In the 2015 Washington Monthly College Guide, Jamie Merisotis, the president and CEO of Lumina Foundation for Education, has a feature article on the urgent need for a new cabinet-level department of the federal government that he calls the “Department of Talent.”
But this wouldn’t be simply a new cabinet position. It’s responsibilities would encompass and replace the responsibilities of pre-existing departments.
What should be included in this new Department of Talent? Avoiding the wonkish issues of congressional committee jurisdiction (turf is a real impediment to change) and agency capacity, I’d propose three main entities as a starting point:
· the current functions of the Department of
Education in their entirety;
· the Employment and Training Administration
(ETA) of the Department of Labor; and
· the talent recruitment functions of the Citizen-
ship and Immigration Service (USCIS) under
the Department of Homeland Security.
In effect, the goal is to rationalize and streamline the federal government’s goal of creating a workforce to meet the demands and requirements of a new economy. For example, it’s a worthy goal to get low-income people access to a college education through the Pell Grant program, but we want to make sure that, first, they actually graduate, and second that they gain marketable skills. Currently, these goals are divided between the Department of Labor and the Department of Education, and the result is that neither does a particularly good job of achieving the overall goal.
Here’s what Merisotis envisions as a replacement:
The Department of Talent would create the possibility of several important outcomes. One is greater efficiency and focus. Think about an agency that could develop and implement strategies for high-quality, locally managed workforce development programs, and highly focused global recruitment strategies for meeting the nation’s workforce gaps. Ideally, there would be a coordinated approach that seamlessly relates K-12 standards to learning outcomes frameworks for education and training beyond high school.
Greater efficiency also ties to the issue of effectiveness—the actual success of the programs and strategies being managed by the agency. The Department of Talent would tie together approaches that have been disconnected, and bureaucratically entrenched, and replace them with ones focused on outcomes. The net result would be an agency actually aimed at the true outcome of the policies inherent in the current disconnected mess—talent—rather than an agency that is focused on processes and tools like “education,” “training,” “visas,” and so on.
This may seem like a final capitulation to the idea that our education system should be strictly utilitarian, and that the end goal of higher learning should be to feed the workforce needs of the country. But, let’s remember that the topic of discussion isn’t some abstract debate about the true, noble purpose of getting an education. The topic is what the proper role of the federal government should be in this process and how it should organize itself to fulfill that role.
On that question, Merisotis has opened an interesting debate. We’re already investing tremendous amounts of money getting people into college where they can hopefully gain the skills to be upwardly mobile. That does seem to be the primary idea beyond these investments, so what’s wrong with being honest about it and organizing around it?
In any case, Merisotis has opened a worthwhile debate. You should read the whole thing.
Experience show over the past 70 years that departments with vague names that seek to improve efficiency through combining functions never do. Consider the Department of Defense, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
The Department of Education’s educational focus will get shorted. The Department of Labor’s protections for workers will get shorted. And the purpose of immigration laws in the United States will be focused on creating competition with existing citizens, increasing the conflict of immigration.
For that vague word “talent” that every CEO supposed has in such quantity to justify 300 or more times the salary of the minimum wage worker. And applies only to those of special “natural” ability, which is just another way of saying merit comes from choosing the right parents.
What aristocratic drivel!
Department of Talent. It’s the rare bureaucrat that appreciates talent, and even if one or two do, the system is against it. Look at any American university today. An institution brimming with talent, tun by administrators for their own ends, who have no idea what the faculty or students can do, what they want or what they need, and could care less.
I think that applies just as much to corporate America as well.
There are other reasons to oppose the idea of “talent.”
Talent is considered innate. As a teacher (or a parent) you should never call a kid “smart” as if there were some generic, ingrained quality that they have. “You’re really good at math.” “You did so well on your spelling test.” That links to the idea of work and development.
THAT is what education is. It’s not about “talent” it’s about human, emotional and intellectual development.
We know the brain is a remarkably plastic organ, capable of real growth and change. And that plasticity exists well into adulthood.
Whatever merits there may be in rearranging the deck chairs, if the idea is about “talent” then you have missed the entire point of education.
This kind of thinking is based on one assumption: that there is a terrible shortage of people who can actually do stuff. There’s not. Stagnant wages, large numbers of unemployed and underemployed people, and rampant discrimination of every flavor couldn’t happen in a shortage-driven economy, but they do.
Also the assumption that the individual should come to the table already knowing how to do the stuff. Companies rarely offer to train.
I think using the power of federal bureaucracy to train workers for industry is very wrong. First of all, young people need a good, well-rounded education. They need to be exposed to as many people and ideas as possible. They need to learn another language ( and thereby another culture). They need to explore themselves. They need to WIDEN their perspective, not narrow it. Secondly, governments have been very poor about predicting what skills are needed where. Then they are really slow delivering the goods. Then when the labor market changes, governments are very slow to react, continuing to pump out the wrong type of welders or engineers, thus depressing wages in that specialty. Thirdly, businesses will abuse the system to maintain low wages. Guaranteed. Industry itself is in the best position to do the specific training ( not education) needed
Have you been reading Plato again?
It’s worth considering simply to watch Republican heads explode.
Now if we can somehow orient it towards the children of immigrants……
.
Maybe we should forget the idea that everyone needs to go to college and plan the workforce around people’s talents not aim for a country of all Chiefs and no Indians.
needs to go to college but I refuse to debate with a person who wears their white privilege like a badge of honor.
I also am still waiting to hear what you specifically did to protest the seemingly unlawful killing of white teenager by Zachary Hammond. Since you are so offended by #blacklivesmatter as a movement for all unlawful police killings what are you doing to show that #alllivesmatter (which you seem to think would be a better name). I told you what those involved with #blacklivesmatter did – organized a rally/march. Called attention to it in the press. What did you do?
FU black racist
who happens to find your white privilege appalling even as I agree with you on some issues such as how the push for everyone to go to college has been short sighted at best.
So big fail on your assumption.
Also since you can’t name one thing you have done for white victims of police brutality even as people in #blacklivesmatter have advocated for Zachary and other white victims that tells me that you just want to be bitter for bitters sake over a movement name you don’t like instead of trying to affect real change by joining those fighting the good fight.
If ever a comment warranted hide rating, this is it. I don’t hide rate b/c I think others should see ugly comments.
“Black Lives Matter” is a slogan for a specific form of inequality directed at AAs. It says nothing about you or anyone that isn’t AA. It’s the disproportionate use of violence against AAs by LEOs. Your continuing failure to recognize that and the validity of the slogan is discouraging. It’s not unlike “Black is Beautful” that was extremely important to raise the self-esteem of AA children that were made to feel inferior b/c of the color of their skin. That also didn’t denigrate you or me, but did raise the consciousness of good white people as to the everyday denigration of AAs.
Why do you take the efforts of those discriminated against to reduce such discrimination as a personal attack on and depreciation of you? Just b/c you don’t have a conscious perception of white male privilege in this society, doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist and you haven’t benefited from that privilege. Yet, like the teabaggers you all to frequently lapse into acting like a victim of discrimination and unfairness. If you weren’t such an old man, I’d say, “grow up.” So, have to settle for, “stop being an asshole.”