, the United States faces global challenges that make it imperative to reconsider the role of business and industry in adult workforce preparation. Worker capabilities must be enhanced in ways never done before, as stated by Gordon (2009):

Partnerships between adult education providers like community colleges on the one hand and business and industry on the other are frequently touted as an appropriate and effective response to the challenges of globalization in that they help American businesses to maintain their competitiveness in an increasingly smaller world (Soares, 2010). Involving business and industry in adult education and training is not a new concept. Hodnett (1955) already stated it clearly: “The need for better understanding through closer industry-college relations is a matter of national importance” (p. 12). He complained that a lack of interaction led to missing out on all the benefits such relations could provide. Lipsky (1973) also argued that employer involvement was the key ingredient in successful workforce training, and Hull and Hinckley (2007) lamented that such involvement had been sadly lacking. The ultimate consensus is that employers not only must but also should want to participate more actively in workforce training because of the many benefits that can be realized.