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AVA Report.American Vocational Association, Washington, D.C.4 Dec 7066p.; Presentations at Post Secondary EducationSeminar (New Orleans, La., December 4, 1970)American Vocational Association, 1510 H Street,N.W., Washington, D.C. 20005

EDRS Price MF-$0.65 HC-$3.29*Accreditation (Institutions), *Evaluation,Occupational Guidance, *Post Secondary Education,Seminars, *Speeches, *Vocational Education*Career Education

This report contains the major presentations made atthe American Vocational Association Convention, and also summarizesthe group discussions which included conclusions and recommendationsof the groups. Opening remarks were made by Mr. Lowell A. Burkett,with presentations including: (1) "Manpower Programs andPostsecondary Educational Institutions" by Charles O'Dell, (2)

"Legislation for Career Education in Postsecondary Institutions" byCharles Radcliffe, (3) "Career Education" by Marvin Feldman, and (4)"The American Vocational Association and Its Commitment to Evaluationand Accreditation" by Joseph T. Nerden. A brief summary statement,made in lieu of an oral summary, by C. Nelson Grote is included. (GEB)

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w eastsecondaryeducationseminarnew orleans,Iouisianadecember 4,1970

INTRODUCTION

The last decade has witnessed a marked increase in theemphasis upon postsecondary technical and vocational edu-cation as a means for providing the occupational skillsand knowledge demanded by our increasingly technologicalsociety. A major vehicle for the delivery of postsecondarytechnical and vocational education has been and continuesto be the postsecondary institution identified variouslyas an area vocational school, a technical education center,a technical institute, or a community college. By what-ever name, these institutions provide a variety of occupa-tional education opportunities including pre-employmentcurricula, extension and upgrading programs, and manpowertraining for the unemployed or underemployed.

The increased demands upon and proliferation of post-secondary occupational education institutions have createda host of problems and issues. Among the more importantof these are (1) federal legislation providing funds forpre-employment and manpower training and (2) the concom-mitant use of the academic concept of accreditation as amethod of assessing the quality of a program or institutionfor the purpose of ensuring eligibility for funding. Otherproblem areas include the use of alternate and possibly com-peting delivery systems; articulation of secondary, post-secondary, and higher education; and the need for post-secondary occupational education to reach all the peoplewho could benefit from it.

Recognizing its responsibility of leadership for alloccupational education, and noting the absence of a forumat which these institutions could discuss their mutualproblems and seek solutions to these problems, the AmericanVocational Association sponsoxed a pre-convention seminaron postsecondary occupational education prior to its annualconvention held in New Orleans in December, 1970. Repre-sentatives of over 700 community colleges, technical insti-tutes, and area vocational schools throughout the UnitedStates were invited to this seminar. Also invited werestate officials functioning in various capacities in post-secondary occupational education. Invited to the seminaras major speakers were persons with expert and intimateknowledge ir the areas of manpower training, legislationaifecting postsecondary occupational education, careereducation, and accreditation and evaluation of technical

2

and vocational education. Small group meetings werescheduled during the seminar to provide an opportunityfor the participants to interact with the speakers andto allow the participants to discuss their mutual prob-lems, express their conuerns, and recommend possiblesolutions to existing problems.

While the seminar was apparently well received, itsimpact is as yet undetermined. Because of the complexityof the issues, much of the impact will necessarily belong-term. These seminar proceedings are published withthe hope that wide dissemination will promote a betterunderstanding of and appreciation for the issues andproblems confronting postsecondary occupational educa-tion.

Acknowledgement is made and gratitude expressed tothose seminar participants who made their presentationsavailable for this report and to the group discussion

chairmen and recorders who provided the materials ema-nating from the group discussions. Appreciation is alsoextended to J. K. Dane and Mrs. Sue King, editors forthe Center for Occupational Education at North CarolinaState University, for their expert help in editing theseminar transcripts, and to Mrs. Mary King, Center typist,for her help in typing the preliminary and final drafts.

Charles F. WardSeminar Editor

INTRODUCTION . .

OPENING REMARKS

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Mr. Lowell A. Burkett

1

4

MANPOWER PROGRAMS ANDPOSTSECONDARY EDUCATIONAL

INSTITUTIONS7

Presentation by Mr. Charles Odell

LEGISLATION FOR CAREER EDUCATION IN POSTSECONDARYINSTITUTIONS

14

Presentation by Mr. Charles Radcliffe

CAREER EDUCATION19

Presentation by Mr. Marvin Feldman

THE AMERICAN VOCATIONAL ASSOCIATION AND ITSCOMMITMENT TO EVALUATION AND ACCREDITATION 30

Presentation by Dr. Joseph T. Nerden

GROUP DISCUSSIONS, CONCLUSIONS ANDRECOMMENDATIONS

39

REFLECTIONS AND CONCLUSIONS51

Dr. C. Nelson Grote

APPENDIX A: SEMINAR PARTICIPANTS54

I

4OPENING REMARKS

Lowell A. BurkettExecutive Director

American Vocational AssociationWashington, D. C.

It is indeed a pleasure for me to welcome you here onbehalf of the Board of Directors of the American VocationalAssociation. For some of you this may be your first timeto attend an AVA convention. If so, we certainly hope thatyou will find this a very profitable and enjoyable experi-ence. We want to make it as easy for you as possible toparticipate in the convention which begins tomorrow. Youwill find in your packets the invitations which are beingextended in order that you may register for the conventionif you so desire.

Our task in the field of vocational and technical edu-cation is very broad: It is that of providing the educationand training that's needed for all people. This was stipu-lated in the Vocational Education Amendments of 1968, butit was not something new; to many of us in the field ofvocational and technical education, it's something chat wehave always believed.

Certainly in providing a total program of vocationaland technical education, our institutions--both public andprivate--have a major responsibility. Many of the insti-tutions that are developing at this point ).:1 time are

assuming a major role in this area, particularly the post-secondary institutions. Science and technology have ad-vanced quite rapidly, and there is a need for us to pro-vide education in all these types of institutions to meetthe employment demands created by this scientific andtechnological advancement.

The American Vocational Association is an organizationof teachers and administrators and others who are interestedin the total program of technical and vocational education.We are not institutionally oriented; we are program oriented.We are concerned about the services, the education and thetraining needed to make people employable and to make themgood citizens in our society.

The program of vocational-technical education operatingin the public secondary and postsecondary school systems of

5

this nation is a very broad program, and those responsi-ble for its operation are becoming more and more concernedabout what happens in the thinking and the development ofyouth during their formative years in our elementary,junior high and secondary schools. While the program ofvocational education had its beginnings in our secondaryschools, during the last two decades and especially dur-ing the last decade the postsecondary schools have playeda major role.

The total job of providing a program of technical-vocational education is much more than just the educationand training offered in an institution. Many services toindividuals must be provided, including effective guidance,placement, and follow-up. This requires the complete in-volvement of all :he institutions and organizations whichprovide services to people. Because of this we felt itessential to have this opportunity to express to you, asthe deans, the presidents, or the directors of these in-stitutions, our interest and concern about a total pro-gram of vocational education.

As I said a moment ago our concern is very broad, thatof providing the professional services needed to do thejob. We did some research regarding the number of insti-tutions at the postsecondary level that are offering asso-ciate degree programs in vocational and technical educa-tion, and we found "tat there are approximately 780 insti-tuticms of this type in the United States. We also knowthat there are over 1,500 area vocational-technicalschools and technical institutes that are devotin6 theirentire efforts to career development, and they are doingan outstanding job.

As a professional organization, we felt a need to ex-tend our services in this area, and we have added to ourstaff a former dean of occupational-vocational educationfrom one of our states in the South. His name is Mr. H.Dean Griffin. The area for which he will be responsibleincludes the various professional development activities,program improvement, and information and ideas regardinglegislation related to vocational and technical educationat the post high school level.

We look forward to the privilege of working with you,and we hope that you will want to work with us. Withoutthe total efforts of all educators, we cannot provide thekind of an educational program that's needed by the youth

6

7

yt

6

and adults of this nation, and we cannot provide an ade-

quate manpower program. Because in my thinking, and Ibelieve in the thinking of most of us in the field ofvocational education, vocational education and manpowerare not separate things; they are the same. I hope we

deal with the problem in that manner.

In closing, I want to express to you our deep appre-cation for your coming to this seminar, and hopefully,this experience will mean much to you. I'm sure it will

mean much to us in the American Vocational Association.

Thank you very much.

7

MANPOWER PROGRAMS AND POSTSECONDARYEDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS

Charles OdellDeputy Associate Manpower Administrator

Training and Employment ServiceUnited States Department of Labor

Washington, D. C.

I think the most profitable way I can address myselfto the question of manpower programs as they relate topostsecondary educational institutions is to describevery briefly some of the provisions of a basic piece oflegislation which is of real interest to this group andcertainly to the American Vocational Assoclation. I will

then relate some of the basic provisions of that legis-lation to the whole matter of concern to this seminar,namely, postsecondary education of a technical and occu-pational nature.

There is a bill in conference committee between theSenate and the House called the Comprehensive ManpowerAct, which addresses itself to bringing together theexisting programs funded by the federal government inthe general field, the generic field, of manpower. Thereare three basis pieces of legislation which are signifi-cantly impacted on and subsumed by the ComprehensiveManpower Act. The first is the Manpower Development andTraining Act; the second includes those features of theEconomic Opportunity Act having to do with manpowerwhich have involved delegated programs to the Depart-ment of Labor; and the third is the basic enabling leg-islation for the United States Employment Service andthe various state employment services, the Wagner-Preiser Act.

The intent of the Comprehensive Manpower Bill is toestablish a decentralized and decategorized system forthe development and implementation of manpower programswhich are directed primarily to working with adults andthose who have left school who are potentially in thejob market. Many people in this category are not com-petitively employed or are underemployed because ofbarriers to employment related to race, cultural back-ground, language difficulties and other problems whichcenter on the whole issue of the disadvantaged and thepoor in this country. The purpose of the legislation

8is to bring together unden prime sponsors at the locallevel the responsibility for putting together a compre-hensive manpower plan for the community or the area,and to operate or at least oversee, the operation ofsuch programs. The prime sponsors are identified inboth bills as "responsibly elected public officials,"whether they be mayors or county executives or otherswho may claim prime sponsorship. The "area" referredto in the legislation is presumably the labor marketarea, that is an area in which people move back andforth freely for purposes of employment. That, essen-tially, is what Title I of the Act addresses itself to.It is concerned primarily with the decentralization ofthe funding, the planning, the administration, and theoverseeing of these programs.

Decategorization attempts to eliminate a whole seriesof specially funded, specially designed, frequently com-peting and overlapping progr4.us which have a marvelousassortment of acronym names, ranging from the Neighbor-hood Youth Corps to the Concentrated Employment Program,STEP, SET, and a whole series of others which I won't gointo Essentially, decategorization pulls these pro-grams together into a common program design which centerson reaching people who need help the most, providing themwith the services, in terms of training and support, thatthey need to become employable, getting them employed,and helping them to stay on the job.

Now, this has been regarded by some in the educationalfield and some in the employment service field as the es-tablishment of a dual or a competitive training and man-power delivery system. It is regarded by the sponsorsand the designers of the bill as just the opposite, anattempt, really, to pull these delivery systems together,to develop a quality program in which those who are bestable to contribute are given the opportunity to contrib-ute whatever services they can and to be reimbursed forthose services.

To those in vocational education who complain thatthe bill does not arbitrarily require that all theseservices must be delivered through a particular deliverysystem such as the vocational education program in thestate and through that hierarchy, or to the people inthe employment service who say that it's a bad programbecause it does not foreordain that all the services re-quired in support, in counseling, testing and referral,

9

t.

9

placement and follow-up, must be delivered by the employ-ment services, the response is that we are looking forthe best combination of sponsors, and we are willing toprovide whatever funding resources are available to sup-port the best combination of sponsors to see to it thata coordinated decentralized, decategorized program isdelivered. I don't know what the fate of that bill, orthose bills, will be. I have reason to believe that acompromise between the Senate and the House versions ofthe bill will be achieved in the conference committeeand that we will have, before this session of Congresscloses, a new comprehensive manpower act.

In the time remaining, I shall address myself to thechallenge and the opportunity which I see in that legis-lation for people like yourselves who are concerned withcertain aspects of career development, occupctional, vo-cational and technical education, particularly at thepostsecondary level. I interpret postsecondary to meannot only for those who have completed secondary education,but for those who are in the job market and who need cer-tain kinds of additional training or educational supportin order to become more competitively employable.

There is a very large and significant emphasis in thisbill, in both the Senate and the House versions, on thewhole matter of upgrading, which I consider to be one ofthe underutilized and misunderstood segments of our con-cern with manpower and career development. I can recalla conference of the National Manpower Advisory Committeeabout three years ago which was devoted almost exclusivelyto upgrading, and in which the principal advocates forupgrading were people like Whitney Young, people fromthe civil rights groups, and spokesmen for the black andSpanish-speaking community in this country. At that timethose people said in effect that what we can do by wayof riot-prevention with quickly funded and allocated re-sources to deal with manpower problems on a short-term,get-the-kid-a-job basis will not resolve the basic prob-lems of underemployment and underutilization of largesegments of our working population. The vast majorityof the poor, they said, are employed. They may be under-employed, they may be part-time employed, but their prob-lem is that they are locked into a bottomless pit offrustration and consternation over the fact that theyreally can't make it, in the kind of job they're in,either from an economic point of view or from an occu-pational point of view. Until we do something to target

10

in on the problem of upgrading and creative utilization

of that employed group, we really will not be signifi-

cantly resolving the problems of poverty, or opening up

new opportunitiesfor those who enter at the bottom and

want to move up in an organization.

I can think of no more important and no more signifi-

cant resource for dealing effectively with the problem of

upgrading than the resource that I understand to be con-

gregated in this room. We have not used it effectively;

we have not tapped in, except in a very specialized and

kind of esoteric way, to the resource which you represent

in the upgrading field. We have programs, for example,

very small in size and very limited in impact, called

New CareersPrograms, in which we attempt to relate

career development from an entry level in a public serv-

ice job tocertification, if you will, or credential-

seeking through arelationship with a community or junior

college, or a technical program of some kind which pro-

vides relatedinstruction to improve the competitive

place of the personenrolled in the New Careers Programs.

As I see an effective upgradingprogram, it will have to

draw in an ever-widening circleand in an ever more in-

tensive way, on that kind of resource, on a planned and

structured basis, which not only changes the face and

character of the educational system which is providing

that kind of service, but which also works with equal or

perhaps greater vigor in restructuring job ladders and

in redesigning and restructuringemployment opportunities

to insure that there is upward mobility and an opportunity

for upward movement within industry--andmore important- -

in the public sector of our society.

A second major areais the whole area of career devel-

opment for people who will be working in manpower pro-

grams and in related public service employment, which is

a major feature of the Comprehensive Manpower Act. The

central andcontroversial issue in that bill is the level

and nature of public service employment. I happen to

have some basicdifferences with the people in my own

organization and in the Administrationover the way in

which we have addressed ourselves to the public service

employment issue. Rather than resisting and arguing

against it on the grounds that it is simply another form

of income maintenance or income transfer, we really ought

to be looking at the fact that the really significant and

expanding segment of the economy is the public service

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11

sector--federal, state, and local, and particularly stateand local. This is very dramatically brought out in oneof our own publications which I hope will be here on dis-play with the Department of Labor exhibit at this con-vention, called U. S. Manpower in the 1970's. If we werereally to look at the public service sector from the pointof view of its opportunity-creating potential, not only interms of the emerging fields of concern such as ecologyand environment, but in terms o1 the jobs that are goingessentially by default to people who really don't needthem as badly as some others do who could get them ifthey were helped to qualify to move in and move up, itseems to me we could make a very real dent in the problemof poverty, in the problem of hard-core unemployment, andin the problem of underutilization of large numbers ofpeople.

This is not to say that we turn the public sector intoa dumping ground for the unqualified; it is to say thatwe turn the public sector into a sector which is responsiveto the needs of the people it's supposed to serve. Thepublic sector should lead the way and demonstrate itscapacity to utilize people and provide job opportunitieswhich have a future and which offer a significant amountof stability and upward mobility for those who are willingnot only to come in at the bottom, but to credentializethemselves through related education and support over aperiod of time

In the manpower business itself, I'm very glad to hearMr. Burkett say that he doesn't want to dissociate man-power training from vocational, technical and occupationaleducation. I'm very supportiveof that notion, and I callyour attention to the fact that as we decentralize anddecategorize manpower programs under the ComprehensiveManpower Act, we clearly are going to need to draw heavilyon the resources in vocational, occupational and technicaleducation--not only for training in your traditional role,but for administrative, supervisory, and support personnelto make them work effectively. We have been doing some ofthis in New Careers. We have been doing some of it in ourown efforts to do something about public service employmentwithin our own organization, but we have really only begunto design models out of which a very significant develop-ment could occur if we were to pursue with some vigor andreal commitment the potential that lies within our ownorganizations for this kind of opportunity.

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A final point I would make--because I think it wouldbe a mistake not to mention it--is that I spent all dayyesterday in the executive session of the Senate FinanceCommittee where another bill which has profound manpower,vocational and technical and occupational education im-plications--the Family Assistance Act--was under dis-cussion. Here again there is tremendous potential. I

don't think we will get a family assistance bill in thissession of Congress, primarily because time will probablyrun out over the controversial issues that are still in-volved in the family assistance bill. I think, however,we will have a family assistance program of very signifi-cant size and dimension within the next two years. Inthat program there is an infinite potential for creativemanpower utilization and career development for welfarerecipients and for the poor.

We cannot carry out that potential, we cannot beginto even address it without maximally tapping in to theexisting vocational, technical and occupational educationresources of this country. If the bill were to pass inits present form we would need an additional fifteen totwenty thousand people in the employment service systemalone, half of whom ought to be preprofessionals who arerecruited and trained from among welfare recipients.These persons should be trained both on and off the jobto take on significant roles and be ultimately permittedto become professionals through a bridging arrangementwhich upgrades them and accepts them in the basic meritsystem under which they're operating. We would need atleast that many, or twice that number, of professionallyand preprofessionally trained daycare or childcare workers.We would need at least that many, if not twice that many,additional new federal employees to handle the incomemaintenance aspects of the Family Assistance Program.If we do not see the opportunity that exists for draw-ing from the welfare rolls, from the disadvantaged andthe hard-core itself, at least 50 percent of the peoplewho ultimately fulfill those responsibilities under aprogram like the Family Assistance Program, I think wewill have made a tremendous mistake--not only in termsof reducing the numbers on welfare, but in terms ofcreating a responsive and related role between thosewho are administering these programs and those who aresupposed to be the beneficiaries but too frequently arethe victims of insensitive and unresponsive middle-classvalues that don't relate at all to the client's problems.

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13

So in all this I see a tremendous challenge to you anda tremendous oppertunity. I hope that when we begin tocall for a positive response under the Comprehensive Man-power Act and Family Assistance Program and under the on-going Manpower Programs, that we can count on you, notonly to be receptive, but perhaps to be aggressively con-cerned about how you can get involved. The challenge andthe opportunity are there. I hope we are up to it.

14

I.

14

LEGISLATION FOR CAREER EDUCATION INPOSTSECONDARY INSTITUTIONS

Charles RadcliffeMinority Counsel for the Committee

on Education and LaborU. S. House of Representatives

Washington, D. C.

I assume that this audience doesn't want to bothertalking about 25 percent minimums or 15 percent set-asides, or whatever we have in the existing vocationaleducation legislation. There actually isn't enoughfederal legislation in the field of postsecondary occupa-tional education to merit lengthy discussion. What Iwould like to talk about, then, is the ConE,:essionalframe of mind, or the Congressional frame of reference,if you like, for the development of legislation in thisfield.

I think the first thing that I have to do--and I'vegiven this considerable thought--is to chart the dimen-sions of our needs in this field. Some, if not all ofyou, are going to say that this is an exercise in quanti-fying the obvious, but I feel that it really isn't.While everybody knows that we have enormous needs inthis field, the dimensions of those needs are not soobvious. They are, however, enormous; and when you talkabout the total needs and look at the resources broughtto bear on those needs you can only conclude that existingresources are terribly inadequate. I want to use anotherword. From the point of view of public policy and of ourcountry, they're dangerously inadequate; unacceptably in-adequate.

Our sixteen- to twenty-four year population numbersabout 28,000,000. Of these, 16,000,000 in an averagemonth are in the civilian labor force. What I'd like foryou to consider, keeping in mind just that universe, isthe extent of our educational training capacity.

Starting at the high school level, only about 4,000,000of our high school students have any vocational education.I want to say this candidly, not critically of vocationaleducation, because I think everybody that L know on thisplatform and some of you perhaps in the audience, knowsthat I, among others, have worked for a good many years

5

15

to help to vastly increase the federal input intovocational-technical education. I think I can say thatI'm a friend of vocational-technical education, so I'mnot being critical. But of the 4,000,000 of our highschool students receiving some vocational education, Idoubt if as many as one in five graduate with entry-levelskills in any occupation. I'll leave it at that, andsomebody can quarrel with it later. This means that wemust rely largly upon postsecondary preparation. Evenif our performance at the secondary level were better,the increasingly technical nature of jobs and the needthat Mr. Odell referred to for a general upgrading ofentry-level skills will in any event necessitate an em-phasis on postsecondary preparation. I think this isthe direction in which we must move, and that this con-clusion is inescapable when you look at all the facts.

At the postsecondary level, we have 700,000 enroll-ments in publicly supported postsecondary vocationalcourses. I'm leaving out the 3,000,000 in adult courses,because I want to concentrate on this population of say,eighteen to twenty-four with which we really ought to beconcerned here. There are also about 175,000 persons en-rolled in apprenticeship programs. Private trade, tech-nical and business schools, of which there are about7,000 in this country, enroll something under 2,000,000.Undoubtedly private industry accounts for organizedpreparation--and I stress organized preparation, be-cause I think that's what we're concerned about--ofsome thousands or tensof thousands more; I don't havethe figure on that. But at the most, including every-thing, we're talking about 3,000,000 young people insome sort of postsecondary occupational education.

Now, of course, if we're talking about high-qualitypreparation for the job market of the 1970's and beyond,we would arrive at a far smaller figure than 3,000,000.My guess is maybe only 1,500,000. Now, match this train-ing capacity against our sixteen- to twenty-four year olduniverse of 28,000,000 with 16,000,000 in the civilianlabor force. The only thing I can suggest to you is thatthis is a perfectly appalling picture.

I personally have never been able to get out of mymind the terrible statistic of postsecondary technical-occupation enrollments which came out of the firstNational Advisory Council on Vocational-Technical edu-cation in 1968. At that time less than 3 percent of our

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16

eighteen-to twenty-one

year old populationwere enrolled

in anyform of subprofessional

technicaloccupational

education.

We arein the

midstof an ever-accelerating

revolutionin technology

whichis changing

everyaspect

of our society,most particularly

the job market,and we

have a minisculeoccupational

trainingcapacity

in sub-

professionaltechnology.

Again,I suggest

to youthat

we'retalking

about a vitalnational

interest;and this

is a prettyfrightening

picture.

Let mesay again

candidlythat I find this situation

littleunderstood

by educatorsother

than thosewho work

in occupationalfields.

I find a greatdeal more under-

standingthere,

whetherthey're

vocationaleducators

at

the secondaryor at the post-secondary

levelsin junior

collegeor community

colleges,technical

institutes,etc.

This lack of understanding,

if I havemade an accurate

assessment--and

I honestlyhope I haven't--is

a very,

very troublingsituation.

Returningto the area

where I have some professional

competence,I do not find among

membersof Congress

who

work with educationand manpower

trainingand related

mattersany lack of understanding

of theseneeds;

quite

the contrary.As a matter

of fact,there

is a growing

concernamong

membersof Congress

who work in thesefields

legislatively

that weare losing

precioustime in address-

ing theseneeds.

That,I think,

is theindispensable

basis

for somenew legislative

initiatives.

And,of course,

that'swhat I'm supposed

to be talkingabout.

Let me say, whileI'm talking

aboutCongressional

im-

patience,that there

is someCongressional

impatiencewith

two attitudeswidely

encounteredin education.

One is

thatall we need

to do is spendmore money;

the other

attitudeis that education

is a largenumber

of small,

unrelatedcompartments,

fiefdoms,and special

interests,

whereinthe major

concernis defending

one'sparticular

turf.Neither

of thesethings

will wash.The American

peoplethis year

will spendover $65,000,000,000

on edu-

cation.That's

one-halfof the total

that will be spent

in the worldthis year,

and we haveonly 6 percent

of the

world'spopulation.

Just a parentheticalaside--if

you

thinkthat population

isn't a fair measure--wehave less

than onethird

of the world'sdeveloped

resources.So

our educationalexpenditures

reallyare enormous.

If we

aren'tdoing

thejob in education

with this outlay,

is

17

it must be because we're doing the wrong things. Amongthose wrong things, perhaps, are the way that we allo-cate our resources in education.

I didn't have this in my prepared remarks, because Iwas doing them hastily; but one of the best examples, orif you will, one of the worst examples of an allocationof resources is in the federal government itself. Wespend $2,000,000,000 in all the agencies, including theVeterans Administration to support undergraduate andgraduate students in higher education. We spend just afew millions of dollars for support of students in occu-pational education at all levels. That's just a fact.I'm not saying that we shouldn't invest in higher educa-tion in the way that we have. I'm saying simply that weought to invest more in this other area which is of enor-mous importance, too. We just can't keep on shortchangingand downgrading 80 percent of the kids of this countryand saying that only 20 percent have anything worthwhileto do in this world. Regrettably, that is part of thepicture of our federal expenditur.m.

I have heard it said by vocational educators as acriticism of our manpower training program that we spendapproximately $2,000,000,000 in manpower training and$500,000,000 at the outside to support vocational-technical education which, if adequately supported andadequately done, would eliminate a lot of the necessityfor the manpower training. I don't agree with this con-tentinn, because we must spend that in manpower training,and perhaps more. The reason we have to do it is thatthe job isn't being done down the line in education, andpeople without jobs or with inadequate jobs need helpright now. I think all of us realize this, and I thinkMalcolm Lovell and the people in the Labor Departmentwith whom I work are perfectly well aware that we mustbe working toward an elimination of makeshift manpowertraining programs ten or twenty years from now. However,we have to be doing occupational education thoroughlybefore we get to that point.

I just want to say on this other point of dividing upeducation: that occupational education is a perfect ex-ample of why this is pure folly. If today we did use allof our available resources; if we used our area vocationalschools, junior and community colleges, our private pro-prietary schools, and our four-year college branches, westill would not be meeting more than a fraction of the

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need for occupational education. As vocational educatorsyou know only too painfully well, that until so-calledgeneral education begins at every level to recognize thatpeople learn in order to do the work of this world andthat a knowledge of that work and how to prepare to doit is an essential part of any education, we are not go-ing to make the progress that we can and must make inpostsecondary or any other part of occupational education.Occupational education cannot begin only when studentsare well along in high school or have graduated from highschool. And I think every one of you knows that you cannot do much with functional illiterates, even those witha high school diploma.

We must talk more and more about taking a unifiedapproach to occupational preparation, and that was oneof the major directions pointed by the 1968 VocationalEducation Act Amendments. Last year's Administrationproposal for postsecondary occupational education in thehigher education bill was just not enough; and for thoseof you who are disturbed by it, I'll just say, its dead.We need a totally new departure in this field.

In conclusion I want to make three points about theform and character legislatively of that departure. I

think that legislatively we should not think in terms ofamending the Vocational Education Act or amending highereducation acts. We ought to think in terms of a separateact dealing with postsecondary occupational education.Second, I think our approach should not be institutional;it ought to be programmatic. We ought to be decidingwhat we must accomplish and then devise the mechanics ofinvolving all of our available resources to accomplishingthose objectives. I was very glad to hear Lowell Burkettmake the point about being program-oriented. Third, Ithink that there is no inexpensive approachI'm sure ofthis. Much of the cost might be reabsorbed in terms ofreordering the priorities for using the educational dollar;but it still, I believe, will require a very heavy addi-tional outlay at the federal level, state and local levels.

I deeply appreciate the opportunity to participate inthis conference and in the very important work you aredoing here. I expect to learn more from you than I cancontribute to you.

Thank you.

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19

CAREER EDUCATION

Marvin FeldmanDirector of Program DevelopmentOffice of Economic OpportunityUnited States Department of Labor

Washington, D. C.

It's good to be with you again. It's been about a year,I think, since I have been with those of you in vocationaland technical education. I hadn't realized how much Imissed it until about four months ago when I was asked totake part in an interdepartmental task force looking atalternatives in education, and it all came back in a kindof a flood. The purpose of that exercise was to see whatwe could do with the career education act that's nowbottled up with the higher education bill, Title VII, andto explore alternatives we have in dealing with it.

I feel very close to those of you in vocational andtechnical education, having spent over a dozen years intechnical institute education. I mention this because ifsome of my comments seem harsh or presumptuous, I hope youcan accept them in the spirit in which I offer them.They're the worried reflections of a sincere advocate ofvocational-technical education.

Today I want to make my remarks from a point of viewthat is new to me. After a year at the Office of EconomicOpportunity, many of my old biases were reinforced verydramatically. I know you're tired, if you reflect themajority of public opinion, of hearing about poverty, yetwe have to mention it. The very tensions that grip theworld today, everywhere, are born from a global struggleagainst poverty. We face it everywhere. In Americapoverty underlies the question of minority equality, therebuilding of American cities, and the restoring of socialhealth to Appalachia. In Europe, rapid urbanizationpromises severe problems to come. They've already begunin Germany this year. In Asia the poor are homeless, andthe refugee problems soon to loom in Vietnam and otherparts of Southeast Asia are going to put tremendous bur-dens on government. The problems of all developingnations everywhere, the Mideast, Africa, South America,ure first of all problems of poverty. What makes this aspecial concern to those of us in vocational education is

20that most of the dilemma that we face is chargeabledirectly to us. But our concern really falls in threeparts--economic, social, and political.

From an economic point of view, poverty has beenthroughout history the environment needed to producecheap labor, but in a post-industrial society, cheaplabor is no longer needed. We no longer need unskilledlabor to produce goods; machines produce goods. We needskilled labor to distribute and service goods. This isthe whole business of the sz.vice economy that you heardfrom Mr. Odell. The emphasis on marketing goods makespoverty unsupportable from an economic point of view.

From a social point of view, poverty is a blight.It's a source of crime, of sickness, of social aliena-tion; it's a spreading disease which infests communities.Poverty is ugly and it's drab, and it's ugly in all itsforms. Where proverty exists it is pervasive; it con-trols its environment completely, saps energies, anddevours funds that should go into other causes. It bur-dens communities with expensive services for treatment;it builds police forces instead of schools and it high-lights divisions, polarizations, and tensions. Povertystrips people of their belongings and makes insecurity away of life. From a aocial point of view, if governmentis to serve the whole community, poverty cannot be tol-erated.

From a political point of view, poverty is a liability.The young who cannot qualify for decent jobs distrust thesociety which reared them. Dissidents speak with voicesof rebellion. Campus and inner city revolt reaches intoour public secondary schools. The poor become numerousand organized and articulate enough to reject externalleadership and controls and seek their own. The inevi-table result is polarization and strife. Poverty makesit possible for radical groups, teamed with politicalopportunists, to alter materially our traditional eco-nomic, political and social concepts. The only politicalcure is to eradicate or at least ameliorate poverty, todevelop new political methods based on alliance ratherthan control. So of all the fundamental reasons forattacking poverty, the political ones are the most pressing.Everywhere in the world today, poverty no longer connotesdocility; poverty means instability.

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In searching for ways to overcome poverty, we have ourchoice of many remedies. In fact, economically as well aspolitically, the world is under tension as a result ofdiametrically opposed views and concepts of government'srole in alleviating poverty. But we here in America--atleast up until now--have rejected the wholly materialisticphilosophy which regards the individual as a sort of soul-less unit governed by a complete and powerful state.

In searching for better ways to overcome poverty, edu-cation seemed to us to offer a greater promise. Educationis in a sense the logical way, we thought, to attack pov-erty because it provides a clear path to escape from pov-erty. We attacked poverty through education, really,because we must. Education is the foundation, we said.With it better housing will come, better programs of oppor-tunity, training, and so on; without education, none ofthese things will happen.

The paradox is really distressingly clear. What we'velearned in the last half a dozen to a dozen years is thatpoverty does not respond to conventional education. It

never has; it never will. Poverty has receded, or itsbeen held to a low level only when education has beenoffered with a vocational purpose, without the customaryformalities and requirements. Poverty will not be reducedby opening up new universities and creating new programs inuniversity education. The problem of providing educationthat will reduce poverty begins long before that system ofhigher education begins. It's a problem of building habits,outlooks and opportunities that our schools, particularlyhigher education, seem to take for granted.

As Mr. Radcliffe just mentioned before, probably ourmost serious misuse of major resources is in education.Eighty percent of the labor force work at jobs that do notrequire a college degree; but the federal government spendsfourteen dollars on higher education for every dollar itinvests in vocational and career education. More thanthat, our educational system is geared to serve a college-bound minority. Thus, it neglects the real need of mostof the students, and the consequences are alarming. Mostof our young people are being prepared for a world theywill never see. Their education is irrelevant to thedemands and opportunities of the work world. Thio istragic. It is thoughtless discrimination against thosewho will serve society as technicians and as craftsmen.

22It means that millions of our young people are strugglingto prepare for mistaken goals. It is an absolute outrage.

The burden of our failure to provide relevant educationfalls heaviest on those least able to bear it. Educationis the weapon most certain to succeed in the War AgainstPoverty, but we've used it clumsily and carelessly. Pov-erty persists primarily because we have failed to buildsound educational paths and logical career paths out ofpoverty. We've asked the children of poverty to followexpensive paths that lead nowhere. We've squandered ourresources, and, worst of all, we have crushed the fragileoptimism of millions of our disadvantaged young people.

We have said that any child has a right to an educa-tion, and in that we've succeeded. We have provided aneducation of sorts to every child, but the time has cometo go much farther. The time has come to say that everychild has a right to a relevant education, an educationfitted to his needs and abilities and aspirations, aneducation designed to discover and nourish his uniquepotential. But most important, an education that is apathway to an appropriate and satisfying vocation.

To make education relevant will require a radical re-orienting of educational priorities, particularly as itrelates to those institutions represented here calledpostsecondary institutions that I'm going to blast inabout a minute. We need, first of all, to enlarge oureffort in vocational education. Just now we're spendingabout four dollars in the Labor Department on remedialand manpower programs, because we have to, for everydollar that we spend on preventive vocational programs,because we've had no demonstration by vocational educa-tion that it has a mission in preventive education.

We're spending far more to reduce the pool of the un-employed than we are in reducing the tragic daily flowof the people into that pool. Appar'ntly, our educationalsystem is no longer a long path to a satisfying vocationfor everyone. Right now in this country we spend about$1,400,000,000 dollars for vocational education. Of this,18 percent is federal, and the rest of it is state andlocal. I won't go into the statistics of how many areenrolled and what they're doing and all this sort ofthing. Setting that aside and saying, that's all right,the problem is that it doesn't reach enough people; there

23

are not enough people enrolled in the program. There'sa huge potential market that still hasn't been reached.Let me enumerate quickly some segments of this potentialmarket.

There are elementary school students. RobertWorthington, State Director of Vocational Education inNew Jersey, has set up a program called Technology forChildren in about 114 classrooms, and he's proving toNew Jersey's satisfaction, at any rate to the StateLegislature's satisfaction, that vocational experiencescan help children learn more science, social studies,math and reading and so on, by designing episodes thatwould be helpful in elementary education. Dr. Worthingtonturned to postsecondary institutions for help for manyepisodes, but he didn't find any. He had to import hisown staff into the state department to do anything, andto this day he's receiving very little support from thepostsecondary institutions that should be helping himdesign these kinds of episodes.

There are secondary and postsecondary students whowant vocational education and can't be admitted becauseof inadequate facilities. I now live in Washington, D. C.They've turned away 500 students from Washington's second-ary vocational schools, and about 100 students were turnedaway from Washington's Technical Institute, just this year.Across the nation there are hundreds and hundreds of kidswho aren't getting access to vocational education.

There are young people who are headt.d for work aftergraduation from high school who now receive no trainingat all, about 7,500,000 people this year. Then there arehigh school and college dropouts, 750,000 annually, wholeave high school, virtually all without marketable skills.Young people who would like to, and ought to, test the workworld in some educational program in a field that theythink they want to spend their working lives in, beforethey commit themselves to postsecondary institutions. Wehaven't even scratched the surface of that group.

Another segment of the potential market is comprisedof high school and college students who need income to per-mit them just to continue their education or who need co-operative jobs to complete their vocational or academictraining. The '68 amendments, for example, gave strong

94

24support to this, but it was so inadequately funded ithasn't even scratched the surface.

Then there are unemployed or soon-to-be unemployedworkers, not expecting callback, forced by shifts intechnology, obsolete skills, or shifts in demand, tolearn a marketable skill. We discovered quickly whathappened in Seattle, Washington last year, how inade-quate we were in preparing people who needed retrainingand needed reconnection to the work world. Fully-employed workers facing unemployment, or highly moti-vated working poor stuck in low-skill, low-pay jobs,often moonlighting to stretch their 4.ncome to covertheir families' needs, all need to acquire a skill whichwill break them out of poverty or prevent them from be-coming poverty stricken.

The irony of poverty is that it doesn't have a damnthing to do with a job. Most of the poor people areworking; the mothers and the fathers of poor familieswork. But they work at lousy jobs, at low-paying jobs,where there aren't any hopes for advancement or careerescalation. Such was the agony we faced recently intrying to move our Family Assistance Planning program.There are others. There are decently paid workers stuckin tedious, dead-end jobs who are frustrated by thosejobs and need different skills to improve their job sat-isfaction. We haven't even begun to tap into that par-ticular part of the market.

There are mothers of school-age children who needand want to re-enter the labor market but need skilltraining to raise them above the low-paid service occu-pations traditionally reserved for the unskilled, orthey may simply need refresher training to update theirskills. I just think of the thousands and thousands ofwomen wanting to re-enter the work world when theirchildren begin to approach college age, who need anincome, and have no access to the kinds of trainingprograms that would allow them to make this kind of aconnection.

Older workers, voluntarily or involuntarily retired,who want to continue work but need a new marketable skillor updating of a previous skill constitute another groupneeding retraining.

2J

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Mental hospital patients, during their stay and upondischarge, often need a marketable skill to sustain them-selves economically. There were 308,000 live releasesfrom mental hospitals last year, and I wonder how wellwe've served that particular group.

We haven't talked about the veterans returning fromVietnam to civilian life. Many of them entered the servicetoo young to have acquired any work skill. They will needtraining upon discharge.

A final group is comprised of prisoners needing pre-and post-release skill training and related work experi-ence. At present there are about 195,000 people in pris-ons. We can expect about a 75 percent recidivism rateupon their release, because we haven't adequately devel-oped educational programs which will allow them to copewith the life styles that the world demands. We haven'teven tapped into that market yet.

These target groups which encompass a substantial por-tion of our entire population only touch upon the supplyside. If I had time I'd give you 30 minutes of demandside, in terms of skills that are needed which we're notanywhere near meeting, in ecology and in police and firescience, but you people are in the business. You knowthe list.

Turning to issues now, my main concern for about twentyyears has been in finding a way to end confusing voca-tional education with practical training for a job. I

suppose like others before me, I've really failed. Toassume that vocational education is identical in contentand process with vocational training programs in industryis to deny the all-important spirit in which it's beingstudied in educational institutions. Are you runninginstitutions merely to meet job requirements or are theybeing used to liberate and enlarge the human spirit?That, it seems to me, is a vital question that has beenthe focus of debate and often heated controversy for toomany years. It appears in various forms and guises everytime vocational or technical or career education is upfor policy review; .I just relived it again during thesepast two weeks.

The argument is schools versus private industry fortraining, specific versus general education, secondaryversus postsecondary education, comprehensive versus

26special purpose education, the list is endless. Strangely,this question facing you in your present educational tur-moil has not found an answer acceptable to educationalpolicy-makers, because you have not answered it yourselvesas practitioners in the field. You appear to be in greatconfusion over this absolutely central point: Do youwant your schools to be places where young people becomevocationally literate, or do you want them to be jobtraining centers? This question of priority is para-mount. It's not just the question of finances, sinceit's at the very heart of a central issue concerning therole of the private sector in career development. Ifthat question isn't answered very soon by you, it's goingto be answered for you.

The fact is that interest in secondary vocational edu-cation by those of you who manage postsecondary programshas not really been heard, particularly as to the placeand purpose of secondary vocational education in the edu-cational system. This has served to distort its problemsand multiply all the agonies of career education versusthe job training syndrome.

Instead of an organized, articulate voice in a majoroffense against wasteful educational policies, our fieldhas been preoccupied with minor internal bickering abouttechnical institutes versus vocational education, andvocational agriculture and homemaking against new careers.Let me cite an example. A number of recent studies weresubmitted to a policy review panel about a week ago aboutthe cost-benefits of vocational education. The conclusionin regard to students employed in jobs for which they weretrained were negative. There are three points I want tomake regarding the implications of this kind of MickeyMouse study. They haven't been made, and somebody oughtto make them. First, vocational education should not bejudged solely by the record of its graduates in obtainingand holding jobs for which they have been trained. Noother branch of education is judged by this standard. Allbranches of education, damn it, are vocational. The unem-ployment of a vocationally trained machinist, which is afunction of the labor market, of employment policies of a

host of pressures having nothing to do with education, ischaracterized as a failure of the vocational system, whereasthe unemployment of the liberal arts graduate is lost instatistics, if noted at all. There is ample reason to

27believe that vocational education contributes to the indi-vidual's ability to get and hold a job, even if that jobdoes not require some or all of the specific skills thathe's been taught. He'll have an understanding of the workworld; he'll have a knowledge of tools and equipment andmaterials and processes; he'll have some transferableskills as well as the broad skills. The point is thatvocational education is education. People in higher edu-cation have never recognized that fundamental point. Youpeople who manage postsecondary institutions, communitycolleges and technical institutes could make connectionsthat have never been developed before in this nation, be-tween postsecondary and higher education, and betweenpostsecondary and secondary vocational education, waichis probably your greatest constituency in the UnitedStates. Vocational education turns out its rounded men,too. The curves may be a little sharp in places, butthey are rounded too.

Second, is my concern about the apparent, well-meaningefforts of our private-sector job training. I hear overand over and over again, particularly in the past week,that job skills are acquired on the job, and that suchtraining is more effective and more efficient than voca-tional education. The fact is, however, that both methodsare used often in combination with each other. A definitetrend indicates increasing importance of institutionalconnections with job training and a blending of thesekinds of programs. On-the-job training, first of all, iscostly. The programs are expensive, and companies haveno guarantees that employees stay with them once they'vebeen trained. You ask company officers at Bell Telephonewhat they learned as we did last week: A fantastic costwith a turnover of about 50 percent of the people thatthey train. The larger companies tend to have formaltraining programs; smaller companies don't because theycan't afford them. Even the larger companies make noattempt to train all of their skilled workers in all theskills they need because they couldn't. The cost wouldbe prohibitive. The small number of apprentices isattributable not only to severe union restraint, butalso to the fact that the increasing costs are prohibi-tive to the industries themselves. More important,on-the-job training presupposes some education. Lit-eracy alone may be all that is needed in the way ofspecific preparatory knowledge. We say that employa-bility very often has little to do with the manipulative

28skills, little to do with what people call vocational-technical education, but here we overlook the fact thattechnical-vocational education is the very process thatproduced the ability to communicate.

My third and final point with which I want to sum updeals with the issue of postsecondary versus secondaryvocational and technical education. There is one pointof view in the land that we should move all the voca-tional education into postsecondary institutions. An-other point of view is that postsecondary institutionsutilize wasteful practices and the vocational educationthey offer could just as well be done in the secondaryschools. I don't think its necessary to even take astand on the question of whether it's necessary to movepostsecondary vocational-technical education into sec-ondary institutions. Where the trend is there, it'sgoing to happen. Where it isn't, it won't. There arepoor people who, even if they had access to your post-secondary institutions, even if the education were free,and even if you dealt with their student characteristics,still couldn't afford to wait for access to postsecondaryprograms. So that's not the issue. I think the issue isthat institutions of postsecondary occupational and tech-nical education have got to reorder their own understandingof who they are, where they belong, and who they connectwith. The question facing us right now is should we breakout postsecondary career education, as we tried a year ago,and under higher education create some career educationalternatives and options, or should we take a look atcareer education as being a continuum of secondary-postsecondary, adult returning education, and create apiece of legislation that's based on a kind of a merger,or a connection, or--if you'll forgive the jargon- -articulation with secondary-postsecondary education.

My question to you is: Who do you belong to? Who doyou want to identify with? And this really hasn't beenheard. What frightens me is this, in Moynihan's terms,it's about five minutes to midnight. We've been tinker-ing around and tinkering around, with people worryingabout turf, and people worrying about prestige, and peopleworrying about delivery systems at the state level, withoutany real look at the kinds of people that we want to serveand the needs of those fourteen subgroups that I mentionedearlier.

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29

I just hope that during your deliberations later this

afternoon you'll want to face some of those issues and see

if there is any way at all to get some organized voice

speaking for career occupational education.

Thank you.

30THE AMERICAN VOCATIONAL ASSOCIATION AND ITS

COMMITMENT TO EVALUATION ANDACCREDITATION

Joseph T. NerdenProfessor of Industrial and Technical Education

North Carolina State UniversityRaleigh, North Carolina

From the first three panelists you've had some very strongphilosophical statements and certainly some evidence con-cerning the economic problems and social problems attendantupon the provision of good vocational education. You haveheard strong statements about who should be served in thisUnited States, how they sh-uld be served, who ought to dothe serving, when they should be served, and so forth. Youhave also heard about how much it will cost, or how much itought to cost, to do the job right. These are three strongstatements, so I comment that by contrast at this point,all you're going to hear from me is a report on what is beingdone by the American Vocational Association to take intoaccount some of the concerns of these three gentlemen andsome plans for the immediate future.

With over 1,000 two-year institutions in operation in thenation, and with some expectation that that number willdouble within the next ten years, it is clear that provi-sions for adequate representation of these institutionswithin the structure of occupational education must be made.The American Vocational Association has been cognizant ofthis need and has been working with individuals, organiza-tions and committees drawn from the two-year institutions,in order to recognize and facilitate the interests and con-cerns of those who provide occupational preparation in theseinstitutions. Two of these concerns that have received muchattention by the American Vocational Association are evalua-tion and its extension into accreditation. In a senseevaluation is accountability, and the legal roots of thisactivity may be found in both the 1963 Vocational Act andits subsequent 1968 Amendments. Evaluation appears inseveral sections of the 1968 Act, and while evaluation haslong been a concern of the American Vocational Association,the activity has taken on additional importance with avariety of implications of the Federal legislation.

Through the years, vocational people have placed muchemphasis upon devices which measure the quantity and quality

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of occupational education programs, but time, personnelavailable for the task, and dollars have made it impos-sible for vocational enterprises throughout the nationto engage in evaluation and accreditation activities tothe extent deemed necessary. However, about a decadeago, the board of directors of the American VocationalAssociation recognized the urgency of producing (annually)hard data concerning the successes and limitations ofoccupational programs conducted throughout the nationand, as a first step, created a committee for the evalua-tion and accreditation of vocational education programs.This committee has been actively involved in these mattersduring the entire decade, and it is about some of itsactivities that I wish to speak briefly this afternoon.

At first, the emphasis by the American VocationalAssociation was on evaluation on an "in-house" procedurefor maintaining and further improving all vocational edu-cation programs. Soon it became apparent that the grow-ing need for accreditation in Federally reimbursed pro-grams would force the American Vocational Association(and other agencies) into consideration of evaluation asa primary step toward accreditation. There were otherelements, too, that made it necessary to couple evalua-tion and accreditation into a single committee activity,and these influences included not only Federal fundingpossibilities, but also the pressures being placed uponvocational education by faculty, students, employers ofgraduates, and many others. The stamp of approval, whichis in fact accreditation, was regarded by each of thesegroups as a highly desirable characteristic of a programand, hence, a necessity for the future.

AVA Activities in AccreditationAre Five in Number

Activity 1. The American Vocational Association hasbeen the focal point for meetings, conferences, and nu-merous other discussion sessions, all directed toward work-ing with the recognized accrediting agencies in the nationin the matter of evaluating and ultimately accrediting allkinds and types of vocational education programs. Meetingsand discussions with the six regional accrediting associa-tions in the nation, with the National Commission onAccrediting (NCA) and with many of the private agenciesresponsible for accreditation reach back over ten years.

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It has always been the hope of the AVA Committee on Evalua-tion and Accreditation that discussions held during theyears would result in careful consideration of the occupa-tional education parts of the program offered in areaschools, in high schools and in the two-year, postsecondaryinstitutions. Recognizing that the National Commission onAccrediting was the important rallying point in all dis-cussions concerned with accreditation, the committee workedoriginally with Dr. William Selden, then later with Dr.Frank Dickey and his associate, Mr. Jerry Miller, in thesematters. During the years, AVA established a most usefuland harmonious working relationship with NCA, resulting ina continued involvement in establishing workable relation-ships between those in the occupational education fieldand the six regional accrediting associations.

Activity 2. With the extension of occupational educa-tion, both laterally and vertically, the National Commissionon Accrediting two years ago established the Interim Councilon Accreditation of postsecondary occupational educationprograms. As its chairman, I was privileged to work withabout 20 other nationally selected persons directly con-cerned with accreditation on the postsecondary level. TheInterim Council fulfilled a real need during its two-yearperiod, and it is anticipated that it will soon be convertedinto a permanent council, representative of both the publicand private sectors of occupational education in the country.There is some expection, also, that the National Commissionon Accrediting will very shortly engage in a national studyand research relative to accreditation of occupational edu-cation programs in postsecondary institutions, and that theAmerican Vocational Association will continue to have acooperative role to play in this proposed national study.

Activity 3. Convinced of its several responsibilitiesin the matters of evaluation and accreditation, a year anda half ago the American Vocational Association submitted tothe U. S. Office of Education a proposal for a grant tostudy accreditation of occupational education, to developstandards and criteria for its evaluation and ultimateaccreditation, and to field test the standards and criteriaprior to their recommendation to the six regional accreditingassociations for possible adoption and use. Dr. GeorgeBrandon of the AVA Washington office and Mr. Jerry Millerof the NCA were the co-authors of the proposal for thegrant which won approval from the USOE. Working coop-eratively with the NCA, AVA succeeded in obtaining

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approximately $167,000 for the initial steps to be takenin its nation-wide activity of evaluation and accredita-tion. A year has passed, and the standards and criteriaassembled by the AVA staff, headed by Mr. Lane Ash, areabout ready for field testing. It is a very hopeful andpromising project, and the beneficial results of thisactivity should be evident to the profession shortly.

Activity 4. Another activity which will have consid-erable effect upon evaluation and, possibly, ultimate ac-creditation of occupational education programs at alllevels in the nation is the soon-to-appear publicationentitled The Vocational Instructor and Self-Evaluation.During the summer of 1970, it became clearly apparent, byvirtue of the AVA executive secretary's (Lowell Burkett)participation in the National Advisory Council on Voca-tional Education, that increasing attention at the locallevel would need to be given to evaluation of vocationaleducation. Assembled for consideration of this matterwas a small committee of eight that met in AVA headquartersand made some decisions concerning the production of a use-ful guide that might be prepared for instructors in voca-tional education programs and used as a device for self-evaluation. The committee prepared a rough draft outliningin ten sections the suggested standards and criteria forself-evaluation which should be considered by each of the50,000 members of AVA. In early fall, the standards andcriteria were assembled in draft form and distributed forfield testing to the 50 states. The results of the fieldtesting are now being reviewed in the AVA headquarters,and very shortly 'che document should be ready for finalediting and printing through the facilities of the AVAcommittee on publications. The AVA believes that by reach-ing into the consciousness of every instructor, supervisorand administrator of vocational education, the standardsand criteria will provoke further consideration, furtherimprovement and accountability for the quantity and qualityof vocational programs.

Activity 5. The American Vocational Association par-ticipates actively in several other important activitieswhich bear directly upon evaluation and accreditation. Itsnational executive secretary, Mr. Lowell Burkett, is amember of the National Advisory Council for VocationalEducation, and is chairman of the special subcommitteedealing with evaluation of occupational education programs.Also, the AVA is represented on several important com-mittees of the USOE dealing with evaluation and accreditation

34as they affect vocational education enterprises in bothpublic and private sectors.

Problems Which We Face in Accreditationand Evaluation

I would like to point out three of the many problemswhich we of AVA face in connection with matters of evalua-tion and accreditation.

Problem 1. The first problem is one which has receivedconsiderable discussion throughout the nation--institutionalaccreditation versus program or curriculum accreditation.This particular problem area comes close to the heart ofquality vocational education wherever it is conducted,since many of the professionals in the field believe thatthe maintenance and further improvement of occupationaleducation programs can only come about through the im-provement of each of the respective curricula within aschool program. On the other hand, the regional accredit-ing associations, with whom the AVA has been working coop-eratively during the past decade, have established proce-dures for institutional accreditation. The regionals haveset a pattern, and an accommodation will have to be soughtfor the regional "institutional accreditation" versus thestrongly supported "curriculum accreditation" advocated byvocational people. Back of all of this is the pride withwhich highly specialized teachers, craftsmen, and technician-instructors exhibit in connection with their respective cur-riculums and their wish to be recognized for the qualityand quantity of their respective curricula. Still further,some elements of the occupational education programs blendthemselves more readily into institutional accreditationthan into curriculum accreditation. For example, the rapidgrowth of the middle-grades occupational education programsin the nation clearly involves all elements of the schoolprogram, and the programs lend themselves readily to insti-tutional accreditation. On the other end of the spectrumare the nearly 200 institutions in the nation which conductoccupational education programs from grades 9 or 10 through14, for whom the values of institutional accreditation aredifficult to comprehend. With curricula operating on sec-ondary and postsecondary levels, with some curricula beingconducted as preparation for higher education and with stillothers being of either the short-term or long-term variety,the matter of institutional accreditation is not looked upon

35

as the recommended procedure for providing discrete infor-mation with regard to any one specific curriculum. Manyvocational people question the procedure and, as indicatedearlier, recognize that an accommodation will have to besought with the established institutional accreditationprocedures utilized by the regional accrediting associations.

Problem 2. Real problems develo when vocational eo leattempt to force occupational education programs into theestablished academic matrix. Most vocational people viewtheir contributions to the total education of individualsas being discrete, distinct, and certainly not somethingwhich gives up its identity as it is coaxed into blendingwith the oft-described "mainstream of all education." Ina word, vocational educators are convinced that vocationaleducation is different, and it will continue to requiredifferent procedures to provide occupational preparationfor all who are capable of receiving it and who need it.As a rationale for this last, it has been pointed out thatin four distinct characteristics, vocational education isdifferent from most other kinds of education. An examina-tion of these four characteristics would appear to indicatethat there is ample evidence that vocational education (asa discipline) is not now, nor will it be in the foreseeablefuture, similar to traditional academic education. In thefirst place, the individuals served by vocational educationare generally youth and adults drawn from the lowest socio-economic stratum; when compared to students in academicprograms whose intent generally is to go on to higher edu-cation, it may be clearly seen that the motivations andthe social and economic backgrounds of the people servedby vocational education differ greatly from those goingthe four-year college route. With regard to the secondcharacteristic, the curricula that are served to the youthand adults in vocational education are quite differentfrom those served to college-oriented students. The cur-ricula are job-oriented, with emphasis upon skills, tech-nical knowledge and communication skills. Even the mathe-matics, science, and other technical subjects of the pro-gram are applied (related) to the major vocational thrust.With regard to the third characteristic,instructors forvocational programs, it is quite apparent that most ofthese individuals are neither prepared nor come throughthe usual route which produces instructors of academicsubjects. Rather, individuals who have the responsibilityof teaching within vocational programs are themselveswork-oriented and bring with them a required background

36of wage-earning work experience. Many of those who teachin the vocational program have only a high school diplomacoupled with a decade or more of high quality work experi-ence. In this very important characteristic alone, voca-tional instructors are quite different from their academiccounterparts. Even in the design of the facilities andthe selection of the equipment used in vocational educa-tion (the fourth characteristic), similarities to academiceducation are lacking. Vocational education is generallyconducted in job-oriented types of surroundings, and, inthe case of cooperative vocational education, activitiesactually take place out in the businesses, hospitals,industries and factories of the region. Shops that looklike shops and laboratories that look much like commerciallaboratories are the intent of the designers of vocationalfacilities. When compared with the usual academic educa-tion, the motivation inherent in job-oriented facilitiesmakes its impact upon students, faculty, employers ofgraduates, and the community at large.

There are several other characteristics of vocationaleducation which differentiate it from college-orientededucation; there are very few which would indicate thatit could be considered along with its academic counter-part as making up the "mainstream of all education."With different people to be served with totally differentcurricula to be served to them, with instructors whosequalifications for job-oriented types of instructiondiffer considerably from their academic counterparts,and with facilities which resemble the world of work,there is every reason to believe that the planning,organization, administration and measurement of suc-cesses and limitations in vocational education demanddifferent treatment than that normally accorded academiceducation. Vocational people ask rhetorically, "Is voca-tional education really different?" It would appear so!Further complications in this matter of people to beserved may be noted in the short-term occupational edu-cation curricula that are offered throughout the nal:ion.Manpower Development Training Programs are vocationaleducation programs and must be considered within therealm of occupational evaluation. How, then, shalt thesekinds of short-term curricula be jammed into the matrixof academic education evaluation and accreditation andstill have the total process mean anything? King-sizeproblems are there, too!

37Problem 3. Vocational people are not only concerned

with standards and criteria and whether or not insti-tutional, curriculum or program accreditation is theissue; they are also concerned with the procedures thatwill be used by the evaluating and accrediting personnel.They are concerned with the selection of the individualson the committees that will visit and apply standards andcriteria and with the procedures which these committeeswill use. Vocational people are concerned with theevaluating committee members, particularly when the guide-lines and criteria are placed in the hands of regionalaccreditation associations and others. They ask suchquestions as: Will the members of the visiting committeesknow what it is they are supposed to be looking for? Willthey have occupational backgrounds which will enable themto intelligently apply the standards and criteria underwidely varying circumstances? Will vocational people havea role to play on vocational evaluation and accreditationcommittees? Such questions have been raised during thepast ten years during AVA meetings, and they indicate thatthis could be a matter of serious concern.

Finally, it has been my pleasure to point out to youthe sincere involvement of the AVA in all matters affect-ing the evaluation and accreditation of occupational edu-cation. May I now inject a few of my own personal com-ments with regard to the suggested roles to be played inthe immediate future by the more than 1,500 two-year in-stitutions in the nation. Most of these institutionshave a very real stake in occupational education and,certainly, in its continuous and continual evaluationand subsequent accreditation. By virtue of the activityin which the American Vocational Association has takensuch a lead during the past decade, you are earnestlyinvited to join hands with us of AVA and assist in pro-cessing matters of evaluation and accreditation throughto the stage of successful operation. AVA has much ofthe required expertise and has established an office andstaff headed by Mr. Lane Ash, in order to focus all pointsof interest and concern in the nation on the problems ofoccupational evaluation and accreditation. AVA has demon-strated its concern and has invested heavily its own fundsin this activity, in the intecest of its 50,000 membersthroughout the nation. AVA has a sizeable USOE grant forthe development of standards and criteria for accreditation,and usable results should soon be available. Overall, AVAhas a commitment to its 50,000 members to see the activity

c.

38of evaluation and accreditation through to a success-ful and workable conclusion, and it needs all the advice,all the counsel, and all the help it can get from allof the institutions in the nation who today (and whowill tomorrow) conduct occupational education programs.Come join with us!

,3 9

39GROUP DISCUSSIONS, CONCLUSIONS

AND RECOMMENDATIONS

To provide an opportunity for those attending the con-ference to make maximum input, conference participantswere divided into five discussion groups. Participantswere randomly assigned to each group, and those who madepresentations to the general meeting rotated among thediscussion groups. No attempt was made to structure ordirect the discussions except that they were confined toproblems concerning or impinging upon postsecondary occu-pational education.

The major concerns, priorities, and recommendations foraction emanating from the various discussion groups areenumerated below.

Discussion Group A

Group Chairman: Jerome ShostakSenior Public Relations SpecialistWestern Electric FundNew York, New York

Group Recorder: Addison S. HobbsDirector of Vocational Technical

Education ProgramsWashington Technical InstituteWashington, D. C.

Issues and Problems

-- Lack of continuity and insufficiency of fundingcause difficulty in the operation of programs ofpostsecondary occupational education. This isparticularly true of programs funded from morethan one source or dependent upon multifundingprocedures.

-- To provide alternatives for job entry and up-grading or retraining, the possibilities of jobclustering merit further investigation and con-sideration.

g

40-- The relationship between short-term and long-

term occupational programs could be more clearlydefined by establishing levels of competencieswhich may or may not be viewed as continuous bythe worker at various maturity stages which areimplicit in the definition of career education.

Potential recipients of postsecondary vocational-technical education have different levels of need,maturity and aspirations than do persons who pur-sue vocational education at the secondary le el.If postsecondary technical-vocational education isto diversify and expand to serve more of the popu-lation than in the past, these differences mustbe recognized, and new methods of presenting thevarious programs must be designed.

The voucher or contract system of providing grantsdirectly to students can be successful only wherethe objectives of such systems are specificallystipulated and the potential recipients clearlyidentified.

-- There is a pressing need for greater articulationbetween the various levels of vocational-technicaleducation at the elementary, secondary and post-secondary levels.

-- More effective utilization of advisory committeesin technical-vocational education is needed toimprove communications with and among the variousconstituencies served.

Priorities for Action

-- Steps should be taken to ensure that funds foroccupational education are allocated to varioussystems and types of institutions based upontheir performance as measured by objective cri-teria.

-- Efforts should be undertaken to diversify programofferings for potential recipients of occupationaleducation, and a method should be devised wherebyeach program can be evaluated in terms of minimumstandards which, when met, will assure funding.

4

41

-- More effective articulation of various levels ofvocational-technical education is essential tominimize unnecessary duplication of effort and toprovide for orderly transition from one level toanother.

-- To provide occupational education for a greaternumber of recipients and to provide more employ-ment options for the graduate, adaptation of ajob cluster approach in curriculum developmentshould be undertaken.

Recommendation

Directed to AVA and AAJC:

The American Vocational Association and the AmericanAssociation of Junior Colleges should make every effortto combine forces for a strong front to express the uni-verse of need for postsecondary occupational educationand to press for legislation which will provide sufficientfunds to accomplish the educational task.

Discussion Group B

Group Chairman: Arden L. PrattDirector of New Institutions ProjectAmerican Association of Junior CollegesWashington, D. C.

Group Recorder: Oran H. BeatyArea Director of Vocational-Technical

EducationCouncil Bluffs, Iowa

Issues and Problems

-- Congress and governmental agencies appear to feelthat the public schools have failed to provide arelevant type of education for many youth and adults,resulting in re-channeling of funds to other agencies.

-- Secondary and postsecondary school administratorsand vocational personnel seem to lack the dynamic

42

leadership needed to develop a system ofvocational-technical education for the youthand adults of today which is commensurate withthe needs of our society.

Colleges and universities are turning out admin-istrators, teachers, and counselors who lack anunderstanding of the educational needs of youthand adults in today's technical environment.

The U. S. Department of Labor has devoted toomuch effort to attempting to provide educationand training and not enough effort to raisingthe image of the worker and the job in the work-a-day world.

There is too little articulation between insti-tutions providing academic and vocational educa-tion, resulting in the inability of students totransfer from one to the other and to receivecredit for prior education.

-- Both government agencies and educational insti-tutions have failed to develop the long-rangeplans essential to the orderly growth and develop-ment of occupational education.

-- A lack of communication between accreditingagencies and schools offering occupational edu-cation has resulted in the use of irrelevantand inadequate standards and criteria for theevaluation of occupational education.

-- Inadequate support for vocational programs isattributable to a lack of communication betweenschools, the public, business and industry groups,and legislative bodies.

Priorities for Action

-- An effective line of two-way communication mustbe developed between users and potential usersof occupational education, employers and potentialemployers of the products of occupational education,the lay public, leaders in all phases of education,federal agencies, and Congress.

43

43-- Efforts must be made to select school leadership

that has a broader concept of the educationalneeds of the individual who does not fit into thepresently used educational scheme which emphasizesacademic education for all.

-- We should promote a belief in a total educationalplan commensurate with the needs of society and allindividuals, not just a plan for students who likeor readily adjust to the present system.

-- The "who" and "how" of delivery systems for educa-tion have no innate importance. The prime objectiveshould be the provision of valid occupational educa-tion opportunities for all who can benefit fromthem using whatever delivery system is availableor devisable.

Recommendations

Directed to AVA and AAJC:

-- Undertake a broad-scale program to promote recognitionof the importance of and benefits to be derived fromvocational-technical education as a means of obtaininggreater student acceptance.

Directed to U. S. Department of Labor:

-- Direct an all-out campaign for recognition andglamorization of the skilled and technical workersequivalent to that engaged in by the armed services,in order to attract persons to enter training.

Discussion Group C

Group Chairman: William Bruce HowellExecutive Secretary, Florida State

Advisory Council on Vocational EducationTallahassee, Florida

Group Recorder: Lloyd J. PhippsDepartment of Vocational Technical

EducationUniversity of IllinoisUrbana, Illinois

44Issues and Problems

-- The funding structure for occupational educationdoes not adequately earmark funds for postsecondaryeducation.

-- There is a confusion in terminology being utilizedin the various areas impinging on occupational edu-cation. This confusion results from differinginterpretations of common terms.

-- In many states postsecondary education is notadequately involved in the development of stateplans for vocational-technical education.

-- It is possible that the manpower councils and theadvisory councils established under the 1968Vocational Education Act Amendments are duplicativeor contradictory in direction and should be inte-grated into a single council.

-- More effective methods for communicating desiredchanges in postsecondary education to the decisionmakers at the national level are needed.

-- For the mutual benefit of all, ways must be devisedto better articulate secondary and postsecundaryeducation.

-- There is lack of agreement as to whether accredi-tation emphasis should be placed on institutionalor programmatic accreditation.

Priorities

-- A funding structure which earmarks funds for post-secondary occupational education should be established.

-- A glossary of terms for occupational education shouldbe developed.

-- Postsecondary occupational education should be moreinvolved in the development of state plans foroccupational education.

4 5

45

-- A procedure should be established for bringingdesired changes in occupational education to theattention of the policy makers at the nationallevel.

-- Greater articulation between the various levelsof occupational education and a unification ofefforts in behalf of occupational educationis essential to maximize accomplishments.

-- Present accreditation practices should be evaluatedto determine whether institutional accreditationprovides the assurance of quality within programsand curricula or whether programmatic accreditationis needed.

Recommendations

Directed to AVA:

AVA should take the lead in establishing a fundingsystem that earmarks funds for the various levelsof occupational education.

AVA should evaluate present occupational accredita-tion practices and establish guidelines to be usedin the future to ensure eqditable program develop-ment and evaluation.

Discussion Group D

Group Chairman: Robert L. McKeeProject Director of AMIDSWashington Technical InstituteWashington, D. C.

Group' Recorder: Donald Farrens, DeanVocational-Technical Education DivisionSouth Florida Junior CollegeAvon Park, Florida

46Issues and Problems

-- Fragmentation of programs and efforts exists at alllevels of occupational education. Much of thisfragmentation arises from federal legislation, butis compounded because each state operates in a dif-ferent manner.

-- Accreditation as a prerequisite to meeting federalfunding requirements has resulted in occupationaleducation being measured by unrealistic anJ inap-plicable standards and criteria. Accreditation istoo heavily process-oriented and needs to placemore emphasis upon standards and criteria whichmeasure the product of the educational process.

- - Academic orientation of educators in general pre-sents a problem for occupational education. Thereis a need to orient college presidents, deans,faculty, state department personnel, etc. to theconcepts, problems, needs, and philosophy ofvocational-technical education.

- - Vocational-technical education must be adequatelyprepared to train and retrain people who areunderemployed or become unemployed due toadvanced technology which makes their skillsobsolete.

A proliferation of funding agencies in the federalgovernment has led to unnecessary duplication ofefforts, the lack of a unified effort in vocational-technical education, and dependence at the stateand local level upon organizations which lack theexpertise to provide an effective program ofvocational-technical education. As a result,limited resources have not been used to maximumadvantage.

-- There is a great need for pre-vocational orienta-tion programs that will introduce the student tovocational education at an early age and give himan established seL of positive values with whichto approach decision-making concerning careeropportunities. Occupational and preoccupationalcourses should begin no later than the middleschool or junior high years so that higher

A r7

47competencies in specialist areas may be taughtlater in the secondary system.

- - Lack of adequate and accurate statistical dataupon which job needs and manpower projects canbe based has caused weaknesses in short-termand long-range planning in technical and voca-tional education.

-- Improved methods are needed in counseling,training, and working with the disadvantaged inorder to identify how they can better be broughtinto programs of occupational training and edu-cation and how they can be retained until suc-cessful completion of the program.

Priorities

- - Accreditation, its implications for funding, andthe validity of its process, procedures, and cri-teria for occupational education merit much furtherstudy.

- - Pre-vocational programs and orientation for theelementary and middle school-age children areessential to the long-term success of occupationaleducation.

-- Provisions for more effective implementation of thenew manpower program now in Congress are sorelyneeded.

Recommendations

Directed to AVA Staff and National Advisory Council:

A national ad hoc committee should be appointed tostudy the problems of accreditation and its ramifi-cations in securing federal sanctions and funds.This group suggests that more emphasis be placedon product standards rather than on process standards.Adoption of uniform standards and evaluative criteriawould improve the effectiveness of accreditation andhelp bring about programs which would better meetthe needs of employers, employees, and unions and

1

48would stimulate these organizations to establishmore flexible working relations and hence superiorconditions for the student in both his trainingand employability.

Directed to AVA, Educational Organizations, and Membersof Congress:

-- The members of this group suggest that provisionsbe written into the new manpower legislation toprovide for pre-vocational training and orientationfor all elementary and junior high school children.This is essential if the philosophy of "academiceducation for all" is to be overcome. Plans shouldalso be implemented to provide and necessitatetraining for all teachers, counselors, and admin-istrators concerning the role of modern-day occu-pational education and the need for full under-standing, cooperation, and support if it is tofully meet the needs of the nation.

Directed to National Advisory Council:

-- Because the manpower training programs and voca-tional education are so fragmented into the manyagencies of the federal government, we feel thatstrong consideration should be given to the appoint-ment of a cabinet post for a Commissioner of Education.It is felt that this person could give better over-all direction to the many problems faced by occupa-tional education and could better administer thetotal program through the nation's schools andcolleges.

Discussion of Group E

Group Chairman: Robert Knoebel, DirectorBureau of Management ServicesDepartment of EducationCommonwealth of PennsylvaniaHarrisburg, Pennsylvania

Group Recorder: Walter J. Bartz, CoordinatorPostsecondary Coordination UnitDivision of Vocational-Technical EducationSpringfield, Illinois

119

49Issues and Problems

-- There is a failure on the part of vocational edu-cators to organize their resources to meetadequately the manpower training requirementsof the nation.

-- There is some lack of understanding of fundingprocedures within the proposed ComprehensiveCommunity College Act (Williams' Bill).

-- There is an unresolved question as to whetherCongress' basic approach to postsecondary occu-pational education should be institutional orprogrammatic.

-- The extent to which AVA should and does becomeinvolved in the direction of and services to post-secondary occupational education programs isunclear.

-- The present system of funding postsecondary occu-pational education does not provide for adequateutilization of private agencies and institutions.

-- Institutions offering postsecondary occupationaleducation lack a national forum for discussing theirproblems and have no national organization to voicetheir concerns or promote their interests as theystrive to serve the nation's educational needs.

Priorities

-- The question of Congressional emphasis being pro-grammatic or institutional must be resolved.

AVA should strengthen its effort to provideservices and direction to postsecondary occu-pational education programs.

-- Some compatible system of funding should beestablished for both public and private agencieswhich do or could utilize funds for postsecondaryoccupational education.

50

Recommendations

Directed to AVA:

AVA should support programmatic emphasis in draftinglegislation for postsecondary occupational education.

- - To provide for a unified voice and mutual nationalsupport, AVA should take action to provide forinstitutional membership for postsecondary occupa-tional education institutions within the AVA.

51

REFLECTIONS AND CONCLUSIONS

C. Nelson GrotePast President

American Vocational Association andDean, School of Applied Sciences and Technology

Morehead State UniversityMorehead, Kentucky 40351

It was a personal privilege to be invited to presideat this National Postsecondary Seminar and.to be asso-ciated with distinguished program participants on theplatform and in the audience. It is at the request ofthe seminar planning committee that I submit a briefstatement, in lieu of an oral summary that was to haveconcluded the format of the seminar. Perhaps with thelapse of time and the opportunity to review the paperspresented from the podium and the reports of the grouprecorders, I will be at least better prepared, if notproductive, in providing some personal reflections andconclusions.

It is clear that whenever we address ourselves to thebroad question of developing human resources in a demo-cratic society and relating the needs of people to theever-changing job requirements of a technological, social,and economic base, we are discussing a gigantic problem- -one that is fundamental to our survival as an industrialnation and one that is basic to the tenets of our way oflife. Not only are the parameters of the problem infinite;the variables are becoming more numerous and complex.These basic assumptions lead me to believe that humanresources development will be given higher and higherpriorities by mcre and more agencies, both public andprivate. The day is gone when any one type of insti-tution, or any one field of service, or any one profes-sional association can assume full responsibility forand control over vocational-technical education, how-ever it may be defined.

Rather, we find ourselves in an educational arenawhere the "managing of our turf" sometimes means defen-sive as well as offensive action. The "right of eminentdomain"--the right to "take over" educational "property"from previous owners--and the question of jurisdictionand action through concurrence and assurances have becomenew rules in ever-changing relationships and interactions.

stan ar a wl cl, w

41

52This problem is compounded by changes that are taking

place in curriculum development, for example, in voca-tional-technical education throughout this nation. It

is evident that we are not talking about secondary edu-cation programs serving primarily juniors and seniors inhigh school; nor are we limiting our concern to any agegroup, e.g., above 14 or 16 or below 65. Rather, we haveseen "vertical curriculum" develop within the institutionalsetting, beginning with the kindergarten and proceedinginto postsecondary career-oriented curricula. We are notjust interested in those "in-school youth"; we are becomingincreasingly concerned with the dropouts or "stop-outs" whohave left the formal school setting. We are not primarilyconcerned with the rural areas, but rather with an urbanand suburban constituency. Whereas terminal educationwas no handicap only a half-century ago in a society char-acterized by technological change, human obsolescence canonly be prevented, or at least arrested, by continuingeducation.

The ever-widening of our curricular offerings (horizontaldevelopment) is evidenced by the diversity and broad rangeof offerings and educational experiences required to matchchanging job requirements and conditions--new and emergingtechnological developments, social requirements, and nationalpriorities. Again, it must be concluded that the horizontalprogram development, when added to the vertical programdevelopment, simply compounds our difficulty in "turfmanagement," raises the probability of conflict, and necessi-tates a re-alignment of resources and re-scheduling ofpriorities.

We are long overdue, as individual professionals and asmembers of professional associations, in dealing adequatelyand effectively with the question of articulation. This is

especially true in the field of postsecondary educationand, more specifically, in occupational or career education.A major recommendation to the American Vocational Associationand other interested associations and agencies would be toplan immediately for a national conference on articulation.Perhaps by necessity, the conference would have to be restrictedto "Articulation of Postsecondary Occupational Education- -

Process and Product."

Too often, articulation is only viewed as a product--anend result. This means that as a result of some action,

53-_,-

53

articulation has been accomplished. In most cases, arti-culation is achieved by "overpowering" those groups orLgencies with whom you wish to articulate. Often thispower is made evident through such forms as politicalclout, status of the department or bureau in the formalhierarchy, the social status of a given type of insti-tution, the image of a profession or occupation, sheerstrength of numbers or economic resources, or just "out-smarting" with creative strategies. Discussions oftenresult in arguments over whether the piston is moreimportant than the crankshaft or if the axle is moreimportant that the wheel. We all know that a pistoncannot be effective by itself; neither can the axle orthe wheel serve its function without the other. Engineersdon't conceive a gear box by designing the housing andpouring in a conglomerate of disassociated parts. Neitherdo they normally fit a molybdenum alloy gear against alead blank and force an "articulation" with pressure.Yet, each of us could take this mechanical analogy andcite educational examples at the federal, state, andlocal levels which illustrate the misuse of the principleof meshing together of the various components to bringabout a planned function. The future of our great countryis too important, the population is sufficiently sophis-ticated, and the tax payer, while affluent, is too taxburdened to accept our "playing of games" as so-callededucational leaders. The choice we have is whether wewant to have articulation "forced" upon us from the outsideor to take the leadership in shaping the nature and char-acteristics of the form and substance of a system of arti-culation. It is the judgment of the writer that articulationin the 1970's is going to be viewed more as a process thana product. We will experience a never-ending developmentof new relationships and interelationships requiringcommunication networks, data banks, and concerted effortson a regional, national, and perhaps international scale,the like of which we have never experienced.

Coordination, communications, decentralization, decate-gorization, accreditation, and accountability were termsused throughout this seminar that are illustrative of theconcept of articulation. In my judgment, the first stepwas taken by those who envisioned this seminar. Let'snot allow their vision to be blurred or their dreams impairedby procrastination. Let's move forward to the time when wecan say in gestalt terms that the "whole is greater than thesumof its parts." What better way to apply the concept ofconfiguration than in the reality of postsecondary educationand the world of work?

redoraL agencies, anu uuuKLuno.

4 3

54

APPENDIX

55

APPENDIX A

SEMINAR PARTICIPANTS

Mary P. Allen, American Vocational Association,

Washington, D. C.

Mitchell L. Ammons, Wharton County Junior College,

Wharton, Texas

Richard P. Anderson, Rhode Island Junior College,

Providence, Rhode Island

Joseph Ayarbe, University of Nevada Technical Institute,

Reno, Nevada

Robert G. Backstrom, Merged Area VI Community College,

Marshalltown, Iowa

Jack D. Ballard, Nash Technical Institute, Rocky Mount,

North Carolina

Melvin L. Barlow, University of California, Los Angeles,

California

Walter J. Bartz, Illinois Division of Vocational and

Technical Education, Springfield, Illinois

Oran H. Beaty, Area Director Vocational Technical Education,

Council Bluffs, Iowa

Everett L. Belote, Illinois Junior College Board, Spring-

field, Illinois

Carroll Bennett, Des Moines Area Community College,

Ankeny, Iowa

Merril Berg, Lake Region Junior College, Devils Lake,

North Dakota

Robert Bergstrom, Minnesota State Junior College System,

St. Paul, Minnesota

David H. Bland, Montgomery Technical Institute, Troy,

North Carolina

56

M. D. Boatwright, Swainsboro Area Vocational TechnicalSchool, Swainsboro, Georgia

Howard E. Boudreau, Fayetteville Technical Institute,Fayetteville, North Carolina

James D. Bowling, Muskingum Technical Institute,Zanesville, Ohio

Ben Brewton, Macon Area Vocational-Technical School,Macon, Georgia

Fred J. Brinkman, Los Angeles Trade-Technical College,Los Angeles, California

Lewis L. Brinson, Ben Hill-Irwin Area Vocational TechnicalSchool, Fitzgerald, Georgia

John Broderick, Vanguard Technical Institute, Fremont, Ohio

Dale E. Brooks, Central Kansas Area Vocational TechnicalSchool, Newton, Kansas

James L. Burden, Ferris State College, Big Rapids,Michigan

Lowell A. Burkett, American Vocational Association,Washington, D. C.

Kenneth E. Carl, Williamsport Area Community College,Williamsport, Pennsylvania

Lewis Case, Lane Community College, Eugene, Oregon

James W. Clark, Walters State Community College,Morristown, Tennessee

John S. Clark, Ouachita Valley Technical Institute,West Monroe, Louisiana

Donald Cogdill, Ferris Post, St. Petersburg, Florida

Sidney N. Collier, Orleans Area Vocational TechnicalSchool, New Orleans, Louisiana

Harold K. Collins, Durham, North Carolina

57

Richard Collins, State Advisory Council for VocationalTechnical Education, Monpelier, Vermont

Melvin Cotrell, Butte, Montana

James A. Cross, State Advisory Council on VocationalEducation, Charleston, West Virginia

Michael Cullen, Willmar Technical Institute, Willmar,Minnesota

Richard Dagg, Vanguard Technical Institute, Fremont, Ohio

Raymond M. Deming, Chipola Junior College, Marianna,Florida

Walter F. Ditzler, Pima College, Tucson, Arizona

Virginia Dobbs, Technical-Occupational Programs, EastfieldCollege, Mesquite, Texas

Thomas E. Downey, Missoula Technical Center, Missoula,Montana

William A. Dwyer, Blue Hills Regional Technical Institute,Canton, Massachusetts

OLav R. Enli, Nicolet College, Rhinelander, Wisconsin

Theodore Erickson, Laramie, Wyoming

Lois Farone, Phoenix College, Phoenix, Arizona

D. H. Farrens, South Florida Junior College, Avon Park,Florida

A. P. Fatherree, State Director Vocational TechnicalEducation, Jackson, Mississippi

Marvin Feldman, Director of Program Development, Officeof Economic Opportunity, Washington, D. C.

William N. Fenninger, Delmar, New York

Flint, Kansas City Community Junior College, Kansas City,Kansas

58

Charles I. Foltz, New England Occupational Resources

Center, Newton, Massachusetts

Ray Freund, Faribault Area Vocational Technical School,

Faribault, Minnesota

Jack Friedman, Community College of Baltimore, Baltimore,

Maryland

Gordon B. Funk, California State CLdlege, Los Angeles,

California

W. D. Garrett, Baton Rouge Vocational Technical School,

Baton Rouge, Louisiana

Joe D. Gault, Spartanburg County Technical Education

Center, Spartanburg, South Carolina

Harlan E. Giese, Iowa Vocational Education Advisory

Council, Des Moines, Iowa

Angelo C. Gillie, The Pennsylvania State University,

University Park, Pennsylvania

Felton Goudey, State Advisory Council for Vocational

Technical. Education, Randolph, Vermont

Donald E. Graves, Southeastern Regional School District,

South Easton, Massachusetts

Charles F. Green, Warren County Technical Institute,

Washington, New Jersey

H. Dean Griffin, American Vocational Association,

Washington, D. C.

C. Nelson Grote, Morehead State University, Morehead,

Kentucky

Harold Grudem, Superintendent, Dakota County Area Vocational

Technical School, Farmington, Minnesota

John R. Guemple, Association Committee for Occupational

Education and Technical Education, Austin, Texas

Warren F. Haas, Indiana Vocational Technical College,

Indianapolis, Indiana

50

59

F. S. McCain, Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College,Tifton, Georgia

Ronald McCarter, Technical Institute of Alamance,Burlington, North Carolina

Robert L. McKee, Washington Technical Institute,Washington, D. C.

Dean McNenny, Area Vocational Technical School,Sturgis, South Dakota

George Mehallis, Miami-Dade Junior College, Miami,Florida

Richard J. Metcalf, Flinthills Area Vocational TechnicalSchool, Emporia, Kansas

Jack Millican, District School Board of Lake County,Umatilla, Florida

Norman P. Mitby, Madison Area Technical College,Madison, Wisconsin

Ronald F. Moon, Black Hawk College, Moline, Illinois

Lester Morley, Gulf Coast Junior College, Panama City,Florida

Jack S. Mullins, State Committee for Technical Education,Columbia, South Carolina

B. J. Murdock, Texarkana College, Texarkana, Texas

William E. Nagel, Advisory Council on Vocational Education,Springfield, Illinois

Joseph T. Nerden, Department of Industrial and TechnicalEducation, North Carolina State University, Raleigh,North Carolina

Charles Odell, U. S. Department of Labor, Washington, D. C.

Wilmot F. Oliver, Ocean County College, Toms River, NewJersey

S. C. O'Neal, J. F. Drake State Technical School, Huntsville,Alabama

6 9

60Richard H. Hagemeyer, Central Piedmont Community College,

Charlotte, North Carolina

Dana R. Hart, The Accrediting Commission for BusinessSchools, Washington, D. C.

Robert 0. Hatton, Colorado Springs, Colorado

Murle M. Hayden, Kansas Department of Education,Topeka, Kansas

John W. Henry, Jr., Malcolm X College, Chicago, Illinois

H. Robert Hewlett, State Superintendent of Public Instruction,Brownsburg, Indiana

Addison S. Hobbs, Washington Technical Institute,Washington, D. C.

Harold H. Hopper, Virginia Western Community College,Roanoke, Virginia

James A. Horton, Wahpeton, North Dakota

Frederic L. Howell, Chipola Junior College, Marianna, Florida

William Bruce Howell, Florida State Advisory Council onVocational Education, Tallahassee, Florida

Jack P. Hudnall, Bristol Community College, Fall River,Massachusetts

Ezekiel Hughes, Jr., Wenonah State Technical School, Birmingham,Alabama

Alton Ice, The Advisory Council for Technical VocationalEducation, Austin, Texas

Lloyd J. Jewett, University of Maine at Augusta

Clyde H. Jordan, Jr., Ouachita Valley Technical Institute,West Monroe, Louisiana

Leo Keskinen, Itasca State Junior College, Grand Rapids,Minnesota

61

Ray M. Kesler, County School District, Morgantown, WestVirginia

Earl H. Knebel, Texas A & M University, College Station,Texas

Robert Knoebel, Bureau of Management Services, Departmentof Education, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Harrisburg,Pennsylvania.

Robert G. Koons, Iowa Vocational Education Advisory Council,Des Moines, Iowa

William A. Korizek, Helena Vocational Technical Center,Helena, Montana

Elmer L. Kuntz, Elko Community College, Elko, Nevada

john C. Lanz, Harrisburg Area Community College, Harrisburg,Pennsylvania

Irvin T. Lathrop, California State College, Long Beach,California

Charles J. Law, Jr., Division of Occupational Education,Raleigh, North Carolina

M. G. Linson, Denver, Colorado

Robert W. Leonard, Brookdale Community College, Lincroft,New Jersey

Robert W. Le:May, Jr., Raleigh, North Carolina

Scott A. Marshall, Jefferson State Junior College,Birmingham, Alabama

Quintin A. Martin, Panola College, Carthage, Texas

A. D. Mathison, Milwaukee Area Technical College, Milwaukee,Wisconsin

Mildred A. Mason, Norfolk City Schools, Norfolk, Virginia

Robert M. Mayo, Hinds Jr. College, Raymond, Mississippi

(5 2

62Robert E. Paap, Catawba Valley Technical, Hickory,

North Carolina

George A. Parkinson, Milwaukee Area Techn4al College,Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Ernest: B. Parry, Forsyth Technical Institute, WinstonSalem, North Carolina

Hugh B. Phelps, Virginia Western Community College,Roanoke, Virginia

Lloyd J. Phipps, University of Illinois, Urbana, Illinois

Arden Pratt, American Association of Junior Colleges,Washington, D. C.

Charles Radcliffe, Minority Counsel for the Committee onEducation and Labor, U. S. House of Representatives,Washington, D. C.

Henry I. Rahn, Jr., Sandhills Community College, SouthernPines, North Carolina

Charles G. Richardsor,, Western Wisconsin Technical Institute,La Crosse, Wisconsin

Earl Roberson, Carver State Technical Trade School, Mobile,Alabama

Walter Roberts, Skagit Valley College, Mt. Vernon,

Washington

Berol L. Robinson, J. S. Metric Study, Newton, Massachusetts

David Schroeder, Dakota County Area Vocational School,Farmington, Minnesota

John Schwetz, West Shore Community College, Scottville,Michigan

Austell 0. Sherard, Indiana Vocational Technical CollegeIndianapolis, Indiana

Sam Shigetomi, State Director, Honolulu, Hawaii

Jerome Shostak, Western Electric Fund, New York, New York

63

J. B. Simmons, Henderson County Junior College, Athens,

Texas

Marion D. Smiley, Trenholm State Trade School, Montgomery,

Alabama

James S. Smith, Maryland State Department of Education,

Baltimore, Maryland

Warren Sorenson, West Valley College, Campbell, California

Lyle C. Sorum, UND-WillistonCenter, Williston, North Dakota

Bill G. Spence, Vincennes University, Vincennes, Indiana

Robert A. Stenger, Kirtland Community College, Roscommon,

Michigan

J. Louis Stokes, Utica Junior College, Utica, Mississippi

Thomas C. Stone, Southern State College, Springfield, South

Dakota

Ruth Stovall, Home Economies Education, Montgomery, Alabama

Clinton E. Tatsch, Columbus Technical Institute, Columbus,

Ohio

Jack E. Tompkins, Texas State Technical Institute, Waco,

Texas

Arthur L. Walker, Richmond, Virginia

Charles F. Ward, North Carolina State University, Raleigh,

North Carolina

Lowell A. Welsh, Nebraska Vocational Technical Education,

Milford, Nebraska

Ronald D. Wilson, Butler County Community Junior College,

El Dorado, Kansas

Robert E. Turner, Palos Park, Illinois

64Scott Tuxhorn, State Superintendent of Public Instruction,

Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

William P. Vaughn, Triplett Technical, Mt. Jackson, Virginia

James C. Wakefield, St. Cloud Area Vocational TechnicalSchool, St. Cloud, Minnesota

Richard L. Waldroup, Guilford Technical Institute,Jamestown, North Carolina

C. I. Washburn, Belleville Area College, Belleville,Illinois

Howard D. Waters, Albany, Georgia

Paul K. Weatherly, Delaware Technical and Community College,Dover, Delaware

Warren G. Weiler, Ohio Advisory Council, Worthington, Ohio

Edward L. Weld, Nashville State Technical Institute,Nashville, Tennessee

Carl 0. Westbrook, New Mexico State University at Grants,Grants, New Mexico

Harold T. White, The Northeast Mississippi Jr. College,Booneville, Mississippi

Charles O. Whitehead, Memphis, Tennessee

D. H. Whittington, State Advisory Council on VocationalEducation, Natchitoches, Louisiana

Harry J. Wolf, University of Nevada Technical Institute,Reno, Nevada

6 5

american vocational association1510 h street, n.w.washington, d.c. 20005