This chapter focuses on what has come to be known as the school-to-work (STW) transition, an area where the United States has serious problems relative to most other democratic industrial countries. The United States concentrates more resources, absolutely and as a proportion of GDP, on college and university education but very little on the great majority of Americans who do not intend to pursue baccalaureate degrees. It should be emphasized at the outset, however, that the U.S. economic and learning system' problems are not restricted to STW – they are systemic. Indeed, focusing on the transition from school to work can be misleading because the United States has serious deficiencies in most other learning systems (i.e., families; preschool, elementary, and secondary schools; and workplace education and training) that make it very difficult to establish world-class STW processes. Similarly, the United States is unlikely to create world-class STW systems unless it has much more effective labor market institutions and adopts economic policies that will cause employers to demand workers with higher skills. Major problems for the United States are caused by its past successes with an organization of work that required only a few people with higher-level academic skills; most employees with limited formal schooling could earn relatively high incomes.

A major assumption of this chapter is that the maintenance and improvement of real wages for most workers require much greater attention to improving the skills and knowledge of the large majority of workers who are not likely to be 4-year college graduates. The problem facing the United States is not that we do not have some excellent apprentice, community college, and technical programs for these workers because we do.