On the ineffectiveness of government retraining programs

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On the ineffectiveness of government retraining programs

Wednesday, July 15th, 2009 | Political Survival Kit, Politics |

Megan McArdle - Retraining Isn’t the Answer:

Thus did I make one of the best and worst decisions in my life: I signed up for a course to become a CNE–a Certified Netware Engineer. I’d done some light network administration at the startup, and I thought I’d like to make a career of it.

The IT types among my readers are cringing. No one gets hired because they took some low-rent course and passed a computer adaptive test. Indeed, back in the day, hearing someone officiously announce that “I’m a CNE” was a warning sign not to let them anywhere near your network. It’s like having a job applicant hand over their eighth-grade graduation certificate. Of course, everyone qualified has one to stick on the resume, but they don’t talk about it, because it’s not even a basic qualification. Anyone whose main qualification is a CNE knows just enough to be extremely dangerous.

But I didn’t know that at the time. I financed a $3,500 course on credit cards, and dutifully trooped off to class four evenings a week. I passed all the tests. Then I found out what any professional could have told me: without actual work experience, no one would hire me.

And that’s for one of the more reasonable-sounding career training options. There are lots of shady operations out there thay prey on people’s hopes. I have a relative who pinned her hopes on a medical transcription course that she paid for out of her own pocket, but which never produced a job. Beware.

Read the whole thing, which predicts poor prospects for government-retraining of laid off autoworkers, based on not just McArdle’s experience, but past studies. Politicians like retraining programs, because it looks like they’re doing something, and also no doubt because in some cases the training companies are sending money their way. What - me cycnical?

1 Comment to On the ineffectiveness of government retraining programs

Rabbit
July 15, 2009

When I was working on a L3 hardware support team for Mid-Range systems one of our newhires proudly hung up her MCSE certification in her cube. Of course, it was a MCSE for Windows95, this was around 2002, and Micrsoft products didn’t have a blessed thing to do with either the hardware or software we touched. About half the group even ran OS2 on our workstations instead of WinNT.

We teased her unmercifully about her ‘must call someone experienced’ diploma. At least she had a great sense of humor.

Regards,
Rabbit.