08/02/12 - Institute President Jennifer McNelly participated in the Brookings Institution's Metropolitan Policy Program (Metro Program) roundtable today focued primarily on STEM-related occupations, the manufacturing sector and middle-skill jobs: those requiring more than a high school diploma but less than a four-year college degree.
Nearly twenty national thought leaders and practitioners discussed the following questions:
- What are the nature of the partnerships among education/training institutions, employers and others? What are reasonable and feasible measures of success? How do we balance and/or integrate academic instruction with occupational and work-readiness skills training, as well as supportive services when appropriate?
The Metro Program is advancing a vision of a “next economy”—one that is driven by exports, powered by low carbon, fueled by innovation, rich with opportunity, and characteristically metropolitan in form and function. To support that vision, the Metro Program is embarking on a new research and policy agenda focused on the critical role of human capital—the education and skills of current and future workers—in building that next economy in metropolitan America.