Institutional Skill Training among American Manpower Programmes: Lessons from the Experiences

Institutional skill training—training in institutions organised for that purpose rather than on‐the‐job—was the first of the manpower programmes of the 1960s to be mandated by Congress and applied on a nationwide basis. Its overall goal has been to improve the skills, employability and income of the unemployed and under‐employed through the provision of vocational and related instruction in a formal classroom or laboratory setting. A corollary purpose of the programme has been to meet the needs of employers for workers in demand and/or “skills shortage” occupations. It differs from traditional vocational education in that its objective is to train workers for immediate employment in occupations which are currently in demand. Traditional vocational education, on the other hand, has a much broader objective: to prepare the student for a lifetime of work in a dynamic labour market. Institutional skill training, as it evolved in the sixties, is short‐term and intensive; traditional vocational education is longer in length and adapted to the less immediate needs of secondary and post‐secondary level students.