Brett Melvin addresses a press conference held by U.S. Rep. Lloyd Smucker upon the introduction of legislation intended to support skills training through apprenticeship and fill available jobs more quickly.
ACCORDING TO THE 2013 MCKINSEY REPORT EDUCATION TO EMPLOYMENT: DESIGNING A SYSTEM THAT WORKS, THERE IS A MAJOR DISCONNECT BETWEEN EDUCATION AND BUSINESS. OVER 70 PERCENT OF EDUCATORS BELIEVE THAT STUDENTS ARE READY TO WORK ON DAY ONE OF THEIR NEW JOB, BUT LESS THAN 50 PERCENT OF EITHER STUDENTS OR BUSINESSES WOULD AGREE WITH THAT STATEMENT.
began to see, the people gap is just one part of the problem. Tere’s a knowledge gap to contend with as well. According to the 2013 McKinsey report Education to Employment: Designing a System Tat Works, there is a major disconnect between education and business. Over 70 percent of educators believe that students are ready to work on day one of their new job, but less than 50 percent of either students or businesses would agree with that statement. Perhaps even more alarmingly, the McKinsey Global Institute estimates that, by 2020, there will be a global shortfall of 85 million high- and middle-skilled workers. In 2017, after several years focusing solely on the crane and rigging skills gap, Melvin began thinking more deeply about the broader challenge the two-fold skills gap posed. Te name Bridging America’s Gap (BAG) popped into his head, and after finding the website domain name unclaimed, things progressed quickly. Before he knew it, he was filling out the paperwork to register BAG as a nonprofit organization. By the start of 2018, Melvin was able to give BAG his full attention; by February of that
year, the first BAG website was up and running and the first partners had signed on. Te organization received its official 501(c)(3) designation just four months later.
A BETTER FIT Melvin pointed to the current state of affairs created by the existing “college for all” solution the U.S. has promoted as the genesis of the skills gap dilemma. In other countries, education is handled in a different way. “Students are tested early on to find out what will work best for them and are then encouraged to follow an appropriate career path,” he explained. “Currently, we have over fifteen million high school students in the United States. Over thirty percent (about five million) have no plans to pursue a post-secondary education upon graduating. Of the ten million young people that do go on to college, approximately forty percent will not receive a degree within six years of starting college, but they will have college debt averaging well over thirty thousand dollars each. Tat is both a national tragedy and a national crisis at the same time.”
WIRE ROPE EXCHANGE
SEPTEMBER–OCTOBER 2019
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