Going to Scale: Employer Participation in School-to-Work Programs at LaGuardia Community College

‘Business partnerships for American education’: employer involvement in the national academy foundation's high school career academies

“…This stability is in sharp contrast to other case study research. For example, a study of the co-operative programme at LaGuardia Community College found that only about half of the employers stayed with the programme from one year to the next (Wieler & Bailey, 1997). While our data cannot give a clear sense of turnover, our figures do give an indication of lasting employer participation for those affiliated with the NAF academy programme (Table III).…”

“…Thus, the challenge may be to ensure initial involvement of employers, rather than maintaining involvement over time. This does, however, contradict another study that found high turnover in employer participation (Wieler & Bailey, 1997). It is possible that the findings discussed above, particularly the industryspecific preparation of the students, may encourage employers to remain active in the academy programme after their initial experience.…”

“…In addition, almost three-quarters of the respondents are from private, for-profit firms. In contrast, other analyses of firms participating in internship programmes found a stronger reliance on non-profit and government placements (Bailey et al, 2000;Wieler & Bailey, 1997 Finally, of particular significance is that half of the interviewed employers had participated since 1995 -more than 5 years -and nearly 20% had been participating for 10 years or more. Of advisory board firms, almost one-quarter have been participating in the programme for 10 years or more, and about one-third have served on the board for more than 5 years.…”

“…Other studies increasingly demonstrated that programmes were having success in recruiting employer partners (Lynn & Wills, 1994;Wieler & Bailey, 1997;Hughes, 1998). Cappelli et al (1998) fielded a national survey of employers and found that in 1997, 26% of all US establishments employing 20 or more people were participating in a school-to-work partnership, and 39% were participating in some form of work-based learning.…”

Experiential Learning: Reducing the Real-World Divide between Libraries and Library Schools

“…Examples of extra effort for an instructor include the time taken to find real-world projects (relevant to the class) each semester, the difficulty in evaluating student work based in this setting, and the requirement to adjust style of teaching and guide students through the unknown (Levine, 2005;Minstrell, 2001). For example, in one class that attempted to incorporated work with real employers at LaGuardia Community College, there was an approximate 50% turnover of participating employers each year (Wieler & Bailey, 1997). The high turnover results in high setup costs to find clients each semester.…”