Search

Copyright of Interface - Comunicação, Saúde, Educação is the property of Fundacao UNI and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In the United States, policy makers refer to young people, between the ages of 16 and 24, who are disconnected from school or work as "opportunity youth."Although researchers have documented demographic characteristics of this population, few empirical studies examine features of context that explain how youth become disconnected from education and employment. In this chapter, I present the voices of young people as they examine the phenomenon of "disconnection" in their rural community. I draw on qualitative data to describe how features of policy, practice, and place make it difficult for youth to experience feelings of belonging, develop valued social networks, and establish identities as productive community members. The chapter includes recommendations for sustaining youth engagement and interrupting pathways to disconnection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies of low-wage workers have long recognized the role of space in mediating access to employment. Significantly less attention has been paid to the ways in which space informs workers' ability to develop the attributes that would make them more employable. In this article, we address this gap through an examination of how immigrant workers use the relative spatial organization of residence and production to cultivate the skills that enable them to shift out of low-wage occupations. We also argue that workers' spatial job market strategies have an important, but often overlooked, temporal aspect: workers use space over time not only to shape their access to jobs but also to create breathing room for learning skills that enable them to improve their employment trajectories over the long term. Drawing on a multiyear ethnographic study of Mexican immigrants in downtown Philadelphia, we show that immigrant workers used the functional proximity among the restaurant industry, small-scale residential construction work pertaining to housing renovation, and the neighborhoods where they lived to develop skill sets that enabled them to shift into higher-wage construction jobs. In essence, these workers knitted together two seemingly separate industries, such that they could use their employment time in one for learning in and about the other. Our study suggests that interventions that curtail immigrants' mobility may have implications that are far more serious than limiting immediate access to jobs: these measures may undercut immigrants' strategies for developing the skills required for long-term occupational mobility and advancement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BACKGROUND. Little is known about educational attainment, agricultural jobs and income among graduates from Historically Black Land-Grant College and Universities. In this study, we examined the impact of educational attainment on type of jobs among former students and determine if controlling for income, educational attainment has a positive impact on the type jobs after graduation. METHODS. Data are from a study of graduates from three Historically Black Land-Grant Colleges and Universities in Alabama and Tennessee. The questionnaire included questions on educational attainment, career mobility, college curriculum competencies and skill, opinions about agricultural careers, actual salaries, fringe benefits, and other personal characteristics. Descriptive statistics and Chi-square statistics were used for the analysis. RESULTS. The higher the level of education, the greater the tendency for these college of agriculture graduates to remain in agriculture-related careers. To these former students, the extent to which the work is intellectually satisfying appears to be more important than the income it yields. CONCLUSIONS. Graduate related work associated with an advanced degree is highly satisfying even within low incomes. * We thank Professor Henry J. Findlay for his helpful feedback on previous drafts. Address correspondence to Professor Andrew A. Zekeri (email: Zekeri@mytu.tuskegee.edu) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study provides an analysis of the occupational and educational selectivity of Puerto Rican migration to and from the United States using consolidated data from the American Community Survey for 2006 to 2008. Using existing theoretical explanations of migration, the study assesses the extent to which current explanations of migration are applicable to the most recent migratory flows. To ascertain the validity of the proposition that Puerto Rican migration flows are primarily composed of the most disadvantaged workers, we divided the sample into two labor market segments—those employed in low-wage occupations and those not employed in low-wage occupations. The main conclusions of this study are that net migration outflows from the island are likely to persist to the extent that growing disparities in labor market conditions between Puerto Rico and the United States persist, and that the patterns of selectivity predicted by various theories of migration are not unmistakably identifiable in current flows. Such evidence calls for a new look at the case of Puerto Rican migration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Training in neurological surgery is one of the most competitive and demanding specializations in medicine. It therefore demands careful planning in both the scientific and clinical neurosurgery arena to finally turn out physicians that can be clinically sound and scientifically competitive. National and international training and career options are pointed out, based on the available relevant literature, with the objective of comparing the neurosurgical training in Europe and the USA. Despite clear European Association of Neurosurgical Societies guidelines, every country in Europe maintains its own board requirements, which is reflected in an institutional curriculum that is specific to the professional society of that particular country. In contrast, the residency program in the USA is required to comply with the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education guidelines. Rather similar guidelines exist for the education of neurosurgical residents in the USA and Europe; their translation into the practical hospital setting and the resulting clinical lifestyle of a resident diverges enormously. Since neurosurgical education remains heterogeneous worldwide, we argue that a more standardized curriculum across different nations would greatly facilitate the interaction of different centers, allow a direct comparison of available services, and support the exchange of vital information for quality control and future improvements. Furthermore, the exchange of residents between different training centers may improve education by increasing their knowledge base, both technically as well as intellectually. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With many teens concentrating on academics, fewer are working during the summer; in recent years, teens also have faced a labor market weakened by recessions, a diminishing number of federally funded summer jobs, and competition from other groups for entry-level job opportunities [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author reflects on the lack of skilled workers in the U.S. because everyone is making sure that they have a four-year degree instead of a certificate or an associate focused on the actual work. He argues that good teachers are needed but without practical application, knowledge is useless. An overview of why U.S. infrastructure needs skilled workers is offered. The author suggests that it is time to reset the academic discipline to focus on work and skills before it is too late.

Using data from the 2000 Public Use Sample of the U.S. census, this research examined how estimates of school enrollment and school-work patterns among Mexican-origin adolescents are affected by including or excluding young immigrants who never enrolled in U.S. schools. The analysis demonstrates that a nontrivial share of adolescents who were born in Mexico almost certainly never enrolled in U.S. schools; these youths most likely migrated to the United States for work. Excluding these adolescents from analyses substantially reduces gaps in school enrollment between Mexicans and whites and between native and foreign-born Mexicans. Excluding never-enrolled immigrant youths also changes the relationship between the duration of U.S. residence and idleness among Mexican immigrant youths, revealing that additional years of residence in the United States increase the likelihood of being out of school and not working compared to being in school and not working. Overall, inferences about the level of school enrollment and intraethnic differences in school enrollment by duration of residence depend on how those who are likely to have never enrolled in U.S. schools are treated. Inferences about interethnic differences are also affected, although they are somewhat less sensitive to this issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

El Estudio Internacional de Tendencias en Matemáticas y Ciencias de 2003 revela que el trabajo del estudiante merma más su rendimiento escolar en unos países que en otros. Es probable que las diferencias se deban a las circunstancias nacionales en cuanto a necesidades y posibilidades de trabajo. Los autores, basándose en una encuesta estadounidense de 2004, confirman que el trabajo influye en el rendimiento en matemáticas: trabajar hasta diez horas por semana tiene consecuencias positivas ligeras, mientras que hacerlo de veinte horas en adelante tiene un efecto negativo considerable. Después someten aprueba la posible endogeneidad de la decisión de trabajar. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The future of noncredit workforce education programs looks bright but organizational, funding, and accountability issues remain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The academic performance of urban African American students continues to be a major concern. Academic achievement has been the main avenue to upward social mobility for African Americans. This study assesses the effect of attitudes, behavior, peers, and family on the academic performance of African American students living in urban public housing developments located in a large midwestern city. Results are presented from a sample of 238 African American adolescents aged 13-19 with a mean age of l5.6 years. Results suggested that youth with unfavorable attitudes toward deviance and who spend time involved in family activities are more likely to report above- average grades. As youth involvement in antisocial behavior and exposure to delinquent peers increased, they were less likely to report above-average grades. This investigation highlights the importance of examining family, peer, and individual correlates when assessing factors that influence academic performance among African American students living in public housing or similar urban settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the life accomplishments of sociology professor and educator Philip Foster who died in 2008 in the U.S. It says that Foster was an education officer in the Acholi province of Uganda from 1955-1958 where he met an anthropologist who become his wife and mother to his two sons. He entered at the University of Chicago where he was appointed assistant professor and received his doctoral advance. In 1984-1986, Foster served as chair of the U.S. Department of Education.

The article discusses the U.S. No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) in terms of how it will effect the workforce by providing jobs for educated persons and dispels the myths that the best way to eschew poverty is through education. The number of jobs available is compared with the number of low-income people who could work for the period from 1984-1996. There was an insufficient number of jobs and the government only provides job training and not job creation. Minimum wage is too low for any person who wishes to leave poverty to do so and half of the workforce earns only "poverty-zone wages." Poverty, the authors demonstrate, is not the result of low test scores but a failure of corporations to create jobs.

The article looks at how assessment via high-stakes tests has changed the education system in the U.S. and the place that the Business Roundtable (BRT) has had in that change. A history of education and the reform of the public education system is provided. When the U.S. economy, the author argues, shifted to a service economy, a new system for tracking academic achievement was also devised. Higher class students go to college while underperforming students from the lower classes take minimum wage jobs or go to prison.

This study focuses on the occupational component of the labor market adjustment of Hispanic immigrants. The author asks whether Hispanic immigrants assimilate with natives and what factors influence occupational attainment. The findings suggest that years since migration narrow the socioeconomic gap between Hispanic immigrants, their U.S.-born Hispanic counterparts, and non-Hispanic whites. The level of human capital affects the rate of occupational mobility and determines whether convergence occurs in the groups’ socioeconomic occupational status. The occupational status of Hispanic immigrants with low human capital remains fairly stable and does not converge with that of non-Hispanic whites. However, those with high human capital experience upward occupational mobility. In part, their occupational assimilation is driven by the acquisition of human capital among younger Hispanic immigrants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a report that examines occupational mobility data for the January 2003 to January 2004 period for selected demographic and employment characteristics and compares historical data with current data. The report is based on the January 2004 Current Population Survey in the U.S. A concept related to occupational mobility is job mobility. Job mobility occurs when an individual stops working for one employer and begins work for another. Occupational mobility can occur with or without job mobility. Occupational mobility rates for January 2004 show a consistent relationship between age and mobility for both men and women. As age increases, occupational mobility rates decline, regardless of gender. School enrollment can have a slight effect on the occupational mobility rate for those aged 16 to 24 years. About 58 percent of those who changed their occupation between January 2003 and January 2004 also changed their industry; this means that most changes in occupation are accompanied by a change in industry.

The concept of the school-to-work transition is a recent development, associated with change, waiting, and uncertainty. The route from schooling to employment is often depicted nowadays as long and perilous, unlike the short and direct routes presumed available to previous generations. The school-to-work agenda embraces many long-standing issues concerning schooling, employment, and training. This paper discusses research findings for seven advanced economies. Although analytical evidence has traditionally been confined largely to the U.S., a European literature as emerged lately. The analysis of different national experiences promises two benefits. School-to-work issues vary by country. There are two primary foci in the U.S. structural joblessness among disadvantaged non-white youth, the traditional concern of economists, and vocational preparation for non-college-bound youth, the traditional concern of educationists. Although analogous issues arise elsewhere, in other countries socioeconomic disadvantage tends to be less damaging and vocational preparation more highly developed. The research findings considered here are drawn mostly from microeconometric studies that address the problem of selection bias.

Between 1985-90, metropolitan Los Angeles received about 400,000 working immigrants and about 575,000 working native in-migrants. We subdivide these native- and foreign-born migrants by national origin and ethnicity to examine the processes that channel recent arrivals into different industrial sectors. Our analysis extends previous research on migrant employment and the ethnic division of labor in two ways. We compare the employment of recent arrivals to residents for several groups across a large, diverse, regional economy. We also consider the role educational qualifications play in the allocation of different migrant groups to jobs at this aggregate analytical scale. The results show that both native- and foreign-born groups channel into particular industrial sectors. The strength of group channeling, however, varies by national origin and ethnic group. Native-born in-migrants are more likely to channel into the industries where their co-ethnic residents work than immigrant newcomers. We also find some groups more likely to take jobs based on their educational qualifications (whites, blacks, Filipinos and Chinese), whereas ethnic group effects dominate the choice of industry of others (Koreans). The analysis investigates the issue of interethnic labor market competition by comparing the employment profiles of newcomers with those of resident ethnic groups. It shows that immigrants experience more interethnic labor market competition from newcomers than do native whites and blacks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the combined effort of the Departments of Labor, Health, Education, Welfare and Commerce to find ways to strengthen the relationship between work and education in the U.S. Means of helping young people bridge the gap between school and work; Details on the process of local collaboration among various institutions that deals with the transition from school to work; Involvement of various sectors of the community in youth development.

The article focuses on the future role of vocational education in high schools in the U.S. with special reference to the current state of vocational education in the country. Vocational education is defined as an integration of programs aimed to provide students with work and life skills. General vocational education programmes and occupational-specific programmes are the two broad categories into which high school vocational education may be classified. About two-thirds of the high school students participate in the former and while one-third in the latter. Comprehensive high schools deliver a major proportion of the vocational education taken by American high school students. Many school districts have established vocational high schools or area vocational centres due to lack of good teachers of vocational subjects and increasing cost of equipping comprehensive high schools to teach these programmes. Some of the problems affecting vocational education includes declining enrolments on vocational courses, declining resources available and the growing obsolescence of the training equipment, lack of status attached to it and difficulties faced in overcoming sex-stereotyping in vocational education among others.

The article focuses on unemployment in the United States and discusses various suggestions made to prevent unemployment specifically in youth. Economic conditions in the United States are explored and unemployment statistics are presented. The role of education and employment is examined in particular and concepts such as work study programs are considered.

To study how the design of unemployment insurance (UI) affects people leaving school to find jobs, a model of job search in the presence of UI is developed and estimated for the United States and Canada. The level of UI benefits depends on previous earnings, which creates opposing incentives for unemployed people not receiving benefits. Which of these opposing incentives dominates the other is found to differ across demographic groups within each country. Changes in UI policy therefore can have very different effects on different individuals. The major differences found in the transition from school to work in Canada and the United States are a lower rate of job-offer arrivals and a lower rate of offer rejections in Canada. Within each country, offer-arrival rates differ across individuals much more than offer-rejection rates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyzes the status of child-labor legislation in the United States as of December 1922. In July 1922, Senator Medill McCormick introduced into the US Senate a constitutional amendment that would prohibit child labor. Child labor legislation needs to recognize the distinction between child labor and children's work. Some groups advocate constructive legislation, which recognizes work experience as a factor in education.

In this article, the author discusses issues and beliefs on accountancy as a profession for well-educated men. He observed different views and publishing of various eminent members of the accountancy profession and researchers regarding this topic. According to these studies the thought that members of the accountancy profession should have well-developed intellectual, moral and cultural faculties is a relatively new idea in the history of the profession. The author reports that the accountancy profession had its beginning in England, probably at some time during the seventeenth century. It seems quite probable that the early public auditors, or public accountants, of England worked single-handed, but in the course of the increased recognition and prestige which these men obtained from the field of business it became necessary for the principal to secure the services of assistants. The idea of the desirability of a technical education for those entering the accountancy profession gradually took form after the year 1900. It is argued that the profession needs greater educational as well as personality qualities because the professional should have engagements in complex and technical duties, such as, auditing, the installation or revision of systems of accounts, special investigations, municipal or other governmental auditing and system installation, engagements pertaining to the financial affairs of trusts, receiverships, bankrupt and decedents' estates, and audit and system installation engagements involving cost accounting.

A detailed comparison of intergenerational mobility into one elite occupation-engineering--in Britain and the U.S. reveals contrasting patterns and indicates some of the mechanisms, especially education, that tend to be ignored in broad national comparisons. Changes in recruitment into engineering during the past forty-five years indicate increasing rigidity in the U.S. and a pattern of increasing fluidity in Britain. In addition, high status origins are more highly related to professional success in the U.S. than they are in Britain. The advantages of cumulative evidence based upon comparisons of particular occupational and educational institutions are suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on a study which examined the prevalence of successful professionals who were born from southern U.S. states but work in other parts of the U.S. The study found that education and the place of graduate training play important roles in the distinction of whether an individual will remain or leave the South. It also concluded that the South has superior but undiscovered human talents that can both contribute to its leadership needs and help in other parts of the country.

The author reflects on the educational system in the U.S. wherein the younger workers are lack of both general education and career skills to increase the complexity of business and societal problems. He cites the quality of poor education in many higher educational institutions in some countries. He details the economic crisis facing the countries of the world such as bankrupt of any business or economy.

In June 2012, the US Supreme Court ruled on Arizona's 2010 immigration law. The court unanimously sustained the most in/famous part of the law, which requires state law enforcement officials to determine the immigration status of anyone they stop or arrest if there is reason to suspect that the individual might be an 'illegal' immigrant. However, it blocked the implementation of other provisions, with the majority of judges rejecting measures that would have subjected individuals to criminal penalties for activities like seeking work. It has become apparent that the ruling is likely to set the ground rules for the immigration debate, with supporters of the Arizona law pushing for 'show me your papers' provisions in more states and opponents trying to overturn criminal sanctions for those who do not have the papers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on revising the policies on workload, promotion and tenure of faculty members performing online classes in the United States. Providing efficient online lesson resulted to additional workload for teachers. As a result, the quality of their job in other aspects of teaching, such as research and service, are affected. The role of department heads of different academic schools in setting direction and system of compensation for Web-based teachers is presented, followed by discussion on some considerations that departments heads must know in doing policy changes. Several tips in addressing the problem of online teachers are stated. These include revising current policies, studying the issue, and avoiding policy.