Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

One of the most important labor market trends of the last few decades has been the increased premium placed on skills and education. Increasingly, good-paying jobs require a higher level of skills and credentials than ever before. Unfortunately, however, the labor supply has not kept pace with this demand, as increasingly larger proportion of job seekers fail to secure a stable, well-paying job.

One of the main factors behind this trend, besides falling public investment, has been the disconnect between the private, education, and workforce development sectors. This paper analyzes the implementation and effects of The Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College Career Training (TAACCCT) Grants Program, an initiative of the U.S. Department of Labor (USDOL) that supported community college development of new education and career training program strategies designed to meet employer demand for a skilled workforce using evidence-based information. These new and enhanced programs were part of the nations’ education and training system designed to meet employer demand for a skilled workforce and to help workers who have lost their jobs (as a result of foreign trade or other economic factors) prepare for employment in growth industries. Between 2011 and 2014, USDOL awarded four rounds of TAACCCT grants to hundreds of community colleges around the U.S.

This paper uses data collected as part of the evaluation of several TAACCCT-funded initiatives to argue that they are potentially successful antidotes to “network failures”. Previously coined in economic sociology, the concept of network failure describes a common phenomenon that occurs when organizational environments that require learning and quick adjustment to rapidly changing conditions would be best served by networks but for a variety of reasons, these networks either fail to materialize or fail to become entrenched (Schrank and Whitford, 2009). The literature singles out lack of competence or lack of trust as the main causes of network failure. Correspondingly, attempts to mitigate network failure should address the underlying cause—i.e., getting partners to trust each other or making them more competent so that they could serve each other better.

The paper amasses evidence from multiple TAACCCT initiatives to show that many TAACCCT-funded initiatives did just that. By bringing together community college representatives, employers, and workforce development agencies, TAACCCT initiatives built trust between partners while causing partners to acquire new skills (for example, community colleges involving employers in curriculum development). The paper contrasts these cases with other cases where these positive outcomes did not occur. The paper will highlight the role of previous attempts to institute career pathways, the existence of intermediary institutions that act as catalysts for collaboration, and the economic makeup of the region as factors that influence attempts to solve network failures in regional labor markets.