2019-2020 Academic Catalog

Apr 20, 2024

2019-2020 Academic Catalog [ARCHIVED CATALOG]

IDCE 387 - Workforce Development and Urban/Regional Employment

In the knowledge-based society, the race to achieve higher levels of development and productivity has become one of expanding the human capital base of societies and countries. Thomas Piketty, in his book Capital in the 21^st Century, has called this trend the “rising human capital hypothesis”. In the same book, however, he also poses a very provoking question: “Has the apparently growing importance of human capital over the course history been an illusion?” This question is extremely relevant, especially when we hear and see all kinds of ways in which we destroy or waste “human capital”. Workforce development encompasses a variety of employer-based, place-based, and people-based policies, strategies and programs to boost the employability, skill base and education of workers, improve the matching of workers and employers in labor markets, increase the competitiveness of industrial sectors, urban areas and regions, and to address multiple kinds of labor market dislocations resulting from enterprise restructuring, deindustrialization, technological modernization, and occupational obsolescence. This course examines, first, basic theories about the functioning of labor markets (neoclassical, human capital, segmentation/dual labor markets) and the structural forces behind the deterioration of jobs, such as the growth in low-wage employment, globalization, declining quality of jobs, unemployment, and labor market deregulation. Secondly, the course examines the workforce development regulation of the USA, the variety of workforce development strategies and programs (adult education, employability programs, work-first, sectorial/cluster-based, career-ladders, etc.), and the role of various actors (government, community colleges, labor market intermediaries, unions, networks) in the formation and implementation of such programs. Also, we ask about the evidence of performance of programs under the various approaches. Thirdly, we examine the specificity of programs to support a variety workers (youth, women, immigrants, low-wage workers, incumbent workers) overcome various kinds of labor market disadvantage. Finally, the course explores the connection between workforce development policies and community/regional economic development, especially in small and midsize cities and their regional context: industrial cluster development, the emerging green economy, and the new agriculture. This is comparative course with material from the US and Western Europe, Asia and the Global South.

Concentrations

Education and Development- Youth Development- Urban Regeneration:Economic and Workforce Development

Anticipated Terms Offered: varies

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